Lightfast artist colored pencils from the Austrian pencil factory Cretacolor, usable in both dry and wet techniques. Used dry, they are suitable for quick outline drawings, hatching and detail work; with a brush, the drawings can be watercolored. For lines that are not clearly defined, the watercolor pencils can be used directly on damp paper. Fine color gradations you achieve by mixing the colors in the dry as in the wet.
The watercolorable artist color pencils are not as soft as the Monolith watercolor pencils from Cretacolor, which we also carry in the range, but have a beautiful, intense color application, are highly pigmented and lightfast and easy to paint.

The production of colored pencils is a science in itself and correspondingly complex. A and O are of course the pigments, from the kind of their processing (their digestion) and the added quantity depends on the Fabintensität. In other words, a high pigment content does not necessarily result in high color intensity if the breakdown is poor.
The color smear on the paper is determined by the binder content in the lead, the type of fillers and colorants, and the proportion of waxy components. Finally, the lead diameter also plays a role: leads with a small diameter require more binder for greater breaking strength and therefore appear somewhat harder when drawing. Leads with a larger diameter allow a softer consistency (i.e. less binder), which goes hand in hand with a high color intensity and soft stroke. So-called hydrophile or lipophilic additives (water- or fat-loving additives) determine whether a color is watercolorable or permanent.
All these parameters - type of pigments and additives, proportion of binders and lead diameter - also affect the resulting color. The color palette of our color and watercolor pencils therefore turns out quite different.