Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor Review

Up for review is a set of 12 Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils in assorted greys. Is it worth the money?

What They Are

Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils are oil-based, light fast and break resistant coloured pencils. This particular set of German-made pencils is priced at a bit over CAD$26 on Amazon.

sketching with the white pencil in the set — Sketching with the white pencil in the set

The Paper

I use Strathmore paper for most of my art; I trust its quality and it rarely disappoints. To review this set of Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor assorted grey pencils, I decided to go with black mixed media paper vellum for a bit of tooth. I wanted to test how the white goes on the black paper. While it wasn’t completely opaque, it did show up well enough on the black paper.

First Impression

This is my first time using any coloured pencils on black paper and I was a little skeptical how this would turn out. Ideally, to use white pencil on black paper, you don’t want big areas of white like this, but I really liked to do this portrait of Vivien Leigh.

The colour lay down was slightly opaque, so I had to layer several times to get the full opacity on the highlighted parts of the skin. Despite that, there is very little sheen since the pencils are not wax based. There is a little bit of gloss where the layers were but no real wax bloom.

Drawing of Vivien Leigh on Strathmore 400 series Black Mixed Media paper

Blending

I used all 12 pencils in the set to give it a fair review. Since this is done on black paper, I think it is an even better test of the pencils’ blendability, though the black pencils appear glossy on the paper which is normal.

The white, light greys (cold and warm) blended the best. The white is not as creamy and easy to blend as Derwent Lightfast if I have to compare the two, the latter being more opaque in a single layer than Lyra Polycolor. The silver greys are not as creamy; they feel a little scratchy on the paper but still blended out okay. Not great, but okay.

As for the darker shades, some of the medium shades in grey didn’t blend too well on the paper either. They require a bit of muscles but they blend out eventually.

For the black shades, there is one regular black, which blended well, one soft black, which was okay as well. The black hard is meant for drawing in fine details so its function isn’t to blend. These all worked fine.

Portrait of Vivien Leigh, drawn with Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils in assorted greys.

As you can see, I did sharpen the pencils quite a bit. True to their break resistant claim, they did not break at all, just like the Derwent Lightfast oil-based pencils. The Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils claim to be lightfast as well.

Overall, I would say that the Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils in assorted greys work fine, but Derwent Lightfast performed better, with more opaque colours and better blending. The biggest set I have seen is 72, so their colour range is about the same as Derwent Lightfast.