When using oil-based colored pencils with the Icarus Drawing Board, make sure to combine them with a wax-based medium. As you can see below, a thick layer of wax-based colored pencil is necessary to make the oil-based one as blendable as its wax counterpart.
4 comments
deb mason
February 15, 2010
Ester, what brands are oil based colored pencils? I use Prismacolor that are wax based. Caran d’ache is the wax based “pastel” or crayon….but oil based cp is new to me. Thanks for the updates by email.
Ester Roi
February 15, 2010
Deb: the oil-based colored pencils I’m familiar with are Caran d"Ache Pablo, Faber-Castell Polychromos, and Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor, all excellent brands. Keep in mind that oil-based colored pencils are usually harder than their wax counterparts like Sanford Prismacolor, Caran d’Ache Luminance etc. Since they don’t soften as much with heat, I use them in conjunction with a wax-based medium.
Elaine Acree
November 13, 2019
Ester, Have you tried the new Derwent Lightfast Colored pencils yet? They are oil based but said to be softer than Polychromos pencils. Also, can you use an oil pastel as the coloring base instead of a wax pencil? Thanks!
Ester Roi
November 14, 2019
Yes, I’ve tried the new Derwent colored pencils but I don’t use them as I prefer softer, wax-based pencils like Luminance and Prismacolor.
I’ve worked with oil pastels as a base for colored pencils; they build up very quickly and need to be thinned down with a paper stump to layer colored pencils on top. It’s a bit tricky but it can be done. However, I prefer Neocolors in place of oil pastels.