BiC Conté Watercolour Pencils

​BiC Conté Watercolour Pencils have an almost identical packaging to their standard colouring pencils, but perform very differently. As they are watercolour pencils, you can use the supplied paintbrush to add water to your colouring and create a painted effect.

First Impressions

These have the same matte black, round barrel as the standard pencils, but happily they have a colour dipped tip so you can see which shade you're picking up at a glance. Again, there are no names or numbers to catalogue which colours are here, so you'd have to chart them yourself as I have done.

Performance

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​These pencils perform far and away much better than the standard Conté pencils, even when using dry. The pigment is rich and leads are soft, with vibrant colours that don't take page-ripping pressure to laydown. This density is needed so that there is a lot of 'ink' for water to work with when you add it, creating a beautiful watercolour painted look that blends easily. There's no artistic qualities required for these either- I literally scribbled some colour down and let the paintbrush & water even it out.

from Coloring for Two by Sarah Janisse Brown

Erasing, Smudging & Sharpening

The pencils erase very well when dry but obviously won't after water has been added. I'd say 90% of the pigment can be erased which is great for those who go out of the lines a lot like me. These pencils will smudge if you're not careful, due to their softness and high level of pigment.
Sharpening the pencils has been without issue so far, and the leads seem sturdy enough to withstand some pressure.

Value
The 12 set is £8.99 and the 24 set £18.99, the latter I find probably a tad expensive for so little variety. On the other hand, these blend well and can be mixed together with the water to create different colours, so I'm possibly being over-critical. Overall I'd recommend these to anyone looking for a set of watercolour pencils, who maybe don't want to fork out for a full set of Derwent Inktense but still want a good saturation of colour.

I received these pencils in exchange for an honest review. You can find them on Amazon here:

BiC Conte Watercolour Pencil - Tin of 24