Color Deluxe Sketching and Drawing Set (70-Piece) Review: Generous Kit, Mixed Quality

Introduction

Sets like the Color Deluxe 70-piece sketching and drawing set are aimed squarely at people who want everything in one box: graphite pencils, charcoal, pastels, blending tools, erasers, and accessories. The packaging leans hard on phrases like “artist quality,” “professional level,” and “premium expert,” and that is exactly where this review needs to start. After working through the entire set on multiple papers, including a finished portrait piece, the honest verdict is that this is a usable, generous student kit, not a professional one.

Who This Set Is For

If you are an adult buying for yourself, a school student, or a teenager starting out with sketching, there is a lot here to work with. Parents buying for a child going back to school will find the sheer variety appealing, and the core drawing materials genuinely hold up. What matters more is knowing which parts of the set deserve your attention and which parts you can quietly set aside.

What You Get in the Box

The set arrives as a layered case with three tiers. The top layer holds two sharpeners (one lightweight metal two-hole sharpener and one plastic sharpener better suited to pastel and charcoal pencils), two blending stumps, two tortillans, a small sanding block, a craft knife, a pencil extender, charcoal blocks, pastel blocks in white, light grey, and grey, graphite blocks labeled hard, medium, and soft, willow sticks, a kneaded eraser, and a vinyl eraser.

The middle layer contains three woodless charcoal pencils, two woodless graphite pencils (6B and 4B), three traditional wood-barrel charcoal pencils in soft, medium, and hard, five pastel pencils in red, brown, grey, sepia, and black, three white charcoal pencils, a pencil eraser, a 0.5mm mechanical pencil with refills, a white gel pen, and a double-ended marker with a felt tip on one side and a fine liner on the other. The bottom layer holds the 24 graphite pencils.

A few accessories deserve specific warnings. The craft knife is poor quality and not particularly sharp, but it is still sharp enough to cut, which makes it a genuine concern if the set is going to a younger teenager. Removing and safely disposing of it is a reasonable step for any parent. The pencil extender is close to useless: the large end is too big to grip standard pencils securely, and the small end does not fit most pencils in the set. It is a common filler item, and here it simply does not work.

The Graphite Pencils

The 24 graphite pencils run from 14B down to 6H, which is a sensible range. The spread stops at the light end around 6H rather than pushing to 10H or 12H, where pencils become scratchy, clay-heavy, and difficult to sharpen, so the grade selection is arguably better judged than in some competing sets.

Swatching the full range reveals the strengths and limits. From 6B to 14B the tones are very similar, and the 14B is not noticeably darker than the 4B. Between 2B and 5B the differentiation is likewise subtle. One genuinely positive surprise is the low shine: even under pressure, these pencils do not produce the glossy sheen you often get from graphite.

These are not on the same level as established graphite lines from the bigger brands, and light layers of something like a 2B do not blend out as smoothly as better pencils do. Still, sharpening was trouble-free, including the brittle-prone H grades, and for a student the graphite section is entirely acceptable.

Charcoal, Willow Sticks, and Pastels

The woodless charcoal pencils are the standout of the entire set. The soft grade lays down a gorgeous, rich dark, and they were used heavily in the finished artwork. The traditional wood-barrel charcoal pencils in soft, medium, and hard are decent, with a distinct if subtle difference between grades. The white charcoal pencils are also very good and worked well for highlights.

The charcoal blocks, in soft, medium, and hard, show clear grade separation, though even the soft block feels quite hard and gave limited coverage when used on its side. The willow sticks are a nice inclusion: thin scorched sticks that sketch out shapes with control, lay down a good dark, and lift or blend easily before you refine with graphite or charcoal.

The pastel pencils are the clear low point. Red, brown, grey, sepia, and black, they are scratchy, under-pigmented, and require heavy pressure to produce coverage, even on sanded pastel paper where pigment should come off with a light touch. Layering with this much pressure fills the paper’s tooth and creates problems, and they did not improve even on better paper. The pastel blocks (white, light grey, dark grey) fared noticeably better on sanded paper than on grey-toned paper.

The white gel pen is a pleasant surprise, with a very thin nib that gives finer highlight detail than many gel pens, provided it does not clog over time. The mechanical pencil works fine, though the included HB lead felt too light for detailed work and a 2B refill was substituted. The double-ended marker has a felt tip on one side and a fine liner on the other, but it carries a strong permanent-marker odor that is hard to ignore.

Things to Consider Before Buying

Be skeptical of the “artist quality, professional level” claims on the box. Compared with dedicated graphite and charcoal products from specialist brands, this set sits clearly at a student level. The pastel pencils are close to unusable, the craft knife should be removed from any set given to a young person, and the pencil extender does not function as intended. If your expectations match what a student kit should be, most of the disappointment disappears.

What the Set Can Actually Do

To test the set properly, a full portrait was completed using only the contents of the box, primarily leaning on the woodless graphite and woodless charcoal pencils. The result was genuinely satisfying, with rich darks and workable highlights from the white charcoal pencils.

Blending was done with the included blending stumps and a soft brush, and while some blended areas were not entirely satisfying with light graphite layers, the finished piece demonstrates that the usable parts of this set are more than capable of producing real artwork. That is the fairest way to judge a kit like this: not against professional-grade materials, but against what a motivated student can create with it.

Buying Advice

For a school or secondary-level student, this set offers a broad, workable toolkit, and the graphite, charcoal, and white charcoal sections are the parts worth using most. If you are an experienced artist with established preferences in graphite or charcoal, you will likely notice the gap in quality immediately and may be better served buying individual materials from specialist brands. Parents should check the case before handing it over and deal with the craft knife responsibly.

Conclusion

The Color Deluxe 70-piece set is a mixed but largely usable package. The woodless charcoal pencils, white charcoal pencils, willow sticks, and sensible graphite grade range earn their place, while the pastel pencils, craft knife, and pencil extender do not. Judge it as a student set rather than a professional one, and it represents a reasonable way to start sketching with almost every tool you need in one case.