Tombow are my favorite pencils when it comes to drawing. in my selection I place them in second place for being objective because unlike Mitsubishi they paint darker than normal
Give the Koh-I-Noor Toison D'Or drawing pencils a try. They are so underrated in my experience. PS... My number one is the Uni Mitsubishi 2.0 lead holders with their 2mm graphite. Like butter but better!
A comment for the algorithm. I don't pretend to understand YT but I want to contribute as little as I can, because Harry put so much work in these videos. Thank you for all you do. Much appreciated. Cheers from Italy. Dan 🧡
I’ve tried many, many graphite pencils. There’s only one set you need: the Faber Castell Pitt Graphite Matt. Not having a shine and going up to 14B is a gamechanger.
I have a few different brands in my graphite pencil collection, but still reach for the old Koh-i-Noor Toison D'Or tin and Palomino Blackwing that I bought as an art student many moons ago. Don't know whether that's down to performance or familiarity to be honest, but I like them because I find value transitions between the grades quite smooth.
Looking at your chart, I'm noticing how much darker the Grafwood HB is than the 4 others you tested. I have the Grafwood HB which I love, however I purchased their F grade in order to have a slightly paler graphite, however it's hugely paler, more like a 2H and extremely hard. This was disappointing that their grades seem inconsistent. I'm also seeing a big difference in darkness between their HB and H on your chart. Thanks for the interesting review, I agree that the Hi Uni's are so incredibly smooth, they're wonderful. When I'm writing, I like to feel and hear a little feedback, though, there's something satisfying about listening to my pencil, which is why I mostly use HB, F and H grades for writing.
I've used the Windsor and Newton set and found it quite awful. They lay down very smoothly and I love that about them, but there were hard, scratchy chunks within the lead. It was even in the 4b and 6b. And of course, the way I find the chunks is to scratch my artwork. Unfortunately, I just cannot risk using them.
This is really helpful. I never got into graphite too much because I found the scratchiness of certain pencils too frustrating, but it's good to know theyre not all like that and that the H pencils lean more scratchy than the Bs
I have a Derwent 5H that I got when I was in art college - so early 90s. I found it again last year after I started getting into graphite pencils in recent years so I tested it against my Tombow Mono 100 and Faber Castell 9000 and it's the least scratchy out of the three brands. So maybe something's changed over the years with their grittiness. The Tombow Mono 100 range are like butter, they're so, so smooth and I love how they let you lay down just the right amount of graphite. I hope you get a chance to do a full review and compare them to the Hi-Uni as those two brands seem to be in a league of their own. I've not tried the Hi-Uni but I've noticed the 22 set on Amazon for £30 which is very tempting. Anyway, thanks for the video, listening to you talk about graphite pencils is just what I needed tonight!
Staedtler Lumograph is my absolute favorite -- but I will admit to not having tried Hi-Uni. I do have Hi-Uni for my mechanical pencils, and am very satisfied with them.
My university days in 1980's has always been Steadtler. Been using Carsn dAche for last 12 years, have Derwent mostly gifted to me. As for Faber-Castell recently got matt black. For technical, Steadtler are best.alomg with their Mars sharpener and Mar Plastic erase.
No1: Faber Castell Graphite Aquarelle No2: Faber Castell 9000 No3: Blackwing No4: Faber Castell Pitt Graphite Matt No5: Mitsubishi Hi-Uni That's a top 5 drawing pencils, in terms of performance and quality. Derwent can't be in a top 5 when even Staedtler and Tombow can't fit.
Derwent absolutely deserves a mention, if not in the top 5 at least as an honorable mention at the end. Yes, the wood lamination is kinda meh, there's definitely some QC issues with scratchy pencils and wonky grading, but Derwents are special because they (to my knowledge) are the only pencils that still use English graphite, which is still the most unique graphite on the planet because of how soft and pure it comes right out of the ground even before the leads are manufactured. That alone means Derwent will always have a niche, because when you get good Derwent pencils in your tin they are GOOD. It's also weird to me that you mention Blackwings, because their claim to fame is the laydown of their super-soft Japanese leads... which you can get from Tombow or Mitsubishi without paying a brand tax for a pencil that looks like its eraser got chewed up by somebody. For Pitt Graphite it's just a hard disagree... we're in completely subjective territory now but they feel extremely waxy to me due to whatever they did to make it matte, the laydown feels inferior in every way to the Castell 9000. They're not bad, but they're definitely not top 5 in my opinion.
I can't believe Derwent is in that top 5 and tombow mono 100 isn't 😅 For me it would be; 1 mitsubishi hi uni 2 Tombow mono 100 3 palomino Blackwing (for quick drawing) 4 General's Kimberly 9xxB (like matte pencil) 5 Caran d'ache Grafwood
maybe the General's should not be on that list because it is a compound pencil but they are my 5 favorites, personally Derwent disappointed me and Faber-Castell is not up to par
Tom Bow Mono isn’t in the list cause I’ve not tested that pencil properly, a wonderful subscriber sent me a few of them and they are gorgeous and if I can get a full set of them I’d really love to review them. Never heard of the Generals Kimberly so I’ll look them up and try to get a set, I know Generals is a magnificent charcoal manufacturer. Love your selection and added two pencils to my list of review.
@TheArtGearGuide I would be very excited to see your review of the Tombow Mono 100. The Kimberly line of General's is normal graphite in all its graduations and in truth I myself have not tried them only the marking as 9xxB which unlike the rest is a composite graphite in the style of the staedtler mars lumograph black and the Faber-Castell pitt matt. I can say that I only found a video on RU-vid of the 9xxB more than 10 years ago I think I remember and I felt the need to have that pencil in my hands , it is really the only totally anti-Reflective. that I have tried, It would be wonderful if you made him known to other artists just as I have popularized him in my environment. 9xxB that great unknown that surpasses the best known of other brands.
Tombow Mono100 is a soft graphite like butter on paper the only thing I can object to is that they tend to get darker than usual according to standard graduations. A greeting and a cordial embrace from Spain of a passionate art materials (I hope machine translation doesn't distort my messages)
I just ordered my first set of Caran d’Asche in that awful 15 set tin. First of all, I don’t know what they were thinking with that tin, but personally, I don’t want to have to pull every pencil out and sort them all by grade any time I have a few minutes to draw. Secondly, out of the 15 pencils, two were/are cracked nearly in half and it was done at the factory because they are painted over…shoddy quality control. Thirdly, the lettering on the pencils is very poor quality. Every pencils lettering is bleeding over making it look like the quality of a dime store pencil. For the money I spent on these pencils I was really expecting to be wow’ed…in a good way however, I ended up being wow’ed in a bad way. Like they say, fool me once…
Wow I am shocked at the state your pencils were in, have you spoke to Caran d’Ache about this? Take some photos and send them to Caran d’Ache they have an excellent customer support service. I agree with you totally about the round tin they arrive in but for me I have drawers to put all my pencils in or even little wire mesh tubs that look like waste paper baskets only much smaller for my pencils. If you plan on keeping them in the tin it will become more and more problematic for you as the pencils wear down from sharpening. Let me know how you get on with Caran d’Ache, they will sort out your issue they don’t expect customer to pay the money they do and end up with as you say dime store pencils.
@@TheArtGearGuide yeah, it was pretty disappointing after all the hype I had heard about this brand. I had ordered them from Amazon and a few minutes after posting on your video I started stewing about it and went through the process of exchanging them. Amazon says the replacement will be here Saturday. Hopefully this time is a much better experience. If not, I will absolutely contact them and see what they say. If that happens, I will let you know how they handled it.
