Caran d'Ache Luminance 6901

Today I bought 11 Caran d'Ache Luminance coloured pencils to test them. They are so expensive and I wanted to know if it's worth all the money. I bought really soft colours... almost whites, a light blue and a wonderful shade of Olive Brown. My favourites are Olive Brown 10% and Raw umber 10%. Very usable. I found them very easy to blend and they also mix well (blue and yellow actually make green, which isn't always the case). The leads are soft and give a nice smooth, rich colour. On the other hand, making a thin transparent layer was easy too which is good when you have to put on many layers. Downside is that you can't read well the silver colour numbers, but that's just a little thing (although it is a bit frustrating when you use many similar colours at the same time). I didn't test them in combination with my Faber-Castells or Prismacolors yet. But I'm really looking forward to it.On the Caran d'Ache website is a very nice colour-chart it's just a bit too small for me. I wish they had put the chart there that you can see in the photo here, at the start of this blog (click the photo to see it larger). I'll have to see how many colours are really different and usable in botanical art. €3,50 ($3.33 or £2.65) is really a lot of money to spend on one pencil. So that huge tin must be a really generous gift for Christmas or maybe I'll limit my wishlist to just a few more colours. I'm really curious about the greens and the black.....

I'm on Zazzle

You can now buy some nice things with my artwork on it at my Zazzle store. There's not much there yet but I promise to fill it up soon. So if you're looking for a nice gift or you need a really fancy apron, come on over and make me a rich woman ;)


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Dotting

I've been so busy lately with a lot of things. Most of them had nothing to do with botanical painting, drawing or gardening. A bad thing, although the other things had to be done too. Last week we had a week off. We went on holiday, away from home and all the things that still need to be done here. We went to museums, slept a lot, visited my parents in law and I celebrated my birthday. All in all another busy week. But this was fun.

I actually found some time to draw a bit again. It had been ages since I made my last pen and ink botanical and I really felt like doing one now. Another artist, Michael Murillo from the US, asked me if I would like to trade drawings. I saw a nude sketch he made and I was impressed. I really loved it. He wanted to give me that sketch and trade it for one of mine. I don't have a lot of sketches. At least I don't think they are worth a trade. So I thought this pen drawing could be nice for him if he liked it. He did. So I started dotting this amazing deep purple violet Clematis viticella 'Black Prince' from my mother's garden. It was so much fun and so relaxing to do. Yesterday I finished it and here's the result. I think I might stipple another drawing soon.