Drawing Pencils - Everything You Need To Know

Here is a comprehensive guide for artists, covering our most beloved drawing and sketching tool.

A segment here, from my 3rd book, which is in progress at this very moment, and is all about the most basic and necessary art supplies. I’ve written as consisely, but comprehensively as possible since this is primarily for reference. My goal is for you to quickly get the information you need the most. This article covers graphite pencils.

Pencils - Any drawing media that is encased in wood, plastic, or metal. This includes graphite, charcoal, crayons, wax-based colored pencils, and watercolor pencils.

Graphite Pencils

1) DESCRIPTION

Graphite is a naturally occurring substance that is dark, smooth, and makes good marks on paper. It’s also very slick, and powdered graphite is used as a dry lubricant. Modern graphite is manipulated and created by combining it with other materials. As a solid, it’s extremely brittle, so thin sticks are encased in stronger materials to prevent breakage.

Pencil lead is made of graphite. Graphite is made with varying amounts of ceramic clay baked into it. This way, manufacturers can create soft versions and hard versions of graphite sticks and pencils (usually clad in wood to make them more durable and easy to hold). Some graphite is used in mechanical metal or plastic pencils.

Sketching pencils have a system to identify their hardness and their darkness. School writing pencils sometimes use different systems, especially in the U.S.

We’re only going to look at the traditional system used for drawing and sketching pencils. There are two graduating scales that use either H as an abbreviation for hardness, or B as an abbreviation for blackness. What is interesting, is that these two scales are defining both properties at the same time. That means when a pencil is harder, it is also lighter, and when a pencil is softer, it is generally also darker.

However, the two scales, H and B, both start in the middle. A place where the pencil is neither especially light or dark, nor especially soft or hard.

You can think of the middle as a zero point, or neutrally hard and neutrally soft.

There are pencils that sit in the middle, with both letters together on them: HB. You can think of an HB pencil as having a balanced level of hardness and blackness. It’s like a zero.

H pencils are not very useful for artists. As you increase the H number, the lead is getting both lighter in color, and harder. H9 is almost like writing with a paper clip. It’s so light it’s very hard to see and not many people use outside of drafting, which is almost completely digital now. I haven’t seen one in a long time. It’s very difficult to get a range of values out of a hard graphite, so it’s not very useful for sketching. I discourage artists from using them. A light pencil will usually cause artists to press down harder, and that makes erasing more difficult.

For B pencils, such as 2B, 3B, 4B and so on, up to 9B, they get darker and softer as the numbers get higher. However, this is going in the opposite direction from the H scale, so I like to think of them as negative numbers. They’re bigger numbers, but they are going down, into the darkness below.

It makes sense to me.

2) QUALITY

The good news here is that graphite pencils and sticks seldom suffer from quality issues. The most common problems are bits of hard lead mixed into soft, and an off-center casing. A good store will always carry pencils that are consistent, and that are centered in the wood casing. (off-center is difficult to sharpen). If you do somehow get a pencil that is already broken inside, or that has bits of hardness that make it difficult to use, take it back and avoid that brand in the future.

3) USE

Graphite should be used lightly. Never press down with a graphite pencil. Instead, layers should be slowly built up to achieve darker areas. If you press down hard, you’ll make a slippery, shiny mark on your paper as well as creating unsightly grooves and furrows in the surface itself. This is called burnishing, and creates a reflective surface that works against the blackness of the pencil. The light shines on the burnished areas, reducing the effect of darkness significantly. You don’t usually want this effect. It’s much better in many ways, to keep your pencil light as you work.

Layering is best! Sketching and drawing papers have a textured surface so you can build up layers slowly without showing your strokes so much. Start with a light layer, and then keep adding light and medium layers to create darker and darker areas. Don’t let the pencil press down so hard it makes that slick and shiny burnished spot. It ruins the paper, and also creates odd highlights in your drawing.

Erasing graphite is impossible if you have pressed hard, but extremely easy when you draw lightly.

When we were young, we wanted to get control out of our teeny tiny wobbly hands, so we learned to grip hard and press down with force. Artists have to unlearn these two habits. You should hold the pencil lightly to keep your hands healthy, and press down very lightly so you can erase easily.

There is a point of no return when drawing with a pencil.

When you’re pressing a pencil down onto paper, there is a specific amount of pressure, that when crossed, makes graphite impossible to erase no matter what eraser you use and no matter how vigorously you work it. There is a reason for this specific point of pressure, and you need to know how to avoid going past it.

In your mind, shrink yourself down to microscopic size. If you look at the paper now, it is like a football field sized mattress. The makeup of the paper is not like a mattress though. Because it’s made of fibers, and because we are very small, it looks more like a crazy tangle of thin vines.

When a pencil comes along, it mashes the paper mattress of fibers a bit. The graphite is scraped off of the pencil tip, in particles, which are left on the surface of the paper. this is how the line is being drawn. It’s really just powder on the paper. That’s why it smears so easily.

With a light touch, the paper mattress only compresses a little bit, and all the particles sit on top of after the pencil has moved on. The little particles can easily be lifted off by an eraser. Especially a kneaded eraser, which is more sticky than abrasive.

If the pencil is pressed down into the paper mattress hard enough though, there comes a point when the pressure of the pencil is too much. The surface of the paper is compressed enough, so that the pencil is touching fibers down inside the paper. As the pencil moves forward, the paper behind snaps back up, trapping some particles of graphite beneath the surface. When this happens, many of the particles are embedded inside the paper, while most are still up on the surface. An eraser can only lift off the particles on top, and the ones embedded - are there forever. that’s why you see a ghost of your line even when you erase vigorously.

