Derwent Pastel Pencils, 4mm Core, Metal Tin, 24 Count (32992)

I am loving these pencils for working in my coloring books. The colors apply smoothly and blend extremely easily using the silicon color shapers I also purchased to use with these. The soft shapers seem to work best with toothier paper, and the firm shapers better with smoother paper. To me, this is counter intuitive but that is what I have found. I am using a Tombow colorless blender to "set" the colors and that works well--I found that using water, even with just a damp brush, made the thinner papers in my coloring books buckle somewhat. I have not tried any other brand of pastel pencils so I can't compare them with anything. I chose Derwent because of their reputation for high quality products, and I also love and use their Inktense pencils. I am sorry that I only bought the set of 36 pastel pencils because now I will have to buy open stock if I want to complete the set--I wish Amazon offered open stock on ALL of their pencil sets, at a reasonable price!

These are great products for any artist.

These are top tier so you pay a little more but you get ALOT more brilliant beautiful colours -

The pencils are excellent. However, the metal container was dented indicating rough handling in shipment.

Derwent Pastel Pencils have a good variety of colors included in their set. They have a nice softness to them that allows you to layer and blend color effectively. They seem to be lasting longer than my other pastel pencils, and that’s a good thing.

I've been learning about pastel pencils and soft sticks and Derwent was the obvious choice, as I've been using their graphite pencils for years. Love the bright colors and blendability of these pencils. They're not too chalky, nor are they too dense. Very easy to work with, whether making fine, edgy marks, or broader coverage marks. "Green Heron Fishing" on 9x12 Canson Mi-Tientes pastel paper. Highly recommend the Derwent pastel pencils.

UPDATE: still love the ease of use, color brilliance, and overall quality of these Derwent pastel pencils. BUT some of them seem to crumble and break pretty easily when I try to (carefully!) sharpen them. This seems to happen more with the Derwents than the Stabilos. Maybe shippers dropped the box? Don't know. Oh, these are really nice pastel pencils. I also have the full set of Stabilo pastel pencils, and these are better. Great coverage, better color selection (72!), blend nicely, and as an extra bonus (for me), the name of the color is printed on each pencil, not just a number....much easier to remember and find.

Definitely worth trying this brand if you have not. I found the Derwent Pastel Pencils to be everything they claim to be...a professional (and expensive) blending pastel. Again, as I found out by only purchasing the set of 24, so many colors were missing that I wanted and needed, but that was my fault...not theirs. I love the way they put the name and number of the color high on the pencil, so if you need to re order a certain pencil from open stock you can. The wider pencil was a nice touch and I had no trouble getting use to it. The only negative thing I could say is...the nice tins these pencils come in stink. You will have to replace them with a case because after my experience of putting them in a backpack...falling open and them all over...made me more than a little upset. Especially after I paid a premium for a nice set of pastel pencils. So count that into the cost of purchasing any type of pencils, whether colored or pastels. I will be ordering their biggest set, just as soon as I can afford it. Still mad at myself for not waiting and ordering the largest set. Perhaps this will helps someone else not make the same mistake I did.