Bianco Black Wooden Pencil 12B, Silver End Stripe

12B sits at the far soft end of the graphite scale, well past the 2B most people picture when they think of a soft pencil. It lays a dense, almost velvety black in a single pass and smudges deliberately under a finger or a blending stump, which makes it a tonal drawing tool rather than a writing one.

The price of a grade this soft is that it blunts almost immediately and needs sharpening constantly, and that the core is fragile: drop the pencil once and it can break inside the barrel, after which it will keep breaking every time you sharpen it. Keep it out of the bottom of a bag. Work on paper with some tooth, too — on smooth stock a 12B fills the surface in one layer and starts to go shiny rather than darker.

• 12B — the far soft end of the graphite scale
• Dense black in a single pass
• Blends with a finger or a stump
• Fragile core — keep it from being dropped