WH Smith Colouring Pencils Review | WH Smith Stationary Store
WH Smith Colouring Pencils Review | WH Smith Stationary Store
Here in the UK, we have a chain of stores called W H Smith, a store all of us here in the UK have I am sure been inside at one time or another. WH Smith is a stationary store, selling Newspapers, Confectionary, Novels, Back To School and Office Stationary and Art Supplies.
WH Smith has stores on almost every major City High Street throughout England, Scotland, N Ireland and Wales, they also have small kiosk type stores at most Train Stations, major Airports and Ferry Terminals. WH Smith also have stores in North America and Canada but under different names, Marshalls Retail Group and InMotion. There are also stores in other European Countries such as France, Italy, Germany, Denmark etc and they also have stores in Australia. Stores can also be found in the Middle East and China, however these stores are primarily found in Airports
Whilst this is unfortunately a review for primarily UK artists only due to the geographical location of WH Smith stores, I know that there are a lot of US artists and others who have expressed interested in knowing more about the WH Smith Colouring Pencils and so I hope this review helps those of you interested. I previously mentioned that WH Smith stores sell art supplies which they of course do, however it is a fairly limited selection. Depending upon which store you visit, you may be able to buy some Derwent products, Caran d’Ache, Winsor & Newton, Daler Rowney and Conté, but every single store will sell WH Smith very own brand of art supplies, in particular their Coloured Pencils range.
WH Smith Colouring Pencils Sets Available
I normally add this section of the review quite a bit further down, however I feel I must clarify this before going further as I think it will make the review appear more clear than I am afraid I made the video review, if I can complicate a process I absolutely will, unintentionally of course.
My wife was in town one day and I asked her to pick up a set of WH Smith Colored Pencils for me to review, I had been meaning to review the WH Smith Colouring Pencils for quite some time based on messages and emails I had previously received about them and so I remember this and asked my beautiful wife Victoria to pick me up a set. When she returned home, she had purchased two different sets as she had no idea which set I wanted and because both sets are relatively inexpensive, she bought them both.
Although this is not strictly a comparison video, it is a mix of review and comparison video, which I hope you don’t mind. WH Smith provide two sets of Coloured Pencils, one set is sold in a tin and the other a flimsy cardboard box. I will of course go into more detail about both sets further into the review but for now I will try and remain brief.
The WH Smith Coloured Pencils in a tin, otherwise officially titled by WH Smith as Artist Colouring Pencils are considered their top quality set. I say that WH Smith refer to this set as Artist but this is only on the website when you go to purchase them, there is nothing on the exterior of the tin to suggest Artist quality pencils. The second set of coloured pencils sold by WH Smith are sold in a cardboard box, the artwork on the packaging is pretty minimalistic and does appear as a lower quality pencil in comparison to the WH Smith Colouring Pencils in the tin. There are other distinguishing features between both pencils but that is not noticeable upon opening the sets, which we will of course look at..
Oddly, the WH Smith Colouring Pencils in the Tin are sold in a set of 12, 24 and 36 where as the lower quality WH Smith Colouring Pencils in the Cardboard Box are sold in sets of 12, 24, 36 and 48. If I am wrong on this then please let me know, but according to the web site this is the set sizes and according to my wife this was the set sizes in store for both pencils.
WH Smith Colouring Pencils Characteristics
This review primarily focuses on the WH Smith tin set of coloured pencils, even though I occasional talk and show the other set, I know it is confusing and for that I deeply apologise, however I knew that all those people who know about both sets would ask questions and would want to know what I am about to provide, so I hope I can do a decent job to not confuse matters.
I purchased the 36 set of WH Smith Coloured Pencils for this review, the largest set in this line, when opening the set you are immediately confronted with the single layer of 36 pencils. The barrels are triangular in shape, which takes a bit of getting used to when holding them, however, this particular shape is used to help younger artists hold their pencils correctly. I say correctly, correctly according to whom I will never know. I was smacked on a regular basis during my primary school years because I was unable to hold my pencil correctly, no matter how hard I tried and fear eventually stopped me from wanting to write at all.
