Cretacolor Pastel Pencil Review | 72 Set Of Cretacolor Pastel Pencil
Cretacolor Pastel Pencil Review | 72 Set Of Cretacolor Pastel Pencil
I have wanted to get hold of the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils for quite some time now, Cretacolor is a huge name in the art world with an impressive list of various art supplies that they create. It appeared to me however, that the Cretacolor name was getting swamped with all the new budget brand pencils hitting the market as well as some of the bigger names launching new products; that was until Cretacolor’s social media presence started becoming a lot more visual and popping up in my feeds.
As a result of this social media push from Cretacolor, I noticed some of the gorgeous looking new Sketch Sets, Drawing Sets, Graphite Sets and Charcoal Sets hitting the market and it was these items that reignited my desire to get hold of the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils to review for you guys.
I have long been in huge admiration for pastel artists and the pastel medium, some of my absolute favourite and most inspirational pastel artists are Emma Colbert from my own home country of Northern Ireland, a wonderful all round pastel artist, Colin Bradly UK Artist, a wonderful Pastel Pencil artist, covering all genres, Gail Sibley, a Canadian Pastel Artist but she also has mastered many other mediums on top of Pastels, Jason Morgan, a breathtaking wildlife pastel artist from Wales and finally Leontine Van Vliet, another simply stunning pastel artist. I have listed these wonderful artists and there are many more, too many to list here, so that you can check out their work to see just how wonderfully versatile the pastel medium really is.
Cretacolor Pastel Pencil Characteristics
First things first, as you can see in this review I have the full 72 set of Cretacolor Pastel Pencils, if I can I always try to obtain the full set so that I can showcase the full palette. The main tin is covered with this cardboard sleeve which displays artwork completed by the very pastel pencils in the package. I personally think the art is gorgeous, incredibly bright and vibrant and does an excellent job of teasing the artist with those breathtaking colors.
The sleeve displays a lot of information pertaining to the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils, information about the lightfast ratings which we will get into later and other information explaining the lengths the company has gone to regarding environmental issue, the type of wood used for the barrels etc.
On removing the cardboard sleeve you are presented with a plain silver looking tin, on the top centre of the tin is the companies name embossed which actually looks very classy, simple yet very effective. Because the writing is embossed, it clearly stands out and there are no real issues reading or seeing the print.
On opening the tin you are presented with a brochure that briefly lists all the products Cretacolor do that you might be interested in, such as Sketching Sets, Colored Pencil Sets, Watercolor Pencil Sets etc. Beside this is a very classy envelope, again with embossed print, looking very expensive and high end, inside the envelope is a strip of corse sandpaper. This is an excellent addition as the sand paper helps the artist refine the point on the pastel pencils but allows the artist to create dustings of pastel of their work in a very loose free flowing style.
I did pick up on one issue at this point, however I feel this will only apply to the 72 set and not any of the other sets. There are two tiers of pencils in the 72 set, each tier holding 36 pencils, the good thing that Cretacolor have done is provide these paper flaps on either side of the trays, allowing the artist to easily remove the tiers. However, the plastic used to house the pencils is incredibly flimsy, on my YouTube video review you will be able to see just how flimsy the trays are and if you did not know about this before removing the trays, you could accidentally drop your pencils on to the floor damaging them before you even get started.
The Cretacolor Pastel Pencils feel really good in the hand, well balanced, not too light and they feel well made. The Cretacolor Pastel Pencils sport a 3.8mm core, housed within a gorgeous plain wood 7.5mm Barrel. Along one side of the barrel is printed in very clear easy to read print, the company name “Cretacolor” this is closely followed by “Fine Art Pastel” again very clear in funky print.
Toward the very end of the barrel is printed “Austria” the company’s home, this is closely followed by a silver band which separates the gorgeous wood grain barrel from the inch and quarter pigment identifier capping the end of the barrel. Some of the pigment identifiers match the actual core pigment, however I have never reviewed a set of pencils where the pigment identifier matched with all the cores. It is much more reliable for the artist to create their own swatch using the product on similar paper that they are likely to be using.
