• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
Artnitso & Co

Artnitso & Co

Pursue your art and craft dream and find your niche

  • About
  • Blog

Faber Castell Polychromos pencils – a closer look

22 December 2021 by Louise

Polychromos - a closer look - Pinterest image of blue colour swatches on blue background - Text says 'See the colours of Faber-Castell Polychromos' - Artnitso.com

The Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencil range holds 120 pencils. Do you want to know more about the colours included in this range?

You have limited time and energy, yet you want to thoroughly know your coloured pencils.  You know it will take time to make colour charts and to sort your pencils according to lightfastness and type.

This post will help you save your time and your energy. It will show you what colour family colours and neutral colours are included in the Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencil range. Use this post together with our post on colour harmonies to help you choose the colours of your next artwork.

Or you can save hours of time and use a handy document we created that shows you 91 colour harmonies, 91 colour temperatures, and 960 colour combinations. Just click on the image below to purchase. Find more information about this product here.

product NPP1367 cover colour harmony 91 and 960 - Copy
Click here to buy this handy pdf.

Deeper analysis

An earlier blog post explored the question, which are the better coloured pencils and looked at four artist coloured pencil sets. Two were wax-based and two were oil-based. However, the analysis was limited to looking at four pencils in each colour wheel colour family.

It was further limited in that some coloured brands and fewer – or more – than four pencils in a colour family when grouped by lightfastness.

We have explored each of the sets.

These are the wax-based Caran d’Ache Luminance 76 and Prismacolor Premier 150 (by lightfast and non-lightfast), the oil-based Faber-Castell Polychromos 120 and Caran d’Ache Pablo 120.

Also, further to this analysis, we have had closer looks at other oil-based and wax-based pencils. The oil-based are the Derwent Procolour range of coloured pencils, and 100 Derwent Lightfast coloured pencils. The wax-based pencils we have analysed are the Derwent Drawing pencils and Prismacolor Art Stix woodless coloured pencils.

We have explored other media, such as water-based coloured pencils – these being Caran d’Ache Museum and Caran d’Ache Supracolor; Derwent Inktense blocks water soluble ink; Caran d’Ache Neopastel oil pastels, Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water soluble art crayons, and Caran d’Ache Neocolor I wax crayons..

You can read this disclaimer about the colour analysis.

Subscribe to our email list and access a pdf that compares 7 brands of pencils. Click the image below to find more information.

Link to coloured pencil comparison charts

Faber Castell Polychromos Coloured Pencils

This post has images of hand drawn colour swatches for each pencil in the range.

Let’s start….

The Faber Castell Polychromos range consists of 120 oil-based coloured pencils

Now to get a closer look, let’s separate these colours into two groups – the colour wheel colours, and the neutral colours.

The Polychromos coloured pencil colour wheel colours

The Colour Wheel Clock

The colour wheel moves clock-wise around the wheel. The image below shows the colour family positions on the clock.

Colour Wheel showing the colour wheel family colours in clock positions Artnitso.com
The colour wheel clock showing the colour wheel positions.

Of the colour wheel colours, the make up of each colour family is outlined below. While the colours are of varying shades and tones, the predominant base colour belongs to the colour wheel colour family in which it has been placed.

Red – 12 o’clock

Starting with red at the 12.00 o’clock position, the image below shows the coloured pencils in the set of 120 includes that belong to the red colour family.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Red - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-11 colour harmony number 12 polychromos red - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and red and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

To help you see this colour family, we created a short video that shows how you can use Polychromos monochromatic red using a printable pdf we have available for purchase – PPP1010-11 Number 12 and Polychromos.


Red-Orange – 1.00 o’clock

The next colour family group is red-orange at 1.00 o’clock.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Red-Orange - Artnitso.com
PPP1010 colour harmony number 01 and polychromos red-orange - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and red-orange and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Orange – 2.00 o’clock

Next colour is orange at 2.00 o’clock.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Orange - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-1 colour harmony 02 polychromos orange - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and orange and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Orange-Yellow – 3.00 o’clock

Orange-Yellow sits at the 3.00 o’clock position.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Orange-Yellow - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-2 colour harmony number 03 polychromos orange-yellow - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and orange-yellow and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Yellow – 4.00 o’clock

At 4.00 o’clock sits Yellow.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Yellow - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-3 colour harmony number 04 yellow polychromos - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and yellow and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Yellow-Green – 5.00 o’clock

Yellow-Green sits at 5.00 o’clock.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Yellow-Green - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-4 colour harmony number 05 polychromos yellow-green - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and yellow-green and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Green – 6.00 o’clock

The colour family of green sits at 6.00 o’clock.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Green - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-5 colour harmony number 06 polychromos green - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and green and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Green-blue – 7.00 o’clock

Green-blue sits at 7.00 o’clock.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Green-Blue - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-6 colour harmony number 07 polychromos green-blue - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and green-blue and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Blue – 8.00 o’clock

Blue is at the 8.00 o’clock position.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Blue - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-7 colour harmony number 08 polychromos blue - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and blue and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Blue-Violet – 9.00 o’clock

Blue-violet sits at the 9.00 o’clock position.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Blue-Violet - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-8 colour harmony number 12 polychromos blue-violet - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and blue-violet and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Violet – 10.00 o’clock

Violet sits at the 10.00 o’clock position.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Violet - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-9 colour harmony number 12 polychromos violet - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and violet and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Violet-Red – 11.00 o’clock

Violet-Red sits at the 11.00 o’clock position.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Violet-Red - Artnitso.com
PPP1010-10 colour harmony number 11 polychromos violet-red - resized
We created a printable pdf about colour harmony and violet-red and neutral Polychromos pencils. Find more information here.
BUY NOW

Colour wheel colour family –  Summary

As you can see from the above images, the Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencil range has pencil in all the colour family colours.

