I’m Testing Derwent Lightfast Colored Pencils

I’ve used Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils since high school in the mid 1980’s; back in the dinosaur days before they were called “Premier”.

Now, I teach with Prismacolor pencils.

But as much as I love my Prismacolors, they do have a few drawbacks.

One of my favorite pencils is Prismacolor 931 Dark Purple. Unfortunately, it scores poorly in lightfast tests. Even worse, Dark Purple has a nasty tendency to bleed through other colors.

Can Derwent Lightfast Pencils solve some of these issues?

I’ve been testing to find out!

Why do I use Prismacolor Dark Purple in all my projects?

If you’ve taken any of my coloring classes, you know I teach beginners and intermediate students to use a no-light-source method of logical shading. We call it Push & Pull.

My pushing method makes objects look visually farther away using a bit of color theory and specially chosen pushing pencils— but there are two colors which I find to be the most effective pushers:

Prismacolor 931 Dark Purple and 901 Indigo Blue

With just these two pencils, we can push almost any color in any project. I use them daily in my own work and I call for at least one of them in all my classes.

I’m not kidding. I buy these colors by the box.

How can two pencils cover almost everything?

Dark Purple and Indigo Blue are extremely translucent and can push a color darker without hiding the base color underneath.

Dark Purple over any red looks like you used a dark red pencil. That same Dark Purple over green looks like you used a dark green pencil. Dark Purple is chameleon-like because the only time it looks purple is when you use it over purple.

In my XO Ballon project here, look around the edges of the largest balloon. See the ruffled edge where the mylar seams are? That’s not deep pink there or even red, I used a purple pencil.

You’ll see the same purple pencil repeated throughout the entire image.

I didn’t use any red darker than a bright fire engine red. Where you see wine, burgundy, or brick red tones, that’s actually purple pencil over bright red pencil.

Because I can use chameleon-like pencils over a wide variety of base colors, I reach for them again and again. I don’t have to think about how to make dark red or dark orange. I don’t have to debate which dark green pencil would look best…

I let my chameleon-like pushing pencils determine what the color will be.

More Colored Pencil Tips:

Don’t miss my previous colored pencil articles and tips!

Prismacolor & Lightfast Ratings

As much as I love working with Prismacolor Dark Purple, it does frustrate me.

Most people have heard about Prismacolor’s poor lightfast ratings. What they don’t realize is that the tests are for individual colors, not the whole entire brand.

Prismacolor actually makes many excellent lightfast pencils which score higher than pencils in other popular supposedly lightfast brands.

Most Prismacolor browns, grays, and yellows get top ratings and are considered archival.

But as I said, the ASTM lightfast ratings are pencil by pencil. Sadly, there are many Prismacolor colors which score very low.

My beloved chameleon-like Dark Purple rates as Fair (the second lowest rating possible). Dark Purple definitely fades over time.

But honestly, I really really don’t care much about lightfast ratings.

I teach most of my classes using a base of Copic Marker and Copics are not lightfast.

ASTM doesn’t rate Copics for lightfastness but I’ve been testing them in my Uncapped series at my other site, MarkerNovice.com.

Copics fade in a matter of weeks, not years.

If ASTM had a category called Terribly-Awful-Incredibly-Bad, that’s where most Copic Markers would score.

There’s absolutely no point in spending extra money on lightfast colored pencils when you’re using them over Copic Marker.

It’s all going to fade anyway.

The Real Problem: Dark Purple bleeds hot pink!

I know the lightfast issue is make or break for many people, but lightfastness doesn’t help much when you’re starting with fugitive Copic Marker.

Archival properties are nice but that’s not why I’m shopping around for other pencils.

What really vexes me about Dark Purple is the bleeding.

I always have to warn students to be careful about which colors they lay over the top of Prismacolor Dark Purple. There’s something in the formula… not a pigment… it must be an oil or an extra boost of colorant in the formula…

… anyway, there’s something in a Dark Purple pencil that is bright pink.

And man, if you lay anything white or light colored over the top of Dark Purple— it could be gel pen, gouache, white out, or even a pencil with white pigment in it…

I’ve even had it happen with clear Glossy Accents!

If you lay anything white-based over the top of Dark Purple, a brilliant pink color bleeds through.

It takes only seconds for it to happen with a gel pen. With a white or pastel colored pencil, it takes a few hours.

The pink rises up to the top layer and there’s nothing you can do but cry. You can’t erase it, you can’t really lift it much either.

It’s pink. Forever.

In my sample here I’ve colored a base of PC931 Dark Purple and then used a White Uniball Signo pen to write the word PINK over the top.

The white ink on the letter P was already pink by the time I got to the letter I.

It’s that fast!

It’s awful. You can’t use Dark Purple as a base for much of anything because if you forget it’s there and layer something like PC938 White, PC914 Cream, or PC1086 Sky Blue Light over the top, you’ll regret it later.

Glowing, ugly pink. Ack!

The same thing happens (to a lesser degree) with PC901 Indigo Blue and a few other deep translucent Prismacolors. It’s not always pink and actually, it’s not always a bad thing. I sometimes purposefully layer White on top of Indigo because I like the cyan color it makes.

