70 Piece Kalour Sketching and Drawing Set, Post Malone Artwork
70 Piece Kalour Sketching and Drawing Set, Post Malone Artwork
In this post we take a look at the 70 Piece Kalour sketching and drawing set. There are a lot of different sketching sets on the market that comprise of graphite, charcoal and a multitude of other art accessories, with each set delivering various degrees of performance.
Kalour is a brand I have reviewed quite a lot of over the years and there sets can be a bit hit and miss, or some of them can be very similar, just packaged in different tins and sets. However, given the relatively inexpensive prices placed on the Kalour sets, I guess it is something we should expect, after all we are not dealing with art products on the same level as Caran d’Ache, Derwent, Faber Castell, etc.
Kalour 70 Piece Sketching and Drawing Set Characteristics.
First Tier
On opening the Kaour Sketching and Drawing set you are presented with the first of three tiers, jam packed with various tools and products. On the first tier you can see two sharpeners, a metal two hole sharpener and a second black plastic sharpener, the plastic one is supposed to be better for pastel pencils and charcoal pencils.
Below the sharpeners there are three paper blending stumps of various sizes and two tortilons. Beside the blending stumps you are presented with a craft knife, I found the craft knife in this set to be blunt and very badly made, this made me thing to warn parents perhaps buying this set for their kids to be mindful of this craft knife and perhaps remove the knife prior to giving them the set.
Next we see a pencil extender which is pretty much useless, the graphite pencils in the set do not fit properly into either the small or large side of the extender. I display on my YouTube video that other pencils do not work in this extender either. This is something I encounter quite often with pencil extenders, particularly those that are double ended.
Next we have three Charcoal Blocks, Soft, Medium and Hard, there is three Pastel blocks, White, Light Grey and Grey. Below the pastel blocks we have three graphite blocks, again presented in levels of hardness, Soft, Medium and Hard.
There is a kneaded eraser and vinyl eraser as well as a sanding block to help sharpen charcoal and pastels, the sanding block in this set is significantly small that ordinary sanding blocks, but it still works as it is supposed to regardless of size. We also have a pack of Willow Sticks and finally a glove to help artists draw without smudging work with the palm o f their hands.
Second Tier
In the second Tier are are presented with three woodless charcoal pencils, although woodless, meaning not wood barrel as you might find on a traditional pencil, the woodless pencils have a very thin film coating the medium allowing the artist to use the product without getting it all over their hands. Beside the three woodless charcoal pencils, which incidentally are also graded Soft, Medium and Hard, there are two woodless graphite pencils, a 6B and 4B graded graphite.
We then see three tradition wood barrel charcoal pencils, these pencils sport a hexagonal barrel and are graded soft, medium and hard. Next we have four round barrel pastel pencils, Red Brown, Grey, Sepia and Black; however we will talk more about those in the performance section of the review.
Next we have three white charcoal pencils, again graded Soft, Medium and Hard, these charcoal pencils came in really useful for the Post Malone drawing I completed. There is also a pencil eraser, white gel pen and 0.5mm mechanical pencil along with refill leads. Finally there is a double ended black marker, one end sporting what looks like a felt tip pen and a fine-liner nib on the opposite end.
Third Tier
The final tier in the set is of course the full range of Graphite pencils ranging from 6H all the way up to 14B. There are a couple of grades throughout the set that are duplicated and I am guessing Kalour think those particular grades are the ones most commonly used, which I would be inclined to agree with.
The full graphite range staring with the H side is as follows, 6H, 5H, 4H, 3H, 2H, H, F, HB, HB, B, 2B, 2B, 3B, 4B, 4B, 5B, 6B, 6B, 7B, 8B, 9B, 10B, 12B and finally 14B. I think Kalour got the grade of graphite in this set right, at least for my own personal liking.
