After discovering that Caran D'Ache's Luminance pencils were the perfect fit for my drawing style two years ago, I've been gradually building up my collection. Last week, I took delivery of the final pencils I needed to complete the full range of 100 colours. My old swatch sheet was a download from Caran D'Ache that places the colours all over the place rather than in colour families, so I decided to re-swatch all of the pencils in an order that makes more sense to me visually. I'll be sharing these swatches this week, along with the colours that I've found most useful during my time using these fabulous coloured pencils.
Luminance 6901 are Caran D'Ache's premium range of coloured pencils. They're expensive (usually around £3.50 per pencil when bought individually) but are packed with pigment and I find them a complete joy to use. I have the full set of Faber-Castell Polychromos coloured pencils, which are also professional quality, but I don't find these suit my drawing style. It's a shame as they cost around £1.90 per pencil and are beautiful things, however I find they don't layer over other media as well as the Luminance pencils and they don't give me the texture I like to achieve in my drawings on watercolour paper. I'm very happy I have the Polychromos pencils when I need a very light addition of colour though, such as in my raven drawings, as they are great for building up colour very gradually.
Back to Luminance. I love collecting things, especially colourful things that give me joy, so I'm over the moon to have finally completed my set of Luminance pencils. I started with a few individual pencils, to check I liked them more than the very similar Derwent Lightfast range, and then bought the set of 40 of Luminance pencils when they were on offer. This was a great way to get started as it gave me a useful range of colours at much less than I would have paid by buying them individually as open stock. Since then, I've added a couple of Luminance pencils to most of the art supply orders I've made and if there's been a good discount on them, I've bought lots of pencils in one go. It's so satisfying to receive them in the post and add the colours to my swatch sheet, gradually seeing the blank spaces reduce and the variety of colours I have to choose from increase.
My original swatch sheets.
Unfortunately, the official Caran D'Ache swatch sheets (above) order the colours by number, rather than colour family, and place the original range of 76 colours on a separate sheet to the the 24 they later released. Some of the names have also apparently changed since this swatch sheet was produced so it was less than ideal and made finding and comparing colours very difficult. I've now reordered the pencils in my pencil case and re-swatched them in a much more useful way:
I find the colours in the Luminance range really suits the subjects I draw. I mainly draw birds and so rely on a range of neutral colours, particularly browns. These are the colours that I built up first as it's amazing how many different browns can be on just one bird.
Some birds with more neutral plumage.
Of course, several birds are anything but neutral in their colouring and so I ordered a wide selection of the yellows and blues when working on the sunbird drawing and added to my turquoises for the kingfisher. By the red ibis drawing I'd already built up my collection, so I didn't have to order in anything extra for this one.
It's pretty obvious which colours to choose if you have a particular subject in mind, but what do you order from this range if you're just getting started?
From my experience, I'd first buy a couple of pencils in colours that you like and tend to use already in your work to help you to judge if these are the right pencils for you. We're all so different and find different things work for our art, so try a couple out and see how you like them. I can recommend getting more than one to try as my Payne's Grey 30% pencil is scratchy and if I'd only tried that one I'd never have bought any more. My Cassel Earth pencil is very chalky and again, I doubt I'd have bought more Luminance pencils if that was my only experience. I'm not sure if these characteristics are true for all the pencils of that colour, or just the particular pencil I bought, but whatever the case get a few to try before you decide to buy more.
The next step, if you can afford it, is to look for a set of colours that suits your work and get them when they're on offer. This gives you a good range of colours at a more reasonable price. You can then build up your collection with open stock from there.
The colours I've found most useful are:
Dark Indigo (639) and Payne's Grey (508) - These are great background or shadow colours. I included the Dark Indigo in the neutral swatches as it's almost a black. I go through these two pencil colours by far the quickest.
Dark Sap Green (739) - Another wonderfully dark colour. I've used this in a dark background where the blues wouldn't have worked.
Sepia (407) - I've used a lot of this and it's my go-to dark brown. (I like the colour of Cassel Brown as well, but as I've already mentioned, it's so chalky I don't enjoy using the pencil).
Olive Brown (039) and Green Olive (025) - Not the prettiest colours, but massively useful if you draw birds. I've been surprised by how much I've reached for these.
Moss Green (225) - Such a natural green, it's been vital to lots of drawings. One of the criticisms of the Luminance range is its relatively small range of greens. Many people supplement their Luminance pencils with some of the greens from the Derwent Lightfast range.
Black (009) - I couldn't get the depth in the eyes of the birds I draw without Black. I usually only use it a little, but sometimes use it more extensively on very dark subjects or to add to a dark background, along with the Dark Indigo.
Carmine Lake (575) - A very useful deep brownish red. Either this or Burnt Sienna (069) come in very handy.
These are the colours that I've found I reach for the most, across lots of drawings, and I think they're likely to be generally useful for most artists. There are many colours that I'm very happy to have, not because I use them often, but because they're so beautiful. Ultramarine Violet, Manganese Violet, Middle Verdigris, Anthraquinoid Pink and Light Malachite Green fall into this category for me.
Really fascinating Emma; I’ve yet to try these!