The core of the WH Smith Triangular Coloured Pencils is an ample 3.6mm held inside a 7.6mm triangular barrel. Each barrel is color coded to match the pencil core, which makes color selection visually quick and easy. The only information printed along the barrel is WH Smith which is located toward the very end of the barrel. The only other mark on the WH Smith Triangular barrel is a decorative silver ban separating the WH Smith logo to the rest of the barrel.
The WH Smith Triangular barrel sharpens really well, as with a square set of pencils I recently reviewed, one could be forgiven for questioning whether or not such an irregular barrel shape would sharpen well, but as with the square pencils, the WH Smith Triangular pencils sharpen perfectly without any issues.
On the actual tin of the WH Smith triangular coloured pencils, there is some information indicating various features of the pencils such as the Triangular barrel, High Colour Concentration which we will come back to in the performance analysis, break resistant cores, good for dry mixing and blending, another topic for the performance and finally suitable for a variety of surfaces, which I guess can be applied to any art product.
However, perhaps most impressive is the information printed on the inside of lid for the tin. I have provided an image below for you to click on and enlarge which you can read for yourself as opposed to rewriting it. Nevertheless I thought this was a really nice touch for younger artists buying this set of pencils and learning a little bit more about pencils other than simply applying colour to paper.
Although there is a 48 set available in this range of WH Smith Coloured Pencils, on the day Vicky purchased them for me, this 36 set was the largest set in the store, which actually turned out quite nicely given that the palette in both sets is identical.
The first thing to note with this range of WH Smith coloured pencils is the flimsy cardboard box packaging, the actual pencils are quite secure in that they are protected with a wrap of clear cellophane, but over all not a package I would be confident sending across the world and expecting the pencils to arrive in one piece. The artwork or imagery on the front of the box is not as bright and colourful as the tin set, but it does provide a clear distinction between both sets and there should be little to no issues of selecting the wrong set.
The first noticilbe difference is that the pencils in this set of WH Smith Coloured Pencils sport a hexagonal barrel. The overall dimensions a little bit smaller than the WH Smith Triangular coloured pencils weighing in with a 3.2mm, held within a slim 6.9mm barrel.
Each barrel is lacquered a gunmetal come charcoal grey colour with the end of every barrel sporting an inch long pigment identifier. As with the Triangular WH Smith Coloured Pencils, the WH Smith logo is printed on the end of the barrel. However, perhaps more puzzling than anything I have ever encounter with reviewing art products, printed along the hexagonal barrel of this pencil is “ The Spectrum Sings”. I am afraid I am lost to the relevance of this being printed along the barrel, why not the pigment name?
WH Smith Triangular Coloured Pencil Performance
There are a few bizarre aspects to both of these sets of coloured pencils from WH Smiths, but I will bullet point them in my conclusion, after I have laid out my findings. As always I completed a swatch of the WH Smith Triangular Coloured Pencils and I did this on Clairefontaine Paint-On Mixed Media paper.
when laying down the color for the swatch, I didn’t find the pencils to be incredibly pigmented, but I did find them to very much be in line with the price point of the pencils and this is something I would like to clarify. I completely understand that when a company produces a product they want to make that product look as attractive as possible in order to sell it. However, when wording is used, it is important that the wording is accurate and not just what the company think the public want to see.
On the tin of this set of WH Smith Triangular Coloured Pencils it states “High Colour Concentration”, I personally would not say that these pencils have high color concentration, although i would say that for the price point the pencils are sold at, the pigment level within the pencils is really good. Now, I completely understand that a company can’t write all of that in the description of their product.
I completed a swatch of the lower grade WH Smith Coloured Pencils in the cardboard box packaging as the palette of both 36 sets was identical and I wanted to see how each palette compared to one an other. I think for this test it is best left down to you, the viewer, to determine which palette if any is better.
