Wax or Oil Colored Pencils Myth or Fact ?
Wax or Oil Colored Pencils Myth or Fact ?
Before we get into the nitty gritty of this article, please let me say that I am in no way telling artists how they should or should not categories their supplies, how we all categorise our art supplies is a completely personal affaire as is the way we use them.
That said the information in this review is completely 100% factual, at least from the perspective that after years of begging I was finally able to discuss this matter with two individual Chemists from two separate major colored pencil manufactures. I say Chemists, although this may not be their correct title, but the creating of a colored pencil core is quite a complex process, requiring exact ratios of ingredients that mix and bind to produce the pencils we all know and love.
I would also like to say that I am not at this point prepared to mention the names of the two people I spoke to or the companies they worked for, unfortunately at this juncture all I can do is tell you that what I am telling you is the truth and regardless of that fact, the outcome of this subject has establishes no gain to me personally one way or the other, so to fabricate such encounters and information would be ridiculous. The reason I am not mentioning their names is because after two or three years of begging certain agents, who were assigned to me, to put me in touch with people working in the company that ordinarily do not talk to the public, could potentially fall back on them and cause issues. This is something I am not prepared to do under any circumstances. The men and women who are involved in the creation of the colored pencil cores, in some cases are dealing with recipes hundreds of years old and to the companies are invaluable, should such information get into the hands or competitors, serious ramifications would occur. Finally, before moving on, I would like to make it very clear that neither of the two individuals I spoke to divulge any information regarding ingredients, ratios etc that go into producing the cores.
Coloured Pencil Reviews The Beginning
Way back when I first started out and I called my Channel Coloured Pencil Reviews, using the English spelling of the word colour, my reviews were at best weak. I never proclaimed at that time that I was an expert reviewing colored pencils, instead I portrayed the channel as a newbies experience to colored pencils and talking about such products from that perspective. Obviously after six years of developing crazy testing techniques for art supplies, talking to many people working at large and small art supply companies, my understanding of certain art supplies has obviously increased, I would not refer to myself as an expert, far from it, but I would however refer to myself as fairly knowledgeable in the field.
My reviews in the beginning simply consisted of me providing a swatch of the set I had, a layer test of selected colours and a simple blending test. Now these are still part of my reviews today, but as opposed to back then when they were the staple diet of the review, now they are only a small part.
I eventually changed the name of the channel because I wanted to branch out and review markers, pastels, watercolors etc and naming the channel Coloured Pencil Reviews was a little bit too restricting, hence the change. When I would get a set of pencils, if it was not stated on the tin or literature inside the tin as to the pencils composition of wax or oil, I would immediately contact the company and ask.
I soon discovered a major flaw in this process. Because Coloured Pencil Reviews was not well known, when I contacted the companies, I would call the customer services number just like anyone else would, so I would get through to someone who’s main job was to deal with complaints, discuss pricing, talk about set sizes etc but not deal with the much finer details of the product. I could call a company on the Monday and ask if a pencil was wax or oil based and be told Wax, if I needed to call the company back a few days later, which I often did, I could be told that the same pencil was oil based. I must stress this was not the fault of the men and women talking the calls, their job was not to know the specifics of the products in such detail.
On discovering this I quickly became aware of the fact that I was not delivering accurate information in my reviews. I could also see this in the comments section, when I uploaded a review and claimed a pencil to be wax, half the comments section would break out into an art frenzy with varmint disagreement and the other half in agreement with the review would strongly debate back. this was not what I wanted, I did not want to create uncertainty in my reviews and so I knew that I had to come up with a solution.
By this stage I had changed the channel to The Art Gear Guide and more companies were become aware of me, so much so I started receiving products to review from companies but perhaps more importantly, I was assigned agents within the companies who I could contact at any time. The agents were incredibly knowledgeable of the products and if I ever asked a question they themselves could not answer, they would come back to me a day or so later with a definitive answer.
I decided that I needed to talk to someone from one of the major companies who wore a white lab coat about the wax and oil matter surrounding colored pencils. For me this was one of the most troublesome issues of me reviews, artists were so adamant in knowing if a core was wax or oil. This in itself was something I had trouble understanding as I had done many tests layering and blending “So called wax and oil pencils” together without issues and the same tests using odourless mineral spirts. At first I assumed that using OMS on say Wax pencils worked wonderfully and on oil pencils it didn’t work, but this was never the case in any of my tests.
