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

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.

The charcoal is fairly nice to use but has lots of hard "minerals" that constantly scratch the paper and force you to pass it on sandpaper to get it off...but another bit appears right after. I would love this to be a defective item but I bought several from different dealers and the problem persists, so I guess it is really how they do it. Just cannot understand why so famous...

Great for dark and hyper realistic drawings and amazing texture

Great quality

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.

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.