PENCIL WARS #4 - Semi-Hex VS Mitsubishi Hi-Uni | Which is best?

00:23 - Woo. That’s been wearing me out. Can’t believe how many people that just been gobbling up my paper.

00:30 - And it’s been keeping me busy from morning till night, but I’m taking a break ski and I’m going to review this pencil set.

00:38 - So time to start digging in the old queue, let’s take a close look.

00:43 - This is the packaging. And believe it or not, it did not come.

00:50 - Unscathed. I ended up having to do some surgery on it right there.

00:57 - Hope you don’t mind. Anyway,but there you go.

01:05 - It says four pencils, I guess they’re called crayons somewhere? Wonder who calls them crayons? Now a Lapices, Lapices.

01:18 - I know that means pencil. So we have HB 2B 4B 6B.

01:22 - So these are the BBB BS. That’s awesome.

01:25 - So that means they’re the soft pencils and we got an eraser and we have a sharpener that HB says it’s hard.

01:34 - It’s not really that hard, but anyway, HB’s hard.

01:38 - 2B’s, medium, a 4B soft 6B is extra soft. Honestly, those are very strange descriptors.

01:46 - They’re all considered relatively soft pencils.

01:49 - You get a pineapple free pineapple with every purchase.

01:53 - Just kidding. Don’t hold me to that.

01:56 - I don’t want any lawsuits. All right.

01:58 - So let’s let’s dig into this thing. I’m going to use my AFMAT sharpener here.

02:06 - And this is my favorite sharpener. And I’ll show you why look what this puppy is going to do to the end of this pencil here.

02:20 - look at that. Pretty good, huh? So let’s do that with all of these.

02:28 - Okay, there you go. By the way, there’s a video on that sharpener there.

02:33 - If you want to check that out. Okay.

02:37 - You know what? I’ll be a nice guy. I’m going to put it.

02:42 - I guess it’d be right there, right up there somewhere.

02:46 - I’m right there. You see that right there? I hope that’s there.

02:49 - Okay. If you’re wanting to see the review on that.

02:51 - All right. So. Take a close look at the pencil where you can see it has itself a pretty nice blue paint job here with silver and prints.

03:04 - Nice. And a reflective kind of like a Chrome paint job on your custom Harley Davidson or something.

03:13 - There you got a 2B or not to be. There are no erasers on the end of these, which is pretty typical of drawing pencils, but.

03:24 - Cheaply. It doesn’t even have a nice little rounded cap it’s just chopped.

03:28 - Right. And off the end there, she had just locked it right off.

03:32 - So if you want you to sharpen the other end too, but boy, that would be kind of silly wouldn’t it? Alright.

03:37 - So what we’re going to do next of course, is we’re going to lay down some graphite onto some drawing paper, and we’re going to see how the shades.

03:47 - Go up from HB 2B 4B 6B, then we’re going to compare them to the Mitsubishi hi uni, which is the set that I normally compare all drawing pencils to the list.

04:00 - See what kind of a comparison we get. I’ll be back in a snap.

04:05 - That didn’t take very long. Did it? Okay.

04:09 - So. Why don’t we just go ahead and start with the HB here and we’ll work our way up.

04:16 - Okay. So let me just do a little zooming in.

04:22 - All right, right there looks pretty good. All right.

04:25 - Let’s start with our HB and as usual, I’m going to hold it very lightly on the back.

04:32 - Let the pencil, let the pencil do all the work.

04:35 - Yes. Mr. Computer. I hear you.

04:40 - okay. Now it seems to be going on. Nice.

04:44 - I’m not getting a lot of friction or should I say I’m not feeling any kind of little clay bits holding me back or skipping, you know, those little hard bits that you get in some pencils when the quality control is not that good.

05:03 - Yeah, but this is just going on per normal.

05:07 - I mean, if I was going to draw with this pencil, I’m just going to kind of go over it real light.

05:13 - There’s no pressure here. I’m not putting any, any additional pressure other than letting the pencil just kind of glide on the paper.

05:23 - Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to turn this around this way.

05:30 - And now that it’s back in focus and now I’m going to go this way.

05:34 - And you, if you’ve watched my previous videos on pencil reviews, you know that I’ll go over four times four layers.

05:43 - I do it vertically and now horizontally, of course, I’m moving vertically, but it’s horizontal to this, this image thing here, this square.

05:58 - Well, you know what I mean? Okay. So I do this till I feel that I can’t saturate it anymore.

06:07 - It means it doesn’t look like it’s getting any.

06:10 - Darker or anything. Then what I’ll do is I will turn this this way so I can do it diagonally.

06:16 - And the whole reason for this is because, you know, you, paper is not, this paper is not just flat, smooth.

