Comments about Crayola Short Colored Pencil Set:

Crayola coloring pencils are for kids, but many of their colors are fairly densely pigmented and very beautiful. Navy blue, magenta, orchid, deep brown are stand outs. Crayola makes a fair number of beautiful, useful browns and grays and their spectrum bright colors are brilliant.

Pros: Good colors for kids' pencils. If an artist does not care about not knowing the lightfastness ratings, these make fine pencils for illustrations.

The 64 set has a lot of colors, many of them unusual for kids' pencils. They are suitable for a lot of different subjects. As you know, they are already only half the length of Crayola's normal pencils and one wished Crayola would make the more unusual colors available in a full-length set. I am not referring to their Extreme dayglo colors, which are available, but lack the strength an artist would find useful. Also, since they are dayglos, their permanence is virtually nil, but a child will love the incredible intensity of these colors.

Cons: These cons refer to the uses a serious artist, young or older, would put coloring pencils. Crayolas blend well only in what I call optical blending. For example, a red lightly drawn over a warm yellow will give you an orange, but actual blending, as can be done with Prismacolor Premier soft cores, is out of the question, unless one uses an artist grade pencil to blend them. They can be blended with paint thinner, but who wants their little kids playing with paint thinners?

In choice of colors, Crayola has left some glaring holes in their lineup and it is virtually impossible to mix some often wanted shades. Foliage greens are in short supply, period, even in the 64 color set. Browns are plentiful, so why short us on natural greens?

Crayolas don't work that well for multiple layers, and their white has virtually no pigment; no covering power. It does make a cheap blender for artist grade pencils, but artist grade whites, like Prismacolor Premier soft core, or Derwent Drawing white do a far better job.

All in all, I would recommend these for beginning artists and those who don't want to spend very much money.

For the money, they are hard to beat. And one can create some really good art with them.

Comments about Crayola Short Colored Pencil Set:

the leads keep breaking
the thing that twists keeps falling off
not much color at all