Couple of disappointments in my last batch of "Art Supplies"

Finally completed my collection triad of Japanese supreme wooden pencils (Tombow Mono 100, Mitsubishi Hi-Uni, and the Pentel Polymer 999) with the arrival of a dozen Pentel Polymer 999 HB pencils in my last JetPens order. While I'm glad to have had the opportunity to add this pencil to my collection, I am not particularly impressed by its performance fresh out of the box which is in itself a pretty nice example of cardboard packaging seldom seen in the stationery aisles anymore. This pencil is shipped unsharpened and is fairly rare in the US market with its elegant matte black finish and silver cap accents. Started removing the bulk of the exterior wood layers with a Panasonic(R) KP-310 Electric Pencil Sharpener, and then tried to finish sharpening it with a new General's All Art colored pencil sharpener. Yet the graphite core offered great resistance against the cutting blade edge and cracking at the tip. It did not sharpen easily even with a fairly new Prismacolor sharpener (graphite point still split and cracked even while holding the sharpener vertically to reduce stress) and it drew ok but nothing spectacular. To be fair, the slogan on the box reads "the highest quality for general use" which probably means mostly writing applications. Thus they are not making any claims of being second-to-none art tools since their true top grade offering is the virtually impossible to find Pentel Black Polymer 999α. Maybe I am being too picky, already biased by the awesomeness of the Hi-Uni, and this was not by any means a structured blind test.
Did a couple of quick test doodles, and the Polymer 999 did show to be a tad darker than the same grade in the Hi-Uni range. Its lead feel on the same paper was nowhere near as smooth as the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni or the Tombow Mono 100 though.

Sorry to report that I find this pencil to be nothing special, and that most users (other than the most dedicated pencil collector) would be better served by ignoring this wooden pencil offering and just go for the best choice in existence: the legendary Mitsubishi Uni-ball Hi-Uni.



I had waited a long time to try this Kuretake Disposable Medium Pocket Brush Sign Pen since I already have several working brush pens that are quite reliable like the Premier Archival markers and the Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens. I had hoped this pen's substantial nib size would have made it a suitable tool for quick sketching of large scale cartoons and caricatures, but unfortunately the nib ink flow is so slow that yields only pale and streaking lines when attempting to draw longer strokes.

Fresh out of its sealed package, this brush pen's initial test marks showed heavy streaking or a "dry brush" effect as if the pen was already partially dried when drawing at normal speeds.
Very busy gold lettering covers one side of the pen's barrel. Not a particularly attractive design since all that text makes it look rather cluttered. I even left the capped pen pointing down on a pencil cup for a few minutes to see if gravity would speed up the ink flow, but it did not seem to have any effect.
Even when considerably slowing down my usual drawing speed, the pen started to streak just after a couple of dark strokes (notice the white streaking in the wavy lines inside the bird body outline). When going very slowly, it is possible to achieve uniform dark lines with it. Thus it would probably be an adequate tool for calligraphy and careful rendering of Kanji. I would not recommend this pen for sketching and drawing though. While both these tools may have failed my arbitrary standards for quality sketching tools, they may very well be perfectly fine for their intended purpose of general writing and Eastern calligraphy.