2-Pack - General Pencil 321742 557BP - 4 Charcoal Pencil Kit with Eraser

Great for dark and hyper realistic drawings and amazing texture

General's are still the best pencil for me, more stable, less crumbling than others. And Amazon almost always gets the product here on time.

I love these Generals charcoal pencils. I want very dark rich black to do my sketches and these are perfect. I haven't found a darker black yet. They are smooth and easy to blend. Be careful sharpening them because like all charcoal pencils they will break easily if sharpen the wrong way. I use a special sharpener, utility knife or sandpaper. I would recommend these to anyone that does charcoal drawings.

How does amazon come up with the categories that it asks you to rate things on?Durability? I love Generals because their charcoal is charcoal. However, I also hate it because their charcoal is charcoal and has the bits and pieces that keep it from being smooth in the pencils.The wood on generals is always kinda like crappy balsa wood. I do NOT sharpen generals pencils with a sharpener unless it has a brand new blade in it and even then it's risky. Use a pen knife to remove the wood from the center lead. Sandpaper to sharpen. Otherwise, the wood will cause the charcoal to break.I can get blackest blacks and blend beautifully with them. If you need light, use powder OR shave powder off of a pencil and use a brush because the bits of grit in these will scratch the paper and leave marks. Otherwise, excellent.

Great quality

I love generals charcoal, they are great, definitely the best brand of charcoal pencils. Unfortunately, they were rendered basically useless by the way The item was shipped. It was just loose in a plastic envelope. If the pencils are dropped even once, the charcoal inside the wood breaks and every time you try to sharpen it it breaks, so I knew these stood no chance when I opened the envelope, yet I was hopeful. I had bought them to use on a project for my classroom, but they just break every time they are sharpened.

I've been using charcoals daily for about 5 years now and I've always used the cheapest materials I could find--it's all practice anyway.Finally I decided to experiment with some quality products and see the difference. I've heard General's are the best, so I bought some.The colors are dark and rich and beautiful and go on smooth.For a few seconds.Then you hit a dead spot and it just inexplicably stops marking and scratches or tears the page. I've ruined several pieces just trying to add a couple of edges. I'm honestly pretty shocked.I'll give them credit though, I threw one on the floor and the core didn't break.

I recieved the order. But it is not my order which damaged packages, very poor as the second hand products.