(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)
Stressed? Me, too! Coloring helps. I did a little coloring this week, and decided to try the Blackwing Colors Colored Pencil Set. I'm a big fan of their graphite pencils, as many are, so I was excited to see if I'd like these as much. If their graphite pencils are my favorite to write with, would their colored pencils be my favorite to color with? Sadly, no, but they are very decent--just not as superior as their daily writers.
The set comes in a box with a foam insert that has all the pencils safely nestled in their little cubby. The box opens like a book, which is nice for use while you're coloring. It's much easier to use than a top-opening box. You can see exactly what you're reaching for, and it helps protect the pencil tips. It's also magnetic, which helps keep the pencils safe in transport.
Speaking of tips, the pencils do not come sharpened, so your coloring session will need to be preceded by a sharpening session. They do sharpen very neatly, though. One pencil did not cooperate. The black pencil core broke when sharpening once, but then continued to break as I tried to use it. It was obviously broken in several places internally, so I gave up on it. But the rest never broke at all. I usually expect some breakage with colored pencils, so only one is not bad. The clay-based cores of most colored pencils are a lot more delicate than graphite pencils.
The cores of these colored pencils are very soft, and that's because Blackwing has created a wax-based core for them. I used a Kum Masterpiece two-step sharpener to put a pretty good point on these, but that point wore down very fast. These would not work well for those very detailed coloring books with lots of very tiny spaces to color in, which is most of what I have. But the soft cores are wonderful for blending and shading, so they'd be great for artists creating their own images.
The colors are well-pigmented, with even the lightest colors creating very vibrant tones. The bright colors and smooth texture remind me a lot of the Prismacolor colored pencils that were the Cadillac of my high school art classes. Overall a good coloring experience, though not as nice as the Derwent colored pencils that I've been using over the past decade.
One thing these colored pencils have that most don't is the signature flat Blackwing eraser. Erasers aren't usually as effective on colored pencils as they are on graphite, and that's still the case here. The eraser formula on these is different than for a graphite pencil. They're paler, more textured, and a little crumbly, because Blackwing has included sand in them to make them more effective. They work better than a regular pencil eraser would, but you can see that they still aren't removing much of the pigment from the page. A bit, yes, but the erased lines are still visible except in the very palest colors. The erasers are refillable, though, so if you find yourself erasing a lot, you can replace the end.
The set of 12 pencils is $30, which is on the high end of colored pencil prices. For comparison, a 12-color set of Prismacolor erasable colored pencils is $9. Price-wise, they're up there with the fanciest Faber-Castell colored pencils ... but I don't think they're as nice as those. They are very fancy, though, with fine cedar wood, wax cores, sand erasers, etc. A lot of thought did go into making them good pencils. Sales of these pencils also benefit music and arts education programs, so some of that extra cost is going to good causes. So if you're a Blackwing fan, these might be the perfect colored pencils for you. But if you're looking for a fantastic coloring experience because the world is falling apart around you, you might want to try some alternatives.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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