Marco Square C800 Review
Marco Square C800 Review
Not that long ago, I completed a review of the Marco Square C820, which are essentially the same pencil that is on review today, however the entire palette of the Marco Square C820 is made up of pastel tones. As I mentioned in that review, the palette is gorgeous, but a palette best used alongside another palette, hence the Marco Square C800. If you want to find out more about the Marco Square C820 you can follow the link to either the YouTube Video review of them or the written review.
I was unable to complete any form of artwork when I reviewed the Marco Square C820, simply due to the soft tones of the entire palette, however I said in that review, that when I reviewed the Marco Square C800, I would incorporate both sets in the artwork and I have done exactly that
Marco Square C800 Characteristics
The most glaringly obvious characteristic of the Marco Square C800 Colored Pencils is of course the shape of the barrel. Rather than the traditional round or hexagonal, Marco have opted for Square barrels, or I guess we should call them blocks. The barrels are uncapped exposing the core, I personally am not a fan of this look, however it can serve one purpose and that is identifying whether or not the core is centralise and for the most part, the pencils in this test are pretty central.
Nevertheless, when I first started using Square barrelled colored pencils, I genuinely thought that there might be a slight issue with sharpening, I am not sure why I thought this as I was completely wrong. With regards to the Marco Square C800, they sharpen perfectly and thus far I have experienced no breakages when sharpening.
The barrels are lacquered the same color as the core, this aids in visually identifying the pigment you require at a glance, not all of the barrel colors match up perfectly to the actual pigment of the core, however they are very close. Regardless, it is always a good idea to make sure you swatch your pencils and work from your swatch when requesting color
The core in the Marco Square C800 is an average 3.8mm, but you know how the old saying goes, size isn’t everything, this average size core packs a reasonable punch when pouring out the pigment. The core is of course held within a mind bending square barrel, rectangle, cube, block, whatever, but the width of the Marco C800 is 6.9mm. The Marco Square C800 holds nicely in the hand, not too light, it feels like a quality pencil, well weighted.
Along one side of the barrel is printed the model name of the pencil which in this case is “Square C800”, the print is in silver leaf which on the lighter tones can make reading the print a little difficult, obviously on the darker tone the pencils reading the print is easier. On the end of the barrel is printed the company name “Marco” and this is closely followed with the Marco logo.
On the opposite side of the barrel the pigment name is printed and this is closely followed with a number, which corresponds to the pigment, however, the Marco Square C800 is not sold open stock, at least nowhere outside China that I can find..
On opening the tin you are presented with the first layer, but I will talk about the palette in just a little bit. With the 48 set of Marco Square C800, the top layer also presents to you a sharpener and eraser. It is important to note that both of these items are low quality and the sharpener worked fine on a few pencils but I wouldn’t hold much hope for a longer relationship. Unfortunately the eraser just made a mess when trying to erase any colored pencil work, but in fairness, the eraser may be possibly aimed more toward the graphite pencil included.
Its important to make this clear, in the top layer of the Marco Square C800 48 Set, there is a Marco HB Graphite pencil, this means that there is in fact only 47 colored pencils in the set and 1 Graphite pencil. I have seen this many times with Watercolor Pencil sets were they include a small watercolor brush, which I think is incredibly helpful in those particular sets. However including a Graphite pencil in place of a colored pencil, well, I feel this is a personal preference thing, I don’t feel the graphite pencil holds the same merit as the watercolor brush, but then again, there may be lots of artists who appreciate the graphite pencil being included.
Marco Square C800 Set Size and Prices
Unfortunately the largest set available for the Marco Square C800 is the set I have on review here, the 48 Set. Whilst is quite a small palette when it comes to colored pencil work, it is important to remember that the Marco Square C820 is the same pencil and so it could be said that in total, the palette of the Marco Square is 72; the Marco Square C800 48 set and the Marco Square C820 24 Set of Pastel tones
With regards to the Marco Square C800, you can only purchase either a 24 set or 48 set, I am unsure if the 24 set comes with a sharpener, eraser and graphite pencils reducing the actual number of colored pencils to 23, however I have emailed Marco and will update as soon as I get a reply.. For artists in the UK and US, you might have to purchase a set of the Marco Square C800 via Ali-Express as I did to review this set. I can tell you however, the service from Ali-Express is better than First Class. I think if there was a thermo Nuclear War, your package from Ali-Express would still be in tact, the packaging is amazing, in fact it takes a while to actually get to your product cutting through all the bubble wrap and protective foam.
