Castle Arts Harmonious Coloured Pencil 72 Set Review | Castle Arts Coloured Pencils
Castle Arts Harmonious Coloured Pencil 72 Set Review | Castle Arts Coloured Pencils
Before I get into the nitty gritty of this review, I would just like to say a few personal things regarding Castle Arts. There are many budget art supply companies on the internet, lots of colored pencil budget ranges and most of them are all China based or in that part of the world. Now I personally don’t really care where the pencils come from that I use, however, when one of those budget range companies is based here in the England, I just think props should be given.
Castle Arts are literally on my door step geographically speaking and I had the honour of meeting the CEO just as the world was going into Lock Down. One thing that was crystal clear from my meeting with this man, was how dedicated he was to providing quality budget products for artists of all grades. He made it clear that Castle Arts would not only provide such products to their customers, but that they would also listen carefully to feedback and concerns.
In the very short time Castle Arts have been in existence, they have made remarkable strides in providing an extensive range of excellent quality art supplies for artists on a budget. I for one think their trajectory has been amazing and I have yet to hear any horror stories about their customer service encounters. So thank you Castle Arts for not only providing an excellent range of high quality products for those of us on a budget, but also for listening to your customers, there are not many companies around with a similar ethics toward their customers.
Castle Arts Harmonious Characteristics
In this review I am not really going to go in-depth regarding the quality of the pencils, the Castle Arts Harmonious Coloured Pencil set of 72 seem to me to sport exactly the same type of core that the other Castle Arts Colored Pencils provide. The Castle Arts Gold Coloured Pencils definitely seem to have a slightly softer and more pigmented core than the traditional Castle Arts Coloured Pencils, so when I state that the Harmonious set sports the same core as the other Castle Arts Coloured Pencils, I am not referring to the Gold set.
I have provided a link to my review of the traditional Castle Arts Coloured Pencils and here you can see my testing and demonstrating of the Castle Arts Coloured Pencil core, how they blend and layer etc. The Castle Arts Harmonious Coloured Pencils sport a gorgeous 3.8mm core which is encased in a well weighted 7.7mm barrel, round barrel.
Each barrel from the Castle Arts Harmonious range is colour coded the same as the pigment in the core, this makes pigment selection incredibly easy. The information printed along the barrel is simple and straight to the point. Along one side we have printed in easy to read, silvery white font, the Castle Arts logo and “Castle Arts”. After this there is a simple silver band which is decretive only, normally this is to separate the barrel if the end is the pigment identifier.
On the opposite side of the barrel we have printed in the same easy to read font, the pigment name, closely followed by the decretive silver band. After this we have an alpha numerical code which obviously corresponds to the pigment. That being said, one would be forgiven for assuming that the pencils were sold open stock, unfortunately this is not the case. For a company like Castle Arts, selling excellent quality products at budget prices, it is just not cost effective for them to sell individual pencils.
The biggest thing to note about this beautiful set from Castle Arts, their Harmonious 72 set of Coloured Pencils is the to die for colours in the entire 72 set. As you will see later in the review, the colours are simply gorgeous, I think you can see that the people at Castle Arts have thought long and hard about this palette, this is not a set just thrown together in a few minutes and a name added to the set, this is a well thought out palette.
The only thing I would say about the Harmonious set of coloured pencils, which may or may not be construed as a negative thing and that is, I feel the set is more of an additional collection to another preexisting set of pencils. As is the case with some of the pastel colored sets that companies come out with, including the Pasteltint Castle Arts released a while back, the palette is beautiful, but there just isn’t enough tonality throughout the set, not enough darks.
With the Harmonious set, they could be used more of a standalone set than the Pasteltint as the Harmonious do have a few nice darks. However, when it comes to showcasing the swatch and artwork I completed using the Harmonious set, you will be able to understand better what I am trying to convey.