I have seen many graphite sets which go as high as 10 or 12H and for me, when you go this high on the H grade, the artist is practically drawing with the clay filler. This makes such high H grades incredibly scratchy and difficult to draw with, not to mention the issues with sharpening. Such high H grades tend to be incredibly brittle and unless you are using a sharp hand crank sharpener or better still, sanding paper, you will encounter frustration.
70 Piece Kalour Sketching and Drawing Set Performance.
The first thing to note is the labelling on the Kalour Sketching and Drawing set tin, now this is not exclusive to Kalour, many budget range brands do this but it frustrates the life out of me and I have no idea why there are no regulations. Along the top of the tin are phrases like “Artist Quality”, “Professional Level”, “Expert” and “Premium”.
For established artists this type of marketing means nothing as most artists are well aware of the professional brands, the huge pricing differences but with good reason. However, for unsuspecting parents buying art supplies for their children going through school or college, as I was once was guilty of. Parents and students see such marketing and think they are buying a product of incredible quality that will be sufficient to use on art they may want to sell. Unwittingly an artist could sell a piece of art claiming to have used professional quality products, only for the client to return months later with a huge disgruntlement.
This is why I take such matters seriously and wish that there was a regulator for this type of thing. I fully appreciate and understand that companies have to use clever marketing skills to sell their products, but they have to be accurate. An artist with pure and excellent intentions would not be wrong to claim their work was completed with professional products, however, such a misunderstanding could cause the artist trouble or put them off art.
I am not saying that sets such as the 70 Piece Kalour Sketching and Drawing set are terrible quality, absolutely not, but neither are they on the same level as the Caran d’Ache Grafwood Graphite, the Derwent Graphite, Faber Castell Graphite, Conté Sketching sets, Staedtler, Tom Bow, Uni and the list of high quality professional products go on, but I am sure you get my drift.
I completed a few test samples of the various items indside the Kalour set, but you can also see them over on my YouTube review. I used a couple different papers to help demonstrate how important paper can be with sets like this. Some of the test samples were completed on Strathmore Pastel Grey paper, which is very similar or is Ingres Paper, not a paper I enjoy using for pastel and charcoal. However I also completed a test sample on some UART Sanded paper, this is a solid choice paper but it can be expensive.
I was going to also demonstrate on some Clairefontaine Pastelmat Paper, but unfortunately I am running low on this and I have a set of pastel pencils to review very soon. I also completed the Post Malone artwork on some Strathmore 300 Series Bristol Velum Paper. I tried to use as many items from the set as I could, but all in all, I was really happy with the final outcome of my Post Malone drawing.
The woodless Charcoal and Graphite pencils were really good and I enjoyed using them for a lot of the drawing. The Charcoal and Graphite blocks are also very good, you can see from the test samples, there is a good difference between different grades of soft, medium and hard.
The four pastel pencils in the set, Red Brown, Grey, Sepia and Black are terrible, they are incredibly scratchy and quite low levels of pigment, I was really disappointed with these pencils. The traditional Charcoal pencils with the wood hexagonal barrel were of a similar quality to the woodless pencils.
I really enjoyed using the White Charcoal Pencils on the drawing of Post Malone I created, they came in very handy for the detailed, thin highlights in the hair and beard. Both the plastic sharpener and metal or tin sharpeners worked relatively well, but I would hazard a guess that after a few weeks of consistent use, problems would start to occur.
It was really difficult to grade the mechanical pencil, in terms of it working, I had no issues, however the problem with lower grade mechanical pencils is that the stop working after a bit of use. Currently I can’t say that to be the case with this pencil as I only used it for certain sections of the drawing, should anything change over the next few weeks I will of course amend my review.
The eraser pencil was terrible, I found it to be quite gritty, almost like those erasers you can buy that say they eraser ink. The white gel pen was excellent, what I really liked about this was the thin nib. Some of the Signo White Gel pens sport quite a thick rollerball style nib, which tends to pick up grit and clog. I did not find this to be the case with the Kalour white gel pen and the ink was fairly pigmented
I was a bit surprised with the black so called marker, the fine-liner Side of it delivered a rich dark level of ink, however, I think they would have been better placing a small brush nib on the other end as opposed to the felt tip pen nib. What I would say is there was a terrible odour from this pen, this is something I don’t normally pick up on, I have watched many reviewers say certain markers have strong odours and I can never smell the same odour, so this must be bad for me to notice it.