UK Pricing
To purchase the Marco Square C800 from Ali-Express via the UK you can expect to pay the following prices. For the Marco Square C800 24 Set you will pay £14.63 and for the largest set of Marco Square C800 48 Set you will pay £26.27
US Pricing
To purchase the Marco Square C800 from Ali-Express via the US you can expect to pay the following prices. For the Marco Square C800 24 Set you will pay $20.35 and for the largest set of Marco Square C800 48 Set you will pay $35.25
Canada Pricing
To purchase the Marco Square C800 from Ali-Express via the Canada you can expect to pay the following prices. For the Marco Square C800 24 Set you will pay $27.77 and for the largest set of Marco Square C800 48 Set you will pay $50.01
EU Pricing
To purchase the Marco Square C800 from Ali-Express via the Europe you can expect to pay the following prices. For the Marco Square C800 24 Set you will pay €16.86 and for the largest set of Marco Square C800 48 Set you will pay €30.31
Australia Pricing
To purchase the Marco Square C800 from Ali-Express via the Austrailia you can expect to pay the following prices. For the Marco Square C800 24 Set you will pay $26.29 and for the largest set of Marco Square C800 48 Set you will pay $47.19
Marco Square C800 Performance
As always I try to complete my reviews on as many different papers as possible, to help you better understand the type of pencil we are reviewing. The first thing I guess we should talk about is how soft or hard the core is and I think I have come up with a good way of explaining this dilemma.
If we use a scale, with Prismacolor Premier being the softest pencil on the market and the Derwent Artist being the hardest core on the market, we place Prismacolor at 1 and Derwent Artist at 10, other pencils will fall in between this scale. So to help add a little bit of context, I would say that the Black Widow colored pencils would fall in around 3 regarding how soft the core is. This indicates they are closer to Prismacolor than they are Artist.
That being said, if I had to place the Marco Square C800 in this scale, I would drop them in at 4, this of course is only a guide so please don’t think this is an accurate test, although I am working on creating such a test. Given the softness of the Marco C800 core, this does come with some of the traditional issues that soft cored pencils deliver.
I am sure Marco would categorise the Marco C800 as a wax based pencil, but if ever there was a good example of a colored pencil core being a mixture of wax and oil, it would be this pencil. As I mentioned above, I have no issue at all regarding breakages which can sometimes be a symptom of soft cores, but I did encounter crumbling.
I didn’t really have to use a heavy hand to encounter this crumbling, but I soon learnt how to best deal with it. Because the core is soft, if you layer over any bits that have crumbled off, this can cause the layer to be uneven, when this occurs and you try to keep layering on top, this is when I encountered that sticky tacky consistency.
However, to best help with demonstrating this I have completed a few tests, as well as artwork, all on different papers. As I previously mentioned, the artwork I have completed for this review was a collaboration of the Marco C820 and the C800, this art work was completed on Strathmore 300 Series Bristol Velum. I ended up using this paper for the artwork as I originally tried the same artwork on the Derwent Watercolor Paper, not their big quality Lightfast paper, but the cheaper Hot Pressed Watercolor Pad, but I found this to be too smooth and not enough texture to allow for layering and blending.
I completed the swatch of all 47 colored pencils from the Marco Square C800 on the Derwent Watercolor paper, but because this was really just a light and heavy application of pigment for display purposes, I didn’t encounter any issues with the core, it was only when I started the artwork which was when I changed the paper to the Strathmore 300 Series Bristol Velum, incidentally an all round excellent paper and not expensive at all.
Next I conducted the layering test, blending test and Odourless Mineral Spirits Test finally finishing up with the Marco Square C800 on Black Paper. The layer test, blending test and OMS was all completed on the Clairefontaine Mixed Media Paper PaintOn. This paper sports slightly more texture than Bristol Velum, but still smooth enough to deliver a nicely detailed bit of artwork.
