Tombow Wood Color Dictionary Irojiten Pencils 30 kg Woodlands

These are the best pencils I have ever used. Beautiful colours and feels like working with paint. There have beget been any breakages when sharpened and they are perfectly weighted. They look lovely displayed on the bookcase too. I will not use any other pencils now.

I am not an artist but do enjoy adult colouring books, and have a variety of coloured pencils, including cheaper ones like The excellent starter Crayola pencils, and more expensive ones like the soft and vivid Derwent coloursoft pencils, and my lovely Faber Castell ( FC) Polychromos Pencils. However much though I love the FC, there have been some colours I've struggled to get from them. I bought these because they looked so beautiful in their boxes, and the colour range looked gorgeous. The pencils themselves certainly feel 'silky' in the hand and are lovely to hold. The writing on the barrel is silver, and this sometimes makes It hard to read the name of the pencil colour on the barrel if the light isn't very good. In the end I bought all 3 sets of these - 90 pencils in all. It's taken time to process my thoughts about them. The first thing was that though the boxes looked lovely, they were impractical kept like that, so added the pencils into my Derwent Hold-All pencil case alongside the Faber Castel Polychromos ( the FC have solid coloured barrels, unlike the Tombow Irojiten which have the pencil colour at the end of the barrel). The Irojiten expanded the range well, and complimented it. I was especially keen on the cherry red, as whilst FC do a ton of reds, personally they invariably seem either more orange, or purple tinged, whilst the Irojiten cherry red is a very definite 'red'. The pencils themselves are slightly longer in length than the FC, but also have a slightly thinner core. Some lay down beautifully smoothly, like the mustard and the olive yellow, whilst others feel quite 'scratchy', like the tangerine orange. Most seem to lie in the middle though. It was the feel of them laying down that gave some hesitation about them at first. First attempt was a page from Joanne Basford's book 'Secret Garden', using a mix of Irojiten and FC pencils, and after a hesitant start really started to settle to using them. It's taken a bit of perseverance but I really love them now because they give that desired extra colour range. The quality isn't quite up there with FC, but it's absolutely fine overall. They layer very well, and also with the FC. They sharpen to a great point ( I use a KUM metal sharpener) and though there have been a couple of breakages, these have been minimal. The pigment seems good too, though am aware there are questions over how lightfast they are. Overall in fact I tend to reach for them first. However if was buying again, I wouldn't bother with the last box set, in internal box colours of fawn, grey and mustard, containing volumes 7 ( fluorescent colours - just no point, personally don't use them), volume 8, very pale tones ( too pale, just paler versions of those in the other sets like in volume 1) and volume 9, the dull tones - with the one exception of oil yellow which I've used a lot ( think it can be bought on line as a single pencil from open stock) , haven't really used the rest as much. If only able to afford one set would go for the first set (vol 1 - pale tone, cream outer wrapper; vol 2 - vivid tone, green outer wrapper; vol 3 deep tone 1 - pale blue outer wrapper). Incidentally there are no blacks or whites in any set.Having bought several sets now will post this review for each but add different photos. The final comment is that they are a lot of fun, and I'm really enjoying them. Will certainly buy them again and have bought sets now for friends.PS have added a brief colour swatch showing some of these Tombow Irojiten colours (TB)alongsidewith Faber Castell (FC) colours, plus a selection in my pencil case, also with the FC, (in a Derwent Hold-All case) , and the first page done where both were used together.

I absolutely love these pencils and have all the 3 sets buy just wish the colour range was wider. One of the sets has alot of neon colours which I don't use. Only downside is that a few dud have broken leads so are very short and stubby now amd not out of the same set so would have to buy all 3 sets again to replace them. A few people have said these are waxy but I don't agree I think they are more powdery but are very easy to blend and shade together. You do have to push a little harder than polychromos or prismacolour buy still prefer them to these. Fins the polys and prisma far too waxy and heavy and difficult to blend. Been trying to find other brands like these to widen my colour range but so far cannot...