Derwent Chromaflow Review and Coloursoft Comparison

hi everyone welcome to another video here on color with claire today we're taking a look at the new 72 set of chromaflow pencils by derwent we'll have a look at the colour range performance blending and all that good stuff as well as comparing them to coloursoft which is the closest comparative pencil in the derwent range here's the 72 tin with beautiful commissioned artwork on the front as we've come to expect from derwent packaging the pencils themselves have black barrels with gold lettering and signature derwent coloured dipped ends the barrel measures 7.2 mil making it thinner than your average pencil width so if you work with coloured pencils regularly this narrowness will be evident as soon as you pick up the pencil i quickly got used to it and it didn't affect my colouring experience at all the core is 3.5 mil thick giving the pencils a fair amount of strength whilst feeling light in the hand the wood used for the barrel is not as good quality as the higher end pencils in the derwent range and this can be noticeable when sharpening sometimes i used an electric sharpener and a manual hand crank and experienced a couple of breakages in certain pencils the wood seemed a little bit resistant to sharpening however once i tried the recommended derwent metal pencil sharpener this problem was alleviated it would be unfair to expect them to be comparable in build quality to say artist grade pencils because that just isn't their category or price point although they do still have some light fast properties more about that later this set has extremely vibrant colors and in my opinion is ideal for coloring enthusiasts and hobbyists the leads are fairly soft but not at all crumbly so they hold a decent point for a long time the laydown is incredibly velvety and smooth and most importantly for me they blend beautifully the colours are very well balanced in the set all of them very rich and bold making for striking colouring they lay down lots of pigment and quickly i was pleasantly surprised at how fast i was able to colour and still keep the lay down consistent the lead feels like it glides across the paper and it makes for a very pleasant colouring experience with very little debris the wax based core enables easy blending and the amount of layers you can apply depends predominantly on the paper you're using you don't need to layer them up like you would with a harder oil based lead but depending on the paper this technique may be preferable my particular colour in style is using vibrant contrasting colours that are so smoothly blended it can almost look like marker work there are countless colouring techniques and preferences that are unique to the artist such as applying a very delicate layer of colour that leaves the texture of the paper visible however i don't personally colour this way chromaflow pencils are just perfect for my style of application because the colours are so striking and they blend really well it's also no effort to get full saturation of colour onto the page as the lead expels a lot of pigment with very little pressure again papers with a heavier tooth will grip that pigment more than a smooth stock would so as with any pencil the paper you use will somewhat determine your experience in my speed colour in here i use cheap printer paper i always test pencils on this initially to see how they hold up on the most basic of papers as you can see they did wonderfully and i'll test them on different stock later in the video i was pleasantly surprised to find i barely needed to sharpen these pencils throughout the whole piece as they kept a decent point throughout as i mentioned earlier these pencils do also have a level of light fastness the pigments have been tested for permanence under exposure to light according to the blue wool scale and 44 of the 72 pencils are considered to have a very good level of light fastness this means the saturation and hue of the colour will remain unchanged under museum conditions for up to 100 years each pencil has its own lightfast score which you can find on the official color chart this means that despite chromaflow being predominantly marketed towards hobbyists colored pencil artists could cherry pick the colors with the highest light fastness to add to their professional collection of course if you're looking for a superior range of lightfast pencils you'd be better off with derwent lightfast collection as all 100 are highly lightfast and have been rigorously tested under the internationally recognized astm standard so let's have a look at some testing i've performed on these pencils using a paper specifically marketed for coloured pencil use a medium texture stock that you typically use when printing pdfs to colour firstly i'm going to try a simple rainbow blend have a look at how smooth we can get the full spectrum of colours the result is incredibly smooth and again i'm impressed you can see there's barely any debris from the lead even though we're using heavier pressure to burnish so that's a huge thumbs up next we'll see how many layers can be done i was pleasantly surprised to see all seven boxes were filled before the layers started to burnish this is a great result for those who like to build up layers of colour i then looked at how chromaflow respond to various blending solutions first we have pencil only then blending with white which mutes the colour down to a tint whilst blending and burnishing the two colours so if this washed out effect is what you're going for use the white next is a