Castle Arts are without doubt the best company around when it comes to supplying literature in their sets and every bit of literature corresponds to the particular set you are opening and not the same old information dropped into every set. The Literature always refers to the particular pencils in the set.
Castle Arts Harmonious Performance
As you can see from the swatch image provided, the colors are absolutely gorgeous, for me personally, I love the amount of tinted greys that are in the set, greys with a hint of green or lavender etc. I also love the natural greys in the set, the greens are just beautiful, especially those grey greens, which I know I have already mentioned, but somehow, mentioning them twice just drives home the point of how much I love them.
The paper I used for the swatch was the Strathmore 300 Series Bristol Velum paper, this paper has a slight texture to it, it is a really gorgeous paper and so well priced. When I swatch out my pencils, I always apply a heavy application and fade out to a light application, this just shows me the range I can achieve with one colour.
I have also displayed images of each layer within the 72 set of Castle Arts Harmonious Coloured Pencils, this showcases all of the pencils and colors as they first appear on opening the set.
I also wanted to see just how opaque the Harmonious coloured pencils were and so I selected a random bunch of colours and applied a heavy application to the paper. This test simply demonstrates if the core of the pencil is opaque or translucent, neither are bad traits, artists have their own preference. As you can see from the colours selected and applied to the black paper, the colors are quite opaque and play really well on darker surfaces.
As always, I try to complete some artwork in order to help demonstrate how the product works in the fashion it was intended. I chose this Eurasian Jay Bird because to my eye, the greys and grey lavenders throughout the Bird complemented the palette I had in the Castle Arts Harmonious Set.
However, it was evident throughout the drawing process that I was going to have to borrow colours from other sets. When it came to the paler tone browns on the bird’s feathers, I didn’t have those colors in the Harmonious set. Although I borrowed a few colors from another set to complete the artwork, it was only two or three colours and the rest came from the Harmonious set.
It was for this reason that I concluded the Harmonious set was definitely less of a standalone set and more of a set you would incorporate in with an existing set to help expand your current palette. Also, for this drawing I used the Fabriano Artistico Extra White Hot Pressed 100% cotton paper; this is a much higher quality paper than the Bristol Velum and it definitely allowed me to layer and blend much better with the Castle Arts Harmonious than on the Bristol Velum.
Castle Arts Harmonious 72 set or Coloured Pencils Price
If you are interested in buying a set of the Castle Arts Harmonious Coloured Pencils, at the time of writing this article they are only available on the Castle Arts website. If and when that changes and they become available on other platforms such as Amazon, I will of course update the article.
To purchase this gorgeous 72 set of coloured pencils from Castle Arts, their brand new Harmonious range, this will cost you £34.99, which equates roughly to less than 50 pence per pencil. I personally feel this is an excellent deal for this set of pencils.
Castle Arts Harmonious Conclusion
I love the new Castle Arts Harmonious set, I personally feel that once you see the palette, you can tell that a lot of thought had gone into the selection of the palette and that this was not just a bunch of colours thrown together in order to create another set. The quality of the Harmonious Coloured Pencils is the same as the other Castle Arts Coloured Pencils and we all know that Castle Arts provide excellent quality pencils for the price range.
The Harmonious set in my opinion is definitely a set you would add to a preexisting collection you would own, whilst the palette of the Harmonious set is more able to standalone than a set of pastel tone coloured pencils, but it definitely will on most occasions require additional colours from other sets.
Thank you so much for watching or reading this review and for helping to support The Art Gear Guide, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you r support. I am currently going through a lot of personal issues, which I sincerely hope to have resolved one way or the other soon
Don’t forget, if you would like to watch the YouTube review of the Castle Arts Harmonious Coloured Pencils simply follow the link, you can also check out the speed drawing video of the artwork come to life by follow the link. Alternatively, if speed drawing videos are not your thing, you can check out our still images of the artwork taken throughout the drawing process, here you can enlarge and inspect in your own time.
