Derwent Graphic Drawing Pencils, Medium, Metal Tin, 12 Count (34214)

As an artist, I have only used Derwent pencils. They are the best and this set gives you everything you need. If you are ever in England you should go to the factory, very interesting. You cant miss with this set.

I am almost certain I received the new pencils as it states on the back that it is a new formula and they say Britain instead of England on the pencil. Overall the pencils are wonderful. In some other reviews, there were issues with impurities and scratchiness in the pencils. I have found scratchiness with two of the 24, but sharpening them seemed to eliminate the problem. However, I did take a star off for that issue. I love Derwent products overall, but want to write a fair review. I am new to drawing, but the price on this set of 24 was so low that I knew I would never see it that low again and went ahead and made the purchase. I have a set of Tombows, which has more impurities than these and the leads also break way too easily. However, I have a set of the Fine Touch Hobby Lobby pencils that I purchased for just a few bucks, set of 12. I havent had time to fully compare them, but the Fine Touch are super smooth and lay down really easy. I will update after Ive had more time with this set; but so far, Loving it!

I tend to do drawing only as a hobby in my spare time so I picked these up just to offer some different variety in my sketches when time allowed. Having used these pencils for a couple of drawings I can say that I tended to use whichever I happened to take out of the tin case. I found no real difference in my personal drawing style when using any of the pencils. This is my opinion only as I am not really using these different weight pencils for their intended purposes. Upon closer inspection you can in fact see minute difference between each pencil that can achieve a range of different effects. Overall I can say that this pencil set is a nice quality set and very nice for the more avid artist. The metal tin case in convenient to hold all the pencils and offer a great range of possibilities while drawing. If you are more skilled in sketching and drawing I would recommend this set is excellent and I would recommend it to you. If you sketch as a hobby it may be better to go with a more standardized pencil and work your way up from there.

I would still give these a favorable review since the pencils are overall higher quality than what Ive come to expect at this price range. Not shabby at all. Im in the middle of a drawing right now and I seem to be getting some bad luck (compared to other reviewers) as far as hitting some inconsistency spots in the pencils, but a quick little turn of the pencil to find a better spot has never bothered me much. Based on what other people have written in their reviews I thought these were going to be some kind of magic pencils that have uniform smoothness everywhere all the time, but that just has never been the case with any pencil Ive ever used. Maybe a little exaggeration going on, maybe Im unlucky, I dont know. Also my set had an extra HB pencil (3) and no B pencil. Not a huge deal, since the minute intensity differences you can achieve with the pencils is almost overkill anyways. For anyone else who was curious about how many of which pencils are in the set and couldnt find it on this page like me, its supposed to be (from soft to hard): 9b 8b 7b 6b 5b 4b x2 3b 2b x2 hb x2 b f h 2h x2 3h 4h 5h 6h 7h 8h 9h But again I ended up with Hb x3 and no B.

I do a lot of pencil drawing and usually keep it simple; most of my work is done with a #2 or HB pencil, and final dark shading is done with 2B and 6B. However, as I continue to improve my drawing ability, I decided that it would be helpful to have a few more pencil options for shading work. This Derwent set is perfect. At first, I figured I would just use a couple of the pencils and buy the entire set merely for the convenience. However, in my most recent piece, I found myself using about 2/3 of the different hardness values during my shading process. I usually just lay down some graphite and use a Q-Tip to spread it around each area, with the downside being the lack of precision afforded by this method. With the harder pencils, though, I could merely use the pencil to shade thoroughly, allowing me to get into tight corners without making things too dark. This is probably just basic drawing practice, but for me it was a new approach and one made possible by this set. The Derwent pencils are very high quality and this set includes all hardness values from 9H to 9B; there are a few duplicates as well for the total count of 24 (19 different hardness values). If you need a range of pencils for any kind of pencil art, look no further than this excellent set. I have attached a photo of my most recent piece (a 1969 Camaro), drawn using these pencils, in the product images above. I hope this gives a good idea of the potential of this set.

Giving these a four star review for now, but time will tell if they deserve it. Im pretty disappointed--I dont see that these perform any better than my sons Castle Art cheap artist pencil set. In fact, so far I like it less. The pencils are hard and scratchy (not just the harder numbered pencils, but all of them) and none of them seem to erase well, even using a Prismacolor. I fully admit that Im only an amateur artist, but I just dont enjoy these so far. Theyre not bad, but they were pricey for not bad pencils. I was happier with a good old yellow No. 2! But to be fair, Ill try to do a head-to-head comparison of these pencils, my sons Castle Art set, and a No. 2, and see what the results are, and then report back. Maybe Ill be surprised.

These are great and cover the whole range of grays. I had heard these are the best. They seem great so far.

I use to only draw with a number 2 pencil so I’m adjusting o these pencils. Less work and less smudging.

I have tried nearly every brand of premium graphite drawing pencil: Caran dAche, Staedtler, Faber-Castell, Koh i Noor, Tombow, Generals, Cretacolor, Conte and Derwent. I like them all, and it would be difficult to say one brand is best because theyre all good; just different users will subjectively prefer one for their personal style over others. Having said that, the Derwent pencils just feel right in my hand and seem to fit my style the best. The leads are smooth, and the hardness grades are spaced well. They feel most similar to the Faber-Castell 9000 pencils, just a touch softer (grade for grade of course), and come in a larger range of hardness values (20 vs 16). I also like the Faber-Castells, but still I slightly prefer Derwent. Overall, Derwent are my favorite brand of drawing pencil, and Ill definitely be ordering more as I use these up.

As someone with drawing for a hobby, I really like to check out different products from time to time to see how hold up compared to what I am currently using. This time though I needed new pencils because my others were getting quite short so I got these. These were disappointing, I may be picky when it comes to pencils but these were not up to par. The casing for the pencils is a big weak point, they constantly splintered no matter the sharpener I used. This caused lots of breaking of the pencil lead below the tip as the casing couldnt support much pressure from drawing. The casing also wasnt very smooth can you could tell just by sharpening the pencils. It felt like the wood grain on the pencil wasnt tight so that causing the weakness in the casing. This weakness in the casing applied for all the pencils not just one or two. The pencil lead was sub par as well, especially the 9h-2b range where the clay in the lead wasnt refined enough. The unrefined clay caused many scratches into the paper when drawing or writing and made many of the hard h pencils unusable. Though the problems with these pencils dont end there. Their higher gradient B pencils also had problems, such as, the lead being too weak to sharpen and constantly breaking. This also had the side effect of them not being able to hold a sharp tip without breaking easily. Overall, theyre not the worst I have used, but they are certainly bottom tier when it comes to the artist grade pencils I have used. Lyra Rembrandt pencils are much more refined in their h pencils they are very smooth, while remaining quite light in gradient. Tombow mono pencils are also very smooth and have amazing tip retention in their B pencils. They also get noticeably darker than the derwents. The Mars Lumographs are also an amazing well rounded set of pencils as well. Each of those sets I would easily pick over the derwents, and its not even close. Now I know that I could have gotten a bad batch of pencils, which is the only reason why these are at 2 stars instead of 1. I wish I could say better things about these pencils.