Maker	Blackwing
Model	Pearl
Hardness	2B (Maybe?)
Features	That weird eraser
Price I paid	$2.83

I don't think I'd ever heard of Blackwing pencils before a few months ago. At least, not by name. I'd seen them in stores or on drawing tables when I briefly intruded into the domain of one of my local artists, but I didn't know what they were other than they were pencils with funny erasers on them.

But now I know that these pencils have a legacy.

I'm not going to do a deep Blackwing history retrospective, but the short version as I understand it is that: Eberhard-Faber started making the Blackwing 602 in the 1930's → a bunch of famous artists used them → the machine to make the weird erasers broke and the sales volume wasn't high enough to justify the cost to fix it → the pencil was discontinued → True Fans™ began hoarding them and the dwindling supplies started going for lots of money → a different company bought the name and whatever else to try and recreate the pencil. So the current 602 isn't really a 602, it's a tribute to the old 602. And the Pearl is a 602, but softer.

Confused yet?

I had actually intended to buy a pack of 602​s to see what all the fuss was about, but I ended up getting a pack of Pearl​s instead because I screwed up the order. But I won't let a small issue like buying the wrong thing stop me from scribbling.

The eraser on this thing is weird. I think it's one of the things that people notice about this pencil, and I guess that makes some sense. It looks like it would be wholly inadequate for erasing much, but it's actually longer than it appears. It's held in by a couple of clips so you can pull it out and adjust its position in the holder¹ or even replace it if you wanted to.

The weird eraser is kind of a cool idea, I guess, but I didn't really like it. I did like how you could orient the eraser and rub with either the long side or the short side, depending on just how how big an area you're trying to clear up. And being able to extend the eraser is an interesting idea, in theory, but unless I got completely in to the Blackwing ecosystem, I very much doubt that I would buy up a bunch of replacement erasers and then store them somewhere. I have a zillion of those cap erasers already… that don't fit on this pencil, and I have a handful of Pink Pearl erasers to use if I ever wear the eraser out on one of these before I run out of lead. And I probably would since the built-in erasers didn't seem to quite get rid of the marks I used them on.

The eraser is also much taller and more square that just writing with the pencil is kind of distracting. I catch it out of the corner of my eye and every time I do it feels like I had sharpened the handle of a paintbrush and the bristles were waving around at me. I could probably get used to that, even though I wouldn't really have to put up with it for that long. Once I sharpen it a few times, it'll get down to a reasonable length anyway.

Writing with this thing was a lot more of a mixed bag.

I didn't know what to expect when I tried this pencil for the first time. The Pearl is marketed as balanced, which is between the firmness of a 602 and the softness of a Matte, but since I haven't used either of those pencils, those distinctions mean nothing at all to me.

I sharpened the pencil and solved some Jumble puzzles and also wrote a few pages in a Black n' Red notebook, and I haven't been steeped enough into the pencil enthusiast community to accurately describe what it was like. The closest word I can come up with is 'slippery'. The claims of the manufacturer were true, this pencil practically glides across the page whether I'm writing on some adequately nice paper or if I'm scribbling across some cheap stuff from the bottom of a clearance barrel.

I had never really noticed before how much tactile sensation was transmitted through the pencil and into my fingers until I tried writing with the Pearl, and all of those sensations were muted by this pencil. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but the best way I can think of to describe it was that it felt like trying to move your hand while your arm is almost (but not quite) asleep. All the sensations are there, but they're muted. I could probably get used to that, too.

I have mixed feelings about this pencil. It seems to be a decent product and well made, even though one of the pencils in the box I received had a ferrule that wasn't firmly attached and I managed to twist it right off the pencil the first time I went to sharpen it (the rest seem fine). Defects happen, and I don't hold this against them.

Before I used this pencil, I don't know that I would have thought it possible to have a pencil that was too smooth. I feel like it's slipperier than Crayola crayons. That's probably what they were going for, and the people who like that kind of thing seem to really like it. It's weird, too, because one of my favorite pens, the Uniball 207 Impact does almost this exact thing. It has a bold line and lays down a ton of ink, so it's very smooth and just glides across the page. So why do I value that in a pen, but not a pencil?

I have a dozen of these things to go through as I ponder the answer to that question². Who knows, maybe it's an acquired taste?

This article was posted on 14 Sep 2026 and I haven't looked at it since.

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