pencil swatching – ruby charm colors

After many long months of working hard to pull all of the parts of this book together, and going back and forth with KDP on layout issues, it is finally here and available on Amazon!

The Ruby Charm Colors Big Book of Color Charts is ideal for:

- - Keeping your swatches organized
  - Choosing the perfect hue or color combo
  - Tracking what you have & what you need

Following a few photos of the book, I included a description of what you can expect to find in the Big Book of Color Charts. I spent a lot of time polling coloring book fans and members of the Ruby Charm Colors Facebook community to find out what their favorite pencil sets were and a lot of time researching pencils on the Internet to settle on a list of the most popular brands (see below).

Of course there are many more brands in existence, but to fit them all into one book would fill hundreds more pages and wouldn’t be terribly practical for any of us. Hence the ample number of blank charts at the end of the book for adding in those lesser-known charts. In the end, I hope this is a book that will help you further enjoy your coloring adventures!

I removed the Tombow Irojiten page from one of my ‘author proof’ copies of the book to swatch out the colors I currently have, then wrote numbers in pencil next to the colors I have more than one of. This will help when it’s time to order replacement pencils since I’ve accidentally ordered duplicates in the past from Blick. I folded this chart in half and keep it in my zippered pencil case with my Irojitens for quick reference.

This big book of colored pencil charts for adult coloring book and colored pencil enthusiasts is useful for those wanting all of their coloured pencils, pastels, inks, watercolor pencils, gel pens and markers swatched in one handy book.

This is a landscape-oriented, perfect-bound book with a full color cover, black and white interior, and is 230 pages long. It consists of:

- - Introduction
  - Table of Contents
  - Index page to list your custom color charts and page numbers
  - 27 pre-labeled charts for popular colored pencil brands (see list below)
  - Pre-labeled charts for pastel pencils, ink, watercolor pencils & markers (see lists below)
  - Blank charts by color family (reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, violets, browns, greys, blacks & whites)
  - Blanks charts for additional brands & color combos
  - Black charts for swatching light colors
  - Room for notes
  - A few fun Ruby Charm Colors designs you can color
  - Basic color theory (inside) with color wheel (back cover)

PRE-LABELED COLORED PENCIL BRAND CHARTS:

- - Arteza Expert
  - Black Widow
  - Blick Studio
  - Bruynzeel Design
  - Caran d’Ache Luminance
  - Caran d’Ache Pablo
  - Castle Arts
  - Cezanne
  - Chameleon Color Tones
  - Derwent Artists
  - Derwent Coloursoft
  - Derwent Drawing
  - Derwent Lightfast
  - Derwent Procolour
  - Derwent Studio
  - Faber-Castell Polychromos
  - Holbein
  - Koh-I-Noor Polycolor
  - Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor
  - Marco Raffine
  - Marco Renoir
  - Mitsubishi Uni
  - Prismacolor Premier + Verithin
  - Schpirerr Farben
  - Tombow Irojiten
  - Special Luminance & Lightfast Combo

PRE-LABELED PASTEL PENCIL CHARTS:

Caran d’Ache; Derwent; Faber-Castell; Koh-I-Noor; Stabilo

PRE-LABELED INK CHARTS:

Dr. Ph. Martin and Tim Holtz Distressed

PRE-LABELED WATERCOLOR PENCIL CHARTS:

Arteza; Bruynzeel; Caran d’Ache Museum, Neocolor II & Supracolor; Derwent Graphitint; Derwent Inktense; Derwent Watercolor; Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer

PRE-LABELED MARKER CHARTS:

Arteza Real Brush Pens; Copics; Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens; Spectrum Noir Illustrator Markers; Tombow Dual Brush Pens

The blank charts section of the book will give you ample room to swatch additional brands that are not listed. Some of the charts are numbered while others have a total count of the swatch spaces so you can more easily determine which chart will work best for the sets you have. Charts organized by color family let you swatch all your reds on one page, blues on another, etc. which is helpful when looking for the perfect hue regardless of brand.

IMPORTANT: watercolor and marker pages have black-backed pages to minimize bleed-through. The paper in this book (depending on where it was printed through KPD) is fairly tough, but obviously thinner than watercolor paper or card stock. Colors can look splotchy until they are completely dry. We recommend using a sheet of card stock or plastic to help protect the pages underneath from colors bleeding through as well as potential rub-through of pencil pigments while swatching.

You can make PERSONAL COPIES of the charts you plan to use onto your favorite paper or card stock if the paper in this book feels too thin for your needs, or, if you just want to put those pages of the charts you are using into a ring binder for safe keeping.

You can also deconstruct this book for ease of use, so feel free to take it apart, keep the pages you are using in one binder, and store the rest in case you need them later. Many office supply stores (and FedEx service centers) will remove the spine and even spiral-bind or punch holes in the book for you for a small fee.

If you choose to do it yourself, I have a step-by-step tutorial using another Ruby Charm Colors book (Creative Companion Book Binding DIY) on my blog. Or keep it as is—the choice is yours! It is meant to be a book that grows along with you and your artistic needs.