Conte A Paris Sanguine Sketching Pencils Set of 6

For the first time in my life i use conte a paris sanguine pencils, this is my first artwork with Conte a paris pencils the quality and strength of pigment was excellent!

I bought these with my fingers crossed as my last purchase of Conte pencils was disappointing- the leads were brittle, gritty and broke out of the casing instead of sharpening. However these were fine and didn't have any of the aforementioned faults. I was able to get my preferred long point easily with a knife and these are the quality I expect from Conte. This was a relief.I had been intrigued by the two extra colours of Sanguine in this set I had never tried before -the XVIIIe and Medicis - which turned out to be a slightly more Ruby toned red chalk and one that I would describe more as a reddish sepia than a Sanguine. I'm looking forward to trying these out properly as I intend to warm up first thing by copying Old Masters and the trois crayons technique is great for this. (You focus on the important things- light, medium and dark tones and these pencils aren't conducive to fiddling about with details or much erasure. )The packaging was effective and meant the leads hadn't been shattered en route, which sometimes has happened to me when buying online. I think this would be a good set for life drawing. It was good value and I recommend it.

I like all of my art supplies in pencil form: Graphite pencils, coloured pencils, charcoal pencils... even eraser pencils. I'm not sure what this says about me as a person, but it doesn't change the fact that these pastel (or pastel-esque) pencils are wonderful tools. The colours are lustrous and pleasing, and they blend nicely together. I did however make the mistake of trying to sharpen the pierre noire with a hobby knife, which promptly send about half the pencil core flying across the room. It stings to lose so much of what I'm sure would have been a beautiful compliment to the other shades, so make sure you have a sharpener that can take slightly thicker pencils.

I have used these pencils before and generally speaking they are great. BUT, the ones i have just received were completely shattered apart from one. So, these were completely useless. Every time i try to sharpen them with my knife they just crumble.lesson learned, never ever buy conte pencils via post. The suplier really has to up their packaging. Very disappointing .

The pencils are very unique, in that they're not anything I've used before. But that's not a bad thing. With any new tool, it will take some margin of trial and error as well as time to use to its full potential. The texture of the cores are similar to medium hard eye-liner with much less drag. You can use your fingers for very subtle midtones and other blending tools will work in much the same way as if you were using charcoal pencils. The difference is that these pencils are perhaps a millimetre larger in circumference than normal graphite or charcoal pencils, and so you would be hard-pressed to approach small details with the intensity and focus reserved for much smaller pencils. For covering a surface with large swathes of tone, brilliant.

I use these for sketching and the red one for sketching before a watercolour as red seems to sit better underneath.