There's nothing particular about Derwent graphite pencils I don't like...I have a few but I don't use them because I like the qualities of these other pencils better! I also don't rate their coloured pencils compared to the feel and vibrancy of Faber Castell Polychromos so perhaps I was already a bit biased against the graphite ones too :)
Of the ones you show here, the Staedtlers are my favorite, and available individually at my local art shop. They have Tombow, but the ones with erasers. I think the most important thing is to put the pencil to the paper as often as possible, even if it is a simple doodle!
Great video! One of the things Ive noticed is that with cheaper pencils, they break much more often when you're sharpening them. I use a utility knife/razor blade to sharpen mine, and it's nearly impossible with cheap pencils. With good pencils it's a breeze🤷🏼♀️
Yes good point! All of these ones in the video sharpen pretty well with a knife, except maybe the softesr Goldfaber pencils. But there is definitely a big difference in the composition in the lead when you're working with cheaper pencils and so they do break often when sharpening. Thanks for your comment 😊
Thank you for all your videos, I started drawing 4 days ago, after years of admiring artists who can easily draw a realistic portrait, and I find your videos extremely helpful. Thank you for all the explanations, it's so useful to know why one is doing something. I'm using (coincidentally) the green-golden Faber Castell pencils. I bought HB, 2H and H for the beginning, but I think I will add a B one. I consider all of them rather soft to draw with or write with, especially notes for the drawings. Therefore I considered mostly the H pencils.
You're welcome, glad the videos are helping! You'll definitely need B pencils for shading the darkest areas of something like the shadow which is sometimes black. If you just get one B pencil then I'd suggest 2B. If you can get 6B as well then you should have all the pencils you need to get a full range of light and dark shading 😊
They arrived and I just compared them and there really is a difference. The 9000 do feel smoother, and it may be my imagination, but I felt I had a little more control. I'm anxious to use them as I start to get back on track with the lessons!
@@MaryannCassidy-v5u Glad to hear you like them! You can mix and match with the Goldfaber too. Eg you might like the light 9000s better and the dark Goldfabers better. Don't be afraid to experiment with them for different things.
Thank you Emily, this is a great video. I have both the Staedtler Mars Lumograph and the Faber Castell 9000 pencils and I like both of them for different projects. I would love to try out the Tombow Mono and am going to check them out. Those portrait sketches you did are beautiful! Do you have a class where you teach portrait drawing?
Thanks Sabina! I think you'll enjoy the Tombow Mono if you like to use different pencils for different types of projects, they give you something the other pencils don't have. I have a portrait drawing course called How To Draw Realistic Faces, I'll add the link in the description now, with a discount code :)
I lke the bruynzeel 2B red and the cretacolor monolith 4B. They feel so smooth and nice. I also got Koh I noor and derwent but tried then and they stay i my pencil box. They dont feel right.
Hadnt heard of Bruynzeel. I do like those pure graphite pencils like the monolith, great for high contrast if you dont mind the shine. I also have a box of unloved pencils. Funny how some pencils just feel right and others dont!
I use Staedler and I recently bought the Faber-Castell mat pencils because they don’t shine as much if you need it very dark. I must admit though that the B14 is not that dark at all. The Steadler B6 or B8 are dar more dark. I have no experience with the Staedler mat pencils. If anyone here has, please let me know how they draw. 😊
I haven't tried the Faber-Castell matte pencils before. Are they the same kind of grey as a regular pencil? I do own some of the Staedtler Lumograph black which are matte - it's a nice pencil, smooth and very matte, but I don't like using them in combination with regular graphite pencils because they look a bit strange together...
