The Art Gear Guide is your one stop shop for the most recent, up to date, honest reviews on all your favourite art supply products.
So as I have always been with you guys, you will see my brutal honesty when it comes to my reviews. I have had this 48 set of Bruynzeel Design Aquarel sat on my desk for over a year now busting a gut to review them. I tend to purchase sets for review when I see a good deal on Amazon and this is why sometimes I might have a set on my desk for so long before I actually get round to reviewing them.
As I mentioned, the Koh-I-Noor Polycolor 144 set is split into two tins, below you can see an image of the first tin 144/1 as is labeled on the front cover and blow that image is clear images of both trays. The first tin is made up primarily of the yellows, portrait colors, pinks, reds, purples and blues. All the way through the images I have provided you will see just how amazing the total palette is for the entire 144 set of Koh-I-Noor Polycolor.
In this particular review I will be showing you and talking about the Koh-I-Noor Professional Graphite range, the Toison D’or. Koh-I-Noor have quite a few different graphite pencils, so it is worth noting that this range of graphite pencil is not their only one.
The overall appearance of the Promarker is incredibly streamlined, the marker looks like a large bullet, however, this design aesthetic actually serves quite an important roll. At one end of the marker is the pointed cap and the other end sports the squareness off cap. This helps the artists immediately know when selecting a pigment that under the pointed cap, in the case of the Promarker, is the bullet nib and under the squad off cap is the chisel nib.
Caran d’Ache are a formidable name in the world of art but in particular to us colored pencil artist, the type of artists who go gaga over a wall of brightly colored wooden sticks, myself included. Caran d’Ache have an extensive range of pencil mediums and in particular their water soluble range is phenomenal.
The Muji Colored Pencils come packaged in a very simplistic tube form, there is no writing or information on the tube, at least not the package I received, however, on researching the pencils, some there appears to be a small square sticker placed on the package with information in Japanese.
The Clairefontaine Paint On Multi Techniques pads come in quite a few different sizes, I was sent the A5, 5.8 x 8.3 inches, 14.8 x 21 cm, however I was really happy to discover that this pad comes in other sizes, most of which you are already familiar with, but I will explain my delight in discovering this further on in the review.
The Bruynzeel Pastel Pencil sports a bursting with pigment, 3.8mm creamy soft core, the core is protected with a beautiful Cedar Wood casing weighing in at an average 7.4mm. For me personally, I love the pencils that are predominately natural wood casings, exposing the beautiful grain of the wood, I guess it provides a natural aesthetic to it, occasionally reminding us of the pencils original life form.
I personally feel that calling the Lux Archival paper, “sanded” does the paper a disservice, it feels and performs a lot more complex, special and unique than just sanded paper. The best and only way that I have been able to describe the surface of the Lux Archival is “ Sanded Velvet Paper ”.
The Castle Art pencil sports a striking 7mm Black Matt finish barrel, held safely within the barrel is an exciting 3.8mm core bursting with generous levels of pigment. On the end of every Castle Art pencil is a 1 and 1/4 inch pigment identifier, clearly making the pigment within that particular pencil, which also makes pigment selection visually a pleasure. Separating the Black Matt barrel and the pigment identifier is a painted silver ring.
Quite a while ago I completed a review of the Art-N-Fly alcohol markers and the colored pencils that they make, however, I noticed that not long after the review that I got one or two things a bit confused. In relation to the actual markers and their quality, nothing at all has changed, it is more to do with the sets available than anything else.
Although the pencils are called woodless, they do have a very thin protective sheath covering the barrel, so essentially the pencil is all core or pigment for want of a better term. Unfortunately, due to this thin protective sheath covering the barrel, you are unable to use the side of the pencil, similarly to the way you would typically use a pastel block or cylinder.
Throughout this list, there are some luxury items however I have tried to ensure that there are some really affordable yet desirable items. We all have different levels of disposable income and if anyone is aware of that it is me, so I am always conscious when compiling these Christmas lists that there needs to be affordable items present but they also need to be excellent quality and something your loved one is actually going to want.
The other two lists are more product based, however over the past few years, I have purchased quite a few art books to help me refine my own artistic skills and to also better my knowledge for the sake of my reviews. All of the books in this list I have personally read myself and can 100% vouch for them and I have even reviewed one or two of them on The Art Gear Guide much more in-depth. So, let’s get on with the list and hopefully you will see a book in here that might appeal to your artistic thirst for knowledge.
Essentially the Caran d’Ache Pencil Peeler is a horse shoe shaped, stainless steel product. The stainless steal part of the device is the handle and the means of actually holding the razor blade in place, thus allowing the artists to safely use it on any pencil like product.
Conté is a huge name in the art world and in particular pastels, they provide both pastel pencils and pastel sticks, which a just rectangular sticks of pure pastel pigment. I will be conducting a pastel pencil comparison at some point as there is quite a variety pastel pencils and pastels in general, so a comparison video would be an excellent way to highlight the differences.
This year however I have done it a little bit different, I have completed two lists, a realistic affordable list and a Luxury Art Christmas list. Lets face it, not everyone is as penniless as me and so as Christmas is a time for extravagance and one off indulgences, I thought that a luxury Christmas list was a good idea; so here goes.
The first thing I noticed about the Uni No. 888 Colored Pencils when I started to use them was their very light feel. I was unable to find out what wood the company use for their pencils, but this might have something to do with their very light feel in the hand. I know this sounds odd given we are talking about a pencil and in the grand scheme of things how heavy can a pencil be?
A while ago I seen a fantastic colored pencil artist use a battery operated eraser, which so many of us colored pencil enthusiasts know about and love, however this product was slightly different. As I have mentioned, most colored pencil artists will have a battery eraser in their tool set, this is not a tool for getting rid of mistakes, but rather for helping the artist to create certain effects within their art.
