General's Chalk Pastel Pencils

General's Pastel Chalk Pencils

I like to try out different sorts of arts media just to see what unique effects they produce. Sometimes, like with Graphitint pencils, I'm surprised and amazed. Other times, the experience is more ho-hum. On a whim, I picked up a couple of these pencils from an a la carte section of Richard's. I got white, sanguine, and Van Dyke Brown with the idea of making an earth tone picture and using white for highlights.

Initially, I did some simple toning exercises with the pencils, shading in spheres and the like. It takes a bit of work to get strong coverage with these guys, but the results are quite nice. Unlike colored pencil, smudging with a tortillon or finger produces nice, smooth gradient fields with little effort. The white was not as opaque as I might have wished, but this may merely be a property of the medium rather than a shortcoming in this particular pencil.

Naturally, this process blunted the tips of the pencils, so I was forced to resharpen. Using a Staedtler hand sharpener, I had no problems with the sanguine and white, but the brown immediately broke. Changing sharpeners and even going to sandpaper, I had the same experience over and over. I would almost get a decent point and then the whole thing would disintegrate from the base of the point. By the end, I had managed only a tiny point and lost about 75% of the pencil.

While I realize that pastel chalks are fragile, this behavior is completely ridiculous. Even though these pencils are cheaper than other brands, accounting for wastage from fragility makes them a far less good value for money. They are simply not interesting enough to put up with this sort of thing.

Recommendation: Hold