Finally, the graphite pencils, I was really happy with these pencils, they are not the quality of the graphite pencils mentioned above, nevertheless, for their price as part of this set, they are excellent value for the money. I never experienced any gritty scratchiness from any of the graphite pencils unlike the pencil eraser and pastel pencils.
If I had one slight criticism of the graphite pencils it would be that from 6H to perhaps 2H, the values are very similar and the same for the grades 5B to 14B. I expected the 14B to be exceptionally dark but this wasn’t really the case. That being said what I did notice and like was, when you use graphite it has a tendency to become shiny when layered on paper, I really didn’t find this to be the case.
Kalour Sketching and Drawing Set Sizes and Prices
The set that I have been reviewing is the largest set Kalour do in the Sketching and Drawing range and that is the 70 piece, however, there are smaller sets which may be more beneficial to you as an artist. Kalour have a lot of other size drawing sets, but most of them have blue barrel graphite pencils and they look to me like a different set and quality altogether, so until I can use and review them, I am not including them in this.
As well as the 70 piece set there is a slight smaller set of 50, this other 50 set includes items from the 70 piece set and so this is the reason I have included it, however, if you would like to check out the other sets, if you select the links provided below, they will take you to the AliExpress page and from there you will see them.
The AliExpress prices were definitely the cheapest I found and also the various Amazon stores didn’t seem to stock the sets. Sometimes you will notice that the 70 sets are cheaper than the 50 set, that can happen sometimes, whatever the reason it is a bonus if you are looking to buy.
UK Prices
For UK artists, the 70 Piece set from AliExpress will cost you approximately £22 which I am sure you can agree is a pretty good price for the set I have just reviewed. For the 50 Piece set you will pay slightly less at £20.
US Prices
For artists in the US, the 70 piece Kalour Sketching and Drawing set will cost you $27 and for the smaller 50 set you can expect to pay $29
EU Prices
For artists in the EU, the 70 piece Kalour Sketching and Drawing set will cost you €30 and for the smaller 50 set you can expect to pay €30
Canada Prices
For artists in Canada, the 70 piece Kalour Sketching and Drawing set will cost you $50 and for the smaller 50 set you can expect to pay $43
Australian Prices
For artists in Australia, the 70 piece Kalour Sketching and Drawing set will cost you $42 and for the smaller 50 set you can expect to pay $50
Kalour 70 Piece Sketching and Drawing Set Conclusion.
As I mentioned in the review, I am not a fan of budget sets plastering all over the packaging that the set is Professional, Expert etc. That being said, the items I used on the Post Malone drawing, I really enjoyed using and as I mentioned, I was really happy with the final outcome and quite proud as this was my third portraiture attempt.
There was one or two items in the set that I really didn’t like, the Pastel Pencils being some of them. The craft knife is something that concerns me a bit, it is a good idea to have such a tool in the set given the charcoal pencils and pastel pencils which don’t ordinarily sharpen well. However, I found this particular craft knife to be quite blunt and not very well built making it feel unsafe to me.
The graphite pencils, charcoal pencils, willow sticks etc all offered dark rich values, the white Charcoal pencils were also came in very handy for highlights as did the white gel pen. Given the prices for the both sets, I think the set overall is good value for money. It’s important to be mindful of the limitations for such a set if purchasing for your kids or friends, I certainly wouldn’t call the items professional, but definitely good quality.
To watch my YouTube review on the Kalour 70 Piece Sketching and Drawing set you can follow the link. If you would like to watch the speed drawing of the Post Malone artwork you can follow the link or to see the art in better detail, check out the still images by following the link. Thank you so much for checking out this review and supporting The Art Gear Guide, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support.
