WHSmith Coloured Pencils: Insights for Budget-Conscious Artists
For over three decades, WHSmith’s own-brand colouring pencils have been a cornerstone of the UK’s art and stationery market. While the precise origins of these pencils are unstated, they have been a consistent presence in UK art materials since at least the 1990s. WHSmith, a venerable British retailer with a history stretching back to 1792, have provided an affordable entry point for artists and enthusiasts with these student-grade pencils to deliver reliable performance for beginners and hobbyists. With their distinctive grey barrels and vibrant pigments, they are ideal for creative projects such as adult colouring books, sketching, and illustration. This review explores the characteristics, performance, and practical applications of these pencils, offering insights for aspiring artists in the UK and beyond.
Core Characteristics and Performance
WHSmith’s colouring pencils are defined by their practical design and dependable performance, featuring matte grey, hexagonal barrels with “The Spectrum Sings” printed in silver and a colour indicator on the end cap. Likely wax-based, their soft lead delivers a smooth, creamy application, ideal for layering and blending to create rich tones and seamless transitions, such as burnishing for a polished finish. They perform well across smooth and lightly textured papers, though they wear faster on gritty surfaces. The pre-sharpened, break-resistant leads ensure durability, but careful sharpening is needed to maintain points due to their softness. Packaged in cardboard boxes with a black plastic insert and loose-fitting plastic cover, the presentation is functional but prone to damage during transit. While vibrant, the pigments lack lightfastness, meaning colours may fade over time unless protected, making these pencils best suited for practice or non-archival projects.
Base: Wax based |
Lead: Soft-Medium |
Colours: 48 |
Lightfast: No |
Vegan: Unlikely |
Costs: £ - ££ |
Advantages and Disadvantages of the WH Smith Colouring Pencils
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ADVANTAGES
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DISADVANTAGES
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The Colour Palette
These colouring pencils offer a vibrant and versatile colour palette, with the 48-colour set providing the most extensive range, comprising 2 greys, 2 peaches, 3 yellows, 3 oranges, 5 browns, 5 reds, 5 pinks, 5 purples, 8 greens, 8 blues, a black, and a white. In 2017, the palette expanded from 36 to 48 colours, introducing pastel tones that, when combined with the robust brown shades, greatly enhanced suitability for portraiture, enabling artists to create subtle skin tones, delicate highlights, and natural hues for realistic or illustrative work. The wide selection of greens and blues supports detailed landscape and nature sketches, while the reds, pinks, and purples provide bold options for vibrant illustrations or adult colouring books. Despite their vivid pigmentation for a student-grade product, the colours are not lightfast and may fade over time when exposed to light, rendering them unsuitable for archival artwork. To preserve creations, artists can apply a fixative spray to seal the surface, store pieces in protective sleeves to minimise light exposure, or frame artwork behind UV-resistant glass to ensure longevity.
The 48-set colour palette, highlighting the new colours launched in 2017. The 48-colour set features 13 new shades, with one blue replacing a previous hue.
History and Design of WHSmith Colouring Pencils
Early versions from the 1990s featured barrels painted to match the pigment of the lead, with ends dipped in dark blue paint and “WH Smith” printed in silver, offering a similar thickness and a colour palette nearly identical to modern sets. Over time, the design evolved to todays' uniform matte grey barrels, adorned with “The Spectrum Sings” printed in silver and colour indicators on the end caps, while retaining silver-printed WHSmith imagery. Although the core palette has remained largely consistent, slight variations in certain greens, blues, and browns have emerged, reflecting subtle refinements in manufacturing. This continuity ensures that both vintage and contemporary sets deliver comparable vibrancy.
