Hello again I'm back with another review. This is a re-visit of the Prang 50 set
of colored pencils. I gave it an initial review, but felt I needed to do something
a little more challenging than drawing marbles. I've also had time to test them
for lightfastness. These are budget grade pencils and I wouldn't expect them
to be very lightfast. With only four months winter exposure we can see
natural is a bit faded as is peach, pink magenta and the purple are all
definitely faded. Berry red and plum are also a bit faded. The greens look okay.
The blues look fairly reasonable. Rosewood is a little faded but the rest
of the browns look fine.
Neon colors seem fine, but they're kind of washed out to begin with. The blue and
dark blue maybe a little faded. It may also have been how much pressure I used
when applying them. I am however not overly impressed with the intensity of
the blues in this set. So for lightfastness these aren't artists grade pencils, so I
would expect them to fade. And they have. These seem similar to
Faber Castell Classics or Prismacolor Scholars. To sharpen them I find
the very simple and free Faber Castell sharpener that comes with a 24 set of
Crayolas works great. It is a bit messy, but I just sharpen them away from the
drawing. I'd started a drawing using the Lyra
Rembrandt polycolor pencils, but decided to stop because one needed to apply a
lot of pressure to blend and burnish. And applying that much pressure made working
with them uncomfortable. I also struggled with blending them. I don't really want
to use budget pencils for this drawing but I figure it would be a good
challenge and definitely put the Prang pencils to the test. I started on the
shirt which is orange. There's a great assortment of yellow orange and red
colors in the set. I will be using yellow, golden yellow, yellow orange, orange
pumpkin, red orange, and red. Some of the darker areas I use berry red, rosewood
or plum. These pencils are slightly wider or thicker than what I would call standard
size. They are about the size of our Faber Castell Polychromos. This makes
them quite comfortable to use, at least for me.
First impressions, if you keep the tip sharp these lay down quite nicely.
I don't have to use a lot of pressure. The colors aren't as intense as I would like,
but they are quite reasonable for budget grade pencils. I do like that I'm able to
layer the darker orange and red tones quite nicely.
They don't blend like Prismacolors but they do blend with some effort. I am able
to smooth out edges with both light and darker tones. So these orange red
tones are really nice, but the blue tones aren't that impressive. The blue and dark
blue are not that intense and seem quite washed out. One blue that is nice
is the ocean blue. I find if I mix that with either the blue or dark blue it
gets me closer to the intensity I want but not necessarily the right color. Onto
the skin tones. I wasn't overly optimistic to work on the face and arms.
Skin tones is usually an area where I see a noticeable difference between
budget pencils and artist grade pencils. The lightest skin tone is what they
refer to as natural. Then there is peach, sienna, cocoa, brown, and sepia. Tangerine
can also be included in the skin tones and to add blush colors you can use
berry red, plum and rosewood. The skin tone surprised, me at least the lighter
ones. Natural is light enough to match the overexposed parts of the reference
image, but you can layer it to darken things up.
Peach is also able to darken things up further and they still blend and layer
well together. You can include some tangerine or Sienna or any number of
blush colors to augment the skin tone and they all combine quite nicely, layering
or blending. I did find that when you starte d to add the darker skin
tones, like brown, cocoa and sepia, it did give things a bit of a grainy look and
it didn't look right. I should mention I'm using a Prismacolor Premier white
to lighten things up where I need it. While working on the face, I felt I could
take the time and add layer after layer to get the tones I
wanted to. The pencils weren't as forgiving as artist grade pencils but I
was able to make a few corrections by whitening with my prismacolor. I will now
take a little time to discuss how I feel about the pencils. I mentioned earlier
that I use a simple Faber Castell sharpener to sharpen them.
And it works fine. While drawing and sharpening I didn't break any leads.
A few crumbled tips, but no broken leads. You can sharpen them to fine tips and
you really want to take your time while drawing, and keep the pencil sharp, as it
helps in the detail. It also helps with blending or layering. You do need to use
a good amount of pressure to blend and layer but because the pencils are thick
burnishing and blending isn't as hard on your fingers as it is using narrower
pencils. I would say I used about half the pencils in the box and they are all
fairly uniform in feel. There may have been one pencil that felt a little
chalkier than the rest but only one. Overall, the intensity of the colors is
somewhat poor but that is comparing them with artist grade pencils. They do well
when compared to Faber Castell Classics and Prismacolor Scholar. A weak point of
course would be the blue tones. Now let's talk about value. This set cost me
about fifteen dollars. Some viewers mentioned they can get them as low as $5 US.
Right now they're about eight dollars but they do get as low as five.
I've compared budget pencils before and my first choice for someone on a strict
budget would be Crayola. That is based on a 24 set for less than three dollars.
If you could pick these up for five dollars US, then they would probably take the
top spot. A sixty set of Crayolas are about nine dollars in Canada so about
half the price of the Prang set, which is currently twenty dollars Canadian.
I'd prefer to work with Faber Castell classics, but they are generally more
expensive and once I get up into the twenty dollar price range, I then start
to look at going for an artist grade pencil like Prismacolor Premiers.
For budget pencils there's not much I can complain about. The box is horrible and
will fall apart quickly. The pencils smell when new, the smell fades or you get used to it.
They are not lightfast but that is typical for budget grade pencils
They're sturdy, uniform, they layer well, they blend well, sharpen to fine tips,
they've got good intensity on most of the colors.
And they're excellent value, at least in the US. So definitely good budget
pencils. I had watched other reviews that rated them highly and I was skeptical.
But they have certainly proven themselves to me. I probably failed to
mention that this is my eldest son. His team had just won the zones and they
were on their way to the provincial championship. He had an amazing
tournament but he looks a bit funny in this picture. He normally plays shortstop
and the first inning of the first game, the ball took a bad hop where the grass
meets the dirt, and it nailed him right in the nose. He suffered a mild
concussion and his nose was noticeably wider in this image and his eyes darker
than normal. His team won the next five games of the provincials but lost the
final game to an also undefeated Salmon Arm team. It was a great experience and
I'm hoping my youngest will have the chance to make the playoffs this year.
That's all for now. Thank you for watching and I hoped you'd be back in a
couple of weeks with another review.