Derwent Graphitint Pencils

Graphitint Blister Pack, linked from the Derwent website

One of life's great pleasures is browsing around art stores. In my case, Richard's is the local mecca here in Walnut Creek, CA. Wandering the aisles recently, I ran across a blister pack of Derwent Graphitint pencils. These are a fascinating product consisting of graphite lightly tinted with color. While tinted graphite has been around forever, these pencils have a unique additional capability--they are water soluble. 

Used dry, they are very good 4B sketching pencils. They sharpen to a good point and hold that point reasonably well, or at least as well as one might expect given the softness of the lead. Breakage has not been an issue at all for me. As advertised, the tint is very subtle, at least for most colors. The ivy is the exception, it looks more like a colored pencil than graphite. They make a nice range of tonal variation without exceptional effort and getting a smooth gradient of tone is not all that difficult. Their points are fine enough that they can be used for detail work although the softness of the lead cuts against this aspect since they dull quickly. 

The excitement starts when you add water to the mix. I used the Sakura waterbrush that came with a Koi watercolor set while out sketching recently. What a transformation! A sketch of the Closter in Furstenfeldbruck (a town near Munich) went from a low key image to a riot of color and tone. Adding water also allows for a loose style. I found that I need not bother to worry about getting perfect coverage in my layering or getting an exactly smooth tone gradient. Instead, I loosely colored in different levels of tone and then relied on the brush to evenly layer and smooth the tones. Unlike working in colored pencil, the Graphitints have the advantage of easy erasing, no kneadable erasers or any other tricks are required to lift off stray color. A simple eraser does the trick. 

Lately, I've taken to sketching using an ultralight art kit, everything fitting into a slim school pencil case, consisting of some graphic pencils, a set of graphitints, a Staedtler sharpener and eraser, and a black Micron 05 pen. This little kit can produce good stuff on anything from 70-140 lb Bristol or watercolor paper. The Graphitints do not require much water to spring to life, so you can always work relatively dry if using lighter paper. This little kit allows for a wide range of styles to fit your mood, everything from full-blown watercolor to pure pen and ink. 

My only quibble is with the range of colors offered in the blister pack. Used dry, the dark green, dark brown, and gray pencils are almost identical in tone. Even wet, the gray pencil does not add much, better would be to have some lighter red-brown or orange-red tone in the mix since both the port and brown are rather too dark to capture certain red-orange-ochre values. 

Overall recommendation: Strong buy.