Moores Art Gallery & Design Blog: Bigfoot Commission Finished, New Colored Pencil Lesson and Review on Marco Raffine Colored Pencils

Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to everyone! I was just wanted to say thanks to all the veterans and God Bless.

Commission

My latest commission is completed. I used Marco Raffine colored pencils, Prismacolor colored pencils, and iridescent watercolors. The iridescent watercolors do not show up in the scan but the background was done in iridescent blues and colored pencils. Reference was mainly from a photo I took on our trip to Newport, Oregon of the Bigfoot wax image at Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. However, I felt that it looked to zombielike so I made his face a little more realistic.

New Colored Pencil Lesson

Well, I started this piece last spring but school and other clients kind of got in the way of me finishing it. So I hope to finish this up tonight or tomorrow. The free colored pencil lesson will be viewable and accessible on my site later next week.

Review on Marco Raffine Colored Pencils

So, I completed my recent Bigfoot commission piece using the Marco Raffine 72 colored pencil set that I received a few weeks ago. I only paid $21.99 for the set. Pretty affordable when you are a poor starving artist.
I decided to compare the Raffines to the brand I normally use which is Prismacolor Professional Grade Colored Pencils. I compared the two throughout the Bigfoot commission process.

First, a little bit about the pencils themselves. They are oil-based colored pencils and are creamy, smooth and blend well. There is presently no lightfast testing done on this brand.

Positive Points: The Raffine colors have 72 pre-sharpened colors to choose from. They blended well with the watercolors and Prismacolors. They also blended and dissolved well with a Copic colorless blender marker. I had no problems layering multiple colors to create fur. However, I would want to test this brand doing a portrait of a person just to see how well colors blend and layer. Colors are easy to erase with an electric eraser. All Raffiné colored pencils conform to ASTM-D-4236 Non-Toxic requirements.

Negative Points: I did notice that the Raffines have more of an inconsistent pigment than the Prismacolors. They are not as rich as the Prismacolors they are more softer as you see in the image below. If they weren't oil-based, I would say they have more of a waxy pigment due to the softer colors. I thought also that they don't easily sharpen to a real sharp fine point as Prismacolors. Prismacolors I can get to a real sharp point which I like for details. You cannot purchase these pencils in open stock only in sets.

If you are a beginner colored pencil artist or into the adult coloring books then this is a great brand to set you off in the right direction and a great set to add to your colored pencil artist tool box. There might be colors in this set that you may not have found in any other brand set. It's all about the colored pencils and if you love this medium as much as I do, you will continue to create works of art with colored pencils and will find the brand that works best for you whether as a hobbyist or professional.