Are Holbein Coloured Pencils Worth the Hype? A UK Artist's Honest Review

By Carol Leather

Holbein Artists' Colored Pencils carry a reputation that runs ahead of them. You see them in studio shots, you hear them mentioned in conversations about "the next level," and you wonder whether the price tag is justified.

I bought a set, drew with them long enough to form a real opinion, and put them next to the pencils I use every day. Here is what I think.

Are Holbein Artists' Colored Pencils right for your realistic artwork?

Holbeins are at the premium end of the soft-core pencils, where Prismacolor Premier also lives. The laydown is creamy and saturated, and the palette runs to 150 colours with an unusual lean toward pastels and a small group of fluorescents you do not see in other ranges.

Which stage of your art journey are Holbeins best for?

The honest answer is that softness is a learned skill, and these are not cheap pencils to learn it on.

If you are newish to coloured pencil, the laydown will catch you out. Soft cores reward a light touch and punish a heavy one. Learning that lesson on a more affordable soft-core pencil, Derwent Coloursoft for instance, saves you money and frustration. A finished piece or two will also tell you whether soft cores are what you actually want before you commit at this price point.

Once you have the hang of laying pigment down without bulldozing the paper, Holbeins start to earn their keep. The wider palette gives your colour mixing somewhere to go, and the saturation rewards the patience you have built.

And if you work across media, coloured pencil over watercolour, with pastel, with ink, the creamy laydown plays well alongside everything else on the page.

Understanding the Holbein Artists' range and colour palette

Holbein is a Japanese brand with around 120 years behind it in artist materials. That history matters more than it sounds: it gives me reasonable confidence I am not buying into something that will quietly disappear from the catalogue next year. The Artists' range comes in sets ranging from 12 colours up to a full 150-pencil studio set.

The pencils themselves are physically substantial. A 3.8mm core sits inside a 7.8mm round wooden barrel, sourced from Forest Stewardship Council certified timber. The round barrel is a personal preference question. If you grip a pencil firmly for tight detail, a hexagonal pencil may suit you better.

For a wider view of how Holbein compares with other brands at this level, see my beginner's guide to choosing coloured pencil brands.

Can Holbeins help with common coloured pencil frustrations?

If you have been wrestling with specific problems in your current brand, here is how Holbeins behave on the most common pain points.

Putting Holbeins to the test: my findings

Initial feel and core robustness

The feel is soft and creamy, more akin to Prismacolor Premier than my usual firmer Faber-Castell Polychromos. Although soft, I found the cores to be surprisingly robust. They do not crumble under normal handling and they take a sharpen without fragmenting.

Sharpening performance

Holbeins sharpen well in both hand-crank and electric sharpeners. With one exception.

Lightfastness

The Artists' Colored Pencil range meets the ASTM D6901 standard. Holbein divide their colours into five lightfastness bands marked on the pencil and the chart:

• ⭐⭐⭐ Permanent, LF I (highest)
• ⭐⭐⭐ Permanent, LF II
• ⭐⭐ Moderately durable, LF III
• ⭐ LF IV (poor lightfastness)
• No star, LF V (least lightfast)

If you sell finished work or expect it to live on a wall, work with the three-star and two-star groups for the colour areas that need to last.

Layering and blending

With gentle pressure, layers settle into one another rather than sitting as separate marks. This matters most across the pastel range, where neighbouring shades are so close in tone that you can mix new in-between colours just by laying one over another. Artists call this optical mixing, and Holbeins make it easier than most.

Detail work

This is where the softness shows its cost. Maintaining a sharp point for fine detail is more work in Holbein than in a harder oil-based pencil. You will sharpen more often, and you may want to keep a separate set of harder pencils for the finest passes.

Holbeins in the long term: supply and consistency in the UK

In the UK, Jackson's Art is the primary stockist with the broadest range, including open stock for individual replacement pencils. Open stock matters more than people realise. If a key colour disappears halfway through a long project, you need to be able to replace it without buying a whole new set.

Batch to batch, the colours I have used have stayed consistent. Holbein sells solidly into the professional market, which usually means a brand keeps its range running rather than quietly retiring colours.

How do Holbeins perform with key techniques?

Burnishing works beautifully. The soft core delivers the smooth, dense, almost enamel-like finish that burnishing is meant to produce.

Solvent blending responds well. Odourless mineral spirits soften the wax binder and pull colour together into a glassy, even layer.

Layering builds depth quickly. Each pass releases plenty of pigment, so a richly worked surface comes together in fewer passes than with a harder pencil.

Paper matters here. Holbeins are happiest on a paper with enough tooth to grip the soft pigment: vellum Bristol board, a smooth pastel paper, or a quality hot-pressed watercolour paper. Very smooth papers limit how many layers you can build before the surface refuses to take more. See my notes on choosing the best paper for coloured pencils.

Holbeins vs. key alternatives for UK artists

Tips to get the best from your Holbein pencils

Are Holbein Artists' Colored Pencils a worthwhile investment for you?

By the time you reach this question you have probably already answered it. If you are still on the fence, two more angles worth weighing.

The cost: Holbeins are not the cheapest spend in the soft-core category. If your budget is genuinely tight, the gap between Holbein and a careful Coloursoft drawing is smaller than the price difference suggests. The money you save buys you good paper, a workable fixative or a reference book, all of which will make more difference at this stage than the pencil sitting on top.

The subject: if your work leans heavily into pastel shades (florals, fur, soft skies, baby portraits), Holbein reaches into colour territory other brands do not cover. For artists working those subjects, this is the strongest single argument for the spend.

Next steps

After working with a smaller selection, I invested in the full 150-colour set. The bottom tray of pastels is what convinced me. There is nothing else quite like it on the market, and once you have used those colours in a finished piece you understand why people speak about Holbein the way they do.

If you are still weighing up brands, read my beginner's guide to choosing coloured pencil brands for the wider picture, or browse the related pages below.

You might like