The Best Pencils for Drawing and Sketching

Whether you are a beginner or professional artist, you’ll want to use the best quality drawing pencils. As the most basic of art materials, it becomes even more important to use a high-quality art supply to get the results you want. And, great news! Pencils are not all that expensive, even for the best ones.

Here are 3 options for drawing pencils that consistently get rave reviews from professionals and beginners alike.

Related: Best pencil sharpeners for artists

Faber-Castell 9000 Pencils

Faber-Castell drawing pencils are icons in the art world. The signature dark green pencils have been a favorite of artists for decades. In fact, they’ve been around since 1905, and Faber-Castell was founded in 1761!

The 9000’s are a super high-quality pencil for artists to draw or sketch with, and even better, they’re created to be break-resistant. The graphite core is glued to the wood casing, keeping it from rattling around and cracking.

If you drop a pencil on a hard surface, the graphite tends to crack inside, which is why pencils can be extremely frustrating to sharpen. Pretend your pencils are your new iPhone without a case when you’re carrying them around.

Check out some reviews for the Faber-Castell 9000 pencils:

“It feels like I’m writing with butter rather than a pencil. The lines are wonderfully dark and excellent for getting that extra value that you don’t see in other products.”

“I haven’t had them that long but so far they perform better than the brand that I was using. No skipping or gritty spots that you have to sharpen out.”

“I have had these four months, and am no where near having to sharpen them, and i use them to at least 20 minutes a day most days. Not even close to breaking, blend well, and stay very sharp, even the softer/darker ones.”

Caran D’Ache Grafwood Pencils

Caran D’Ache pencils are super-sexy. Actually, their whole damn line of supplies is. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, their products are beautifully designed and of superior quality.

If you are looking for a gift for another artist, look to Caran D’ache.

Anyway. Pencils.

The Caran D’Ache Grafwood pencils are sublime and professional-quality. This set of 15 includes the 9B, the darkest graphite pencil you can buy.

The 6-pencil set includes one each of 9B, 7B, 5B, 3B, HB, and 2H.

Caran D’Ache began in 1915 and as a family business, prides itself on continuing the excellent quality Swiss design is known for.

The Grafwood pencils are cult-following level, and many artists swear by these as their pencil of choice.

Just for a little inspiration, check out this drawing by one of the Caran D’Ache ambassadors, DiegoKoi.

Blick Studio Drawing Pencils

As a third option, you can’t go too wrong with Blick art supplies. While I have not personally tried these pencils, my art school daughter loves them, and they get great reviews! I think these would be the perfect drawing pencils for art students and beginners.

The Blick pencils come nestled in a tin case, with one each of 6B, 5B, 4B, 3B, 2B, B, HB, F, H, 2H, 4H, and 6H.

How Are Drawing Pencils Different From Regular Pencils?

Drawing pencils are numbered according to hardness and softness of the graphite within. As you can see from the Faber-Castell chart, the ‘H’ pencils are the hardest, so the graphite looks the lightest when you draw with them. Th ‘B’ pencils go up in terms of softness/darkness.

So unless you’re just sketching or making an under-drawing for a painting, you’ll want a few different pencils to give you a range of shades.

Of course, you can vary how your pencil marks look to an extent by how hard you press onto the paper. It’s better to get a darker pencil and press more lightly than dig in with a lighter pencil – just because the lighter pencils are harder and will leave grooves in the paper if you’re not careful.

On the other hand, since the darker pencils have softer graphite, the points tend to dull and wear down faster. Keep ’em nice and sharpened if you want a precise line.

These charts are helpful to make if you’re a beginner, or trying out a new brand of pencils. Play around with them a little before drawing, and you can get a feel for how they perform, while also warming up a bit before drawing.

Writing pencils, on the other hand, are #2 pencils, and match up with HB drawing pencils. (I’d love to see a 2nd-grader fill out a worksheet with a range of professional drawing pencils, beautifully shading and cross-hatching the parallelograms.)

Related: How to get better at drawing

Fun Pencil Facts

Who doesn’t love some good pencil trivia to drop some jaws at cocktail parties?

• Many pencil profiles changed from round to hexagon to keep them from rolling off the table.
• Graphite is mixed with clay to make the pencil ‘leads’, and the ratio of clay to graphite determines the hardness (lightness) or softness (darkness) of the mark.
• An average size tree will make approximately 300,000 pencils.
• A pencil can be sharpened an average of 17 times, draw a line 35 miles long and can write approximately 45,000 words.

Totally obsessed with drawing pencils yet? You will be after you watch this video of how they are made at Faber-Castell:

Related: The best drawing paper for every medium

Looking for drawing ideas for your sketchbook? How about 365 of them?! Come on over here for your sketchbook drawing ideas. And here are a bunch of really hard things to draw to boost your skills!