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Navigating a Limited Colour Range:Techniques and Observations
Student-quality coloured pencils, by their nature, are predisposed to exhibiting less intense colour payoff compared to professional-grade alternatives. This characteristic stems from their formulation, which typically incorporates a higher ratio of binder to pigment. Consequently, artists often find it necessary to apply multiple layers to achieve a significant depth of colour. However, the WH Smith coloured pencils present a notable exception within this category. Despite their economical price point, the vibrancy and generosity of their pigments are quite surprising. Despite their economical price point, the vibrancy and generosity of their pigments are surprising. These pencils punch above their weight, capable of delivering rich colours and impressive results that defy their affordable cost. For individuals new to the medium, the WH Smith brand presents an ideal entry point. Should one discover that coloured pencils are not the preferred artistic medium, the initial investment is minimal, thus preventing significant financial outlay on a more expensive, professional set. This accessibility makes them an excellent choice for beginners to explore techniques and develop skills without commitment to high-cost materials. Let's delve into some examples to illustrate how a limited palette and a student-range brand can still yield surprising results.
Building Depth in Dark Fur
This close-up depicts the Black Labrador's eye and intricate fur detail around the face, nose, and ear, all rendered using just 10 colours.
When depicting subjects like a Black Labrador, where the available palette might seem restricted—with just two greys, a white, and a black—it's natural to feel limited. To a degree, this is true; a narrower selection inherently means fewer pre-mixed options. However, this constraint also encourages a deeper understanding of colour mixing and layering. Significant depth and nuance can still be achieved by skillfully utilising the core black and white pencils to create a broader spectrum of greys. Beyond these immediate options, introducing subtle layers of cool tones, such as blues, or warm tones, like browns, can dramatically expand the perceived palette. This strategic infusion of colour in thin, overlapping layers allows artists to build rich, complex shades that add considerable realism and dimension to the subject, transforming what might seem like a limitation into an opportunity for intricate tonal exploration.
Eight Colours, Endless Shades
This close-up of the Blue Merle Shetland Sheepdog's eye, rendered using just 8 colours, illustrates how layered colours effectively create realistic fur texture and depth.
This palette was even more limited with just 8 colours used. For instance, a complex subject such as a Blue Merle Shetland Sheepdog can be rendered using as few as eight pencils from this range. A limited palette necessitates techniques to expand the available hues; therefore, overlapping colours to create depth is crucial. This is particularly evident in the grey areas of the fur, where only two grey pencils are available, offering little contrast when finely layered. By applying and blending these limited grey tones with other colours, artists can effectively create a broader spectrum of shades. Similarly, with only four brown pencils suitable for this type of portrait, softening colours with the white pencil becomes a must, extending the usable palette significantly. This versatile application of the pencils, through layering different tones, builds up additional shades and introduces greater realism into drawings.
Expanded Palette for Portraiture
A portrait of a fair-skinned woman with vibrant orange hair, showcasing the expanded palette's ability to render subtle skin tones and rich hair colours.
The expansion of the colour palette from 36 to 48 pencils in 2017 significantly enhanced the versatility of this range, particularly for human portraiture. While the existing selection already offered colours suitable for darker skin complexions, this increase in available hues notably introduced a wider array of paler tones. This crucial addition, alongside the established darker shades, created a truly broader spectrum for representing diverse skin tones. A compelling portrait is built upon a nuanced collection of colour tones; therefore, having a more comprehensive range at one's disposal directly contributes to a more effective and realistic outcome. This expanded selection empowers artists to achieve greater depth, subtlety, and precision in capturing the myriad of shades present across various skin tones, making these WH Smith coloured pencils a more viable option for dedicated portrait work.
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Optimising Performance on Various Paper Surfaces
The choice of drawing surface plays a pivotal role in the final outcome of any coloured pencil artwork, and this is especially true when working with student-grade pencils. While they perform reliably on standard drawing paper, selecting specific surfaces can dramatically enhance their capabilities and expand artistic possibilities. Highly textured papers, such as Pastelmat or Colourfix, offer a unique tooth that grips pigment exceptionally well, allowing for richer layering and vibrant colour saturation. Furthermore, venturing beyond traditional white, working on black paper can unlock striking effects and challenge conventional layering techniques. This section explores how selecting the right paper can elevate the potential of student-grade coloured pencils, enabling artists to achieve results that might otherwise seem unattainable.
