MstrSktch Art Supplies

Graphite

Pencil and paper are some of the easiest and cheapest of tools available to artists. But don’t let their ubiquity prevent you from acquiring a solid understanding of their material properties, best uses, pro’s and cons ect…

For daily sketching, when the goal is mileage, ie: how many pencils can I wear out this year, or how many pounds of paper can I work through, in depth understanding is not too critical.

But what if you’re working on a highly rendered piece, with hours invested into it? It is very frustrating when you’ve invested a lot of time and energy into the wrong paper and the piece gets ruined or the pencil sheen detracts from the whole piece.

So the following links are not exhaustive but will go a long way toward helping you understand your tools. First up watch this instagram reel and note the patient careful application of pencils strokes for clean values. The results are beautiful. Keep in mind every time you criss cross pencil strokes, it becomes harder and harder to maintain clean values.

Now there is a technique called circulism where you do cross over strokes, particularly effective for highly detailed skin. This and other layering techniques are covered in the following forum post.

Sometimes, in studying an artist work, you’ll note edges so soft you don’t know how in the world they could do that with a pencil. The secret? They didn’t use a pencil, but they did use graphite.

Now the other half of the pencil art partnership is the paper. Do take the time to understand the different kinds of papers and their pros and cons. It’s easy to take it for granted but many artworks are ruined expecting good results from bad paper. This next video you may want to skip ahead to the middle to get the paper selection portion.

And one last parting link for you to consider. Graphite partners with charcoal very well and can be used together to great effect. Even if your disinclined to use charcoal (messy is the most common reason), you’re doing yourself a favor by fully understanding the difference between the two and how they work together even if you choose not to use charcoal. It will help you know the limits of your graphite work.