As you can see, in the layer test we have applied five layers and then a heavy application, the point of adding five layers for any new colored pencil artists is to do with the fact that if you want to use OMS, it is generally considered that the artist should apply approximately five layers of pigment before applying OMS in order to achieve the desired effect OMS gives.
At around the fourth and fifth layer, I did start to detect slight resistance in the form of that sticky tacky consistency to the layers, again another side effect of a soft cored pencil. Nevertheless, you can clearly see in this test the strength of pigment that has been used in the Marco Square C800. the same is true of the heavy application, on this test you can clearly see the vibrant color left. Incidentally, the colors that I used for this test were simply, Red, Yellow, Blue and Green.
With the blending test, the results were slightly more favourable, I always say that with this test, the clearer the third color is, the better it demonstrates the blending ability of said pencil. In this case with the Marco Square C800 the third colors are clearly visible. The Yellow and Blue created a gorgeous Green, the Red and Yellow also created a clear Orange and finally the Red and Blue created a nice Purple Plum color.
I have added some images here of the Odourless Mineral Spirits test, however, in the actual YouTube video review I have uploaded, you can watch the process in real time and see the break down of the pigment. The images I have provided are of a Sphere I drew using a few blues and black from the C800 range, one image is before the OMS was applied and the other, after the OMS was applied; incidentally the OMS I used for this test was Zest-It, an excellent brand of OMS with a nice lemon sent to it.
Black Paper Test
As always I completed the black paper test, this test is to show the level of opacity or opaqueness of the pencils, neither result means the pencil is good or bad, some colored pencil artists simply prefer one over the other. the Faber Castell Polychromos tend to be quite a translucent pencil and so meant artists love those pencils, whereas the Prismacolor Colored Pencils are much more opaque.
With the results shown above you have to make your own decision as to which result you prefer. I will say this, of all the pencils that you would normally like to be opaque, which is the white, that is not the case with the Marco Square C800. However, some of the other colors are incredibly thick and opaque, I also tested the Gold and Silver pencils which for the most part I am not a fan of metallic pencils but I quite like and appreciate the results provided here from the Marco C800.
Marco Square C800 Colored Pencil Conclusion
I really enjoyed using the Marco Square C800, but without a doubt, the experience was enhanced when I had the option of dipping into the palette of the Marco Square C820. Both sets are pretty average pencils, but when both palettes are combined and used as one set, I think they are totally transformed.
It is important to note that the Marco Square C800 and C820 are not artist quality pencils, in my opinion I would say that both pencils are fantastic for adult colouring book artists, and I know there are adult colouring book artists out there that like to use lightfast pencils on their work, and rightly so, so for those adult colouring book artists I would give the Marco Square a miss.
I would also recommend the Marco Square C800 for sketch book work, beginner colored pencil artists, for use in colored pencil work that is for enjoyment only. The Marco Square blend beautifully, with the correct paper, and in my opinion that is a paper with a slight tooth, layering is good and the pigment levels in the Marco Square is excellent.
When you take all of the above information into consideration and then add into said consideration the price that you will pay for the Marco Square colored pencils, I don’t think you can go too far wrong. That being said, there is no lightfast testing for the Marco Square and so any work you are doing that requires lightfast pigments, the Marco Square C800 are not your pencils.
As always, I have added a YouTube Video Review of the Marco Square C800 where you can see the Odourless Mineral Spirits test that I complete in real time along with other demonstrations. You can also see the artwork I have completed in the form of a speed drawing YouTube video or if that is not your thing, you can simply browse the various images I have posted here on The Art Gear Guide of the artwork throughout the process at various stages of completion.
Thank you all so very much for your continued amazing support. I apologise from the bottom of my heart if I have appeared a bit snappy when I have left replies on YouTube or other social media platforms. Although this is not an excuse I have been going through a pretty rough time what with my pre-existing medical condition and other matters which have been added and the pressure has at times become too much. I know all of you also go through such pressures and I am ashamed of myself for not being professional and calm in my replies regardless of what I am experiencing away from The Art Gear Guide.
