The Venus Perfect Pencil is a beautiful pencil. It has that classic pine-green color that we are used to see on high-quality pencils, perhaps a tone darker. But what makes this pencil stand out is the unique craquelure pattern in a lighter green, giving the pencil a leathery look.
The writings are in gold with a serif typo that hightens the feel of uniqueness, even if they are not really well defined.
The ferrule is perfectly matched to the pencil, being in gold with a green ring. The eraser itself seems to have lost its color over time. I’m not sure how old this pencil is, but the eraser is dried up, if that is the right term.
As you can see in the pictures I fetched a whole dozen in a pretty (kitschy) box. The smell of the cedar wood is overwhelming. We europeans are not used to cedar wood in pencils, so that smell totally transports you to the meditereanean, sitting on a small hill, looking down into the old center of an small italian village, cicades singing their song… but I diverge. The smell is just great, while sketching I repeatedly smelled the tip.
An interesting detail was uncovered by sharpening with my KUM Long Point. You can see how the lead has cannelures, which are certainly used to make the lead adhere to the wood and perhaps also to make it more durable.
It felt quite right as a drawing pencil. Not extremely smooth, but the weight of the pencil and the hardness of the HB lead made for a balanced and inspiring performance. Just the right hardness for an HB with a nice dark line if sharpened and pressed hard. The craquelure provided some light grip. I unfotunately put the eraser to my mouth at some point and this totally destoyed its mediocre performance, but that is mainly due to its age and not really a thing of quality.
So I can say that this pencil is worth the purchase, if you happen to come by a few. I certainly will sketch more with it in the future. I tried it in my small Canson sketchbook and in the big Moleskine and the performances were good on both papers. Is it a perfect pencil? Certainly not, but it is a good pencil, not outstanding, but worth the price.
And there’s even more to the brand Venus.
My pencils draw worlds 