Faber-Castell Pitt Graphite 9B Pure Pencil

Product Information

The pencils don’t seem to be as well bonded as the Faber-Castells and Staedtlers and break more easily especially when you sharpen them, though this may be due in part to the soft crumbliness of the very dark leads.

It’s vital that both graphite and clay should be finely ground and well mixed to give a uniform and consistent stroke. We hope you are very happy with every purchase from Pegasus Art however if you are not entirely satisfied we are here to help. Graphite pencils are mixed with a binder of clay, and different grades of softness and darkness are created by the varying the graphite and clay ratio. The "green pencil from Faber", which was already being mentioned with approval by Van Gogh and Goethe, has now become part of everyday life. 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.The ‘HB’ grade is in the middle, the soft pencils are labelled ‘B’ for ‘black’ (B, 2B, 3B and so on) and the harder pencils begin with an ‘H’ for ‘hard’ (H, 2H, 3H etc). This will be a plus for some, but if you want a good blending pencil then the Grafwood really wouldn’t be for you.

Although Conté are well known and popular in the UK their graphite drawing pencil range is not widely sold which surprises me because it really is very good. If you wanted to draw more lightly with them you’d need to use the H grades, but because these stop at only 3H there would be a limit to how light you could go.

The pencils are very popular in the UK where many people rate them for their blending ability, but I personally feel that they don’t match the standard of some of their rivals despite the fact that they often cost more. Therefore you get quite an extreme degree of tonal gradation between the lightest and darkest pencils.

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. Faber-Castell’s 9000 range which was first launched in 1905, is my personal favourite and despite having tried many others I’ve so far never been swayed from it. 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. Japanese wood-casing pencils tend to run very dark and soft and the Monos are indeed extremely dark – they only go up to a 6B grade, but the Mono 6B is even blacker than a 9B from the Staedtler or Derwent ranges.

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.