Koh-i-Noor Progresso Woodless Color Pencils – Test

Woodless pencils make even more sense as a colourful artist’s medium. The Koh-i-noor Progresso woodless colored pencil set is a great art tool with a startling range of use in art and doodling.

Vishal: We are testing the Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Progresso Woodless Coloured pencils. They look like colored pencils but there’s no wood and they’re all color. So, Samir why don’t you and Minjal tell us about these things.

Samir: As I said these are very different. They are in the shape of a pencil but most of us think of pencils as having some amount of wood casing in them and these are just a stick, like a crayon, or a pigment with a plastic casing. So it’s just a very thin casing that you can sharpen like you would a normal pencil but there is very little that makes it a pencil other than the shape and they’re also great.

Vishal: Yeah, we enjoyed using them a lot so if you want the short version, yeah, that’s it we enjoyed using them. But the more pencil per pencil of the Progresso allows you to do things like sharpening it down to get that super long point that you then use.

Samir: We have tried a bunch of color pencils before. We’ve tried the Prismacolors which are probably the closest to these as far as the the texture of the pigment itself is concerned but even those are maybe a few mm thick, the actual pigment, whereas here you have the entire thickness of the pencil that you can work with, which is just great when you want to do this kind of broad shading.

Vishal: And at the same time you can go in like a regular pencil, hold it the normal way and do a very nice line, it’s a lively line and Minjal, this lively line is almost a feature of theirs, isn’t it?

Minjal: Yes, it is. However, since there is no wooden casing these pencils tend to be a little fragile and can break easily.

Samir: I guess as far as strength is concerned this is like the diametric opposite of the Ikea pencils we tried, which were meant for kids and were a centimeter or two thick.

The Koh-I-Noor company is kind of unique these days because as we have gone through over 60 plus episodes, a lot of the stationery brands that we grew up with which we thought were separate companies are all kind of now large conglomerates owned by brand holding companies. Koh-I-Noor continues to be an independent company and it’s also one of the oldest ones. Koh-I-Noor started in 1790.

Vishal: Was the Koh-i-Noor around at the time?

Samir: Yes, it was named after the Koh-i-Noor Diamond. It’s from the Czech Republic and it was started by a man called Joseph Hardtmuth, hence the the name. Although it didn’t start with his name in it. I think his name was put in by his sons in 1890.

What’s interesting about pencils and Koh-I-Noor is that they started in 1790 but by 1802 they were the first ones to patent the making of a graphite lead by mixing it with kaolin – it’s a specific kind of silicate clay, so they were one of the first ones to standardize how and what is mixed into a modern pencil with a wood casing. And in fact they were one of the first ones to put in like a cedarwood yellow casing which was introduced in the New York World Fair, if I’m not mistaken.

Minjal: Which was the very popular Koh-I-Noor Yellow Pencil.

Samir: Exactly. So, Koh-I-Noor, as much as this is a woodless pencil, has a huge and important history to do with the wood pencil.

Vishal: Well, it’s a great history and they continue to make progress hence the Progresso, I’m guessing, that’s where the name comes from. What we do on this show is test drives. So Minjal, show us your test drive. Did you use some regular pencil for the finer lines?

Minjal: So the finer lines, the black outline is with the Uni pins, our favorites, and the coloring, the shading is with the Koh-I-Noor Progresso pencils.

Samir: It’s such a very ink – like gradation.

Minjal: Yeah, I actually tried this on the rough cartridge paper and the smooth paper. With the textured paper obviously you get some whites in the background, it’s not very easy to blend on that kind of paper, the blending is much smoother on the smooth paper.

I also sharpened the pencils and they are extremely fragile. So I think applying a lot of pressure is not a good idea with these pencils.

One may think that it is just a color pencil at the end of the day that every color pencil will be like the other one but this one is actually quite different to use. It feels like a really nice, waxy crayon.

Vishal: Yes and at the same time it’s vibrant without being overwhelmingly gaudy.

Minjal: I’ve seen a lot of reviewers mention that they’re not very easy to blend because they’re fragile. But in smaller areas it actually blends quite well.

Vishal: You’re right, it blends so well that you would think that it’s almost like this color just being washed, like a water soluble pencil. Are these water – soluble?

Minjal: No, they’re not, I tried it. Staedtler Luna is the only one that we’ve tried so far which was water soluble.

Vishal: I had a lot of fun doing a 90s kind of editorial and advertising illustration. I never quite knew how to get it because you try it with a waxy crayon or a color pencil as a kid, and you would never get that lively line.

