Student-grade colored pencils and professional-grade ones vary drastically not only in their price but how they're made. A set of 120 Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils costs $350, 14 times as much as a similar box of Crayola colored pencils. And some brands price their sets at over $550. That's because of the time and attention put into creating pencils whose colors are rich, blendable, and last decades. At Faber-Castell, this is a result of a combination of pigments and other ingredients, expertly designed cores, and carefully selected wood.
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00:00Every coloured pencil starts off like this, bright powdery pigment, but it's the secret
00:10recipe for transforming these pigments into colourful cores that sets professional pencils
00:15apart from student grade ones.
00:19Every ingredient, from pigments to waxes and oils and even the wood, is carefully chosen
00:26to make these pencils perform better on paper.
00:30And artists are often willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for this level of performance.
00:36A set of 120 Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils costs $350, 14 times as much as a similar
00:45box of Crayola coloured pencils.
00:49And some brands price their sets at over $550.
00:55But professionals say that compared to cheaper alternatives like Crayola, the difference
01:00in quality is glaring.
01:02It's quite chalky and waxy in comparison to this, which has taken so many more layers.
01:08Making high quality coloured pencils involves more science than art.
01:13So how did chemists and engineers perfect them?
01:17And why are they so expensive?
01:22At Faber-Castell's factory in Stein, Germany, workers churn out a whopping 2.3 billion pencils
01:30a year.
01:32Making them takes a surprising amount of precision, starting with these, the pigments.
01:39Just like people, the particles of each pigment have their own distinct personality and behaviour.
01:46Some are rough and edgy and scratch across the paper, while others are smooth and silky.
01:54But size also matters, down to the micrometre.
01:58Faber-Castell says ideally, 90% of the pigment particles should have a diameter of less than
02:0540 micrometres.
02:07It says this is perfect for creating a core with a consistent texture and vibrant colour
02:14that applies smoothly.
02:33Balancing the pigment's behaviour requires adjusting the other ingredients.
02:38Unlike cheaper alternatives, professional coloured pencils have a lot more pigment than
02:43filler, so it's important that the balance of ingredients is just right.
02:49The ingredients are top secret, but Gerhard Lugert, a chemist at Faber-Castell, told Business
02:55Insider, it's a specific combination of oils, waxes and fillers that binds the pigments.
03:05The result is this mixture, dough-like clumps of colour.
03:10But each colour has a bespoke formula, because not all pigments are created equal.
03:26After the mysterious blend of waxes, oils and fillers is mixed with the pigment, it's
03:31pushed through this high-pressure machine.
03:36The result?
03:37Identical pencil-length cylindrical cores.
03:42Workers bake the cores in batches to harden them.
03:46Then, they dip the dry cores in a melted mixture of waxes and fatty acid derivatives.
03:53Faber-Castell's coloured pencil cores are 3.8 millimetres in diameter, making them less
03:59likely to break compared to Crayola's 3.3 millimetre cores.
04:06The company randomly tests cores from each batch to make sure they won't break under
04:12pressure.
04:14Quality testers apply pressure to the cores at a 60 degree angle.
04:19They shouldn't break until the force is at least 3.3 kilograms.
04:25The core's performance is also scrutinised with smear tests like this one.
04:43Pencil cores made by different brands each have their own characteristics.
04:49The wax base of Caran d'Ache's Luminance pencils is soft, so the colour melts into
04:54the paper.
04:56That makes them great for creating gradients.
05:00Faber-Castell's coloured pencils, on the other hand, have a harder core, so they're
05:05best for fine lines and realistic details.
05:10Even the wood encasing the cores of professional-grade pencils is carefully considered.
05:17A pencil's wood determines how long the pencil will last, and how well it will sharpen.
05:24At the factory, the cedar is cut into planks, which are stored for months until they're dry.
05:48Grooves are milled into the wood, and the cores are slotted into the planks.
05:54Another identical plank is glued on top, and they're pressed together before the next
05:59machine cuts them into perfect pencils.
06:06But the pencils shouldn't just perform well.
06:09They must also look and feel expensive.
06:14Workers mix dyes to the exact colour of the cores to create a water-based varnish for
06:19the outside of the pencils.
06:24Another machine coats each pencil with this varnish.
06:29The pencils are then stamped with the company's branding, and the end caps are dipped again,
06:35rounding out the top of the pencil.
06:38Every step of the way, the pencils are checked for visual defects, like chips and varnish
06:44irregularities, and the faulty ones are removed.
06:54My collection of pencils now is probably worth, I would say, about £600-700.
07:04That's Bethany Veer, and she knows a thing or two about coloured pencils.
07:09She has about 400 high-end ones, which she uses to make realistic animal portraits that
07:15can sell for up to $6,500.
07:20And each brand and each type of pencil works, and they complement each other so well.
07:26So I tend to use the Caradush Luminance because they're wax-based, so it creates a really
07:34lovely, smooth, buttery seal to the surface, and then over the top I can go in with Polychromos.
