Review: Derwent Graphitint Water-soluble Tinted Graphite Pencils

This sketch is a product test, specifically of Derwent's Graphitint pencils. Got a set of 12 courtesy of a lovely friend. Whether it's a gift or a loan depends on how much I like 'em 😁

These are water-soluble tinted graphite pencils and they caught my eye because I like sketching with pencils but I also like colour. These seem to be the best of both worlds. I chose to test them out by sketching a photo of Shirakawa-go, a very pretty UNESCO World Heritage village in Japan that I visited a few years ago.

First impressions: Unfortunately, these do not feel like graphite pencils which was what I'd hoped. They're very smooth and soft, more like coloured pencils. The colours are more muted than coloured pencils though, which I love. The negative point is that when used dry, the colours are all a dull mid-tone, as you can see here. 

I just couldn't get them dark enough, so I tried wetting them. That's when the pigment pops, though I still needed to go over some of the lines with the Midnight Black pencil (which isn't even black, it's a dark grey). To deepen the contrast, I kept wetting the lines, then going over again with the pencils, until I realised too late that I'd overworked it 😖. The lines became too clean and clinical, and lost some of the initial energy. the sketch also became very dark because there are no highlight colours.

 

I found a white Inktense block in my stash, wet it and drew on the highlights. It went on patchy but funnily, it works because it looks like snow ❄️

I felt this test opened up a different question: so how are Graphitints different from watercolour pencils? To answer that, I did a second test. For a fair comparison, I picked out shades of watercolour pencils as close to the Graphitint set as possible (see image below: Graphitint on the left, watercolour pencils on the right). My choices were quite limited since I don't have a large range. As you can see, the watercolour pencils are generally much brighter.

I did the same sketch twice using Graphitint (top) and watercolour pencils (bottom). 

 

As mentioned in my previous test, there isn't much difference in the texture of the pencils, so it came down to colour. I prefer the muted Graphitint tones. The watercolour pencils felt like I was sketching in colour, which I don't like.

Btw in the bottom sketch, I used a 30-year-old Faber-Castell watercolour pencil for the towel. Big mistake. When dry, the colour is very pretty. But when I added water, the Night Green suddenly morphed into Nightmare Green. Worse, the pigment seeped everywhere like a quick-growing fungus. Dotter: "That looks like Aquaman's tea towel." 🤢

A problem with Graphitint is that all the shades are relatively light even though I tried darkening the shadowy bits with black. This lack of contrast is apparent when you compare it with the watercolour pencil sketch.

But the biggest problem with Graphitint is that I've since read a review that they're not lightfast, and artists have complained of their sketches fading even when left in a sketchbook 😱. This is unacceptable for an artist-grade product, so for this reason alone, unless you're not looking to create anything permanent, I would say regretfully to give Graphitint a miss.