I was a little astonished when I opened the tin to see that the pencils have round casings, which is something that I’ve rarely seen except in children’s pencils. Although the Mono range is much darker than the Faber and Staedtler pencils I generally use, I just loved the way that they glide across the page. Another observation I made was that despite the softer ‘B’ grades being blacker than almost any of the pencils I’ve reviewed here, their leads were super strong, gave off no graphite dust at all and would hardly smudge even when I tried. The colours start from a pure white casing for the 4H grade, and then get progressively more grey towards the silvery HB.

With its rich and dark lead, it's easy to create bold and dramatic lines, making it an essential tool for artists, designers, and anyone who loves to draw.I’m not necessarily saying that the 9000s are superior to the other pencils I’ve awarded top marks to, but for the type of drawing that I do (light, quite detailed portraits) they suit my style better than a darker, softer range. The pencils are fairly expensive here if bought individually and are better value when purchased in a tin, where because because the range of grades (only 3H to 6B) is so small you receive several duplicates. The 16 different grades of hardness range from a delicate grey hue to a deep graphite black, and offer artists a wide range of possibilities.

This tin of Derwent Soft Graphic Sketching Pencils is a perfect starting point for what every artist needs: a good set of traditional, high-quality graphite pencils.If they aren’t, you’ll encounter that gritty, ‘scratchy’ feeling (and sometimes even a squeaky noise) when you hit a lump of clay and your pencil doesn’t make a good mark. s are dependable in other ways too: I always find the leads smooth and never gritty or scratchy and their grading scale is 100% consistent with the shades darkening smoothly and gradually as they rise up or down the scale. From 4H to 9B, each pencil has been varnished with the tone of that grade, making it easy to spot in your pencil pouch. Faber-Castell's PITT Graphic range provides all creative artists with an extensive range of pencils and crayons in different grades of hardness for sketching, graphic design and shading work.

Therefore if you don’t put your pencil back with the lettering facing up you can’t tell which grade is which.You can read more on the pencil grading system here, but to summarise briefly: pencils are graded on a scale that runs from the hardest grades which have a lot of clay in them and which make a very light mark, to the softest grades which have the least clay and mark very darkly. Therefore you get quite an extreme degree of tonal gradation between the lightest and darkest pencils. Grafwoods have one brilliant innovation which is that the casings are colour coded, so you can identify the grade of the pencil visually without reading the written grade indicator. At first I thought this was quite mad – the point of regular hexagonal casing is after all to stop the pencils sliding around on your desk – but then I picked one up and it felt so lovely, slim and smooth to hold that I was quite won over! In either case they are surprisingly cheap which I find quite baffling because they are such an excellent pencil.

This pencil range hasn’t been available in the UK for that long and many people aren’t familiar with the Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth company.It is beloved by many designers, draughtsmen and animators but is equally acclaimed for fine art sketching. Companies apply the grading scale as they wish and as you can see there can be wild disparity between ranges, with a HB grade in a very dark range like Tombow’s ‘Mono’ pencil equating tonally to around a 5B in a very light range such as Faber-Castell’s ‘9000’ pencil. Art Design pencils are encased in pure cedar wood with an ultra-fine, extra-resistant graphite lead. It turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong: the Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth company was founded back in 1790 and its Austrian founder Joseph Hardtmuth played an important role in the development of the modern pencil made from graphite and clay.