Hello Again. I'm back with another video. This time it's a head-to-head
competition of the Prismacolor Scholar student grade pencils versus the Faber
Castell Polychromos pencils. And today we'll be using the 60 pencil set for
each. Now I know what you're thinking it's not really a fair comparison as the
Faber Castell pencils are typically about four to five times the price of
the scholar pencils, however, the scholar pencils do have an advantage as I have
been working with them for a while now and I'm quite familiar with blending the
colors. The polychromos set is a new one and I'm still trying to familiarize
myself with this set. The subject for the drawing will be Henry Cavill from the
Man of Steel. I'll be using the scholar pencils first for the left side of his
face. So getting started I'm using a peach and light peach for the skin tones
and I've just shaded in a bit of his face. I've lightly traced the image out
using the monitor tracing method shown in my tips number two video for a
colored pencil. I've used dark brown and raw umber for the hair and I've gone
over that with some black. And as you can see I have broken my first pencil now
that would be the white prismacolor pencil and I don't believe I was
applying too much pressure I wasn't burnishing or anything with it. So now
I'm moving down to the ah, the neck, just filling things in a bit. Because I've
traced so lightly with a 6 H pencil, as I fill in the drawing I have a tendency to
just erase the lines with my hands, so sometimes I'll go over the whole image
just lightly with with some colors so I don't lose my reference lines.
I used three different shades of red for the Cape and various blues for his suit.
I wasn't able to get the right blue colors to represent the suit. I went for
a traditional Superman blue.
I tried to replicate the patterns of the suit but I don't think it was very
successful. And I don't think it was worth the effort. I probably would have
just filled it in with solid blue color next time. You see I've broken one of the
blue pencils there. Again I wasn't applying much pressure. While using the
prismacolor scholar pencils I had struggled once again with broken leads.
I believe I broke about seven or eight leads just for this one drawing. In some
cases I was applying a good amount of pressure, but in others that was not the
case. For the broken lead problems with the scholar pencils. I did find that if I
switched to the fabric castell pencil sharpener I tended to have less breaks
so the Faber Castell sharpener it reduces the sharpening angle, so this
means you have less lead showing. but this reduced angle it results in less
broken pencils. I don't think, I don't think I've broken any pencils after
switching. Unfortunately I didn't switch the sharpeners until I was nearly
finished the drawing. And I will have a little note at the end just showing you
the sharpener and showing you the different sharpening angles.
I used three to four different shades of red and orange for his emblem as well as
a yellow and gray. The emblem also has this this pattern and again I just I
didn't put too much effort and trying to mimic the pattern there. I broken one red
pencil and then I broken another red pencil . Again as you can see I'm not
applying too much pressure these just break fairly easily. I was fairly happy
with the prismacolor scholar pencils. I was quite happy with the skin tone the
hair turned out nice although it would have been a little bit darker would have
been better. I was happy with the cape and I thought the the red looked quite
good. Unfortunately I wasn't happy with suit none of the blue tones were dark
enough to represent the suit. I think the only way I could have represented the
suit correctly would have been adding black into the blue and I didn't really
want to do that. So it's it's uh it's certainly not the correct color blue. But
the overall result, other than breaking a lot of pencil leads, I thought was pretty
good. Certainly the Prismacolor Scholar
pencils are nice pencil to work with. I'm just doing the finishing touches on the
left hand side of his face just darkening it up certain areas of the
face, trying to get the skin tones a little darker, and then I'll move on to
the polychromos pencils.
Trying to do the right-hand side of the face I struggled a fair bit. Part of this
was I couldn't take advantage of symmetry so when I'm working on a
forehead or a mouth I might want to take that feature and fill it in completely,
take a tone on the forehead and move it all the way across or various shade all
the way across the forehead or even the forehead crease or wrinkle. But I
couldn't take advantage that when I did one side and then had to work on the
other side. I was also struggling with trying to match up the tones because
even though I'm trying to show the differences between the two sets I am
trying to make it so that there's not an obvious gradient between the the left
side and the right side of the face. I am trying to blend things in so the pencils
don't stand out. Another significant issue was when I did the left hand side
of the face I inadvertently erased or smudged outed with my hand my trace lines
on the right hand side of the face. And as a result I had to freehand in a lot
of the right-hand side of the face. My freehand skills aren't that great and
and this became apparent. Certain features of the face just didn't look
right. I didn't quite get the eyes right and there was some issue just minor
issues with the jaw and stuff like that. Where if I had the trace lines in there
it probably would have looked a bit better. My inexperience with the
polychromos pencils also caused some issues. So I'm essentially trying to match up
tones with the scholar pencils but because I don't really know which colors
to use or which colors to blend I didn't necessarily match up the tones
very well. I did find that when I did the face I wasn't, I wasn't very confident
and I wasn't very sure of of myself. As I move down to the neck I was more
confident using the pencils and I started to have a better feel for them.
The polychromos pencils did a lot better job on the hair. They can certainly
produce darker Browns than the scholar pencils at least darker Browns easier.
The Reds for the Cape were also more intense and I did not have any issues
trying to match the blue color of the suit with the polychromos pencils. I did
however try to keep the colors similar so again I didn't, didn't produce this
sort of gradient or divide between the left hand side and the right hand side
to make the the image look strange or silly. And as you'll see probably towards
the end my freehand abilities aren't that great I am off on certain areas the
nose isn't quite right the eyes aren't quite right.
So rather than Henry Cavill I find the Man of Steel looks more like Derek
Zoolander. Of course as I get near the end of a drawing I have a tendency to
rush. Typically I'll start out and do things in pieces, as I get near
that final, where I think I might be able to get it done that last day, I tend
to push myself and I tend to make some mistakes. So the blue patch of his suit
didn't really turn out the way I wanted it to. I think I could have done a lot
better job on that, but I kind of botched it. Here's the final result, not 100%
happy with it, but I I guess it's my first man of steel drawing and it's a
good start. For the comparison between the two pencils you can see that a lot
of the prismacolor scholar pencils broke but you can also see usually see should
be able to see you can you can still do a really decent drawing with these
pencils. So even though they're cheap they're good pencil, you can blend
with them quite well. They just break, and again, I might have found the solution to
that. With the polychromos, they were a bit frustrating to use because I'm
not used to them in the beginning, but towards the end of the drawing I was actually
starting to really enjoy them. I will be doing a full review and tutorial on
those soon. The last thing I wanted to talk about was sharpening the pencils,
that's sharpening the scholar pencils. When I purchase them I bought a scholar
pencil sharpener, but, recently I picked up a Faber Castell pencil
sharpener. And the Faber Castell pencil sharpener has three slots for sharpening
one says color grip and the other two say Universal. One is for
quite a large diameter pencil. If you use the color grip slot, the angle on
the pencil is noticeably reduced. The angle on a pencil that you sharpen with
prismacolor scholar, it works out to be about 11 degrees 11 degrees or 79
degrees depending on which way you want to look at it. The Faber Castell pencil
sharpener leaves an angle of about fourteen point five degrees. So when you
sharpen it with the Faber Castell I've noticed that you're less likely to break
the pencils and so far all the pencils I've been breaking using the scholar
sharpener, once I've switched over to the Faber Catell I haven't had any breaks
yet. That's all for today, I should be back in a week or so with another video
on color pencil tips and techniques. I also mean to do a complete review of the
Faber Castell Polychromos pencils