Tips on Choosing and Using Drawing Pencils

An essential component of any pencil artists materials is a good set of drawing pencils. These can be bought fairly cheaply in any artist materials shop and are a great investment as they will last for a long time when looked after properly. It is worth buying a high quality set of pencils as poor quality graphite can lead to problems creating consistent tones and even scratches in the paper. Drawing pencils can often be purchased in boxes of six or twelve and they range in scale from 6H, which is the hardest and gives the lightest tone, to 8B, which is the softest and produces dark tones. When buying a set of pencils make sure they span a range of tones from fairly hard to soft. It is rarely necessary to use more than a few pencils when producing a drawing as a wide range of tones can be produced simply by varying the pressure that you use to produce the pencil strokes on the page. A good combination of pencils to use is a HB for the initial drawing of the outline and preliminary shading, and a 5B/6B for adding depth to the drawing. It will rarely be necessary to use pencil lighter than HB, and hard pencils may leave indentations on your paper when hard pencil strokes are applied. Don't be afraid to use soft pencils to produce dark shading in the areas with shadow as a strong contrast in pencil tones will help give the picture depth and a three dimensional quality. A good technique to use when shading a drawing is to start off by shading the entire drawing lightly with a relatively hard pencil and then adding progressively darker layers to this with softer pencils to build up the tones on the pages. Soft pencils can also be used to build up consistency in a drawing as pencil strokes from soft pencils when applied lightly will tend to blend into one another without the need for crosshatching. Crosshatching is drawing of two layers of fine parallel lines that are at right-angles to each other and is used to create area of tone in a drawing. When using soft pencils, if you make delicate pencil strokes that are close together along a single plane, this will create the illusion of an area of tone where the individual pencil strokes are invisible. After sharpening a drawing pencil, make sure to use a scrap of spare paper to dull the point, as a sharp point at the tip of the pencil will make effective shading more difficult. For some examples of portraits that were drawn with a HB and 6B pencil combination check out my pencil portrait website.