With markers, I found that they are best used on top, after adding a “base” layer of marker underneath. You can start dark or light with the markers, the neocolours are so opaque that they easily show up over the markers. crayons, in the colours above plus: golden yellow, light orange, reddish orange, purple violet, light violet 2, light ultramarine, jade, grass green, dark green, linden green

These crayons work very well with coloured pencils and also permanent markers. They are best used as an underpainting when combined with coloured pencils. As usual with coloured pencils you are best working from light to dark as lighter shades of coloured pencil don’t show up very well over the top of a dark neocolor II wash. Another caveat to bear in mind is that you can’t use paint thinner when mixing coloured pencils and neocolors as it will cause the neocolor underpainting to shift and lift all of your coloured pencil layers off. If you like watching more of a completed process here is a 14:45 minute speed video by JenW Fine Arts. Neocolors are one of my go-to art materials for art journaling.They are versatile and the colors are luxurious and saturated. They have a buttery smooth texture.Another strength of them being rewettable is erasing – if you make a mistake, most of the pigment can be lifted off by dabbing it with a damp cloth and the remaining errant pigment can be covered up with additional layers of crayon.

Raw sienna was added to the nearer bush and midnight blue for the darker areas and the cast shadow. You always know what colours to expect when using Neocolor IIs wet or dry. A lot of other brands in this medium look a little dull when used dry and get a lot more vibrant when water is added, which personally I have never liked. Neocolor IIs have the rare advantage in this medium to look nearly exactly the same colour dry as when wet, making it much easier to judge values and hues, and thusly to combine wet and dry techniques. Painting of a siamese fighting fish/betta fish I made for Inktober using Neocolor 2s I continued to paint the subject as a watercolour, adding ochre for the walls of the building and light grey for the roof.Snowy Farm, Neocolor II water-soluble wax oil pastel on grey Clairefontaine Pastelmat paper, (33x46cm) Edit 2021: It seems Caran d’Ache have discontinued the set of 120 as well as 42 colours in the range which is an absolute shame. The largest set available now is the set of 84. Test Paintings and Techniques “Coastal Sunset” 33.5 x 23cm painting, Caran d’Ache Neocolor IIs on Fabriano Artistico HP watercolour paper. crayons, in the colours above plus: ochre, vermilion, ultramarrine blue, turquoise, yellowish green

Into the damp paper I added a mixed wash of ultramarine and light cadmium red for the tree line and shadows. Bare with me here- I wanted to give a nice example, with a video of some of the process. As things sometimes go, they went awry. They are REALLY water-soluble. This is a simple rendition of Van Gogh’s Starry Night . After I put down the color I used a small spray bottle. At first it was looking great and I was saying wow! Then I used too much water and was saying something else… Dry Wet-Really Wet There are 2 types of Neocolor Wax pastels. Neocolor 2 are water-soluble whereas Neocolor 1 aren’t. This does mean that if you wanted to you could create effects by combining the two. For example if I use non watersoluble white pastel and a soluble green I get a wax resist effect. You can see here some other combinations too.

Which paper to use with Neocolor ii

Next day, I added the tree structures and placed shadow onto the buildings using the dark grey pastel. Described as “water soluble wax pastels,” Neocolor IIs are part of an increasingly popular but reletively new emerging medium. Scraped shavings of colour were applied directly to the paper then solubilised with a brush to create a transitioned wash effect. Techniques for using Neocolour II I also found you can use each individual crayon as basically a paint tube. Grab a wet brush and rub it against the end of the crayon to transfer some paint to your brush. You can use them as paint without even letting them touch the paper! Price Point

Jessica, I am so embarrassed not to have caught your name at the top of this post, you can probably feel the heat emanating from my red face to wherever you are. Please accept my apologies. You wrote a great review of a wonderful product. Neocolor IIs are great for mixed media projects and cover well on many different kinds of surface because they are so opaque. Pretty much the only thing they don’t work very well on is glass.Selecting ultramarine blue and a pale yellow, called Sahara, I scribbled these colours onto a scrap of watercolour paper, which I then used as a palette.