Maries Grey Wooden Pencil 12B, Silver End

12B is the far soft end of the graphite scale — well past the 2B most people mean by a soft pencil. It lays a dense, near-black tone in a single pass and blends readily under a finger or a stump, which makes it a pure tonal drawing tool rather than anything you would write with.

The cost of that softness is a fragile core and constant sharpening: a grade this soft blunts in a few strokes, and a knock can break the lead inside the barrel, after which it keeps snapping at every sharpening. Keep it out of the bottom of a bag, sharpen with a blade rather than a rotary sharpener, and work on paper with some tooth — on smooth stock a 12B fills the surface and goes shiny instead of darker.

• 12B — the far soft end of the graphite scale
• Dense near-black tone in one pass
• Blends under a finger or a stump
• Fragile core — sharpen with a blade, keep from knocks