Whereas here after I tried using it like a regular pencil, like laying down a base coat and then I just mistakenly did a heavy line and thought, wait that looks fantastic, let me just do more heavy lines! I would gladly use this set and these pencils again even just one of them.

Samir: And I just really love how you can get something that’s so smoothly graded and something that’s so rough and textured from the same instrument, that’s not that common to be able to do actually.

Vishal: And I should say that this was zero effort in the sense that I did it as a quick sketch but at some point when I understood that I could just lean into that without the effort. I did not have to think of every line, this came together very quickly.

Everything from these kind of textured, rounded reds to these very hard reds were done with the same pencil, just like a different stance change and a little effort, very easy. I can see why people in advertising, specially in the ’90s, graphic designers and advertising people saying that the Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth color pencils are the best, just go and get those.

Samir: I mean Koh-I-Noor has always produced some of the tools that are used in the sort of industry the most. I remember having one of their technical pens and they were great too, so they are very dependable as far as the quality.

Vishal: I mean 200 plus years now, 220 years at least or 30 years of continuous operation, making the same thing, that has to be some kind of record.

Minjal: I remember visiting Prague and they have standalone stores with only Koh-I-Noor stationery and it is delightful. They are stacked with every possible object that you can imagine, all Koh-I-Noor and they are a little expensive but the quality of course is excellent.

Vishal: They are worth it and I think Samir’s test drive really shows that off and you will finally get to see the range of all of these.

Samir: I think the entire purpose of this as I went along with it was to just show the full range of it because as Vishal was saying you can get these really sharp lines and at the same time you can use the side and get these beautiful gradations between the colors which is again not easy to do with most color pencils and definitely not easy to do on a textured paper like this.

Minjal: They look like crayons on textured paper.

Samir: And obviously we’ve mentioned this with color pencils before, you can get some really painterly, rich, rendered results with color pencils but that can take hours and days of layering. This is maybe about an hour, so there’s a lot more that can be done with this but the fact that in an hour you can do even this level of of rendering is just remarkable.

Minjal: They’re a little expensive where we are in India. A set of 12 would cost 3.5k rupees right and I think in the US you can get them for $14 – $15.

Samir: The only thing I think that these pencils cannot do is that because of the very crayon nature of the pigment you can’t get those super sharp, fine points. So if you’re trying to do any sort of hatching kind of coloring with it that’s not really going to work out. It gives you a nice sort of lively line but if you wanted to do thin hatching these are not the pencils for that.

Vishal: I think in that case if you’re spending the money there is the alternative of the mechanical color leads, like the Color Eno’s from Pilot, I believe. And those are good, I have tried those, their color is very, it’s good, it’s subtle but it is expensive as well, but also if you want that fine line you can get a 07 or 05 I think in that.

I think you should go and get a Progresso, see I think they do sell them in single colors, because I know a lot of people these artistic grade ones you buy them as they finish rather than buying sets.

Samir: Yeah and that would be very useful with an instrument like this, like even if you just want a single red or something to highlight things in your other materials and other work it’s worth it.

Vishal: For more shows and episodes you should go to inkymemo.com which is our website which has transcripts of many of these shows, if you prefer reading them rather than seeing them individually.

And we hope that you’ll be back next time with us to see more Stationery Test Drives and more other things from Inky Memo.

Samir: And if you would like to look at a pencil with a lot more pencil in it look at our episode on the Ikea Mala pencils. And if you want something that’s a little less waxy try out our video on the Prismacolors.

Vishal: The Koh-I-Noor, it’s a gem!

1. Koh-I-Noor Progresso Woodless Colored 12-Pencil Set, Assorted Colored Pencils – https://amzn.to/4jnSAmB
2. Staedtler Luna Classic Water Color Pencil 36 Colors – https://amzn.to/42ZCiKR
3. Ikea MÅLA Colored Pencil 10 Pack, Assorted Colors – https://amzn.to/42rLTdk
4. Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils, Soft Core, Botanical Garden Set, 12 Count – https://amzn.to/44ERIWa
5. Koh-I-Noor 1500 HB Graphite Pencil (Single) – https://amzn.to/430M6nV
6. Uni Pin Fineliner Drawing Pen – Sketching Set – Black Ink – Set of 6 – https://amzn.to/3EzJu7k
7. Pilot Color Eno 0.7mm Automatic Mechanical Pencil 8 Color Set & 0.7mm Lead Refill 8 Color Set – https://amzn.to/3ECQRe9
8. Canson XL Series Mixed Media Pad, Side Wire, 7×10 inches, 60 Sheets – Heavyweight Art Paper for Watercolor, Gouache, Marker, Painting, Drawing, Sketching – https://amzn.to/3GoxyWt