06:24 - Okay. It has little tiny divots and ridges and all that other stuff.

06:29 - It’s got, you know, a little bit of roughness to it, which makes it ideal for, for picking up graphite.

06:39 - Off your pencil. Otherwise it would just slide like you’re on a, you know, olive oil or something.

06:45 - And you don’t want that if you ever tried to draw a wax paper? Yeah.

06:50 - That’s not any fun. Is it? Let me know if you’re successful in doing that, that’d be an interesting conversation to have.

06:57 - All right. And now we’re going to go this way and we will label this Hb and let’s see how much wear did we get off of that HB to do all that? Eh, we hardly, barely, hardly barely? We didn’t take much off the tip.

07:18 - Did we? And that’s pretty typical of a pencil of an HB, you know, cause it’s, it’s not like excessively What are what’s with that focus? Anyway, stop it.

07:28 - Stop it. All right. So the next one is the 2B pencil.

08:35 - all right. And that’s 6B okay? let’s take a close look at this.

08:42 - I think my eyes are starting to play tricks on me, but.

08:46 - I want to look at those two. Does this, that 4B look, a little darker tone and the 6B I don’t know.

08:56 - What do you think? Let me know down in the comments below, what do you think? And we’re going to compare it with the Mitsubishi.

09:02 - So we’re going to put down the Mitsubishi next.

09:06 - Let’s write down here that this is the generals.

09:09 - What did they call this thing again? It’s called the Semi hex.

09:12 - Okay. So we’ll write. All right.

09:16 - General’s, semi hex. All right.

09:26 - Now let me just back off here a little bit.

09:30 - Now I’m going to go get the Mitsubishi and we’re going to compare the two.

09:36 - Alright, so. Here are my Mitsubishi.

09:42 - Hi unis. There’s the 4B the HB. Okay.

09:48 - We got the 6B and the 2B. So let’s start with the HB and I’ll just do it right here underneath.

09:56 - Okay. I guess it’s time to zoom back in again.

10:00 - There we go. All right. well there, you have it.

13:10 - Take a really close look at those. I think you can clearly see a difference.

13:16 - You could see that the Mitsubishi has some real drastic changes in contrast.

13:24 - In depth of tone, going from HB to 2B to 4B and to 6B, it’s very strong compared to the General’s semi hex, which is subtle.

13:40 - So you have the darker there and that’s definitely darker.

13:45 - And that one is a yiy yiy yiy. So here’s what we’re going to do.

13:51 - We are now going to do a new test and this test has never been done on RixCanDoIt before, but we’re going to do today.

13:59 - And that is we’re going to do the Mrs. Rix test.

14:03 - And that is I’m going to invite my wife to come in here.

14:07 - She doesn’t draw doesn’t mess with pencils.

14:11 - Well, we’re going to ask her some questions and use her eyeballs and see what she has to say about these.

14:20 - We’ll be right back. Who my wife, Mrs.

14:23 - Rix. And I have not rehearsed with her what to say whatsoever.

14:28 - I just want to get that out there. So I’m going to explain a few things right now and ask her questions and let’s just get her opinion based on her own eyesight.

14:38 - Okay. So we have two rows here. All right.

14:42 - What I’d like you to do is to kind of describe what you see as far as the shade, when it gets lighter or darker going from left to right.

14:52 - Okay. Then I want you to do the same down here and then tell me, what do you see as different between these two? Let’s kind of go with that first.

15:00 - All right. So start with the front.

15:02 - What do you see here? I see here in the top left that it is lighter.

15:10 - Then what I’m seeing as I go to the right. And as far as it being shaded in a tighter way, I guess, I don’t know how to explain that, but, and the next one next to, it seems a little bit darker.

15:25 - Okay, good. And how about the one next to that? The one next to that is Like not so much of the white showing it’s darker yet compared to during.

15:33 - So, so far you’re saying it’s getting a little darker as you go from left to, right? Yes.

15:37 - Okay. Then how about going from here to here? They don’t, this one does not seem darker than the one to its left.

15:47 - Okay. It’s just shaded a little differently.

15:50 - Not as much white showing compared to that.

15:53 - The tone looks about the same. Okay.

15:55 - It looks the same to you now let’s try this row down here, start from the left and work your way to the right.

16:00 - Hm. So the bottom corner left here.

16:04 - How’s it compare? I’m comparing to the right.

16:07 - Seems slightly lighter. Just. Ever so slightly, which one is lighter? Left one it’s a little lighter, right? Correct.

16:15 - Okay. And then what about the next thing comparison again, it’s getting compared to the one on the right is a level darker.

16:22 - Yup. Tell me, which is darker. I am a little confused.

16:26 - This one’s darker than this one or is this one, the one on the right compared to this one here is darker and then darker again.

