New Drawing Pencils

Pica has just given me a set of the new Derwent drawing pencils as an early birthday present. I have loved the Derwent drawing pencils for many years now, starting with their original set of six pencils and then later acquiring their set of 24 pencils when the line got expanded to that size. These pencils are enjoyably soft and creamy but the colors in the 24 pencil set are muted and have a limited range of hues. To the excitement of many, late last fall Derwent released a much bigger set of pencils in this line with 72 colors in it, including some bright greens, yellows, and reds.

I swatched the pencils out yesterday and am starting to draw with them. Here is an apple I sketched this afternoon (the variety of apple is a “Cosmic Crisp”). The full set is too bulky to carry out into the field most of the time so I’ll probably be drawing with them mainly at my desk. I may also try to identify a few bright colors to supplement my set of 24 pencils and use that as my field set.