When laying down the WH Smith Triangular Coloured Pencils, they felt a little bit dryer on the paper but were able to transition beautifully from light to heavy application. The WH Smith Spectrum Sings Coloured Pencils were a little less dry on the paper but again they transitioned nicely from light to heavy application. Both swatches in my opinion looked incredibly similar and so I moved on to completing a layering and blending test.
As you can see from the image provided, this test for both pencils was so incredibly similar. I know visually we will all see something different, but even how both pencils felt in the hand when laying the pigment on the paper was so similar. At one point I asked my wife to hand me pencils without telling me which pencil she was handing me and with my eyes closed, I tried to determine by the feel of the pencil marking the paper which pencil I had in my hand, but I was unable to differentiate.
I did complete some artwork but as I stated at the beginning of the review, this review is primarily about the WH Smiths Triangular Coloured Pencils and so I only completed one drawing using the WH Smith Triangular Colored Pencils. I actually really enjoyed this process and was pleasantly surprised with the final results.
As with the swatches, I completed the artwork on the Clariefontaine Paint On Mixed Media paper, ordinarily I try to mix the paper from the swatch to the artwork simply in the interest of variety, but on this occasion both pencils reacted beautifully to the Paint On paper and so I didn’t think I needed to change the paper.
I also completed a test of both pencils on black paper and as with all tests to this point, the results were very similar. As you can see from the image provided, the Blue and White from both sets were quite opaque, whereas the Red, Yellow and Green from both sets were quite translucent. this is not necessarily a good or a bad thing, colored pencil artists individually prefer different types of pencils be they cores delivery thick opaque coverage or thin translucent coverage.
WH Smith Colouring Pencils Pricing
As you can only purchase the WH Smith colored pencils here in the UK, I am only applying UK prices, however, I have provided some ebay links which may be able to ship WH Smith pencils outside the UK, but you need to check this before purchasing.
To order the WH Smith Triangular Colouring Pencils in the Tin you can expect to pay the following prices, for the set of 12 you will pay approximately £9.99, for the 24 set you can expect to pay approximately £14.99 and for the largest 36 set you will pay £19.99
If you would like to try the WH Smiths Coloured Pencils in the Cardboard Box package, the set of 12 will cost £3.99, the 24 set is only £4.99, the 36 set is approximately £7.99 and the largest set of 48 will cost you £11.99
WH Smith Colouring Pencils Conclusion
There is no doubt about it, this was a really odd review and there was so many things off regarding the pencils that I could not understand who at WH Smiths decided to market their pencils in this way or why.
The first thing that struck me was the WH Smith Tin set of Coloured Pencils being referred to as WH Smith Artist Colouring Pencils on their website when purchasing, as much as I really enjoyed using the pencils and for the price I was happy with the performance, at no point did I ever think these pencils were Artist quality, what’s more, why are they labeled artist on the website but not the actual tin.
Next thing that confused me was the set sizes, the lower quality set had the largest palette, I found this to be quite strange also. Ordinarily you would expect the better quality pencil to provide the largest palette but this was not the case. The price point for the WH Smith Coloured Pencils in the Cardboard Box packaging are really inexpensive, which is good, with the 48 set only costing £11.99, but as you can clearly see from the tests I have provided, there really is very little to no difference between both sets.
I was incredibly impressed with the performance of the WH Smith pencils and the results I was able to achieve regarding the artwork. Bearing in mind the artwork was completed with the more expensive set of pencils, I really feel I could have provided similar results with the cheaper set of pencils.
As always I have provided a full YouTube review of the WH Smith Coloured Pencils as well as a speed drawing full demonstrating the artwork I completed come to life. I have also added a page to The Art Gear Guide with still images from the artwork I completed at various stages of completion, I find this part of the review incredibly helpful to those who want to see exactly how the pigment looks on the paper close up. All images provided throughout the this review can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image you are interested in.
