But first…
Why We Test on Strathmore 300 Bristol Smooth:
Paper has a significant influence on how a colored pencil performs. Surface texture, absorbency, and tooth can affect color buildup, adhesion, blending, point wear, and other characteristics. The same pencil may behave quite differently on another paper.
A consistent testing surface is necessary to make meaningful comparisons between pencil colors and brands. Changing paper for each brand would introduce a new variable, making it difficult to determine whether I’m testing the pencil or the paper.
Strathmore 300 Bristol Smooth provides a consistent, widely available surface suitable for detailed colored pencil work. It's also a paper I know well from years of professional illustration and teaching.
These tests are not intended to determine which paper works best with each pencil. They're designed to reveal how different pencils perform under the same conditions.
By the way: It’s a myth that markers, pencils, or pens work best on paper by the same brand. Very few manufacturers actually produce their own paper. In general, pencil companies make pencils, paint companies make paint, and paper companies make paper.
Developing a unique paper to match any art supply is incredibly rare and is definitely not happening by inexpensive brands. Most branded paper is actually white labelled and any exclusive features refer to the style of pad or packaging rather than the actual paper.
Our Tests, Explained
Name:
An examination of the color’s name, the history or origin, what color it traditionally describes, and how accurately it represents the pencil’s actual color.
Temperature:
My visual assessment of whether the color leans warm, cool, or neutral relative to other colors in the same hue family.
Resemblance:
My visual comparison of the pencil’s color to traditionally named pigments used in watercolor and oil painting.
Neutralization:
My visual assessment of how much the color has been muted or grayed compared to a pure, saturated version of the same hue.
Value:
The burnished color swatch is converted to grayscale, then visually matched to the closest percentage of gray on Adobe’s standard grayscale scale.
Indicator Accuracy:
The painted color indicator on the pencil is held against a burnished swatch of the pencil’s actual color and visually assessed for accuracy.
Availability:
A general survey of retailers, including whether the pencil is sold individually (open stock) and which boxed sets contain the color.
Manufacturers may introduce new sets, discontinue existing sets, or change their contents. Availability reflects the information available at the time of testing.
Core Firmness:
My assessment of how firm or soft the pencil core is. Softer cores are checked for indentation using a fingernail. Firmer cores are evaluated through observation and use.
Point Retention:
A freshly sharpened point from an X-Acto School Pro sharpener is used to make 50 strokes without rotating the pencil, applying consistent medium pressure by hand. The width of the 50th line indicates how much the point has worn down.
Opacity:
Strathmore 300 Series Bristol Smooth paper is fully blackened with Copic 100 Black, which colors the paper without filling its tooth. One even layer of colored pencil is applied over the black using firm pressure. Results are scanned and presented for your visual assessment of how opaque, translucent, or transparent the color appears.
Glazing and Masking:
My recommendations for how well the pencil is suited to glazing or masking techniques, based on its opacity and adhesion characteristics.
Pigmentation:
Actual pigment concentration cannot be measured through home testing!
Any claims you hear from pencil experts, influencers, or colorists, that a pencil is “highly pigmented” are 100% opinion. They’re basing this statement on how strong or vibrant the color appears.
Color strength is not the same as pigment concentration!
Drag tests where the color is pulled away from a swatch are also misleading. They tester is actually testing solubility, glide, paper tooth, and their skill at dragging color— NOT pigmentation.
Instead, I provide two tests for you to evaluate color development and performance.
5-Box Pressure Test: Five boxes are colored with one layer of the same pencil at increasing hand pressures:
Pencil weight only
Light pressure
Moderate pressure
Firm pressure
Burnishing pressure
10-Box Layer Test: Ten boxes are colored using consistent light pressure (Level 2). The first box receives one layer, the second receives two, and so on until the tenth box receives ten layers.
Together, these tests demonstrate how quickly color builds, how many layers are needed to reach maximum color strength, how dense the color appears at full burnishing, and any behavioral changes observed during application.
These tests measure observable performance, not actual pigment concentration.
Glide:
My assessment of how smoothly the pencil moves across the paper, including whether it feels slick, sticky, sandy, or prone to hopping or skipping during application.
Laydown Consistency:
My observation of how evenly the pencil deposits material with each stroke, including variations in the thickness of the applied layer. I also note any trenching, where the pencil removes previously deposited material as it moves across the paper.
Burnishing:
I test burnishing quality in two ways, presenting the results side by side:
Natural Burnishing is the result of the normal layering process where enough light layers eventually fill the tooth of the paper to the point where more layers no longer adhere well. I note how many layers the Bristol accepted before the pencil started to slide, trench, or pill.
Natural burnishing often still looks a bit grainy, this is not a pencil defect.
Pressure Burnishing is the result of 1-3 high pressure layers filling the tooth purposefully fast. I test with a single burnishing layer noting any sliding, trenching, pilling, and the amount of shedding.
Pressure burnishing can look shiny, foggy, or inconsistent. Results are unique to the pencil color and can be a sign of low quality.
Adhesion:
Evaluated in two ways:
Paper Adhesion is how well the pencil material adheres to the paper surface
Layer Adhesion is how well additional pencil material adheres to previously applied layers of the same pencil.
Erasure:
A color swatch is applied at Level 5 burnishing pressure, then a central stripe is erased with 10 swipes of a Tombow Mono Knock eraser (soft, non-abrasive polymer) using consistent firm pressure. The results are scanned for reader assessment.
Shedding:
My observation of how much pencil dust and debris accumulate throughout the testing process. All debris is collected into one pile and visually assessed as minimal, moderate, or excessive.
Point & Breakage:
A photograph documents how well the pencil sharpens to a long point using an X-Acto School Pro sharpener, along with my observations during sharpening.
Breakage is assessed by noting any point snapping encountered throughout the testing process.
Lightfast Rating:
A review of the manufacturer's published lightfastness information, including any reported test results, with my observations about what those ratings mean and their limitations.
Home lightfastness testing is time-consuming and unreliable.
Any demonstrations I conduct are informal, non-scientific comparisons intended to challenge common assumptions about a product's lightfastness, not to establish an official rating.