Palomino Blackwing Wooden Pencil - Pack of 12

I find these are really nice for shading they are very dark compared to most other pencils I’ve tried but there also very soft so there not my first choice for sketching. The erasers actually pretty good and also removable so that comes in pretty handy. It’s a very well made pencil the lead cores been dead center all the ones I’ve tried. I’m definitely going to keep a few in my pencil box from now on.

When I bought these, I ideally wanted to use them for notes or homework. Keep this in mind, because I'm no artist.

I love how dark and smooth these pencils are, but they're a bit impractical for everyday use. I write extremely lightly, but the lead still loses its point pretty quickly. Even if I rotate the pencil at the end of every word, the line becomes thick very quickly. The only solution is to sharpen the pencil every couple minutes. Also, the unique design of the eraser doesn't really help, since you won't be able to use a pencil holder to make use of that last inch of precious lead.

I find that writing with my Rotring 600 with .5mm 4B lead works much better. It's just as smooth, if not smoother than the Blackwing, and there's no need to sharpen every 20 words.

Overall, I'm sure the Blackwings have their use for artists or the occasional bold word, but they're not the best for notes.