16:35 - So they’re progressively getting darker. You’re saying.

16:38 - Okay, good. So you’re basically saying that it goes from the lightest and then incrementally gets darkest.

16:44 - But up here you said. It does it up until here and then these two are kind of the same or, yeah, I don’t see a big difference between the 4B and 6B.

16:53 - Okay. Very good. All right.

16:55 - And in comparison. Yeah. Okay.

16:57 - Give me, give me some top to bottom. Which I’d say the bottom left corner is darker than the top point again, incrementally.

17:06 - The bottom seems a little bit darker than the one on the top.

17:11 - Same. Okay. This bottom is darker than the top.

17:15 - The last one would be too. She didn’t see a difference though.

17:18 - That’s quite a bit darker. Well, thanks.

17:20 - I’m going to call you back in for a second test.

17:23 - After I prepare these pencils, what I’m going to do is I’m going to actually cover.

17:28 - What these pencils are, and then I’m going to have you on the maybe over here on this side of the sheet just slide the pencil really lightly and tell me which ones smoother, more buttery than the other.

17:40 - Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.

17:43 - I’ll call you in a little bit. Okay.

17:47 - So that is pretty much what I see. And I imagine that’s what you see as well.

17:52 - Remember, I was kind of questioning these two now, personally to my eyes.

17:57 - 4B looks slightly darker than the 6B, but you know says that they look the same to her.

18:03 - So we’ll go with that. But so it does kind of go up a little bit and then we kind of get a little lost right here.

18:09 - This one, of course I knew that one was going to be good because Mitsubishi hasn’t failed me yet.

18:14 - That’s why I use it as kind of the base in testing all other pencils.

18:19 - Now what I’m going to do, and let me just move this out.

18:24 - Is that going to cover the shafts of these pencils so that we can’t identify whether they’re Mitsubishi.

18:32 - Or that they’re the other brand, the semi hex.

18:37 - Okay. And then I’m going to have her come in and try each one.

18:40 - So let me just go ahead and do that now. okay.

19:21 - Let me get her back into the room here. I’ll be right back.

19:25 - Okay. I have Mrs. Rix back again.

19:28 - And so now I’m going to go ahead and explained to her the rules of this little test.

19:33 - What I’ve done here is I’ve put masking tape to cover up what these pencils are now I know you don’t know these two different brands anyway, so this is pretty much for the audience here to know that you’re not being influenced by the color of the pencil or anything like that.

19:50 - And I’ve written the shade. Of each pencil on this tape on the end.

19:56 - So what we’re going to do is apples to apples.

19:58 - Here are the HB pencils and here are the 6B’s for example, or moved off to the side.

20:05 - Here’s a 4B and here’s a 4B we’ll move those off to the side too.

20:11 - And then these are the. 2B’s. Okay.

20:14 - We’ll move that off to the side. Now, starting with the HB is what I’m going to want you to do.

20:18 - And I don’t care which one of these two you start with is I’m going to want you to take the pencil.

20:23 - I want you to hold it lightly back here like this.

20:27 - This is, this is how an artist would normally hold a pencil.

20:31 - What you want to do is you just want to kind of lightly let the weight of the pencil mostly do it.

20:37 - Lightly just kind of shade around like this and do that with the other pencil as well.

20:45 - And what I want you to do is tell me, and this is what we’re going for.

20:49 - Of the two, which one feels the most buttery or the softest, that glides the best.

20:55 - That’s the kind of thing we’re looking for.

20:57 - Okay. Kind of gives an idea of the quality of the graphite.

21:02 - So go ahead and take these two HB’s. You can go back and forth as you want, but tell me which one do you feel is doing right in here? Yeah.

21:11 - Any, any white areas fine. Don’t go by sound go strictly by how it feels.

21:35 - Okay. You want the softest gliding pencil.

21:48 - matter of fact, just tell me which one you think you’d enjoy using the most as well.

21:52 - Which one feels better to you? Well, not considering, you know how it was sharpened.

22:10 - They’re both about sharpen the same it looks like.

22:12 - I tend to enjoy the feel of the one on my right.

22:19 - Okay. Seems to be a nicer application to me.

22:23 - Okay. So let’s, let’s put that right up here on top and we’re going to get rid of this one.

22:29 - Okay. Go ahead now and do the 2B’s.

23:02 - Okay. Feel free to go anywhere else on the paper.

23:10 - You don’t have to always go on top of the same because when you glide on top of graphite, graphite is slick.

23:18 - Okay. So use Virgin paper and that’s the best.

23:24 - I don’t know why this one’s saying. Okay.

23:28 - I guess so far I’m partial to the one on the right.

23:32 - Okay let me put that up there. The one on the right and this one we’re going to take away.