After almost 3 years of begging and pleading; to be honest I think they only spoke with me to shut me up, nevertheless I eventually was given permission to discuss the matter with an individual from one of the major pencil companies. I would like to point out that at this stage I never in a million years expected to have the opportunity to discuss matters with a second chemist from a second company. At the time I felt like I was perhaps being a bit underhand talking to the second chemist, as if I was somehow playing two companies against one an other, but the reality couldn’t have been further from he truth. The second conversation was simply a huge bonus, what it did provide for me and hopefully you guys, was confirmation.
I have to say that the information I was given by both Chemists was incredibly complex and for some of my intellectual deficiency, I was at times very confused and did take as many notes as I could. I explained the situation to the first Chemist who explained to me that the fact of an all oil or all wax based pencil existing was to that person, almost impossible, this was when it was explained to me about binding agents, various different types of waxes used to provide various levels of hardness or softness etc.
It was at this stage of reading back my notes I came up with my own analogy. For the most part, and I know not all colored pencil artists think like this, but a lot of us do or at the very least used to, but most of us when we think wax based colored pencils we think soft cores and oil based pencils we imagine a harder based core. However, one of the hardest cores I have ever tested and reviewed is perhaps the Derwent Artists core and yet this is market as a wax pencil, but its hardness is down to the type of wax used, binding agent and many other factors.
When I spoke to the second chemist from the second company, it was approximately six or eight months later and as I mentioned, after talking to the first person, I never expected to discuss matters with a second, but obviously when the chance was presented to me, I absolutely jumped at the chance.
I asked the same questions, mainly entering around the wax and oil issue, this Chemist also told me that there was no such thing as an all wax or all oil colored pencil, it was explained to me that in all the pencils they have worked with, a mixture of wax and oil has always been used and never just one. This individual explained the various different waxes used and that some pencils may have more of one ingredient than the other, but both ingredients are always present.
The analogy used to help me understand was, if I was in a bar with friends, one of the friends offers to buy a round of drinks and you order a Vodka, just Vodka, but when the friend returns and hands you the drink there is a dash of coke in it. Despite the fact that there is more Vodka in the drink that coke, the second the coke is added at no point can it be called just Vodka, it is a Vodka and Coke and more over you will pay for the dash of code at the bar.
I asked both Chemists where they thought this fixation on wax and oil colored pencils came from and why do some companies market there pencils as wax or oil based. The reply was simply they have no idea where or how it started and as far as the companies selling the product as wax or oil, that was decisions made at marketing level, an area nothing really to do with them
My reason for making the video and explaining this and writing this article is because I never mention in my reviews if the pencils I am reviewing are wax or oil for the reasons laid out above but people will often ask me what type of core is in the pencil. I always reply with a long winded response and now I can point them to this article or the video review and hopefully help them understand why I no longer go down that road.
I have chose to do my very best and explain how the core feels to me when I layer the pencil on smooth paper or Velum or Mixed Media Paper, or perhaps how brittle the core is when sharpening, how opaque the core is on dark paper, if the core shatters easily etc. With breaking my reviews down into four separate parts, 1. YouTube Video Review, 2. Written Review, 3. Speed Drawing Youtube video of artwork using the product and 4. Still images taken of the artwork at various stages throughout the drawing process from start to finish allowing the viewer to enlarge the image and inspect closely the pencil marks made on the paper; I hope all four parts give the viewer detailed information. It is too easy to say wax or oil and move on, I want to try and deliver the very best reviews that I can, next to walking into an art store and lifting the pencil in your own hand and testing it on paper, I want my reviews to come close to that experience.
I can’t provide the pencil for you to hold and test in your own hand, but what I can do is provide the absolute most accurate review I can, hence the reason my reviews take quite a while to be upload. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is not me telling you how to categorise your pencils, not at all, if you want to still say one pencil is wax and the other is oil you are absolutely within your rights to do so and nobody should ever tell you otherwise. This is me telling you why I never refer to pencil cores as wax or oil, I hope this helps to clear things up and if you have any questions please by all means ask in the comments section below or in the YouTube video review comments section or finally via email theartgearguide@gmail.com
