Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Hello, everyone! Don't buy that giant set of pencils! BUY THESE! For once, I won't beat about the bush-- You want these pencils. Honestly, you want them. THESE ARE THE PENCILS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. Here is why... They are absolutely the best performing pencils for their price on the market right now. Other sets of a similar price point may tempt you with an outrageous number of pencils. Don't fall for it. These are better. Vastly better-gooder. AND there is a bonus reason...to find out what it is, you have to read on to the end... haha! First, performance, because that's always most important: These layer and blend like a DREAM. Every single color in the box is creamy smooth, loaded with pigment, layers forever, and blends like oil paints on a canvas. They positively glow. Before these were delivered, I spent two weeks working exclusively with Holbeins (if you are not familiar with Holbeins, just google the most expensive and lightfast professional artist pencils on the market and you will understand) and I was truly astounded by the Schpirerr Farben's versatility. They sharpen smoothly, with no knots or tough spots in the barrels. They hold a VERY sharp point, which doesn't break unless you are absolutely ruthless with them. There is a fine amount of dust, depending on the paper you're using, but they NEVER rub off on your hands! (Polychromos rub off on your hands, it's one of my complaints about them.) They aren't the least bit scratchy after a few turns in a sharpener. And they don't smell like rancid lipstick, like so many other pencil sets of comparable price. No one has said what kind of pale wood these are made of, but I suspect some kind of fruit or flowering tree, because they smell faintly fruity when you first open them, the way white oak smells like flowers when you sand it, and applewood make your grilled salmon extra yummy. These are oil-based pencils with a 3.4mm core and a comfortably sized, capped, 8mm round barrel, half painted gold and half with the color. The color doesn't quite match the core in many instances, but gives a good approximation and you get used to identifying what is what. The materials conform with ASTM D-4236 safety standards, for those of you that care about that sort of thing. (personally, as an artist, I'm used to working with risky materials if it results in the look I want, and I'm not going to let toddlers chew on them, so it's a non-issue.) They do not say where they are manufactured, but I have heard someone say it was in China. Their color number is printed on the barrel, but they have no names, so feel free to make up your own or steal mine. (EDIT: THESE PENCILS NOW HAVE COLOR NAMES AND COME IN EVEN MORE GORGEOUS COLORS! YAY!) The company has a very nice website in the beginning stages where you can find color charts, tutorials and color combination charts, with free coloring pages to come. They come packaged in a sturdy, hinged tin, which for some reason has a biography of artist Alfred Sisley printed inside the lid. AND HEAR YE, HEAR YE! The individual trays are so sturdy you can hold them in one hand without fear of them curling up and dumping your precious sticks of awesome onto the floor! PROGRESS! There ARE a few things I need to mention, although the performance of these pencils is so amazing I don't feel any of it should detract from my 5 star rating. First, there are a few pencils that are very close in color: yellows 015 and 016, reds 005 and 006, red-violets 024 and 041, and greens 009 and 043. Secondly, the set is somewhat lacking in very pale pastels, except for a lovely creamy yellow, but this often happens when a range is limited to only 72 pencils. There is no light grey or light brown. There is a ton of yellows, and I feel a few of these could be swapped out for the afore- mentioned light grey and a fawn brown. There are FOUR prefect purples in this set AND also a dark blue-violet and a dark red-violet, which I find to be the perfect number of purples for a smaller set like this. The black is VERY black. There are four greys: warm grey, cool grey, french grey and slate (blue-greenish) grey, all about medium dark in tone. The two lightest greens are almost fluorescent, which some people like and some don't. There is just the right number and variation of darker browns and you aren't overwhelmed with scads of pink, like in other sets this size. The white, in my opinion, could be a tad more opaque. These pencils have no lightfast ratings. But what REALLY excites me about these pencils, what had me DANCING ON THE DESK, is that you can pair these with the set of 100 Marco Renoirs and have an interchangeable SET OF ABOUT 170 COLORS TO PLAY WITH because the colors in this set are completely different from the Renoirs, but the pencils behave almost identically and blend together SEAMLESSLY! And you don't have to take my word for it, because like any good obsessive insomniac, I made a chart including both sets to test my theory! (Be nice, it's a work in progress...) Wahoo! This scores you a huge set of scads of different colors for around $75 and they perform as well as any really good oil-based pencils and hugely better than any other budget or student pencils I have ever seen. When I received the pencils, they were all in perfect shape, but I discovered a duplicate (and therefor one missing) pencil. As I have done in the past, rather than return the whole tin and wait for another set, I contacted to company to ask if they could simply send me the missing pencil. I am firstly, very impatient, and secondly, I can't stand the thought of 71 perfectly lovely pencils possibly being consigned to the dumpster! Almost immediately the seller responded and after I sent them a photo of the duplicate pencils, they sent me a whole new set! That is above and beyond customer service, folks, especially since these are, like most budget pencils, not available in open-stock and my burnt umber pencil is already noticeably shorter than the others, as happens with every set I own... My test coloring page is from Chris Price's The Sweet Shoppe coloring book and for the purposes of this review, I completed it EXCLUSIVELY with Schpirerr Farben pencils, with a white acrylic paint marker for reflections and a Caran d'Ache Bright Full blender pencil. I used plain old sketch paper for the color charts. So, YES... THESE are the pencils you are looking for! Note: These pencils were purchased by me, not provided in exchange for a review.