colourless blender pencil which allows you to keep the intensity of colour whilst blending together but can leave a bit of a speckled texture the blending solution or odorless mineral spirits is next and this blends the colours but does not burnish so you can still see the paper texture underneath this allows you to go back in and add more layers so you can add a bit of oms between your layers to build up the colour finally i tried a colourless alcohol marker which did desaturate it a bit and left a blotchy finish in places so not ideal colour mixing now which is where we take the primary colours and layer them over each other to see if a secondary colour can be created similar to what you do when you're mixing paint in primary school i don't really mix colours a lot in my work because there's so many colours to work with already that i don't really need to create colours by mixing them but i can definitely see we've got a lovely orange and green although the purple is a little muddy next i checked erasability over a light and heavy plush pressure swatch which i was impressed with for a wax pencil which are notoriously difficult to erase it didn't completely eradicate all trace of pigment of course but it was certainly better than i'd expect smudging now so i made sure to apply a decent amount of colour and rubbed it rather vigorously with my finger this isn't something you'd usually do so maybe it is overkill but you could brush the side of your hand over your work quite easily so it's worth checking chromaflow held up well and didn't have much movement at all i thought it'd be good to check if these have any solubility with water even though they're not marketed as such most pencils have a degree of movement with water which is normal but we wouldn't want to see anything too drastic i think next time i'll contain the water into the raindrop shape because the printer ink ended up reacting with the water the blue chromaflow pigment however thankfully didn't move at all finally i thought we'd see how they do on black paper this is a good test for opacity so that we can see if the colours are strong and saturated or more translucent i was gobsmacked at how bright they appear on black even the darkest color the purple is super vibrant that just shows you how pigmented these pencils are fantastic so that concludes my chroma flow testing this is a chart that i made myself and i'll include a cheeky free copy for you if you want to print it off and do your own color pencil testing and i'll leave that in the description below i have put together a list of colors that blend really well in this chroma flow set which will be up on your screen now so if you do have this set of 72 you can try these color combos and let me know what you think finally i wanted to end by comparing chromaflow to coloursoft their closest partner in the derwent range many people who own coloursoft will likely want to know whether chromaflow are worth investing in depending on how much they differ coloursoft are known as derwent's softest pencil it's in the name and like the chromaflow they have 72 colours they're wax-based and are somewhat lightfast that's where the similarities end though the color soft barrel is thicker at eight millimeters and made from cedar wood they also have a four mil core so the build quality is certainly higher on a few different points you'd expect this of course with the color soft being a professional grade pencil and they have 51 out of 72 pencils certified as very good in terms of blue wool tested light fastness because of all this they are of course at a higher price point than the chromaflow and as for lay down they do feel very different indeed where chromaflow are ultra smooth and silky and seem to glide across the page colour soft feel dryer they are super pigmented but the application feels almost chalky in comparison to the chroma flow and incredibly soft to the point of crumbly in some colours whether this is a good or bad thing is totally down to personal preference so i can't judge them one way or the other i can say though that they are clearly a high quality art tool with a very rich intensity of colour and dense lay down and they are very different to chromaflow in look and feel again paper is super important when judging a pencil's performance but on balance i think that despite the difference in price and general quality i actually prefer the chroma flow they're bold colours and velvety feel is wonderful to experience and i like how they feel strong and hold a point despite blending so effortlessly together it's funny because i never really made the distinction but when comparing the chromaflow and the colour soft directly you can really tell the difference between the terms smooth and soft the chromaflow apply light silk and feel firm whereas the colour soft are easier to mush together i'd love to know in the comments what you think of both the new chromaflow pencils and your opinion of how they compare to coloursoft if you don't yet have these pencils will there be a future purchase and if you already have them tell me what you think i'd love to hear from you so please drop me a line below and we will discuss your views i'll be leaving amazon links for the pencils in the description so all that's left to say is a big thank you to derwent for sending the pencils for me to compare and i will see you very soon on colour with clay

Channel: Colour with Claire

Views: 18,978

Keywords: Derwent Chromaflow, Chromaflow pencils

Id: TAaFTLP5YXk

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2022