Following new Faber-Castell products are free of animal derivatives – including the manufacturing process:
115210 Pitt Graphite Matt
160701 Creative Marker – white as snow, Creative Marker blackout
160806 Neon Marker
2818.. brush line
2828.. brush line
all brushes that are part of drawing/painting sets
The material used for all brush hair is nylon.
Faber-Castell is a cruelty-free company on all levels; they do not test on animals, neither commission other parties to do so; the raw material chain is free of animal testing
They would like you to know, that animal testing for art-, writing- and drawing materials/ supplies is banned in Europe.
No animal based raw materials are ever used as auxiliary supplies/ additives in Faber-Castell’s entire production.
Faber-Castell ink : available in four colours: black, blue, pink and turqoise; the shades blue and pink are erasable; black and turquoise cannot be erased; the ink is not document proof; (the waterproof and lightfast alternative by Faber-Castell are the Graf von Faber-Castell inks)
Here is the list of vegan-friendly products by Faber-Castell:
Instead of using watercolours in pans, you can use watercolour pencils, sticks/gelatos and crayons with a water-reservoir brush or stiffer regular brush, but in the way you would paint with pans.
Tip-to-tip transfer: Brush over your water-soluble crayon/stick etc. (use more strokes to intensify the colour) and then apply it onto the paper. Alternatively draw with the crayon direcly on the edge of the paper or a separate paper and take the colour with the brush from there.
This way the colour application is much softer than drawing directly on the paper and going over the lines with a brush. You can colour a dainty little drawing or cover a DinA3 and larger paper with beautiful patterns.
If you don’t have a watercolour travel pan set, you can always take your pencils, crayons etc. and a water-reservoir brush pen. There will be no spills, it does not take up too much space and you have double the use out of the pencils. Using them with the brush and also drawing details directly with them.
It is also something different to go over the crayon/pencil with a wet brush than immersing the whole crayon/pencil tip in water, which can damage the lead.
I also went over a Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pen with the water-reservoir brush to take colour and transfer to the paper. After drying the colour is going nowhere, because of the waterproof ink used in the pens. Why would someone do this to an already brush shaped pen tip ? You can cover a bigger area this way than with the small, less flexible brush pen tip; you can gently glaze the paper and if your brush pens are older, you still get good use out of them without having to draw streaky (although I found it can make also nice effects).
Painting on wet paper with the laden brush helps covering the paper surface quicker.
left side: tip-to-tip transfer, on wet surface; right side: paper-to-brush transfer+wet brush over applied colour
This is a list of cruelty-free companies and the vegan-friendly products they offer. If you don’t find the company you are looking for in this list, please enter the company name in the search box to see their status. If you still can’t find the specific company you are looking for, please let me know, so that I can contact them.
Update May 2018
Kuretake products can NOT be considered vegan-friendly.
At first Kuretake representatives assured me, that their products are cruelty-free, they later chose to inform me, that, due to the language-barrier, they are not able to understand what cruelty-free means or what animal-testing is. Despite claiming to have a looked into this matter, no more replies followed.
Vegan friendly products:
-Kuretake Fude Pens, except the Fountain pen Shikatsuno series, the Fountain Brush pens have a brush tip made of animal hair
-ZIG Cartoonist Ink, except the Sumi Ink
-ZIG Kurecolor
–ZIG Clean Color Real Brush
-ZIG Waterbrush H20
-Acrylista
-Gansai Tambi including the Pearlescent and Starry Colours
I am happy to finally share this information with you. The list is still incomplete, there will be additions over time.
