I love that the Drawing and the Lightfast have a crossover of colour names so you can utilise say the Mars Violet (another fave) in the Drawing range for the underpainting of a piece and then use the Lightfast one to add details. We use different woods in the manufacture of our pencils and sometimes the wood may change during the lifetime of a pencil range. These are hard, pastel like sticks with a flat overall shape designed to be used as either a drawing tool (like pastel) or as a source for wet pigment (like a paint box pan colour). I used a Bristol Plate surface paper for the drawing as Derwent recommends that this product best performs on smoother papers.

Derwent Chromaflow Pencil Tins | Ken Bromley Art Supplies

You can also use them on their own but it is slightly more difficult to get fine details because of the width of the core. The basic ratings are: 1 = Very poor (fugitive), 2 – 3 = Poor (fugitive), 4 – 5 = Fair (impermanent), 6 = Very Good, 7 – 8 = Excellent. Although a palette of 72 is still a long way of 150, it is still significantly better than a 24 set, speaking for myself, I feel that the Chromaflow when offering only the 24 palette, placed the range in a kind of limbo.The best way I can describe it is if you have ever stripped the bark of a dead pine and under the wood feels wet from sap and moisture and looks like it is in fibres; this is the best way I can describe it. Lightfast coloured pencils have been a holy grail that artists in coloured pencil have wanted for a long time.

Derwent Chromaflow Pencils | Pencils | Derwent

The manufacturing of the core to appease colored pencil artists who enjoy Prismacolor has most certainly been accomplished as far as I can tell. I would say it actually feels a bit more similar to Faber-Castell Goldfaber pencils than Prismacolor in that sense. There are many Artist Quality pencils on the market but very few Artist Graded pencils and unless selling original pieces, we mustn’t ignore these other wonderful pencils with mid to high lightfast ratings.

As you can clearly see from the images provided, the Derwent Chromaflow sit beautifully strong on the black paper, all colors applied are quite opaque and the same goes for the Prismacolor pencils used. I complete this test all the time, holding the pencil at the very end of the barrel and allowing the weight of the pencil to layer, this test helps to shoe pigment strength and the pencils ability to layer.