Review on 🖌️ Faber-Castell 48 Watercolor Pencils Set with Sharpener and Brush by Nicole Mcleod

Good watercolor pencils. Cleverly packaged design: A dual-layer pen tray slides out of a loop at the top. By pulling out the tray from the bottom, you can find a place to store the sharpener. It's nice to keep everything in order. However, due to my inexperience, I thought they would resemble the Albrecht Dürer Faber Castell watercolor pencils ( Faber-Castell 12 Albrecht Dürer Artists' Watercolor Pencils ). These are obviously student-quality pencils - and that's fine if you're expecting. For the price of 48 pencils, expect student class. There are even places where a student can write their name. Compared to artist pencils they tend to be harder and the color pops off the page with a WET brush (all caps on a wet brush so no one thinks I'm painting with a dry brush). Intense color is difficult to achieve with most pens. Expect lighter once you wet them. If you're expecting colorful parrots on the front of the box, forget it. Going over the area a second time after it gets wet and allowing it to dry is difficult or impossible. It's as if the pencils leave a waxy coating that the second coat doesn't pick up. So no glazing or saturation depression. Frustrated, I made a color chart of all 48 colors. Some pencils are softer and easier to work with, but most colors are very hard. So when the packaging says the additive helps prevent breakage, they mean business! I learned to apply water to the paint instead of using a brush and gently moving the paint with the tip of the brush. As soon as you brush over a wet paint, it spreads and peels off the page. If you're not careful, the colors will run and leave sharp edges. first dissolve in water. All of my testing was done on 140lb watercolor paper. The hardness of the pencil really doesn't allow you to put enough color on the paper because the paper is textured - pencils cannot color the paper completely. Harder pressure will only spoil the paper. (And I pressed hard - the pins never broke. Insanely strong.) So why 4 stars when my review seems negative? Because they do what school pencils are supposed to do with a shatterproof attachment. I keep them for sketches and greeting cards (and save to buy an Albrecht Dürer Faber Castell stamp). If anyone else knows what type of paper it works best on, please let me know. Maybe I'm way off target here.