Faffing about
This dropped into my Facebook page, my Instagram feed and I had an email about it too. I guess someone, somewhere caught on to the fact that I’d mentioned Paul Smith recently or perhaps, more likely, that I have a weakness for art materials. It caught my eye though, until I saw the price.
Surely, I have those colours in my crayon pot already?
This morning, with nothing better to do, I had a look. In amongst my old crayons were the Caran d’Ache Prismalo aquarelle pencils which I thought would be the most likely to tally with those in the picture. No really dark green there, though, the only pale green in the pot was a really old crayon from a set Daddy brought me back when he was in the Lake District…probably getting on for sixty years ago!! Obviously this set of crayons wasn’t one of those huge boxes with every colour under the sun…just a selection of two dozen or so.
Also in that same pot were some WH Smith crayons and I thought that maybe those colours would be a better match. Not really.
So I got out my super-duper-too-good-to-be-used enormous set in a wooden box. These are Faber Castell and I think I have the complete collection. Surely all of those Paul Smith colours would be here? Surprisingly not. The palest green (labelled Pistachio in the small PS tin) was nothing like that colour in my opinion, and the palest pink was this “light magenta” - more blue toned than the pale rose in the PS set. Blues were a bit lacking too - no deep petrol blue either.
My Hero was sitting at his computer as I was muttering "I do not need any more crayons”, but this was proving to be more of a challenge than I thought.
I looked around and caught sight of the box of no more than a dozen or so StabiloTone, watercolour crayons I bought when I was doing C & G. They’re really great to use, lay down a thick layer of watercolour pigment and until I got them out of the box they lived in, I hardly used them at all. Surprisingly, that small set almost had the whole palette. But not quite. That pistachio green was proving elusive.
What else? These Gelato colours are similar to the StabiloTone crayons but are in a plastic tube rather than a wooden “pencil” format. I have very few of those and yet… But no pale green.
I was about to give up but thought I’d try the thick felt pens I bought in Frankfurt a few years ago, when we visited the Faber Castell shop there. I have only a small set of these (another one of those gasps when I saw the price!) but again, that palette was very nearly there.
But no, there were a couple of gaps….
I remember being amused (and surprised) when I read that paint manufacturers trademark their colours. Slight differences in hue and tone can make all the difference and that was what was going on here. Clearly, when Caran D’Ache set out to manufacture that collection of crayons, they had identified a gap in the crayon palette - how clever.
Still feeling confident that I have no need for more crayons, however beautifully packaged they might be, I thought that I must at least use those that I’d got out and give them a try, if only to see the difference. Top to bottom, then:
Caran D’Ache Prismalo (with the one pale green Cumberland)
StabiloTone - no longer in production
So I spent the morning faffing about really. Didn’t achieve anything much beyond realising that even though I don’t have those exact colours in my collection, I really really don’t need another coloured pencil of any kind. But I did note one thing of interest: you get what you pay for when it comes to art materials. The level of pigment in the better quality crayons was far higher than in the cheapy WHS ones. I’ll bet those in the Caran D’Ache Paul Smith Collection go on like butter and are as intense as they come: a bit like the Albrecht Durer crayons I have in my cupboard (which I really must use!)
I still don’t need more coloured pencils though!
