I admit, I purchased these as an experiment. Let me be the first to say, I love Derwent products and have many different sets of all kinds of pencils and paints through my decades. I purchased these with a bit of a pit in my gut, feeling like I might be wasting money before I even received it. When it got here, I realized the moment I picked up the tin, that it was not the product I was expecting. Why? Because it was so light. This made me feel like the product I was about to open was not the substantial product I was used to receiving from derwent. And I was right. These pencils feel like nothing in your hand. Which is hard for me, because those is how I form connections to the product I am using. Ironically, this is the first tinned, Derwent product I've purchased in a long time, in which the tin itself is not dinged or dented. It's in tact, which might say something good about how it's packed, considering it's usually my longer, 36 or 72 count tins that have that sacrificial corner. It's almost like a rite of passage for Derwent tins to have a scar. I digress. The moment I removed the plastic pencil layers out, I realized just how cheap they were. I was struck by the poor quality, and at the same time, by the color selection. Rather, the lack of. I'm not getting anything new with the pencils. This kit has some normal, great colors, but it's missing a lot for my particular style. It's got mostly blues and greens, a lot of browns.. it just had to many primary colors for me... But there are not many purples, pinks, violets, and the browns are just... Brown. There are not variations of browns, in the sense that there are pink toned browns and mauves that are absent from the set. I grew up using Prismacolor, and nothing compares to the variations of browns they include in most of their sets. It makes portrait works come out much richer. This was only the beginning of the dissatisfaction I was feeling. The true test, is in swatching and using them. This, they flunked. I tried them on all kinds of high end papers...I tried them on various kraft papers, from legion, to Strathmore toned tan. I tried on 100% cotton paper with tooth, and various hot pressed papers as well. I must have tried them on 10 different paper that I favor and they failed to perform on all. Let me say, if you don't mind doing one layer of pencil and calling it quits, or if your style doesn't involve multiple layers and burnishing techniques, or if you have a light-hand, then these may be right for you. If so, cool. I was disappointed by the fact that I could only get a couple of layers and even on the best papers, I couldn't get a good blend. My work requires at least 4 layers ... It was hard smashing the colors into each other, and expecting them to blend... But what I did not like about them does not translate in pictures very well, which is why I have not attached any, but one who has a style like mine, should know exactly what I mean by all of what I'm saying.. I was not able to get a quality, painter like look from them. I am able to get this look with Prismacolor and with Luminance pencils (why did I get these if I have those? I am just an artist looking for alternatives and trying to try new things). I dislike when I layer and it's removing pieces of itself from the layer below. It looks terrible and is a sign that it's just not conducive to my methods. I will be returning them. I cannot in good conscience give them to my neice, knowing that I struggled to use them to produce anything of quality. I feel like every product has a paper that it works best on.... That may be so, but I am not willing to break the bank and hold onto these, potentially missing a return by date, just to seek out that paper. This will not stop me from purchasing Derwent products in the future, but I do think I'll stick to the colored pencil manufacturers that I already l use and love.
