It rained all weekend, so I spent some time with a set of Hero watercolor pencils that I have and made myself a color chart. See above.

My first set of watercolor pencils was by Derwent, and it had 6 colors. It was what I could afford at the time, and they were pretty good. But this Hero set that I have has 72 watercolor pencils, and they cost about the same as a Derwent or Prismacolor 12-pack or 24-pack. Yet, they’re just as good, from what I can tell. So, it’s definitely a great buy — you get good value for your money.

The colors show up easily, darker and brighter if you press harder or color in layers. They also smooth out and look more solid when you use water on them. The chart I made has the colors in boxes, dry version on the left side of each box and wet version on the right.

There are a few colors that seem identical, though. Some shades of blue appear to be repeated in W821, W834, W835, W858, W864, and W868. There’s also W865 and W867; W840 and W866; as well as W816, W833, W845, and W863. But that may just be the medium I used. The pencils themselves look different enough. W835 has more purple in it than W834, for instance, but it doesn’t show up that well on the paper I used, even worse on the scanned version of it.

So I need to figure out how to get a much more accurate reading of the colors so I can make a more true-to-life color chart. I was working at Fancy Publications as an imaging specialist the last time that I seriously worked in color correction; it involved so many calibration tools and profiles that it got very complicated. So it may be a while before I can come up with a good solution.

Give me CMYK percentages any day — so much easier to deal with.

Anyway, please feel free to use this chart for yourself if you have a set of the 72-pack Hero Watercolor Pencils.

You’re welcome!

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