PANDAFLY Professional Colored Charcoal Pencils Drawing Set, Skin Tone Colored Pencils, Pastel Chalk Pencils for Sketching, Shading, Coloring, Layering & Blending, 24 Colors

Charcoal pencils are as hard to sharpen as pastel pencils. Most people left negative reviews because of this. There is no pencil sharpener around that will get an entire set of 24 pencils initially sharpened. You can use a box knife, or you can buy a box of the Mobious and Rupert blades in the blue box. You can use them in any of the pencil sharpeners I used. Or buy the three pack of generals red sharpeners. You will dull every one. Don’t worry, they will still sharpen graphite pencils afterwards, or you can replace the blades. I found a beautiful pencil case roll on Amazon. It came filled with great art supplies including bicolor colored pencils that are of surprisingly high quality. But I I really wanted to dedicate this roll to my charcoal sketching so I took most of the supplies out of that roll and placed elsewhere. This roll is now predominantly for portrait sketching practice in a Strathmore toned tan 400 paper, but it also includes enough landscape colors that you can use it for nature sketching and urban sketching. I liked it so much that I bought the identical set by GETHPEN that is actually cheaper and put it on autoship. This is not a fine art product, but it is for sketchbooks. For fine art you will need to save up and get lightfast pastel pencils. I have a big set of Carbothello but that is such a big set, I wanted something smaller for on the go sketches and this is perfect. The colors are blendable just like pastel, work on toned or sanded paper, and can be blended with water. It’s a lot of fun for the money. NOTE this product includes only 24 pencils, not all that is shown in the picture.

Great product. The box came sealed so no pencils were broken.(if the core of the pencil break it makes impossible to sharpen). These sharpen nicely. The colors are pigmented, transfer smoothly and blend well.I wish they had a larger color selection. Would definitely purchase again.

I picked up these pencils to use alongside my alcohol markers, and I’m so glad I did. The colors are smooth, blend beautifully, and work really well for creating that soft glow effect around objects. They sharpen easily without breaking, and the pigment lays down evenly. I’ve been using them to add highlights and depth to my coloring pages, and they’ve become such a fun part of my routine. A great addition to any coloring or art stash!

Please be warned: DON'T sharpen these with an electric sharpener. In fact, don't sharpen any charcoal or soft pastel pencils with an electric. It can kill your sharpener. Yep, speaking from experience.The pencils themselves perform decently. As you can see in the first pic, they have good color payoff for the price. They are also water soluble, which I only recently learned that charcoal is water soluble, which was part of what sparked my interest in buying charcoal pencils. I also like that they smudge fairly well.The most difficult thing about these pencils is how hard they are to sharpen. I think getting a fine point will be impossible (maybe this is true for most charcoal/soft pastel pencils due to their crumbly nature). You'll see in the pics I got crummy points on even the "best" sharpened pencil, the red one. The worst was, obviously, the green one.A tip on sharpening: I tried four different sharpeners on these, the electric first, then three handheld ones. Oddly, a Revlon makeup pencil sharpener with two different sized holes worked the best. I think these makeup sharpeners are easy to find on Amazon or a drugstore for around $2. I'm researching sharpeners dedicated to charcoal given my new interest in this medium.I did try a standard double hole metal sharpener that proved useless with these pencils. The small hole was too small and the large too large.I do appreciate that the pencil names were printed at the very end of the pencil so they'll remain visible until the pencils are used up. However, I would've preferred the names be spelled out. Names like "WH" and "BK" are easy enough to figure out, but "BN" and "PUS" are too tricky for me.So, the jury's out on this one. Will post an update if I find they're not for me or if they're surprisingly good in action.Explanation of photos:1. swatch/blend/water solubility test on cold press watercolor paper2. blending test with two colors each - cold press watercolor paper3. poor sharpening test on green pencil4. sharpening test on red pencil (best I could achieve with sharpeners I own)5. swatch/smudge on Strathmore black mixed media paper6. swatch/smudge on Strathmore toned mixed media paper

I was leery about purchasing these because so many people complained about them breaking during sharpening. Yes, they are a hard fragile lead, but if you are careful sharpening they work just fine. I love the colors and brightness. I've used them on multiple shades of paper from white to toned, to black and they put down nice pigment. For this price, they are definitely worth the occasional broken lead. They do put off dust, they are erasable with a good eraser and they blend well. For me they are great for practice or just to get a quick sketch down. Note, if you use fixative, the charcoal fixative works better than pastel fixatives and the colors still hold up well. I'll definitely be buying these again.

I'm very happy with these skin color charcoal pencils. They are incredibly smooth and have a really nice texture when drawing. They glide on the paper beautifully. Highly recommended!

The colors were very rich. I was not expecting such rich pigments for the price. I put them down next to more expensive chalk pencils and could not tell the difference. These pencils complement the small collection of pastels I already have. So now I have more variety. A couple of them were difficult to sharpen but I did manage to get them done. I used different sharpeners to get the desired point. Some sharpeners made for charcoal pencils like Stabilo sharpener and they helped get the job done. I did use eraser pencils to clean up my sharpeners afterwards. They wear out the sharpeners quickly.

Hard to sharpen with a standard sharpener!