Caran D'ache Neocolor II

This is a color chart of Neocolor II colors shown both dry and with water added. The first ten colors are from the ten pack, the rest are ones I bought individually. As you can see the colors are very vivid and bright, particularly when activated by water.

I have used this medium in many of my paintings as they work well alone or with mixed media. I have used them over watercolor underpaintings, with pen, oil pastel and colored pencil. 

You can apply neocolors by lifting color directly from the crayon using a brush, scraping bits of the crayon onto a palette and mixing, or directly drawing onto the paper. You do not need to add much crayon at all in order to get a bright wash of color.

Here are some paintings I have done using only Neocolor II and ink. More of my paintings done with these crayons can be found in the gallery.

I primarily colored the crayons directly on the paper itself in order to paint these pheasants except for the small details where I used a very fine wet brush that I loaded with pigment from the crayon

For the manatee I used layers of crayon directly on the paper  and with a wet bristle brush I scrubbed the colors to get the detail on his skin

This is the first watersoluble crayon I tried and fell in love with the medium. It is a very high quality product and can be found easily on most websites, including amazon, blick and Jerry's artarama. Although it comes with a higher price tag they last a long time, blend amazingly well and they are lightfast.

Here are a couple of more color charts done on both hot press & cold press paper:

Strathmore Cold press

Fluid hot press

I think when used dry they look very nice on Hot Pressed but when used with water I think that they flow much better with cold pressed paper. I have not done any paintings with these on the hot pressed but I may try it in the future

Overall:

Pros: very large selection of colors, lightfast, readily available, blends very well wet & dry, great with mixed media

Cons: expensive, small

They can be purchased on many different websites, including: www.dickblick.com , www.jerrysartarama.com , www.amazon.com , www.cheapjoes.com  and www.staples.com