LyraColor-Giants Skin Tone Colored Pencils - Set of 12 count colored pencils With A 6.25mm Core - Highly Pigmented Pencils for All Artists - Durable Color Pencils Set for Drawing Coloring and More

These Lyra colored pencils are probably some of the best quality pencils around! The "lead" cores are just perfect--silky smooth feeling as they slide across the paper. My kids don't have to press super hard to get a nice rich color on their papers. That's something that always bugged me about the "cheaper" brands. My hands grow tired when I am doing even an average amount of writing or drawing with colored pencils because I have to press so hard to get any color. If they make my hands tire, imagine my young kiddos!! Not so with these! I love them and now my kids are more interested in coloring than they used to be. I bought these based on reviews and I'm not sorry I spent the extra money for the better brand.I bought the Skin Tone ones because usually a basic set of colors is lacking in the choices for this "area" of colors. Since kids draw people a lot, it makes sense to have good choices for that. I remember as a kid I was stuck using brown or yellow or tan for drawing faces and hands, and NONE of them really fit for ANYONE regardless of their skin color. Although I can't really give an educated review of the actual colors provided I will say that now we have more choices for coloring people now! Yay! I can also attest to the wonderful quality of all the LYRA colored pencils!! I'm a fan!

This set of twelve "flesh tone" pencils has a nice variety from light to dark. They do not have names or numbers, but with the wooden casing, they are easy to write a number on them and make a small chart for yourself (see picture). They are a larger pencil so you will need a large hole pencil sharpener. The comfort level will depend on whether you enjoy holding a larger pencil. Some find it more comfortable than a regular Prisma or F. C. poly, some find it less comfortable. I found it easy enough to hold the slightly thicker pencil. I am quite pleased with the options among just twelve pencils.

These pencils have large diameter cores, with a hard lead. They will stand up to heavy pressure, layering color in a variety of tints depending on the pressure used. I find the size comfortable in my grip, as an older person with less sensitive fingertips, but they require several layers or heavier pressure to get the same shade of color I expect. They probably work great for children who bear down hard while learning how to color, and with their diameter and harder lead, they will definitely be much harder to break than the smaller and softer pencils.

If you're a colorist and want to do simple complexions, layering 3 colors (midtone, highlight, shadow) these will expand your range of browns for darker (African, Melanesian, South Asian) people. As several others have stated, the set is less useful if you want to concentrate on northern European Caucasian types. It has the same peach tone that you'll find in every coloring pencil set and a beige, but there's nothing like a cream for highlights on very fair people and none of the colors have much pink in them.If you want to do portraits, you'll need a whole lot of other colors, this set could merely be a supplement. Not only are there no colors suitable for eyes, hair, lips and makeup, but there's nothing for undertones (purples and greens for very dark-skinned people, light greens and violets for fair-skinned, etc.). It's also very lacking in yellows and ochres for the olive-skinned (and just generally warm toned people). I compared it with my 150 set prismacolor. Besides the peach and beige mentioned above, I found colors comparable to Sienna Brown, Sandbar Brown, French Gray 90% and Chocolate. There was something similar to Nectar and something similar to Burnt Ochre (but less exact). The rest of the colors (6 of them) are browns that Prismacolor doesn't have (but Prismacolor has a lot of browns this set doesn't have). So it could be a kind of supplement.If you want a Portrait set, Koh-i-Noor has a very good one; Caran d'Ache Luminance has come out with one (but this is very expensive and more of a supplement to the existing Luminance which are definitely professional artists' pencils); and Derwent has a surprisingly versatile set of 6, which really is able to do a huge range of skin colors (though you have to mix). That one, again, won't handle blue and green eyes or red or black hair though. Checking out the tutorial is worthwhile even if you don't buy the set.The pencils are enormous--they can be sharpened with the two hole KUM sharpener manually. Whether you like such big pencils is of course a matter of taste. They need to be applied with a very light touch if you a like a lot of layers--I haven't been able to get many layers on Strathmore Bristol Vellum, and burnishing seems like its a terrible idea with these. They get more layers when you keep them sharp. They have a great deal of pigment. I looked up the lightfastness information and they are lightfast (though even in Prismacolor, these kind of earthtones are the more lightfast pencils).These pencils seem targeted towards elementary school children from the way they are packaged (flimsy cardboard box similar to Crayola pencils) and from the illustrations on the box itself. I'm actually not sure how they would work out for kids--they'd have a somewhat larger selection of different brown pencils than is available in most kids' colored pencil sets, but is that what really makes people look like they are from a particular ethnic group? Finding the 'right' shade of brown? That seems like a problematic idea even if you are teaching social studies, one that short-cuts observation--and it's really disastrous for an art class, even in kindergarten (how many people never outgrow the idea that the sky is blue, trees are green, etc. etc.)

If there's one thing even many experienced artists agree on- it's the idea that getting the flesh tone to look just right for any given drawing is no easy task sometimes, and can make or break your work. That is where this set of thick pencils comes in. Instead of having to pick a base of your own and blend countless layers for a realistic look-these pencils already include many different skin colors. They can be used in any number of ways, as is and just filled in, mixed with one another and blended in....or used as a base with other colors and lightened darkened or highlighted to get just the look you need. They can also be used for landscape work- different shades for outdoor settings- even though they are termed a 'skin tone' set. So since they have multiple uses and ease the stress of doing portraits too, at the price they are well worth adding to your palate of colored pencils. They mix smoothly and easily and also layer quite well. You wont be disappointed.