In 2006, colored pencils fans got pretty excited when the Cumberland Pencil Company introduced Derwent Inktense.

 

These were different from other watercolor pencils in some interesting ways.

 

The color is ink/dye rather than pigment - more transparent and more intense, hence the name.

 

Most folks who bought them fell in love right away with the vibrancy of the color - and right away, wanted more than the 24 colors that were available. They will be excited to hear that 48 more colors have now been added for a total of 72! And the pencils are now also sold open stock so you can replace the colors you use most.

As I mentioned yesterday, they did far and away the best job when transferring from Sheer Heaven to Ultrasuede, and now I’m on a research mission with other fabrics. I love how they maintain their brilliance even against the bone colored Ultrasuede I was using for my tags.

 

I want to experiment much more with their behavior on paper because the product literature has some interesting claims. Once they have been wet and allowed to dry, they are supposed to be waterproof so you can use glazing techniques (laying one transparent wash down over another) or paint over them with watercolor like you  might a permanent ink.

 

My experience so far is that, while a dried wash was pretty much waterproof, heavier applications were not - unless all the color had been liquified. I’ll be sharing some of my experiments with this as we go along.

 

There is an interesting pencil called an “Outliner” in sets of 24 and larger. It behaves exactly like a graphite drawing pencil except that water does not smear it, so it’s good for outlining a drawing when ink lines are a little too scary, It will erase. That always makes a thing less scary.

 

Of course, being the queen of all colored pencil oinkies, I went shopping right away online (because the local stores did not have the biggest set and anyway, the list price would be $160+).

 

Found them for half that at Dick Blick, and yes I bought them, and I even already used them, and I’m excited about making a new color chart!

 

I wonder if I just buy art supplies so I can make color charts and have the illusion of being organized for a little while? Hmmm . . .

 

Anyway, here’s the Inktense page at Dick Blick