About Castle Art Supplies
Castle Arts (sold under the Castle Art Supplies name) is an art-supply brand built around a stated mission to make quality materials affordable enough for beginners while still holding up for working artists. Beyond the colored pencil sets we feature, the catalog runs to sketching and graphite pencils, watercolor pencils, acrylic and watercolor paints, and brush pens. Product development is led in part by resident artist Peter Phillips, who works from Northumberland, England and exhibits through a gallery at Bamburgh Castle; his role at Castle Arts includes designing product ranges and building the instructional tutorials packed in with sets.
Independent coverage backs up what we found in testing: a review on The Art Gear Guide put the pencils through repeated sharpening and heavy layering and reported "absolutely no shattering of the core whatsoever," a core described as "creamy and soft, but not too soft where it is crumbling," and pigment strong enough that "the Blue are incredibly opaque" after six layers. Castle Arts backs every set with a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee, and on Amazon its two colored pencil lines have built a large, consistent review base rather than a thin or recent one.
Brand website: castlearts.com
What Castle Art Supplies makes
Castle Art Supplies's range runs wider than the products we review. The lines we know best from our own testing are marked with a star:
Colored pencil sets
wax-based soft-core sets from 24 to 120 colors — featured on DeskRated
Watercolor pencils
dual-use dry-to-wet water-soluble sets — featured on DeskRated
Sketching & graphite pencils
drawing and shading sets
Acrylic & watercolor paints
tube and pan sets
Brush pens
coloring and lettering markers
Why we recognized Castle Art Supplies
The DeskRated Top Brand recognition isn't paid for and can't be applied for. We award it to the brands whose products consistently stand out in our hands-on category reviews. Castle Art Supplies earned it on the strength of the products below, evaluated the same way every product on this site is: bought, used at a real desk, and judged on merit.
Castle Art Supplies products we rated highly
Castle Art Supplies Colored Pencils Set of 72
Soft wax-based cores lay down buttery color comparable to Prismacolor Premier at a fraction of the per-pencil cost, making this the closest practical alternative for adult coloring book work under fifty dollars. The zippered fabric travel case stores all 72 pencils in individual elastic loops, which protects the cores in transit better than a rigid tin, and a printed fold-out tutorial gives new colorists a genuine head start on blending and shading technique.
Read the 7 Best Colored Pencils of 2026 guide →
Castle Art Supplies Watercolor Pencils Set, 72 Vibrant Pigments
A dual-use formulation works as a conventional dry colored pencil until a wet brush activates the pigment into a watercolor wash, so one set covers both drawing and painting technique. The 72-color range is the broadest watercolor pencil palette we found at this price, and it's the most-reviewed watercolor pencil set on Amazon, with a presentation tin and fold-out tutorial that make it an easy first watercolor pencil set.
Read the 7 Best Colored Pencils of 2026 guide →What earned Castle Art Supplies the recognition
- One of the few brands with two products among our top picks in our colored pencil reviews: both the wax-based 72-count and the watercolor 72-count sets earned their places in testing.
- Independent review coverage (The Art Gear Guide) found zero core shattering under repeated sharpening and heavy layering, a real durability edge over premium wax-core competitors.
- A combined 20,000+ Amazon reviews across the two featured sets at 4.7-4.8 stars, a large and consistent review base rather than a thin or recent one.
- 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee backing every set.
- Product design led in part by a working resident artist (Peter Phillips), with instructional tutorials included in the packaging rather than sold separately.