HISTORY
Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth is a Czech Brand founded in 1790 by Josef Hardmuth originally in Vienna. Formerly an earthenware factory, 12 years later it started to produce graphite leads and invented the pencil as we know it today. Koh-I-Noor is well known in countries such as Czech Republic or Poland, but less popular perhaps in the West European countries because of other brands such as Faber-Castell. Koh-I-Noor is one of the biggest producers of art material worldwide and its innovative products are not stranger to the artists.
Pastel pencils produce a beautiful effect on darker papers, where its whites and cream tones are ideal for landscapes or animal fur. They are brighter than normal colour pencils, although they smudge more than those, and also use-up quicker. The other concern is sharpening: one has to be careful when it comes to sharpen a pastel pencil to avoid breakages or deformed points. In that sense, I believe that a blade is better than a sharpener.
SPECIFICATIONS
The Gioconda pencil is rounded, made in cedar wood with a nice scent and has a transparent lacquer ended in a shiny closed tip painted on a colour that matches the lead. On one side of the barrel there are some engraved golden words (the name of the company, the Gioconda series, the words “soft pastel” and the number of the series and the pencil). On the other side we can see the barcode and an unknown series of numbers, this time printed on black colour.
Regarding the lightfast rate, only 3 tones in the chart have a low resistance, which are: light violet **, dark ultramarine blue ** and light purple ***, which is a fair average in my opinion.
PERFORMANCE
Koh-I-Noor range of pastel pencils are called Gioconda series, and they have an extra soft lead which is ideal for blending, aswell as bright and vivid tones.
Gioconda pastel pencils are light, ergonomic and they spread some crumbs if the pencil is too much pressed against the paper. Being pastel pencils they obviously smudge, so the most sensible idea is to place a piece of paper on top of the drawing as we are colouring, to prevent stains all over the surface.
SETS AND PACKAGING
Gioconda pastel pencils come in tins of 12, 24 and 48 units, being especially relevant the blues and green tones. The total colour chart ascends to 48, and pencils can be purchased individually.
The pencils are presented in the usual tin of the brand without hinges and inside a plastic tray, which will not protect the pencils in case of an impact, so careful needs to be applied when transporting them. When I was in the Koh-I-Noor shop I purchased some individual pastel pencils which were placed inside a paper bag. This bag fell on the floor during my day trip, and… well, you can imagine what happened: I had to sharpen the pencils before using them. Pastel pencils sadly tend to be damaged with the slightlest impact.
COLOUR CHART AND DEMO
The set that I purchased was the 12 pencils one, and the colour chart for these is the following:
8820/1 / 8820/13 / 8820/40 / 8820/5 / 8820/170 / 8820/10 / 8820/9 / 8820/7 / 8820/16 / 8820/10 / 8820/11 / 8820/11
Like many of the Koh-I-noor pencil series, these pencils don’t include any name on the barrel, only a number. However, the official 2018-2019 catalogue assort these pencils by name, not by number. This confusion prevents me from knowing the names of my pencils and to attach them to this colour chart. By the way, I don’t know why the last 2 colours have the same name: might this be a typo? The catalogue doesn’t throw much information about that.
In addition to the 12 colours tin, I own 3 extra pastel pencils that I bought in the shop. Even they belong to the Gioconda series, they are not “soft pastels”, and the serial number is different (one of them is black and it is entirely different from the black in the 12 pencils tin). The touch of these 3 pastel pencils is harder on the paper. Apparently they are commercialized individually and they don’t belong to any set. These 3 pencils come both on a wooden barrel or just the bare pastel bar.
The colour chart for these 3 is the following:
Sepia light 8803 / Red chalk 8802 / Black 8815/1
Here is an illustration that I partially drew using the Gioconda pastel pencils:
WHERE TO BUY
These pencils can be purchased in the official website and in Amazon, where they are cheaper. They tend to be quite cheap at all times, which is fantastic, considering their quality: the 12 pencils set costs around 10-12 pounds and the biggest set of 48 colours costs around 35 pounds.
All the Gioconda sets in Amazon UK
CONCLUSION
These pencils are worth their price if you are a pastel pencil lover. The colours are bright and the leads are very soft. They are also quite economical, so we cannot really ask more for less. I have both tried the Pitt Faber-Castell and these, and I have to say the quality is practically identical. Having said this, I am not a fan of pastel pencils (yet) because I still have to master them.
PROS, CONS AND RATING
The best: they are creamy and pigmented.
The worst: they use-up quickly, they are delicate and they smudge (just like all pastels).
Rating: 9/10
MORE INFORMATION
Learning to draw 