Soucolor 180 Colored Pencils Set Review
Since I decided to try making art again, I have been buying many different colored pencil sets. Soucolor was one of the first sets of colored pencils I purchased. On Amazon, it had little information regarding the pencils. However, from my experience using them, they are likely wax-based colored pencils. I ordered the Soucolor 180 set because of how affordable they are, and generally, they have great reviews on Amazon. In addition, I wanted to practice with coloring books before making my artwork; therefore, whether they were lightfast was unnecessary. Most budget pencils are made in China, and these are no exception. I did find China manufacturers are great at making excellent, usable budget pencils since I started testing and reviewing colored pencils.
Generally, the Soucolor 180 set is priced around $30 -$40, depending on sales availability. Getting 180 pencils for that price is almost too good to be true. I can easily claim this is one of the best value budget pencils you can find!
The Soucolor 180 set came in a standard colored pencil tin. The artwork and design on the tin could be better, but those are optional since many people like to transfer their pencils to a case. A color swatch was printed at the bottom of the tin, but I wouldn't trust them as they are usually inaccurate. Swatching them on your paper is often beneficial because the colors could appear differently on different papers.
Each pencil in the set comes with a 4mm core with black barrels. And the color of each pencil was shown at the end of the pencil. You can find the name and the number of the color printed in silver on the black barrel. The text is easy to read, but you will lose the label once you use the pencil over the halfway point. I love having thicker core colored pencils because they tend to last a little longer, especially when you use them for shading. Also, this set of pencils came with a free, reasonably good quality swatch paper. I found them very helpful in finding the correct colors when working on a coloring book.
Instead of doing a lot of tests straight away, I used these colored pencils for my coloring book. I considered this my first coloring page because the last time I did a coloring page was roughly 35 years ago. In terms of the experience, I felt relaxed and truly enjoyed the process. It is a meditative hobby, and the colored pencils did perform quite well. I intentionally used as many colors as I could and tried blending colors consistently. Even though the paper wasn't the best, I could still lay down the colors beautifully and evenly on the page. The colors are vibrant, and the wax core is soft enough and still able to hold a sharp point for detail coloring.
During my coloring process, I kept wanting to find a true red, a deep saturated red, but I couldn't find one to match my need. The only pencil I had issues with was the deep greenish gray. Unfortunately, I ran into a few breakages in sharpening, and the pencil ended up shorter than the rest. To achieve deeper and darker shadows, I tried to avoid using black directly, but I couldn't find darker blue or brown to help darken the colors.
Like most budget pencils, the Soucolor 180 set could have been better based on my experience, but it is one of the better ones after buying and trying many more color pencil sets. It is a well-balanced set for your coloring book needs or a beginner artist who likes to practice making art using colored pencils.