On the opposite side of the barrel is printed the pigment name which is so important for so many artists and this is followed by a number for open stock purposes. Toward the core of the pencil is printed a bar code and again this is for open stock reasons.
Pastel pencils are notoriously difficult to sharpen using a conventional sharpener, some people will never experience any issue and other will experience problems no matter what they use to sharpen a pastel pencil. For me personally I recommend using a craft knife of something like that and use a sanding block to refine the point you need. In this entirety of my 72 set, I only experienced one problem when sharpening.
The Green Grey pencil, which was one of the colors I was most looking forward to using, had its core shattered all the way through. No matter what I used to sharpen the pencil, about every 5mm the core would simply fall out of the barrel. You can see from the image I have included what I mean, I hope that as I go further down the barrel, the core will stop breaking, but thus far this was an issue I encountered.
Cretacolor Pastel Pencils Sets Sizes and Prices
As with so many products at the minute, there is always a shortage of stock in certain areas, be it in the UK, Us, Canada, Australia or Europe etc, this is not always down to the manufacture, there are a multitude of issues causing this at the moment from fuel prices, haulage issue and so much more, the pandemic created a lot of problems which eventually snowballed into other issues.
As with many of my reviews lately I have added the prices to the products that are currently available and in whatever countries I can locate the products via Amazon. It is worth checking your local art supplier as well, unfortunately I am unable to do this as it would take days to source the same product, from multiple art suppliers in multiple countries.
Cretacolor Pastel Pencils come in sets of 12, 24, 36 and 72, there is no 48 set, although I was almost certain I seen a Cretacolor Wooden Box set of 48 one time but have never been able to locate it. I spoke a little bit on my YouTube video review about how the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils used to be quite expensive and that they seem to have come down in price lately, I am not sure if this has been wishful thinking on my part of if I am 100% right, nevertheless the pricing I think is quite reasonable considering the standard of the product.
Here in the UK to purchase the 12 set of Cretacolor Pastel Pencils you can expect to pay £20.99, to purchase the 24 set of Cretacolor Pastel Pencils you will pay £32.24, for the 36 set of Cretacolor Pastel Pencils you will pay £45.06 and for the largest set of 72 Cretacolor Pastel Pencils you will pay £89.77.
Unfortunately for the EU and US all of the Cretacolor Pastel Pencil sets were out of stock, so as soon as they are back in stock I will of course add them to this review. There are plenty of Cretacolor Sketch Sets, Drawing Sets etc available on Amazon, just not so many Pastel Pencil sets and I guess that is a good thing showing that a lot of people are snapping them up.
Cretacolor Pastel Pencil Performance.
So before we talk about the Cretacolor Pastel Pencil performance, let me just start by telling you I have thus far reviewed the Derwent Pastel Pencils, Caran d’Ache Pastel Pencils, Stabilo CarbOthello Pastel Pencils, Bruynzeel Pastel Pencils, Koh-I-Noor Pastel Pencils, Faber Castell Pitt Pastel Pencils and Conte Pastel Pencils, so at this point I have a good understanding of the pastel pencils currently on the market.
The first thing I always do when reviewing a product is swatch the set and there are a few reasons I do this, but one of the reason is once I see the colors available, I can then start looking for a subject to draw. I knew I was going to create my art on Pastemat paper by Clairefontaine, so I wanted to use a different paper for the swatch, just so I could show you guys the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils on different papers.
I used the Hahnemühle Ingres Pastel Paper, Ingre is a paper that I personally don’t like for pastels, however there are a lot of amazing pastel artist that love this style of paper and Colin Bradley being one such artist, so if it is good enough for the master, it is certainly good enough for my little swatch. I could tell when I opened the set and looked at the pencils that I was going to love this palette, however, once I created the swatch, I was really blown away.
Every artist has their own favourite color family and for me I love my greens and greys, of course it depends on the medium and what I am going to draw with them, for example when I am buying markers, I always look for rich reds and dark reds, but with colored pencils and pastels, greens and greys and a little but of the earth tones are my favourite.
