The Nero is an Austrian made, Cretacolor branded, oil based charcoal pencil. I didn’t know they were oil based until I looked them up, just now…I knew they weren’t graphite, though. A graphite pencil has a very limited value range….a light pencil can only get so dark, regardless of how hard and how much you lay down. Eventually, you develop a graphite shine that will prevent you from laying down any more graphite. You basically have to plan or adapt to the choices you’ve made and a graphite drawing with varying intensities is the result of a suitable range of pencils (light, dark). The Nero is different.
With the same Nero pencil, you can have very dark over very light and many shades in between. I’ve used this to good effect. I can, for example, do a preliminary sketch with more refined layers on top and I can color over the earlier work and get a fuller range of values all from one pencil. Now that I think of it, I was doing the same with the oil based Cretacolor Sanguine 5.6 mm leads. The drawing builds on earlier layers. The Nero pencil is well made and I haven’t had any problems with core breakage like I used to have with charcoal pencils, which means Cretacolor has a good formulation going on. They also sharpen well. Highly recommended.
Perfect Pencil 