Try not to press past the point of no return. With a light touch, you can erase everything.

Surfaces: Pencils work well on all kinds of paper, from very smooth to very rough. Light colored papers work best and have the best range of values. Graphite can lift up into watercolors and acrylics, affecting colors, so avoid heavy lines and shading if using paint over graphite. I do not recommend using graphite on any kind of canvas or gessoed panels, with water-based paints. When using oils, if you like the gray color, graphite can be mixed quite well into oil paintings on any compatible surface for oils.

4) CARE

The most important thing is to not drop or play with a pencil. If dropped, or if you even slightly put pressure on it to bend, the brittle graphite will break inside a wooden pencil. The short pieces will rotate in a sharpener and often come out. You should throw away a pencil with broken lead inside.

Sharpening is up to you. Many people say that sketching pencils should only be sharpened with a knife. It does create a more expressive point. If you do sharpen with a mechanical sharpener, make sure to draw a bit with the tip on some scrap paper, creating a nice flattened tip that matches the angle you’re holding the pencil in. This avoids that initial super sharp dark crisp line, that can look bad when shading areas softly.

If you want a sharp thin line, though, some people will use sandpaper to create a super sharp point. My favorite way to make a very sharp point, is to hold the angle of the pencil tip against a piece of paper, sitting on a table. Then rotate the pencil as you whittle the point with a very sharp blade. The pencil lead is supported by the paper and surface underneath, so it’s not as easy to snap the little tip off as you sharpen.

5) RECOMMENDATION

A 2B pencil has the best overall range of light and dark capabilities, depending on how hard you press down with it. The 2B is pretty soft, and can get fairly dark, or black. A 4B has more blackness and is softer and more breakable. An 8B is very soft and can get very dark. The “lead” in these soft pencils are usually thicker to prevent breakage. Sometimes sketching pencils even have square lead and flat sides.

My recommendation is to have a couple of 2B, a couple of 4B, an Ebony (or 8B), and maybe a stick of 4B or 6B bare graphite too.

Mechanical Graphite Pencils

1) DESCRIPTION

This is a plastic or metal “pen”, that holds a long, very thin, precisely sized stick of graphite. The tip is a tiny tube of metal (usually), which is just the right size for the lead to slide through. A clicker on the back end or on the side, moves the lead stick forward a bit, each time you click it. These mechanisms allow the user to move more lead out of the tube as it gets used up, and prevents the need to sharpen.

Lead comes in meany different sizes, but since the main purpose is to not have to sharpen and to be precise, most of the popular mechanical pencils come in two sizes, measured in 10ths of a millimeter. Both are used for drafting and for drawing. The larger size is a bit stronger and won’t break as easily.

0.5 mm

0.7 mm

The size of the lead and the pencil must match exactly! If you put a smaller lead than the pencil is designed for, the lead slips back in when you draw, or falls out of the pencil entirely. If the lead is too big, it doesn’t come out at all. So make sure if your pencil is 0.7, you don’t buy 0.5 mm lead for it. It won’t work at all.

2) QUALITY

The lead doesn’t suffer from quality very often, but can have harder spots just like any pencil or charcoal. The main differences in quality are found in the mechanical pencil.

There are throw-away plastic pencils that work ok. If it breaks or runs out of lead, you’re supposed to buy another one.

Then you’ll find plastic pencils that are designed to be used over. Many of these are cheap, and can’t be fixed if they break or jam. A few of them, that cost more, will last much longer and have some metal parts in them.

3) USE

A mechanical pencil will make uniform lines. This is great for technical drawing, as well as precise artwork. Many cartoonists only use mechanical pencils.

One of the biggest drawbacks is shading. These are designed for line work, and since there is no side of the lead, like on a wooden pencil, and you can’t wear down to a larger point, smooth shading is almost impossible. However, if you’re doing guide lines for inking over, shading is not needed anyway. That’s why ink artists love a good mechanical pencil.

Instead of smooth shading, artists can make hatch marks, or lots of lines, just like with ink. Lots of precise lines create the look of shading, and cross-hatching works too, to make areas darker.

4) CARE

If a mechanical pencil stops working, you can try to disassemble it to see what the problem is. Sometimes lead gets jammed up and can be reamed out with another piece of lead or a long straight wire or a pin. A few mechanical pencils provide a wire in the back.

Sometimes the spring jams, and sometimes the push mechanism gets loose or jammed. The higher quality tools will be fixable, while cheap plastic ones, not so much.

The back of the pencil can open (if refillable), and usually this is an eraser holder that pops out or unscrews. This is where you drop in a few new leads, which funnel their way down to the tube to be the next one in use. Make sure that when you open the back of a mechanical pencil, that you pretend it’s holding liquid. If you don’t, then whatever lead is in there will fall out, and either break or be lost, as they are quite small and hard to see.

Erasers can be purchased and replaced in many pencils.

5) RECOMMENDATION

One of my favorite mechanical pencils is the Quicker Clicker by Pentel. They have a long history of making excellent devices. These are not only more comfortable than most pencils, but they can be taken apart and fixed. I keep old ones for parts to fix newer ones. Even though these are plastic, they last a long time. They also have an eraser holder that can take several different brands of erasers.

Staedtler makes a refill for an eraser pen, that is a long piece of vinyl eraser that looks like a solid drinking straw. You can cut small pieces off and replace the eraser in a good mechanical pencil, including the Quicker Clicker.

Mechanical pencil lead breaks easily, so most of them default to the harder HB leads when you purchase them. You can buy 2B and 4B, but you need to have a light touch or they’ll break a lot as you work. I use 4B.