Faces are hard. Skin is never just one colour, and the wrong pink can make a portrait look like a mannequin. The Luminance Portrait Box of 20 is Caran d'Ache's answer: twenty colours chosen for realistic portraits of people and animals, from the palest highlights to the deep shadow tones that make features turn.

What You Get in the Portrait Box

These are the colours Caran d'Ache added when they grew the Luminance range to 100, chosen to complement the existing palette with the subtle tones portrait artists kept asking for. Use the box on its own for portraits, or add it to a Box of 40 or 76 for a complete realism kit.

Every pencil is archival Luminance: ASTM D-6901 rated lightfastness, a 3.8mm creamy permanent lead and an FSC certified cedar barrel. The box measures about 26.7 x 19 x 1.8cm with a foam insert.

Colours in the Portrait Box of 20

All 20 colours by number and name, as published for this set. Every colour is also sold on its own, so note the numbers of your favourites for top ups.

Caran d'Ache occasionally updates set assortments, so the colours in your box may vary slightly from this list.

The Caran d'Ache Difference: Swiss Made Since 1915

Caran d'Ache has made drawing tools in Geneva for more than a century, and they still make them the slow way, in their own Swiss workshops at Thônex just outside the city. Not outsourced, not rebadged, not made wherever is cheapest this year. Every Luminance pencil is designed and made in Switzerland, from the pigment-rich lead to the FSC certified cedar that wraps it.

It is still a family company too. The Hübscher family has led Caran d'Ache since the 1930s, and today Carole Hübscher runs it as the fourth generation. That continuity is why the quality does not wobble from batch to batch. The Luminance pencil you buy this year lays down exactly like the one you bought five years ago, which matters when you are matching colours across a body of work.

This is the company that launched Prismalo in 1931, the world's first watercolour pencil, so coloured pencils are not a side line for them, they are the whole point. Luminance is their flagship, the pencil they put their name to for professional, archival work. We have stocked Caran d'Ache at Art Shed Brisbane for years, and Luminance is the pencil our coloured pencil artists save up for.

Why Professional Artists Choose Luminance

• Lightfastness you can prove. Made to ASTM D-6901 with every colour rated LFI or LFII. Your originals and commissions keep their colour.
• A lead that does the work. Creamy and pigment rich, so colour goes down in fewer layers and burnishes to a painterly finish.
• Colour you can find again. Every barrel matches its lead and carries the colour name and number, so reordering is easy.
• Responsibly made. FSC certified cedar, designed and made in Switzerland.
• Open stock. Every colour is sold individually, so your box never has to run out.

Drawing Portraits with Luminance

Map your values first with light layers, then glaze colour over the top. Keep the paper white for the brightest highlights in eyes and skin.

Burnish skin with a light tone or a Caran d'Ache pencil blender for a smooth, lifelike finish, then add crisp detail to eyes and hair last.

Browse more coloured pencil sets, all our pencil sets, or the full Caran d'Ache range.

Questions About the Caran d'Ache Luminance 6901 Portrait Box of 20