The barrel is hexagonal instead of round. This is a personal preference, but we tend to like hexagonal barrels more than round as they are easier for us to hold. I've had mine just over a week and I've used them most days. I use a pro grade sharpener and I'm careful how I sharpen them. But a few of them I'm finding are broken quite badly down the barrel. I've had two pencils where I've sharpened half the pencil away before realising and giving up. With the wax content, there's tip in the questions section re: heating them and letting them cool which could work, in theory. The Monarch and Skin Tone colored pencils have the same ebony barrel color but a colored end cap. The end cap is similar to the pigment of the pencil but not exactly the same I'm a fine artist with a degree and experience with a wide range of art materials and brands. Avoided colouring pencils because I find them too hard for my arthritic hands, usually. Dabbled with a few brands, but generally too hard for me. I wanted better quality than kids pencils but wasn't up for the price tag of polychromos... so I bought these.

After umpteen attempts at creating the color wheel and sorting the colors to my liking, I finally found a prototype of the color wheel that I was satisfied with. depending on what you like to color, you may find that the pencils do not offer the variety of colors in the tones that you prefer when compared to artist brands HIGHLY PIGMENTED & EASY BLEND- Our professional colouring pencils have soft, break-resistant cores. It was made from high-quality pigments that won't fade over time. The colouring pencils set with strong adhesion, and natural overlapping colour are Perfect for Drawing, Shading, Adult Colouring Books, Blending, Printing, Highlighting, and Layering. We have an exclusive behind the scenes glimpse at this amazing new pencil set, but before we get to that, what do we already know about these mysterious pencils?The performance of these pencils is quite capable for their target audience. The color output is good and the blending between various colors is serviceable as well. We didn’t experience much wax bloom until you start heavily layering. The pencils are not water-soluble but you can use water to soften the pencil strokes. They do not blend though like true watercolor pencils The wax that is used is of nice quality. When you push the pencil down, the application is quite smooth. We didn’t experience any of the “chunks” that you may have in some of the lower-end pencils on the market. That being said, this isn’t the buttery feel you will see with premium wax pencils or many of the oil pencils on the market.

Now on to durability. These pencils were about average when trying to sharpen. The wax core is relatively hard to it may want to chip when you are sharpening it to a fine point. So if you are someone that likes to have an extremely fine point, we recommend using a manual sharpener that is designed for colored pencils and taking your time while sharpening.

Available Sets

Finally, the Monarch pencil set was released in 2020, and was their most recent palette before this month’s release. It started one evening when I was watching TV and my attention was drawn to a documentary on adult colouring, a fad that I had never heard of, and was very big globally.