07:42You can sharpen them to a fine point, they're super great for detail.
07:47Bethany has big expectations for these pricey brands when it comes to blendability.
07:53Blendability in the world of coloured pencils means that the artist can layer colours over
07:58one another directly on the paper, creating gradients without sharp lines.
08:03The colours should transition smoothly.
08:07While some coloured pencil artists might use blending tools and solvents, Bethany prefers
08:12to create a blending effect through layering.
08:16So layering and creating the subtle changes, especially with an equestrian portrait, we
08:22think about the contours of a horse's face, there's no harsh lines, so the only way we
08:27can do that is by creating a lot of pigment on the paper, we do that through layering.
08:33She says she can't accomplish the same look with cheaper coloured pencils.
08:39These are Crayola coloured pencils which I think we used to have at school, and obviously
08:44I think you can pick these up from most supermarkets or sort of local stationery stores.
08:54She's demonstrating the difference with swatches.
08:58First up, Crayola.
09:00The one thing I'm really, really aware of is they're very kind of chalky.
09:07I'm quickly realising whilst doing this is that I'm having to use a lot of pressure and
09:11a lot of layers to really make this a little bit more blendable.
09:16Too many layers can create what's called a wax bloom, which Bethany doesn't want.
09:22Eventually, when you press quite hard, you're not really going to be able to layer that
09:26much more pencil over the top, and already it's becoming, it feels a little bit slippery
09:30underhand because I'm adding quite a lot of layers.
09:36Slippery, waxy layers limit how much gradation Bethany can achieve.
09:42With expensive pencils, she doesn't have that problem.
09:47And then even despite the fact that I'm doing this, I can still go over with more layers.
09:54And if I was to take a little bit of black, whereas on here you can see how scratchy that is,
09:59if I use the same light pressure, it just blends so beautifully into whatever we've put down underneath.
10:08Bethany's work on animal portraits often requires her to blend several shades of the same hue,
10:14like varying browns in horsehair or dog fur.
10:18Compared to cheaper brands, manufacturers of professional-grade coloured pencils
10:22offer a much wider variety of shades.
10:26When we've got such colour, such vast colour choices, it does make it easier to really flip between colours
10:32and you get a lot of subtle different hues, whereas a lot of the cheaper pencils,
10:37when you get your very bog standard colours, you might get a couple of different shades of red,
10:42but they're all very vibrant, you don't get the neutral colours that you do with these pencils.
10:48But for artists and their clients, all this effort from pencil producers is pointless
10:54if their work doesn't stand the test of time.
10:58I need to, especially when we're looking at selling our work and selling it to the public,
11:03and actually charging for the work, we need to be ensuring that that work is going to last for years to come
11:10and it's not going to discolour, it's not going to fade, it's going to stay as vibrant as the day when we drew it
11:16or the day that we completed that portrait.
11:18See, it's super colourful and I really, really aimed, like I wanted to show you this piece
11:22because of all the blending that went into it, but you can still see about five years on how vibrant the colours are.
11:29So obviously using the professional-grade pencils, even if this was in direct sunlight all the time,
11:34it wouldn't fade at all.
11:37It's like your portrait.
11:40The longevity of a colour is known as its lightfastness.
11:45Faber-Castell uses a star rating where three stars means the colour will be preserved
11:50with little or no fading for 100 years in museum-like conditions.
11:56Almost all of the coloured pencils the company offers in its professional lines are three stars.
12:02Each colour receives a rating through a specialised lightfastness test.
12:07Here we see a CPS Sun test device with a xenon bulb.
12:12In it, the outlines of the artist's colours are partially illuminated, partially not illuminated.
12:18You can then visualise the fading.
12:22The total exposure time is 100 hours after this test.
12:27And what you see here is a lightfastness test where colours were applied
12:32that were then exposed to the exposure.
12:35You can see that with individual colours that are less luminous,
12:39the colour becomes paler and changes.
12:42On the other hand, there are highly luminous colours that you can see here
12:46that practically don't change at all.
12:53Faber-Castell says perfecting texture, durability and lightfastness for its polychromos line
13:00costs five times more than producing its student-grade pencils.
13:06All this R&D translates to a higher price tag,
13:09but according to Faber-Castell, the extra effort is worth it.
13:15If you take a high-quality pen, the sun will be very nice and yellow,
13:20the meadow will be green, the sky will be blue.
13:22This means that the user has a successful experience that doesn't take a long time.
13:44If I bought a pen and bought a couple of pencils at the start,
13:48then obviously I think that can keep the cost down.
13:51However, as my collection has grown and as I've got more confident with the medium,
13:56obviously that's naturally led for me to expand the collection,
13:59which is now, as I said, worth a fair few hundred.
14:03And to me and the work I create now, I couldn't be without the entirety of my collection.
14:14www.Faber-Castell.com