Conté à Paris Drawing Pencil - White

Great pencil, I bought it to sketch outlines on slate before painting them. It wipes off with a damp cloth and it's really effective.

Easy to use, great quality.

Does its job

This is a great sanguine pencil but when you get to 75% used it is impossible to sharpen as the sanguine core just falls apart.

Unable to sharpen with any of my standard sharpeners Lead breaks

I bought this, along with a white and black pencil, to try my hand at aux trois crayon style sketching, and this particular pencil is fantastic. The colour is vivid, easily blended, responds well to varying pressure in application and feels good on the paper. It's also a slightly chunkier, round barrel which makes it, for me, quite comfortable to hold. This is also a good accompaniment to the conte crayon sticks which, although useful for finer detail, can provide sweeping, broad layers on which to apply this pencil

White pencils are problematic. I try not to use one and indeed very rarely do. I use a normal 3D pencil to mark the back of fabric I am using for patchwork. The majority of cotton fabrics for patchwork - indeed some quite dark fabrics - have a pale back and the 3D pencil slides over and marks the line I need to make to cut out the patches BUT I have recently bought some very pretty dark fabrics which unfortunately have the pattern going through just as strongly on the back of the fabric as the front. The piece I am designing needs these dark colours. The white pencil I already had made no impression at all so I bought this one. A reputable name. And yes I can get it to work but not very easily - it does not slide over the fabric but it does make a mark and I can cut the patches so I can make the quilt as I want and I just have to accept that these dark patches beautiful as they are will not be easy to work with and may not be as accurately cut and marked as the other patches. C'est la vie!

I love working in conté, and find there are just four essential shades: blanc, pierre noire, sanguine, and either sepia or bistre. So although this review is supposed to be for sanguine alone, my comments actually refer to that one, AND the other "essential" colours from the Conté à Paris range (all available here on Amazon). They are absolutely superb quality and, I find, far easier to use than conté crayons, though obviously it is less easy to cover large areas since - unlike the square crayons - these can't be turned on their side. Conversely, of course, outlines and fine detail are far easier with the pencil format. These are beautifully soft, highly blendable, and produce great results. Very portable, too! I like to carry these, along with Winsor & Newton's lovely muted grey A5 pastel block, in my handbag, ready to capture anything inspiring I'm lucky enough to encounter.