Minjal: So things like the details in the hair are those things you would do at the end because those are really fine? So there’s about five or six different timbers that go into these and the wood that goes into the Nataraj Pencils has changed probably two or three times in the last 60 years.

We spent an entire year or more doing everything, layouts, typography, lettering with traditional media on paper and on board. Samir: In fact if you actually read the inscription, it says ‘Apsara Platinum Extra Dark For Good Handwriting. Samir: And again here I think I probably sharpened the pencil once in the beginning and then I just used the changing nature of the point to do different textures. But again these were, as we keep saying, a lot of these come down to personal preferences and conveniences.Vishal: No, no, this is one pencil sharpened once at the beginning and then once when I wanted to put in a few details. Maybe some of the details of the actual pencils get a bit hidden on camera certainly, but in person and in print you can see the range of values that you can get out of it, without too much effort.

We test out this dark graphite pencil and find it to be a very affordable drawing pencil for artists and illustrators of all levels.Vishal: For good handwriting, which I don’t possess and maybe Minjal does, so she can show us some handwriting.

Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). The 10 pencils arrive bundled with a long point sharpener ripe for hacking and a little plastic eraser.I think now it’s actually available in the US in Walmart under their local in-house brand which is Casemate. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. The "skin" coloured pencil was also the subject of a campaign by anti-discrimination activist group Brown n' Proud.

Samir: No, and it had been so long since I had actually done that, and I thought a pencil that has this kind of range but also says that it’s good for writing might be a good place to try out that sort of very formal layout. You just need to be able to put it into a sharpener and get it to work and you don’t care – when you have a couple of dollars for 20 and you have 20 of them sitting around.So pencil wood production has moved from Kashmir now I think about 60% of it is down in Kerala, from Kolam. This doesn’t look like it’s done with a pencil but it has and it’s been done with these very same pencils. So it gives you this really nice long point which is great when you want to drag a lot of texture across things, especially with the flat side of the lead, but it’s also a good point to have overall because you can really spend a lot of time filing down those facets over the course of a drawing. With engraving options available, you can create custom pencils for giveaways, tradeshows, or any other event. These are nice pencils that have a core that works really well for all my writing needs, especially long form writing.