They have a long name, and I waited a long time before buying them, but I finally did, and they took a long time to get here, but they finally did. What’s so special about these graphite pencils? They’re matt, meaning they have very little shine. Plus, they’re on the dark side with a 14B, supposedly the world’s first.

So, how did I like them? Okay, but I found them hard and I needed to go over areas several times to get the dark values. This set has a 14B, which didn’t really look all that dark to me. So, although I enjoyed the lack of shine—I actually do like graphite shine but only when I do it on purpose—I found them to be less astounding than I had imagined them to be.

I’ll keep using them and who knows? Maybe they’ll be like my oil pastels, and I’ll pull them out in a year and think they’re as special as this Solitary Sandpiper I keep drawing.