Hi Brian,
Back in 2015 and again in 2022-2024, I studied 1120 graphite art pencils from every major manufacturer. I was disappointed to find that sets such as Derwent Graphic didn't seem to have the quality or value (darkness) consistency I wanted. I started drawing in 2014, so I had little experience as an artist. Why did my Derwent Graphic grade B pencil seem to have the same darkness as my Derwent Graphic 3B pencil? Why was the 4B exactly the same as the 6B in its performance on paper? Why were some of the leads scratchy? Did my inexperience in the discipline give me unreasonable expectations? I was hardly an artist. But I was (and am) a scientist. I resolved to find an answer to my questions.
I found grade varied tremendously from one manufacturer to another. Why? I did some simple experiments. I found darkness and softness are NOT interchangeable terms. I found a pencil could be very dark yet hard as nails and leave little graphite on paper (I measured the amount of graphite deposited), and a pencil could have moderate darkness but leave a substantial amount of graphite/clay/wax (the composition of 'lead' in graphite pencils) on the page. I realized there was no consistency at all and I determined to quantitate exactly what is meant by softness/hardness/ darkness, smoothness, and 23 other factors, such as pressure sensitivity (some pencils give the same darkness regardless of pressure applied, while other pencils exhibit remarkable range of value depending on pressure applied). I designed and built equipment to study all of these things. An example was a 1970s-era chart recorder that I reversed so that it pulled the paper back in rather than rolling it out, which allowed me to accurately measure softness (amount of lead deposited on paper).
I converted raw softness (S), darkness (D), smoothness (L; called 'Lissance' in my book), pressure insensitivity (P), and blackness range (R) to 20-point scales (since the standard grade range is 9H to HB to 9B). I found many pencils are engineered for writing, since pressure insensitivity was high (meaning darkness was the same regardless of applied pressure), in the P12 to P17 range, but art the best art pencils have P around P8 to P11, right in the middle of the sensitivity range. Pencils having P8 to P11 are neither hyper-sensitive to pressure nor do they just give the same darkness all the time; you can manipulate value quite reproducibly without needing a 'soft touch'. I put together 'Five-dimensional' pencil sets after the example of a somewhat well-known online graphite artist who chose five darkness grades for his work. But my 'five-dimensional' graphite pencils are based on the darkness and pressure insensitivity values I found in my year-long study.
For the purposes of your present video, I put together a lowest-cost five-dimensional set that covered the full range from darkness D4 to darkness D20: Dixon Ticonderoga H (D4, S2, L4, P7), Dixon Ticonderoga B (D8, S5, L10, P9), Paper Mate Mirado Classic HB (D12, S4, L8, P9), General's Kimberly 6B (D16, S6, L12, P7), and Blick Studio 6B (D20, S12, L14, P11). That was in 2015. But in 2023, I discovered Musgrave 600 News. Wow! What a pencil! The 600 News delivers a true D20 (nearly darkest possible graphite; pure graphite gives D24) line, but pressure insensitivity is exactly P9, which is my 'sweet spot' for art pencils. No other D20 pencil I have ever tested gives this ideal pressure insensitivity; most high-darkness art pencils are in the P12 to P18 range, but Musgrave 600 News is perfect at P9. It gives absolutely beautiful graphite portraits. There is a 'perfect five-dimensional set' now for the first time.
Back in 2014-2015, I found Faber-Castell Castell 9000 was almost perfect. The Castell 9000 ends at the 8B grade, which has a darkness of D16, so I had to tack on the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 6B, which is a D20 pencil. There were two minor flaws in this almost perfect set. The Castell 9000 grade B pencil had a pressure insensitivity of P6, not P9, and the Mitsubishi was at P13, which is typical of high-darkness pencils. Of course now, since 2023, the Musgrave 600 News replaces the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 6B. But what about the Castell 9000 B, with its less than ideal pressure insensitivity? My preferred solution was the Kita Boshi 2H, having D8, S2, L8, P9, but the Ticonderoga B (D8, S5, L10, P9) will also work.
This is not the end of the story. I carried on a correspondence with the then Director of Research at Faber-Castell. I wanted to know about some aspects of the F-C process, which the Director provided. I bought a bunch of Castell 9000 sets in 2022 to revisit what I had found in 2015. Surprise!! The Castell 9000 B now had pressure insensitivity at the perfect P9. Was I imagining things? I went back and retested all of the Castell 9000 sets I purchased and tested back in 2014-2015. The grade B pencil in those sets was the same P6. But every grade B pencil in the new sets, purchased in 2022, was at P9. Now all of the F-C pencils were at P9. Wow! I went back to the old sales reports. My book (Pearson's Graphite 2015) sold two copies in Germany in December 2015. Did Faber-Castell R&D reengineer its Castell 9000 line based on my work? I don't know. Maybe the two books sent to Germany didn't even end up at Faber-Castell. But it's an interesting possibility.
So the 'perfect five-dimensional' set is now Castell 9000 F (D4, S2, L6, P9, R9), Castell 9000 B (D8, S4, L10, P9, R16), Castell 9000 3B (D12, S6, L12, P9, R34), Castell 9000 8B (D16, S11, L16, P9, R21), and Musgrave News 600 (D20, S12, L14, P9, R20). I am a scientist and a quite amateur artist, but I am not a salesperson. So in 11 years, I have sold only a few dozen copies of my book, though I poured an enormous amount of time into my study (back then, 370+ pencils), even building equipment for the study. Nice video! I hope the info here is useful to you.
Pearson Moore 2026