The Pilot Water Colour Set.

Whoever thought of this at Pilot deserves both a big hug and a tiny kick.

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There are other versions of this set, and Alberto Lung of robotninjamonsters reviews one in his Kid Sketching blog. It seems that Pilot has addressed customer feedback regarding portability, and now the set comes with a cloth carry case.

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I have a Pilot Croquis leadholder, and 6B leads for it. This was the first time I saw the watercolor leads, so of course I had to bring them home. I wasn’t expecting much by way of pigment intensity, but the packaging added much to the set’s appeal. When opened, the cloth case has a pocket for the plastic palette on the left, and individual pockets for the Croquis pencils on the right.

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I don’t know if there’s such a thing as being too organized when it comes to watercolor sets. So many compartments for such a flimsy plastic palette! The waterbrush is of good quality. For some reason I was expecting a blue sponge, then remembered that the Pentel Aquash watercrayon set is the one that has it.

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I took the pencils out for a spin. My usual technique is coloring then wetting, although with these pencils one can also shave the lead into one of the palette wells and dissolve with water.

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I used a lightweight sketch paper for these samples, hence the buckling. The texture is soft and crumbly.

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It dissolves easily, which is a plus.

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Let’s pretend this is a flower. I deliberately held back on dissolving all the color because I like leaving some clue as to the material origin of my doodles.

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My camera was having a bad day, and so was my color correction. Don’t mind the pinkness of the paper – the droopy flower is very close to its real-life color.

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Pilot gets big hugs for the cuteness, portability, and real-life usefulness of this set. The tiny kick is for the cheap plastic palette, which I fear will crease badly and tear within a few days of use, it’s that flimsy. Can anyone suggest a replacement (or an easy instructable)?