Working with Coloured Pencils on Dark Surfaces
While dark paper surfaces can provide a striking backdrop for coloured pencil work, they can also magnify the inherent weaknesses of certain student-grade pencils. This is particularly evident with the white pencil, which often proves to be highly translucent on black or dark papers. The limited opacity of such white pencils is typically due to the absence or low concentration of highly opaque pigments like Titanium Dioxide (PW6). Professional-grade white pencils achieve their characteristic bright, solid coverage precisely because they utilise this pigment in higher concentrations. In student-quality formulations, cost considerations often necessitate the use of less expensive or less concentrated pigments, resulting in a more translucent white that struggles to show up vibrantly against dark backgrounds.
Coloured pencil study of a Barn Owl, rendered on Fabriano Black Black paper with WH Smith pencils.
Consequently, when working on black or dark coloured paper, achieving effective highlights and strong colour laydown with the WHSmith pencils, often requires strategic application or supplementation. Interestingly, even the student-quality white, despite its translucency, can serve a valuable purpose as a foundational layer. For instance, in this portrait of a Barn Owl, the white colouration and feathers were developed by applying a light application of the WHSmith white pencil laid down first, subtly lightening the paper's surface. This prepared base then allowed subsequent layers of pigment, particularly brighter tones, to appear lighter and more vibrant. For the final, more opaque white layers, a professional-grade white such as the Derwent Drawing Chinese White was applied.
Working with Coloured Pencils on Textured Surfaces
Snow Leopard coloured pencil drawing, focusing on its expressive eyes. Created on Sepia Canson Mi-tientes Touch paper with the WH Smith 48-colour pencil set.
The inherent tooth of textured papers offers a significant advantage when working with WH Smith coloured pencils. These surfaces excel at gripping pigment, meaning even with student-quality pencils, a little goes a long way. This allows for efficient colour application, requiring fewer layers to build intensity compared to smoother papers. Furthermore, the robust nature of WH Smith pencils makes them an excellent choice for foundational layers on these abrasive surfaces. As previously discussed, they can be effectively applied as a base, providing initial colour and tone without excessive consumption of materials. This strategic approach allows artists to then layer over with professional-quality pencils, which not only offer superior pigmentation for finer details and vibrant top layers but also provide the crucial lightfast qualities that student-grade pencils, including the WH Smith range, typically lack. This combination leverages the cost-effectiveness and good pigment laydown of the WH Smith pencils for initial stages, while benefiting from the archival properties and refined colour of professional sets for the longevity of the artwork. For more insights and techniques on working with textured paper, explore our dedicated article: A Coloured Pencil Artist's Guide to Textured Paper
Conclusions
The WH Smith coloured pencils offer a surprising level of versatility in application, often rivalling that of some professional brands. This makes them an exceptional tool for artists to practice various techniques and build confidence before committing to the significant investment required for a professional-grade set. While it's true there's a clear distinction in pigment concentration between student and professional brands—a factor directly reflected in their price—the WH Smith range stands out as an excellent introduction to coloured pencils. Their performance allows beginners to fully explore the medium's capabilities, from layering and blending to creating detailed work, without the pressure of potentially wasting expensive supplies. This accessibility ensures that aspiring artists can develop fundamental skills and discover their passion for coloured pencils, making them a highly recommended starting point on any artistic journey.
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Information regarding the specific ingredients used in these pencils is not publicly available, making it impossible to definitively confirm their vegan status. However, it's generally unlikely for student-grade pencils to be classified as vegan-friendly. Their formulations may or may not include animal-derived ingredients, which could be present in binding agents, wax components, or even as trace substances from processing materials. |
UPDATED JUNE 2025