23:38 - All right. So it feels a little bit softer glides.

23:42 - Better, right? More buttery? Yeah.

23:43 - Okay, good. That’s what I want to know.

23:45 - Okay. Does these both say 4B on it? Yes.

23:48 - Okay. Go for it. Personally, I think it’s even going to get harder for you to choose as you get to the softer pencils, which 4B, and 6B are the softer pencils.

24:05 - I’ll shut up. interesting. I’ll have to say you. .

24:42 - Remember what you’re going for is for smoothness.

24:45 - Let me test that again. Okay. Don’t don’t be looking at, we’ve already did the tones here, testing all we care about that maybe you should even try closing your eyes so that you’re not getting Hmm.

24:57 - That’s a good way to measure. Yeah.

24:59 - I want you, if this is all for tactal feel strictly.

25:03 - It is getting more difficult. So let me try again.

25:07 - Okay. I’m going to try it with my eyes closed.

25:14 - Okay. This one feels more buttering to me.

25:23 - Okay. Put that to the buttery list over there and we’ll get rid of this one.

25:28 - Okay. So the eyes closing helps a little bit, cause it’s going to have to, because you, what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to have tones being influencing.

25:39 - Cause we’ve already done that test. This is all feel and glide.

25:43 - Okay. There you go. So closing your eyes helps go for it.

25:50 - Okay. First with my eyes open. That’s nice.

26:00 - Very nice. Let’s try this boy.

26:10 - This one’s gonna be a tough one too. Okay.

26:26 - Now with my eyes closed, let’s start down here.

26:45 - I think the one on the left has the more buttery feel to it smoother.

26:51 - All right. Thank you very much. You want to be here for the reveal? Okay, let me go ahead and switch places with you here.

27:01 - And let’s see. Let’s see what happened here.

27:05 - Okay. So Mrs. Rix pick these as the softest feeling pencils.

27:13 - Let’s see what they are starting with the HB pencil.

27:26 - Drum roll. Matter of fact, if you you ever decided to get into drawing, you might’ve just picked your pencils.

27:34 - All right. So, well, I know, but I mean, get back into some serious drawing that is not you and I.

27:47 - He used to do years ago and then stick drawing.

27:50 - All right. All right. So for the 4B pencil is the Mitsubishi high uni.

27:59 - Alright, so we’ll put that there. Let’s see.

28:02 - Let’s take a look at the 2B pencil. Well, I really wrapped these puppies up.

28:16 - Good. Didn’t I? Okay. Where is a place that I can peel from? There’s an opening right there.

28:28 - Okay. This one I double wrapped. So make sure that nothing showed when you were doing your test at any time, did you know which pencil was, which like the color of the barrel or anything? No.

28:45 - Okay. Good. Well, okay. Again, she has selected the Mitsubishi Hi Uni yes.

29:00 - Yes. Yes. I’ll get to you later.

29:03 - All right. So yeah, it looks like we have another Mitsubishi pretty, pretty consistent.

29:16 - Huh? That’s your pick? I think, I think so.

29:22 - So here we go. She again, pick the Mitsubishi.

29:29 - I think we pretty much know what this one’s going to be.

29:32 - What do you think you think it’s going to be in the Mitsubishi or the other one? I have no idea.

29:40 - We’ll know in a second here. And it’s the Mitsubishi There we go.

29:56 - She picked all for the Mitsubishi. So you’ve given me those pencils.

30:01 - Those are what I draw with. Yeah. Oh, gosh, I got to go and unravel all these now.

30:08 - Hey, I’ll give you these. Do you want these? I apparently my favorites are the Mitsubishi’s.

30:14 - You don’t want these? They’re free.

30:17 - You want them? Okay. Here. Take them.

30:19 - Is there you have to unwrap them. Thanks a lot.

30:24 - All right. That’s a good deal. So I don’t have to unwrap them.

30:28 - Okay. So there you go guys. She picked a Mitsubishi for its nice equal total values, gradually going up and up and it’s even richer as you can see.

30:39 - And here we have a little bit of an issue with the semi hex and with her little test here, which is technically a blind test.

30:48 - She picked the Mitsubishi, which just shows why I use this as the base pencils.

30:53 - And these are the ones that I use for my own portrait drawing.

30:58 - So there you go. There’s a review of the generals, semi hex drawing pencils.

31:04 - They’re okay. But you know, they’re not.

31:09 - Mitsubishi Hi Uni. I hope you found this pencil review.

31:20 - To be a value. And if you found the video entertaining, please give me a thumbs up.

31:25 - Subscribe. If you haven’t done so already click the notification bell.

31:29 - So you’ll know when I release my upcoming videos and I’ll see you in the next video.

31:37 - Thanks for watching. Look, I got a smudge on my finger. .