Let me preface this by saying that I am not a professional artist. I am simply a colorist. I buy high quality coloring books with good paper by great artists, and I use primarily artist grade pencils in them. I have tried several different artist grade pencils, and these are my favorites to use in most of my books. I prefer them with books that have a fair amount of tooth to the paper, but they aren't bad on smooth paper. These pencils allow me to easily achieve the blending and layering that I like to do in my pictures. They are a harder pencil, so they keep a point well, but they also lay down color smoothly and easily. What really sets these apart is that when I layer two colors together, they effortlessly become a new color. When I layer other pencils, I do get ... MoreLet me preface this by saying that I am not a professional artist. I am simply a colorist. I buy high quality coloring books with good paper by great artists, and I use primarily artist grade pencils in them. I have tried several different artist grade pencils, and these are my favorites to use in most of my books. I prefer them with books that have a fair amount of tooth to the paper, but they aren't bad on smooth paper. These pencils allow me to easily achieve the blending and layering that I like to do in my pictures. They are a harder pencil, so they keep a point well, but they also lay down color smoothly and easily. What really sets these apart is that when I layer two colors together, they effortlessly become a new color. When I layer other pencils, I do get a new color, but I can usually look at it and tell that I layered two colors. With these, it looks like I just used that one color. I don't have to work nearly as hard to get smooth gradients either. The shade range is more natural, which is my preference, and has some very nice pale colors that are great for blending if you don't always like to use white or a blender pencil. Also, the purples in this line are excellent. I find that to be the weak point with most brands. Even if I am using other pencils, I will pull out these purples. I would definitely recommend trying a few before buying the whole set, because I can see why they wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. I, however, am building up to the full set, one order at a time.

I am now a super-fan of Derwent EVERYTHING!!! It's ALL great! Good saturation and pigment. Sharpens easily and doesn't break so I see these outlasting other brands. And they are really well-made.

These surprisingly have a very comparable application to the Caran D'ache Luminance line. I have a full set of coloursoft and use it as I slowly build up my Luminance collection when I can afford it. They have a lovely variety of flesh tone colors for portraits. I am positive that I will still use these even after I build up my luminance set as having boths sets will fill in any color gaps. Highly recommend!!