As you can see from the swatch image, the colors in the 72 set of Cretacolor Pastel Pencils are just gorgeous, the greens are to die for but for me personally, the greys are out of this world. I completed the swatch on white Ingre Pastel Paper to make sure that the colors were seen in all their beauty.
Normally when I am doing my colored pencil review, I also add in to the review a layer test and blending test, but with pastels and the right paper, layering should never really be too much of an issue, however I did add in there a quick blending test which you can watch in real time on my YouTube video review. You can see from the image provided that the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils blending really well on the Ingre paper.
I also created artwork and this was completed on Clairefontaine Pastelmat, I used a fawn mid tone paper and I chose a cats eye study to draw. I have to say right of the bat and you will see this if you watch my speed drawing video or even take a look at the images I have added here on The Art Gear Guide, you will see how much I changed the piece along the way.
I don’t know what happened to me be I really didn’t like the artwork at all and this was absolutely nothing at all to do with the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils or the Claisrefontaine Pastelmat, this was 100% down to my inabilities and I just had terrible artist block. I was really in the mood to draw the cats eye and I was so looking forward to using the pencils, but I just couldn’t get into the groove with this painting, nevertheless I had to produce something.
Pastel Pencils in general are quite a bit harder than your traditional Unison Soft Pastels or Terry Ludwig pastels, they have to be to allow for sharpening etc. However, sometimes, pastel pencils can feel a little squeaky on the paper, dry or scratchy, but the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils just felt beautiful laying down.
If you have used the Stabilo CarbOthello Pastel Pencils, they are quite chalky in consistency and the Caran d’Ache Pastel Pencils are much softer although still hard. I think the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils sport quite a hard core, but they are so pigmented and vibrant that using a light hand with the pencils will still produce a luscious amount of color to the paper. Now the paper will have a bearing on this because with pastel papers they are quite different but I will talk about pastel paper in a different article.
Cretacolor Pastel Pencil Lightfast Information
As I mentioned earlier in the review, on the cardboard sleeve of the packaging, there is a lot of lightfast information, simply stating that the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils are lightfast, however, I was unable to locate individual lightfast information regarding the actual pencils. I was also unable to find if the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils were rated under the Blue Wool, ASTM or in house lightfast testing.
Bearing all that in mind, I can’t hand on heart say to you that the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils are lightfast, I know Cretacolor advertise that they are, but until I know which standard has been used to test them and what ratings have been given for each pencil, I can’t hand on heart tell you that they are lightfast, that is not to say Cretacolor are not telling the truth, simply that I need more information before saying, yes they are lightfast.
When companies add on the packaging that their product is lightfast but don’t say what standard was used or tell us the individual ratings, well every pencil in the set could be the lowest lightfast rating on the Blue Wool or ASTM standard, they are still lightfast but under no circumstances could you use them for a commission. It is so important that when a company claims their product to be lightfast, that they include what standard has been used and what ratings have been assigned.
Cretacolor Pastel Pencil Conclusion
I know pastels are not everyones cup of tea, there are those artists who love the look of pastels but simply can’t stand the texture of the pastel dust on their hands, for me personally I used to watch artists create these beautiful pieces with pastels and I loved the fact that the blocks could cover large areas fast, then the pencils could be used for detail but most importantly I loved how you could apply light on dark.
I have to say, I was not let down with the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils, you know how you always want to buy something and then when you finally get it, you wonder why you put yourself through all the excitement, well this was not what happened to me, I loved using the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils and am very glad I have them in my collection.
I do wish however that the art I created properly represented the product and how I personally feel about them, the art in this review… well lets just say I was so not feeling it. I will try another painting with the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils and upload a speed drawing with them at some point, but for now this is all I have for you.
As always you can check out my YouTube video review of the Cretacolor Pastel Pencils by heading over to the channel or watch my speed drawing video of the art come to life, die, come to life, die and come to life many more times. Finally you can also check out the still images I have provided of the artwork here on The Art Gear Guide, this will allow you to click on any image you want, enlarge it and inspect the pencil strokes, pigment level etc. Thank you all so much for your continued wonderful support, I hope you are all having a wonderful time and don’t forget, always enjoy your art, its meant to be fun.
