STAEDTLER Drawing Pencils - Mars Lumograph - for Sketching - Assorted Degrees, 8B, 7B, 6B, 4B, 2B, HB - Pack of 6, 100B G6

Used by many professional artists, excellent.

These pencils are exceptional. They are very black, not grey and leave no graphite shine. I do not use these for skin or shading because they don't blend out well. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are parts you don't want to smudge, like eyelashes. I use caran d'ache grafwood for my skin as they are very soft and blend out well. Not great for detail though. Then I use Faber-Castell pitt matte pencils for most other parts of a drawing. Using all 3 brands enables me to get the best of them all.

These pencils don’t have that shine that many others do. That is what I wanted. They are more black as well.

I've just taken up drawing as a hobby (so not a expert or anything!) and having done some internet research wanted to treat myself to some nice new pencils. I want to try hyperrealism, or at least make my drawings look as realistic as possible, so got the 12 set of Faber Castell 9000 - and these so that I can have some really black pencils, and a wider range of values to choose from just as im starting out to see what works for me. First up - the pencils which came in the tin are HB, 2B,4B,6B,7B and 8B,different to the description, but Im happy about that as I didnt want 2 2Bs/4Bs. Ive attached a photo of them tried out against the FC 9000's - you can definitely see a difference. So Im glad I bought these because now I have a much wider range of values to work with as Im just getting into my new hobby. I saw a youtube artist video recommending use of a Faber Castell polychromos black pencil alongside her FC9000's to use for the bits she wanted to be really black. I have a set of FC Classic coloured pencils so tried this out next to them for comparison - its a good idea to use if you only have normal graphite pencils, but I found it to only be about as black (in my untrained eye) as the 6B in this Staedtler Black set, and even that isnt as 'black' as these new pencils, it seems a bit of a warmer black, if that makes sense? So on a positive note, these pencils - all 6-do have blacker values compared to the FC9000's and are worth buying for that reason. On a negative - its only really the 4-8B's that are really what I would have bought if I was buying them individually, because to me, testing them on my cheap paper, the HB, 2B and 4B dont seem much blacker/matter than the FC9000 6,7 & 8Bs (they still contain some graphite I think) - thats why I didnt give 5 stars for value for money, because you can probly buy the 6,7&8B black pencils - the ones that really stand out as being something different to what you get in a normal graphite pencil set - for less than the price of a full box of these. Still glad I bought them though, to experiment with - its always good to have a bigger range of things to work with and try out when youre learning something new. And glad theres no duplicates in the tin like it says on the description.

What great pencils top quality from Germany Highly recommended

Perfectly happy with these pencils. Just to to be able to draw.lol

How did I miss these pencils in the past, I don't know. These work great. No reflections from the light, especially with 4B, 6B, 7B and 8B pencils. Will definitely buy again at some point. These don't break neither.

Had never used these before but have them a go as was struggling to achieve dark tones with standard graphite and wow! Will be repurchasing when needed.