But we use Dark Purple in my classes for pushing and shading, so the hot pink bleed-up makes Dark Purple a dangerous tool.

And I feel really bad when I see students accidentally trigger the bleed.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT A DERWENT SPONSORED POST. I PURCHASED MY LIGHTFAST SET FROM VIOLETA-INK.COM USING MY OWN MONEY.

A safe substitute for Prismacolor Dark Purple 931

As I said, I’m quite good about keeping Dark Purple pencil segregated in my own pencil work. But every once in a while I forget to warn people.

And honestly, there just isn’t a pencil that does what Prismacolor Dark Purple can do. So it’s not like I can just not-teach with it. We need that pencil, there’s no avoiding it.

Prismacolor Dark Purple is a unique color.

It’s not just the chameleon-like nature which makes it a perfect pushing pencil. Dark Purple is also a very sticky pencil. It adheres very well, even over multiple coats of pencil when the tooth has long since been filled in.

Plus, with pressure control, you’ll get a wide variety of different purples from this one pencil.

Dark Purple is versatile, so it’s an easy pencil to learn and use.

Aside from the darned pink thing.

For years, I searched for a substitute and I never really found anything that worked as well.

Frankly, I’d given up.

Then in December 2020, students in my advanced group, The Underpainters working on an image called Christmas Baubles which features lots of bright white and soft purple reflections with a layer of gouache details on top.'

In another class we colored cranberries with purple pushes and pale pink shine.

We were tempting fate, putting Dark Purple next to nemesis colors.

I saw the pink bleed happening to students again.

Then I wondered why I didn’t get the same pink bleed in my samples.

But then I remembered I’ve been testing Derwent Lightfast pencils all month. I had been absentmindedly layering white and purple Derwents without realizing the significance.

I had zero pink issues!

JEEPERS! We’ve found the solution!

IMPORTANT FOR ALL VANILLA STUDENTS:

In future classes I will no longer use Prismacolor Premier PC931 Dark Purple.

I now recommend substituting TWO pencils: Derwent Lightfast Purple LFI and Violet LFI

Two Substitutes for One Pencil?

Yes.

Remember, Prismacolor Dark Purple is a unique pencil

The purple color sits in this little tiny Goldilocks zone. It’s not too warm and it’s not too cool.

For years, I’ve struggled to find an alternative purple pencil which sits in this sweet spot, warm enough to use on reds and oranges, yet cool enough to use on greens and blues.

And I’ve STILL not found a pencil that does this as well as Prismacolor 931 Dark Purple.

But I want to use the Derwents because they don’t bleed pink.

Derwent has two pencils which are close to PC931 Dark Purple. One warmer, one cooler.

Yes, it takes two Derwents to replace one Prismacolor.

In future classes, I will ask for Derwent Lightfast Purple when we’re using it to push the warm half of the color wheel.

And we’ll use Derwent Lightfast Violet when we’re pushing the cool half of the wheel.

But there will always be exceptions.

In XO Balloons, I started with Derwent Purple but it looked like an ugly red-brown over magenta. So I pulled out Derwent Violet and it looked great.

So in XO Balloons, I was using cool Violet LFI over warm magenta pencils. That’s not what I had planned.

Remember, I’m in the early stages of testing here.

I may find a year from now that we hardly ever use Derwent Purple LFI in classes. Perhaps Violet LFI will prove to be the more versatile color.

Only time will tell; but for right now, I’m keeping both pencils on my desk. We’ll see which I grab more.

So one more time for the folks who missed it before:

Hey Vanilla fans, a BIG change is coming!

Instead of Prismacolor 931 Dark Purple, we’re now using Derwent Lightfast Purple and Violet.

Now we can layer over purple without fear!

Do you need a full set of Lightfast Pencils?

I love my Prismacolor Premier pencils and I intend to keep teaching with them.

I still think Prismacolors are the best pencil for students to start with. They’re buttery soft and easy to use, they’re highly pigmented, and the color palette is comprehensive with no major missing colors or value deficiencies.

Plus, they’re not impossibly expensive. You get a lot of Prismacolors for your money.

So that’s why I’ll continue to teach with Prismacolor pencils.

We’re just adding a few Derwents to the supply list. We’re improving rather than replacing.

But there’s always someone who’s ready to run out and buy them all.

Do YOU need to replace all your Prismacolor pencils with Derwent Lightfast pencils?

Do you need to buy the great big box of every Derwent ever made?

Probably not.

If you’re one of my Copic Marker students, please stick with Prismacolor Premiers.

Just add the few Derwent substitutions as we find them.

Why? Because remember, Copic Markers are NOT lightfast. It makes no sense to replace perfectly fine colored pencils with an expensive brand of archival pencils. What’s the point if the markers going to fade on you anyway? Your artwork was always destined to be scanned and archived digitally.

Besides, unlike Prismacolor, Derwent Lightfast has giant holes in their color palette. Good luck if you want to color something soft pink, light green, or beige because Derwent doesn’t make these colors yet.

If you lean more towards my watercolor + colored pencil classes, perhaps you should consider upgrading to archival pencils BUT ONLY IF YOU’RE USING LIGHTFAST WATERCOLORS!

If your’e not using a lightfast base-product, you don’t need lightfast pencils.

Celebrate Love!

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