Marco Raffiné pencils - swatch and first impression

So it finally arrived, my box of the 72-count Marco Raffiné coloured pencils! I had seen the colouring community swoon and rave over these pencils for the past 6 months so I just had to see what all the fuss is about. I took the plunge when I saw the pencils being sold on Amazon for a similar price as Ebay. Earlier Amazon had some sellers but the price was so much higher than Ebay or Aliexpress that I couldn't justify getting them. Reports of ridiculously long delivery times from Ebay and Aliexpress deterred me from getting them from these sites, also I love Amazon's customer service whose generosity and solution focused approach has saved me on several occasions.

The first thing that struck me was the weight of the box. I don't know what I had thought but just seeing photos of the box never made me think it would weigh so much! It felt nice in my hand. However I discarded the box straight away, I hate flimsy cardboard boxes. Some people also complained about a strong chemical smell but I attributed this to the box. The pencils themselves smell good like wooden colouring pencils should. (I always sniff on everything new!)

The pencils never struck me as particularly handsome and real life confirmed this. The silvery finish is more plasticky than silvery and is unevenly applied on some pencils. The hexagonal shape and colour indicator on top are OK features. The wood is of varied quality: some pencils are flawless while others shave away quite a bit. However I was pleasantly surprised by the lead quality as I sharpened the whole 72 set and only got one minor tip breakage which was fixed with just a little bit more sharpening. All pencils arrived seemingly undamaged so I'm hoping that no leads are broken further inside the pencils!

The pencils have no colour names but fortunately they are numbered in a straightforward fashion, from 501 to 572, making swatching a breeze. I made a handdrawn colour chart as I currently don't possess an operating printer. Or, there is a printer but it's ink and I'm afraid to use it in colouring because the lines might smudge from blenders and such so we haven't really plugged it in.

Upon swatching I soon discovered that the individual pencils vary in quality within the set: some glide nicely along the paper giving off even and rich pigmentation, while others feel waxy and smeary and leave a patchy result. I therefore took a leaf out of Faber Castell's book and marked the individual pencils with dots from 1-3 depending on how smooth or smeary they feel. I fear the smeary ones will be very difficult to layer and blend, in addition to the feeling that you're pushing candle wax around the paper. (I know they're oil based but this is the best description to the feeling I can come up with.) Here's my quality scale and the number of pencils in each category:

3 dots (19 pencils): Superior quality, rich pigmentation, glides smoothly on the paper and leaves an even coat of colour

2 dots (38 pencils): Good quality, enough pigmentation, possible to layer and blend, no hesitation in using them. 

1 dot (15 pencils): Smeary and uneven result, and/or poor pigmentation. Use with caution in case it's a unique shade I don't have in other sets.

Palette wise I have mixed emotions. The purples and greens are great especially as I'm fussy with my greens and for example I'm not impressed with the greens in my 60 count Polychromos as I find there are to many cold greens in that set. The Raffinés contain many warm green shades that you're more likely to find in nature. The purples are also warm and rich and the yellows are surprisingly pigmented. However I find there could have been a couple more blues in stead of having so many greys. Six shades of grey are entirely too much in a set of 72. The browns and maroons are very nice, however to my disappointment, two of the dark neutrals I most looked forward to using turned out to be one-dotters. Otherwise the one-dotters seem to be mainly lighter pastelly colours which sort of makes sense, if the manufacturer achieved the pale shade by adding more binding material in stead of using a different pigment combination.

How these pencils perform on different kinds of paper and in different situations such as layering, burnishing and using with blending tools, remains to be seen. In any case I'm really looking forward to taking them for a test drive today!

A wonderful encounter!

I have mentioned how much I like belonging to my colouring communities on Facebook. Interestingly, it's the smaller of the two groups that I prefer, it has such a nice atmosphere (so does the other one but that one's a bit too large and therefore perhaps a bit less personal).

Anyway, since haul/supply posts are fortunately allowed in these groups ;), I've had the opportunity to see a lot of people praising the WHSmith colouring pencils. To be honest, I first fell for their very handsome design. They are just so pretty on the outside! And the quote, The spectrum sings, it's just so sublime. I know I'm being silly! :) but anyhow, the other day I posted in my fave group a small complaint about how I'd love to try these pencils but WHSmith doesn't deliver to Sweden. And lo and behold, a great number of members volunteered to mail me a set!! In the end we agreed with a fellow member to swap items: I would send her the postcard book Vinterdrömmar by Hanna Karlzon (the Dagdrömmar lady!) and she would send me the pencils. 

It was of course a small leap of faith, giving out your address to a virtual stranger and everything... but it felt right! Needless to say Samantha, as her name is, got my parcel first, shame on you again and again Postnord... but today the beautiful pencils arrived! As an added bonus the parcel even fit into our mailbox so we didn't have to drive all the way to the grocery store (since we no longer have any post offices in Sweden anymore)

Upon opening the parcel there was another surprise. I thought I'd get the24 set, instead there was a 36 set of pencils in the package! I yelled out so my fiancé came running in from the car. He thought we'd been burgled as I stood in the doorway, shoes and coat still on, screaming. Lol! Then he realized it was pencils... then he was no longer surprised!

This wonderful gift came with very good timing. I've been pining after the 72 set Inktense pencils. I have the 24 set but would really love to upgrade and they are crazy expensive. Recently we talked about treating ourselves to something nice as we moved into our new house just five weeks ago and we have hardly rested, spent each waking our after work unpacking and fixing around the house. The fiancé, or S. as we can call him, was going to buy a nice pair of gaming headphones and I was going to get the Inktense. But after some calculations we agreeed to not spend anything on luxury items as there are so many expenses around the house these coming months. We agreed on this this morning so to get these gorgeous pencils, together with a new friendship, was really great for me today. Thank you, Samantha :)