Maiden 120 Color Pencils Review: A Strong Debut Set Worth a Close Look

Introduction

Maiden is best known for artist accessories: easels, pencil storage drawers, ceramic palettes and a range of well-built studio gear. The company has recently expanded into art mediums proper, and the new Maiden color pencils are one of the most interesting results. The set under review here is the full 120 color edition, with a smaller 72 set also available.

The big question going in was whether these would be a low-grade first effort, the kind of budget pencil with weak pigment that can be difficult to work with. That turned out not to be the case at all. Across sharpening, layering, blending, solvent work and finished artwork, the pencils behaved like a genuinely usable set, and the palette is arguably the most exciting part of the package.

Who This Product Is For

The Maiden 120 set sits in a sweet spot between student and artist grade. Performance on decent quality paper reaches high student to low artist level, so it suits developing artists who have outgrown the cheapest sets but do not want the cost of full artist-grade ranges. It is especially appealing to botanical and still life artists who enjoy subtle grays, earth tones and pale colors rather than only saturated primaries.

If you sell only original artwork, lightfastness matters more to you and you should read the caveats below. For everyone else, including anyone working mainly from prints or study work, the lightfast ratings are unlikely to be a dealbreaker.

What’s in the Tin

The tin itself is striking: a clean white body with bold color accents and nothing on the back. Inside, a silver-leafed tracing paper sheet protects the pencils, which sit in thin plastic trays across three tiers. The trays are flimsy but functional, which is hard to fault at this price.

The top layer runs dark reds into pinks, oranges, yellows and greens. The middle layer continues the greens, including some very deep tones, then moves through blues, lilacs, browns and lighter browns. The bottom tier is where this set earns its appeal, with yellow ochres, tans, a long run of warm and cool grays, pale lavenders, grape tones, green grays, a lotus gray, gray white, ivory, and finally white and black.

Each pencil has a 4 mm core in a 7.7 mm barrel, a comfortable middle-of-the-road size that feels good in the hand and nothing like a cheap pencil. Roughly two thirds of the barrel is white with a colored pigment band at the end, and the barrels are capped, so the core is not exposed at the back. Text and pigment numbers are printed in silver leaf, which looks elegant but can produce glare in photographs and be slightly tricky to read.

Pigment Range and Palette

The palette is genuinely well thought out. Maiden has included light, mid and dark tones within nearly every color family, which makes transitions much easier to build.

Many color names follow established watercolor naming conventions rather than invented marketing names, so you will find phthalo blue, deep cobalt blue, quinacridone violet, burnt umber, van dyke brown and similar names.

The greens deserve a special mention for botanical artists. The gray green is gorgeous, the deep green, forest green and Prussian green all performed well, and olive green and moss green round out a strong section. The earth tones are equally impressive, with reddish brown, transparent ochre red, terracotta, sanguine and cinnamon all pulling their weight. The standout colors for many will be red copper, the tea brown with its subtle green tinge, and the bottom row’s sequence of grays, including deep cold gray, green gray, deep green gray and a gray peach that reads like a pale French gray.

Layering, Blending and Solvent Performance

Testing was done on Strathmore 300 series Bristol vellum for the swatch, Strathmore 400 series mixed media paper for the layering tests, and Fabriano Artistico extra white hot press watercolor paper for the finished artwork.

Across five light layers followed by a heavy application, there were no problems whatsoever: no tackiness, no stickiness, no crumbling, and almost no residue. Sharpening was trouble-free across the entire set, and not a single core broke even with repeated sharpening during artwork.

Blending tests produced clean second colors: yellow and red made a pleasant orange, blue and yellow produced a beautiful green, and red and blue yielded a purple that ran slightly dark depending on the starting tones. The cores also break down well under odorless mineral spirits. A test sphere built from eight or nine light layers responded exactly as you would hope, with the solvent reinvigorating the paper’s tooth and allowing further layers to be added for extra depth.

The finished botanical piece, two pears on Fabriano Artistico paper, came together with no issues in layering or blending, and the surface of that paper worked particularly well with these pencils.

Things to Consider Before Buying

Opacity varies across the set, which is worth knowing before you work on dark paper. On black mixed media paper, red, green and blue produced opaque heavy applications with no black showing through, while yellow and white were noticeably more translucent. The white pencil is not one of the strongest available, so plan accordingly if your work relies on a powerful white.

Lightfast information is the weakest part of the package. Maiden provides a three-star rating system, but it is unclear which system it is based on, and compressing a complicated standard into three stars loses nuance. Realistically, the lightfast performance puts these pencils in the student range. If you sell originals, treat them accordingly; if you work in prints or studies, this is far less of a concern.

Buying Advice

New color pencil sets tend to launch at relatively low prices and rise sharply once word gets around, sometimes doubling within six months to a year. If the Maiden 120 set is on your list and you can afford it, buying sooner rather than later is the safer bet, particularly with the holiday season approaching. Prices are best checked before purchase, as they will move over time. The 72 set is the alternative if you want a smaller outlay, though you will miss many of the grays and pale tones that make the 120 set special.

Conclusion

Maiden’s first major step into art mediums is a success. The 120 set pairs a beautiful, thoughtfully organized palette, rich in grays, earth tones and useful pale shades, with reliable layering, blending and solvent behavior, all in a pencil that feels well made in the hand. The lightfast ratings and the translucent white are the main trade-offs, but for most developing artists this set offers a lot of performance for the money, and it is one of the more pleasant surprises to come along in this category recently.