Watercolour Pencil Comparison - Goldfaber & Albrecht Durer

A side-by-side look at the Student and Artist-grade watercolour pencils from Faber Castell.

Goldfaber product range:

Albrecht Durer product range:

[mjpete]

Hullo Gem, I am not in the market for a new brand of watercolor pencils. You are such a wonderful artist and I am glad to see this video has held up for so many years! I have used the Koh-I-Noor watercolor pencils for 45+ years! I once believed that they were the only brand that made watercolor pencils, my local art shop only stocked them as the watercolor pencils! I know that my little store had to make choices and they did have several more brands of regular color pencils and sold them open stock. I did learn about the Albrecht Durer’s at around 15 years old, but I just could not afford them! I still believe that Koh-I-Noor products are Artist grade, from their Polycolor and aqua pencils to soft pastels. I have purchased a full set of Albrecht Durer’s just last year! I recently purchased the Magnus pencils from Faber Castell and they are just a larger version of their watercolor pencils! I started with a Scrawlrbox that had 3 Magnus pencils and I was just so surprised that I went and got the 24 pencils from their set and open stocked the rest of the Magnus line at 30 colors and I find myself reaching for them over my rather large selection of pencils that I own.
Thank you for sharing your time and efforts bringing this wonderful video and a tremendous source of information about these pencils. You are truly inspirational and a true joy to watch!

[yanboc]

Thank you for this great review! The video quality is so good, and the comparison was very helpful. I didn't expect goldfaber to perform so well, I had the old version as a child and they were VERY hard. the new version seems so much smoother.

[Mme.Savage]

All of your reviews are so comprehensive. Excellent.

[sheilasinghal]

Great review and comparison. Thanks so much! :D

[DD-dd]

FYI Light Blue was in the original Albrecht Durer and Polychromos sets, but removed when they retooled the set several years ago.

[Addleysmom]

This was so interesting as I’ve been looking to purchase high end watercolor pencils and have been curious to know if/how they compare to other levels of water color pencils. I enjoyed hearing your perspectives on these as it was quite helpful!

[kimmyk]

thanks for the video I just order a set of 12 to try. Your awesome

[waymire]

I recently got back into watercolor pencils for my double sided coloring books (having given away my Albrecht Durers a few years ago which I kick myself on the regular for), I grabbed the Goldfabers on a whim because they were available at my local craft store ... I was SHOCKED at how good they are. Really, the only difference is the size of the core which means you have to put down a bit more pencil just due to the fact there is less pencil touching the paper... and the fact there are only 48 colors in the range which means you have to do a decent amount of color mixing. They are particularly lacking in natural cool toned greens and browns. I also miss the greys quite a bit.. they do have a warm and cool grey but only one (level 4) of each. I may still pick up another set of AD.. just because I want all those lovely colors... but I will totally keep my GF for travel or to take to work with me.

[waymire]

I do the same "hand test" with my waterbrushes. It's just the best way to tell how wet they are at the moment. I'm looking for a new waterbrush if you could recommend? I started with the Caradache, and they are lovely but the tips are bigger than I would like. I got the Pentel aquash on another recommendation.. and the small is a great size but they put out too much water for my taste, doing coloring in coloring books. I'd love a small tip with a limited water flow. For comparison my go to for flow at the moment is the Tombow blender pen.. but it's a chunky monkey and often hard to get into tiny spaces such as plant stems without blowing color out of the lines.

[juliabroadley]

Very helpful thankyou you just saved me some money

[bettinaceciliasilveira]

Thanks for sharing! I tried watercolor pencils (I'm a begginer in this) but I didn't like them much. I'm buying some watercolors to see if the problems were the pencils or me :D

[Gaghyta]

Hi! Great review. How do you sharpen the Albrecht Dürer pencil? I can't find a sharpener that fit right. I'm loosing time and my mind :(Sorry my english grammar)