COLOUR INDEX NAMES ON COLORED PENCILS

Dear Members,

Many of you received a message from Sanford Prismacolor asking if you want them to include the Colour Index Names on colored pencils. That letter and my response appear at the end of this message.

The answer to this question should be an emphatic YES!! While Colour Index Names mean very little to most colored pencil artists right now, this is because we haven't been exposed to them. Painters use Colour Index Names all the time and have for years. It is important for colored pencil artists to become familiar with these designations as well.

The Colour Index Name, or CI, is a number that refers to each of the individual pigments used in a particular pencil. Knowing which pigments go into a pencil enables us to make informed choices as artists. It lessens the opportunity for manufacturers to use their own potentially misleading numeric designations when communicating with artists about lightfastness issues, and gives artists unbiased knowledge.

We are quite fortunate, thanks to the efforts of Rhonda Farfan, our former Vice President of Consumer Standards, to have a Lightfastness Standard in place for colored pencils. The ASTM D6901 Standard actually requires that manufacturers put the Colour Index Name on pencils in order for them to claim compliance with the Lightfastness Standard. We fought very hard to have that requirement in the Standard, and we need to make sure the manufacturers know that it is important to all of us.

Even if you have already responded to the letter from Sanford, it isn't too late to let them know that including this data is very important to us and that colored pencil artists are extremely interested in the lightfastness and composition of the pencils they use.

Sincerely,
 
Betsy Holster, Director of Product Research
Kay Schmidt, President

Vera Curnow, Founder

Rhonda Farfan, Vice President of Consumer Standards Emeritus