Palomino Blackwing Pearl Box
A few days ago, our friends over at Pencils.com offered us the opportunity to review some of the new Palomino Blackwing Pearl Pencils. Like any dedicated office supply enthusiast, we jumped on the chance to get our hands on some to test them out, and even managed to knock out some pretty impressive artwork with them that you will have to read through to the end of this review to see.
Palomino Blackwing Pearl Sharpened
The Palomino Blackwing Pearl Pencil has a fantastic looking pearl finish that my photos unfortunately don’t do justice, but take my word for it, it looks great! In addition to the pearl white finish, the horse logo and “Palomino Blackwing Pearl” text stamped on the wood casing is crisp and clean with no splintering or distortion which you sometimes see on inferior pencils with woodcases. clicking on the photo above will give you a much better look at that.
Palomino Blackwing Pearl Sharpened
Sharpening the Palomino Blackwing Pearl in itself is a pretty nice experience. Even using a fairly low end pencil sharpener, the sharpeners blade cut through the pencils woodcase very cleanly, evenly, and smoothly. In the past with inferior pencils, I noticed that the sharpener felt like it was catching jagged edges of wood and not cutting through the case smoothly. The second thing I noticed was the rather distinctive smell of the cedar wood, that unfortunately went away quite quickly. I’m sure that this is just because of the small amount of surface area of the exposed wood, its not like this is the same size as something like a cedar shoe tree that releases the smell because of the size of the exposed wood surface area.
Palomino Blackwing Pearl Body
Here is another close up look at the pearl white finish and contrasting black branding, as well as the ferrule that holds the replaceable eraser. If you have not used or had one of the Palomino Blackwing pencils, they have a very good sized replaceable eraser that can gradually be slid out from the ferrule as you use more and more of it.
Palomino Blackwing Pearl Eraser Ferrule and Components
Here you can see all of the components of the Palomino Blackwing Pearl and the eraser. The gold colored portion that you still see attached to the pencil is called the ferrule, and to the immediate right you can see the long, thin black eraser with the slide to the right of it. The eraser slips into that metal clip at any adjusted height, and both then slide into the ferrule which tightens the metal slide around the eraser so it stays put while in use. Its a very effective and efficient system, that is also able to be accessorized with replacement Palomino Blackwing erasers that come in black, blue, green, orange, pink, and white. I have yet to see or use some of the more unique color erasers in person, but I love the idea that you have the option to make your Blackwing a bit more customized and personal to your own individual style.
Palomino Blackwing Pearl Bunch
So with all of the aesthetics covered now, you might wonder how this fantastic looking Palomino Blackwing Pearl actually writes since that is kind of its main purpose besides just looking so good. Oh, but one more thing, the photo above is actually for the giveaway that we will be doing of these shortly, so don’t forget to check back so you can enter to win a few of these awesome pencils for yourself.
Palomino Blackwing Pearl Writing Sample with Artwork
For someone that really doesn’t enjoy writing with a pencil, the Palomino Blackwing Pearl still provides a pretty excellent writing experience. The lead itself glides across the paper (a Doane Paper notepad in this case) so much more smoothly than your ordinary, generic woodcase pencil. In a typical low quality woodcase pencil, you can often find the writing experience to be scratchy and inconsistent whereas with the Blackwing Pearl, its nothing but a buttery smooth feeling. The Blackwing Pearl also feels to me like it wears a bit more evenly than most pencils which if you are focused, can help you to keep a sharper point while strategically rotating while you write with it.
Even my clunky hands were able to achieve a good variety of shading as I varied the amount of pressure applied as I wrote as you can see from the shaded areas in the writing sample above. On each of those shaded areas I also tested the eraser to see how well it removed the gradually darker blocks of shading. In each case I believe the eraser did an admirable job, although as one might expect, the very heavy shading was harder to completely remove.
Personally I don’t find myself reaching for standard woodcase pencils that often, but from now on, when I do it will most certainly be one of these Palomino Blackwing Pearl pencils so that I know I’ll thoroughly enjoy the experience. Oh, and also note in the writing sample above how just the use of this pencil has obviously turned me in to a virtual Picasso…don’t be jealous, I guarantee you will get at least as good results with your artwork if you use this pencil too. 🙂 Thanks again to our friends at Pencils.com for sending this box over for us to review, and keep an eye out for a future giveaway of these!
©2016, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.
