This is a two-in-one review of Spectrum Noir AquaBlend watercolour pencils. I found these at my local Winners/HomeSense store at CAD$19.99 each, which was too cheap to pass up. I know I have said I won’t buy any more budget art supplies, but this came highly recommended by Lindsay Weirich of the Frugal Crafter and Harry of the Art Gear Guide. The price is good and apparently the pigments are lightfast, so why not?
Spectrum Noir AquaBlend Portrait Collection Review
Since I do a lot of portraits, this set was very attractive to me. Pay attention to the image on the tin, because it foretells the range of skin tones and hair colours you can create with this set.
These are the printed swatches on the back of the tin. Below are my dry and wet swatches:
The colours are quite pale, with no dark shades. Depending on the paper texture, you may have a different experience blending and dissolving these in water; on the above, I used Fabriano 1264 cold pressed paper, which is very textured. Some shades took a little bit more scrubbing to blend but overall, they dissolve fairly easily.
The Shade Caps Don’t Reflect The Real Colours
One thing I noticed right away, is that the shade on the cap of each pencil does not always match the actual colour. Here are just a few examples:
The lighter shades are more inaccurate than the darker ones. The banana on the cap looks green, when it’s actually a pale yellow shade. The papaya shade appears orange on the cap, but looks yellow when swatched. The cantaloupe shade is more dramatic, with the cap looking very pale, even though it is much darker and orange. The same is true for the Botanical Collection as well, so you may want to do your own swatch cards because you cannot rely on the caps to pick your colours.
Jennifer Connelly Portrait
I did my first portrait with the Portrait Collection, using almost all the shades. By the way, I used Fabriano Studio cold pressed 25% cotton paper, which is not my favourite. The student grade Fabriano papers are thick, but water dries very quickly. I usually use them to practice strokes because wet on wet is almost impossible on these papers.
Shades Aren’t Dark Enough
The lack of deep colours is evident. I couldn’t deepen the darker areas much at all, even using the darkest shades in the set, which are Aubergine, Black Umber and Deep Forest. I cannot make Jennifer Connelly’s hair as dark as it is in real life. The set would have been more useful if it included a black pencil.
On this 25% cotton paper, I had a hard time layering the colours as well. They lift whenever I tried to glaze. So, despite the cold pressed texture, it didn’t allow for glazing. Now I really miss my Derwent Inktense! 😛
I ended up using the darkest shades in the Botanical Collection to deepen the hair, shading and the lips. I find it hard to layer, so this had to be done touching my wet brush on the pencil tip and paint from the brush in order not to lift the layers beneath. This is the only technique I find that circumvent the lifting problem.
Sadly, the painting on the Portrait Collection tin is the darkest you can get, so even if you paint someone who has lighter skin but darker hair the set is not a stand-alone. Kind of defeats the purpose and not very inclusive colour choices. There are other sets in AquaBlend family you can purchase, by the way. The two sets I have here do not contain any duplicates, which is nice.
Testing Spectrum Noir AquaBlend on 100% Cotton Paper
I had painted the same cat before from my Let’s Make Art subscription box, so I thought I would do the same, but with the watercolour pencils. I painted the cat dry first, on Fluid 100% hot pressed cotton paper. It’s not my favourite paper, since hot pressed paper doesn’t have much texture and I find this one doesn’t withstand any erasing at all. It was a regret purchase, but I digress.
I used Julep to colour the background, but it was the only shade that does not dissolve or blend properly. The other shades dissolved in water very easily and did not leave streaks like Julep did.
Glazing was slightly easier on the 100% cotton paper. I attempted to dry paint another layer before wetting it.
Lifting happened as well. I moved on to touch my wet brush to the tips of the pencils and added in another layer.
I added a coat of Aegean Blue in the background to even out the Julep streaks. I used the pencils wet (with a brush) to darken the values on the ccat, which worked much better than colouring dry and then wetting the pigments. For the whiskers, I used the pencils dry and did not wet again.
Below is the same cat painted with liquid watercolour paint (from Let’s Make Art):
Spectrum Noir AquaBlend Botanical Collection Review
Next, I am reviewing the second set I bought, which is the Botanical Collection. The colours are expectedly more vivid:
I have a much better feeling about this set. Here are my dry and wet swatches:
Look at these colours! They are vivid and dry nicely. I love the purples and pinks. Thankfully, the Peat shade is dark enough and I was able to deepen my Jennifer Connelly and cat paintings with it.
By the way, both sets have fairly firm leads and they do not break easily. I have sharpened most of these after taking pictures of them in their tins, and none has broken so far.
While the pigments appear vivid in swatches, they don’t always translate when you use them in a piece of artwork. The Dandelion (yellow) shade, for instance, loses its brightness very easily when dissolved in water. It left uneven streaks that I could not blend out.
This was 100% cotton cold pressed watercolour paper, the third kind I tried with AquaBlend. I think this paper fared the best with these pencils wet, though the colours still tend to lift. On the largest flower, which I used Hyacinth and Crocus shades, it is most evident. I was not able to blend it without either blending away into nothing because the pigments lifted, or leaving streaks behind.
I went back and painted the background with a second dry coat of Dandelion and decided not to wet it.
Summary Review of Spectrum Noir AquaBlend
So, are these worth the money? It really depends. I think for the price (I hate this phrase hehehe) I paid these are great, especially because their pigments are lightfast. If you are colouring stamped images, for example, you won’t notice most of the problems I mentioned, as these more than suffice for smaller areas.
However, if you were to pay suggested retail price for these, you are much better off with Faber Castell Albrecht Dürer, which are lightfast AND you can layer/glaze without lifting the colours underneath easily.
I was able to find this video with great comparisons between the two.
