Faber-Castell has oil-based pencils in the monochrome series, which, as I have always thought, are somewhat deprived of attention. They usually hide somewhere between pastel and graphite on the shelf and easily go unnoticed. I would like to tell you about these specific pencils.

Pitt Oil Base caught my eye when I was picking up material for sketches of nude. One such sketch takes 10 minutes maximum, and usually even less, so there is no time for detailed and deep study.

A thin layer of graphite pencil is also easily removed over time, which raises the problem of safety. It is not that the sketches are of high artistic value, being mostly educational material, but I want to follow my progress, periodically flipping through old albums.

The advantage of an oil-based pencil is that it does not get removed. Consequently, it gets erased poorly. This is a great benefit for sketches as there is no temptation to use an eraser, you have to learn to catch the main thing from the first sight.

The color palette and hardness/softness range are not very wide. Faber-Castell produces oil pencils in two colors: red-orange sanguine and black. Sanguine pencils, in my opinion, are perfect for nude sketches. Its color is close to the color of skin and, despite the lack of hard and soft counterparts, it allows you to create good tone transitions. Renaissance artists drew scetches with sanguine. So, you can copy old drawing with this material.

Rafael Santi. Etude of the Loggia of Psyche. The Three Graces

A pencil in black color is presented in five types of hardness: very hard, hard, medium, soft and very soft. For sketches from nature I usually use a soft one. Perhaps the photo above does not show visible difference, but there is: a medium pencil is dark-gray when pressed, a soft one gives blue-black color. Sometimes I draw landscape sketches, ranging from medium to soft.

What I also like is that the pencil rod is very durable, so when sharpening, they almost never break (most likely, thanks to the oil base). I carried them even without a pencil case in a backpack, they all survived.

In conclusion, I can say that drawing volume pictures with Faber-Castell oil pencils is difficult as they do not forgive mistakes, they are poorly erased, the rod is much thicker than graphite. As for sketching, the material is perfect, it has intense color and allows you to keep even fleeting drawings for a long time.