Review on General Pencil Compressed Charcoal 🖍️ Sticks 4-Pack - Soft Assorted (White, GP958-BP) by Hannah Curi

Let me start by saying that I am indifferent to this product. My main use case was using an "aux trois crayons" stick along with charcoal and sanguine. They work but don't match some of the alternatives. Physically, they look just like any other Generals joystick I've used. Specifically, they look almost exactly like what I received in the Universal Pastel Pressed Chalk Sticks set and suffer from the same problem. I suspect they're extruded, sliced, and then baked, but the slicing is inconsistent, leaving a jagged, rounded edge and general distortion at both ends of the chopsticks. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but they're hard enough not to change shape significantly with use, which means I had to sand them down. Forces to apply a lot: far from the advertised "softness”. The harshness means you'll have very little success trying to layer them on top of another loose medium since you have to put so much effort into making sure they blend into the layers underneath. This hardness mirrors the hardness of the "multi-pastel pressed crayons" I mentioned earlier and I believe they are the same. Their only (minor) advantage is that they stick to paper fairly well, so don't smudge so easily, which is important in conjunction with charcoal to avoid a dirty gray tone. In short, anyone expecting the softness of soft-pressed charcoal or even chalk will be disappointed. In general, I'm not very happy with how they work. The 2/pkg 2B charcoals work much better, as does the 4-color white Conte Crayon Match Box set or the Faber Castell pastels found in their monochrome drawing sets.