@@ThePencilRoomOnline It’s not black, a slightly darker grey but you can easily layer them but if you press too hard it does get slightly shiny though. Mixing them with the Staedler pencils is feasible as long as you don’t use the harder ones. Once you mix them with a H pencil it starts looking weird. I use a sketchbook a lot and that is not ideal because of the lower quality paper. It really looks much better on some fine grained paper like the Canson XL which I think is a good value/money ratio paper. Still, for me it could be a lot darker. As my Staedler B’s are getting shorter and shorter I bought a small tin going from HB to B8. The 8 is darker than the Matte B14 but layering that B8 means it gets very shiny. Just out of curiosity (one can never ever have too many pencils, there is no such thing), would you recommend the Staedler matte pencils or do you think it is about the same as my description of the Faber matte’s? Cheers
@@AuntieTrichome Thanks for the info. The good thing about the Staedtler matte black is that they are very dark, even the 4B can go literally black. But that's a problem if you want to combine them with graphite pencils because the colour temperature of them is different. To me it just looks like black coloured pencil added to a graphite pencil drawing. So I'd think of them like black coloured pencils that have the qualities of graphite like being layerable and erasable. This is assuming the Staedtler Mars Lumograph Black are the pencils you mean as I don't know of any other Staedtler matte pencils! So it sounds like they will be different to the faber mattes (much darker, blacker) but maybe not in a good way unless you really hate shine and are willing to do an entire drawing using just the Staedtler black mattes OR just use them for small black details like the pupil of an eye where the difference in colour/temperature wont be so obvious. I really don't use mine much at all but I don't mind graphite shine so much :)
I am doing one of your Skillshare classes. Glad to find you here!
I use Faber-Castell!
The 9000 series!
good choice :)
Thank you. Interesting! Glad I stumbled on this by accident this morning. Why do you NOT like Derwent? Curious!
There's nothing particular about Derwent graphite pencils I don't like...I have a few but I don't use them because I like the qualities of these other pencils better!
I also don't rate their coloured pencils compared to the feel and vibrancy of Faber Castell Polychromos so perhaps I was already a bit biased against the graphite ones too :)
I play/exercise with Colleen graphites, and use Fabers Pitt when I feel like I don't want to see the shine. I love how Colleen glides on paper.
Of the ones you show here, the Staedtlers are my favorite, and available individually at my local art shop. They have Tombow, but the ones with erasers. I think the most important thing is to put the pencil to the paper as often as possible, even if it is a simple doodle!
Agree, doing the drawing is the most important thing!
Thank you Emily, great info as usual.
Great video! One of the things Ive noticed is that with cheaper pencils, they break much more often when you're sharpening them. I use a utility knife/razor blade to sharpen mine, and it's nearly impossible with cheap pencils. With good pencils it's a breeze🤷🏼♀️
Yes good point! All of these ones in the video sharpen pretty well with a knife, except maybe the softesr Goldfaber pencils. But there is definitely a big difference in the composition in the lead when you're working with cheaper pencils and so they do break often when sharpening. Thanks for your comment 😊
Thank you for all your videos, I started drawing 4 days ago, after years of admiring artists who can easily draw a realistic portrait, and I find your videos extremely helpful. Thank you for all the explanations, it's so useful to know why one is doing something. I'm using (coincidentally) the green-golden Faber Castell pencils. I bought HB, 2H and H for the beginning, but I think I will add a B one. I consider all of them rather soft to draw with or write with, especially notes for the drawings. Therefore I considered mostly the H pencils.
You're welcome, glad the videos are helping! You'll definitely need B pencils for shading the darkest areas of something like the shadow which is sometimes black. If you just get one B pencil then I'd suggest 2B. If you can get 6B as well then you should have all the pencils you need to get a full range of light and dark shading 😊
Thank you, Emily, this is very helpful. I've started out with Faber Castell Goldfaber, but I'm going to look for the 9000.
Great, I think you'll notice the difference in the feel of the pencil on the paper!
They arrived and I just compared them and there really is a difference. The 9000 do feel smoother, and it may be my imagination, but I felt I had a little more control. I'm anxious to use them as I start to get back on track with the lessons!