If you want to know how to mix and match these colour wheel family groups. Check out our post about colour relationships.

Let’s now look at the neutral and metallic colours included in the Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencil range.

Neutral Colours

The set of 120 coloured pencils also includes neutral and metallic colours. These are shown clockwise in the image below.

First, there are the metallic pencils.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Metallics - Artnitso.com

Next are the neutral-black pencils.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Neutral-Black - Artnitso.com

Next is neutral-brown.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Neutral-Brown - Artnitso.com

Next is neutral-cool beige.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Neutral-Cool Beige - Artnitso.com

Neutral-Cool Grey follows.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Neutral-Cool Grey - Artnitso.com

Warm-beige follows next.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Neutral-Warm Beige - Artnitso.com

Next up is neutral-warm-grey.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Neutral-Warm Grey - Artnitso.com

White is the final neutral colour.

Faber Castell Polychromos - Neutral-White - Artnitso.com

Colours Summary

As you can see, the Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencil set and range is made up of a variety of colours and neutrals.

As noted above, the selection of colour is subjective and the reviewer has chosen colour by looking at the actual coloured pencil swatches. Nevertheless, you may find that particular colours belong in different groups or families.

An almost complete lightfast set of pencils

Of the 120 set of coloured pencils, two pencils have the lowest lightfast rating of *, 16 coloured pencils have a lightfast rating of **, and 102 have the highest lightfast rating of ***.

Only have a few pencils?

If you’d like to try this range of pencils, you can try a basic set of 12. We have analysed this set of pencils, and provide colour swatches, and the colour recipes of 144 colours that you can make from this set of pencils. You can see the 144 Polychromos colour recipes here.

Make your own colour chart

For your knowledge, it’s advisable to draw up your own colour chart so you can get to know the actual colours of your coloured pencils. You will then be able to see how your pencil performs on the papers that you use for your drawings.

Polychromos interactive colour chart

To help you with this, the colour charts used in this post were rearranged into a sortable and searchable format in an interactive colour chart. You can access the slim interactive colour chart where you can search and sort the pencils by name, number, and lightfast rating. See hand drawn colour swatches.


Colour Harmony and Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils.
We created products about colour harmony and Polychromos pencils. You can find information about them here.

This post was originally published in 2019, updated on 18 November 2019, February 1 2021, 16 August 2021, 1 September 2021, and 22 December 2021. It was last updated on 4 January 2023.

Filed Under: Coloured Pencils, Drawing Tagged With: Faber Castell Polychromos, oil-based coloured pencils

Primary Sidebar

Follow us on social media

  • Pinterest
  • Facebook

Colour

Colour Relationship - Orange Blue Complement Artnitso.com

Colour relationships, colour temperature, colour harmony

Luminance A3 V vr r - Artnitso.com - social

Analoguous 3 violet, violet-red, red – Luminance pencils – Video

Course Lightfast A3 V vr r social - Artnitso.com

Analoguous 3 violet, violet-red, red – Derwent Lightfast

Course Luminance A3 r ro o social - Artnitso.com

Analoguous 3 red, red-orange, orange – Luminance – Video

Course Luminance A2 vr r social - Artnitso.com

Analoguous 2 violet-red, red – Luminance pencils – Video

Tags

Botanical Art Caran d'Ache NeoArt Caran d'Ache Neocolor I Caran d'Ache Neocolor II Caran d'Ache Neopastel Caran d'Ache Supracolor Caran d'Ache Luminance Caran d'Ache Museum Caran d'Ache Pablo colour relationship colour wheel Derwent Drawing Derwent Inktense Derwent Lightfast Derwent Procolour Emotions Faber Castell Polychromos Jasart Coloured Pencils lightfast coloured pencils Networking non-lightfast coloured pencils oil-based coloured pencils organise art and craft supplies Pebeo Prismacolor Artstix Prismacolor Premier Recycle Fabric Set of 12 Watercolour pencils wax-based coloured pencils

Information

Terms and Conditions

Privacy

Contact

 

Recent

  • One year at art school – what can you expect?
  • Colour relationships, colour temperature, colour harmony
  • Time saving tools for your art and craft journey
  • Achieve your goals in your art and craft dream in 11 steps
  • Use a process of elimination to find your art and craft niche

Copyright © 2023 Artnitso & Co ®

  • Pinterest
  • Facebook