@@MaryannCassidy-v5u Glad to hear you like them! You can mix and match with the Goldfaber too. Eg you might like the light 9000s better and the dark Goldfabers better. Don't be afraid to experiment with them for different things.
Interesting! Yes, I'll keep that in mind as I go along. Thanks, Emily!!
Thank you Emily.
Very helpful. Thank you
Thank you Emily, this is a great video. I have both the Staedtler Mars Lumograph and the Faber Castell 9000 pencils and I like both of them for different projects. I would love to try out the Tombow Mono and am going to check them out. Those portrait sketches you did are beautiful! Do you have a class where you teach portrait drawing?
Thanks Sabina! I think you'll enjoy the Tombow Mono if you like to use different pencils for different types of projects, they give you something the other pencils don't have. I have a portrait drawing course called How To Draw Realistic Faces, I'll add the link in the description now, with a discount code :)
@@ThePencilRoomOnline, thank you!
I’m getting back into sketching. I had a set of graphite pencils 2b-8b from Blinks that were great but I don’t remember the brand name 😢
I lke the bruynzeel 2B red and the cretacolor monolith 4B. They feel so smooth and nice. I also got Koh I noor and derwent but tried then and they stay i my pencil box. They dont feel right.
Hadnt heard of Bruynzeel. I do like those pure graphite pencils like the monolith, great for high contrast if you dont mind the shine.
I also have a box of unloved pencils. Funny how some pencils just feel right and others dont!
I use Staedler and I recently bought the Faber-Castell mat pencils because they don’t shine as much if you need it very dark. I must admit though that the B14 is not that dark at all. The Steadler B6 or B8 are dar more dark. I have no experience with the Staedler mat pencils. If anyone here has, please let me know how they draw. 😊
I haven't tried the Faber-Castell matte pencils before. Are they the same kind of grey as a regular pencil? I do own some of the Staedtler Lumograph black which are matte - it's a nice pencil, smooth and very matte, but I don't like using them in combination with regular graphite pencils because they look a bit strange together...
@@ThePencilRoomOnline It’s not black, a slightly darker grey but you can easily layer them but if you press too hard it does get slightly shiny though. Mixing them with the Staedler pencils is feasible as long as you don’t use the harder ones. Once you mix them with a H pencil it starts looking weird. I use a sketchbook a lot and that is not ideal because of the lower quality paper. It really looks much better on some fine grained paper like the Canson XL which I think is a good value/money ratio paper. Still, for me it could be a lot darker.
As my Staedler B’s are getting shorter and shorter I bought a small tin going from HB to B8. The 8 is darker than the Matte B14 but layering that B8 means it gets very shiny.
Just out of curiosity (one can never ever have too many pencils, there is no such thing), would you recommend the Staedler matte pencils or do you think it is about the same as my description of the Faber matte’s?
Cheers
@@AuntieTrichome Thanks for the info. The good thing about the Staedtler matte black is that they are very dark, even the 4B can go literally black. But that's a problem if you want to combine them with graphite pencils because the colour temperature of them is different. To me it just looks like black coloured pencil added to a graphite pencil drawing. So I'd think of them like black coloured pencils that have the qualities of graphite like being layerable and erasable. This is assuming the Staedtler Mars Lumograph Black are the pencils you mean as I don't know of any other Staedtler matte pencils!
So it sounds like they will be different to the faber mattes (much darker, blacker) but maybe not in a good way unless you really hate shine and are willing to do an entire drawing using just the Staedtler black mattes OR just use them for small black details like the pupil of an eye where the difference in colour/temperature wont be so obvious. I really don't use mine much at all but I don't mind graphite shine so much :)
@@ThePencilRoomOnline Thanks, I see a lot clearer now. 💡
Royal
Stabilo
Thank you emily! I’m glad to come back to your videos after a car accident which kept me from drawing. Thank you!!!❤
Sorry to hear that - hope you are on the mend!
I am waiting impatiently for each video. Please contact us. Thank you for your valuable effort.