Mechanical Pencils and Lead Holders

Mechanical Pencils and Lead Holders

 

 

The main problems of the pencil is that it has a very light weight and it's size changes with use and also it needs to be sharpen frequently.

 

So mechanical pencils came to the rescue. They are made of plastic or metal, or a mix of the two, and they hold an internal lead of graphite. They don't shrink with use and remains the same size and weight so the artist can get used to work with it. And sharpening it only involves sharpening the lead and not the case.

The differences between mechanical pencils and lead holders is that the mechanical-pencil lead can be advanced in steps and will not drop out, and don't need to be sharpened. The lead holders have a mechanism to hold the lead in place and the lead have to be sharpened.

Generally the mechanical pencils use leads from 0.9mm to 0.3mm size, and the lead holders goes from 2mm to 5.6mm lead sizes.

The main problem of the mechanical pencil is that the lead breaks easily, even if reinforced with a polymer as some manufacturers do. They are good for detail work, being the lead holders more suitable to other kind of work, like laying value on a area or general sketching, but it is the artist who must decide how they fit in their own workflow.

 Enjoy Drawing

Pencils part 2

In the first article about pencils, I showed a set of drawing pencils with a range of shades from 6H to 8B, all from the same manufacturer. This is desirable as it maintains consistency in all shades of gray that the pencils can generate. As I said before, a 4B graphite pencil from one manufacturer is probably different from a 4B pencil from another manufacturer. So it's a way manufacturers have to probably make you use only pencils of one manufacturer in a given pencil set. On the other hand if you can't get a full set of pencils from one source, you may try to make one yourself, trying different pencils from different manufacturers until you get a set you like.

 The Hard pencils

This picture is from one set i have made. I use it to draw outside. It is made from several manufacturers, those are the ones i could manage to find in local art stores.

These are the Hard (H) pencils, most of them from only one manufacturer.  They range from 9H to F.

Be careful with the high H range of pencils, specially the 9H is extremely hard and when sharpened, it is like a needle, it will hurt you if you don't take care when drawing with it

From top to bottom: 

• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 9H
• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 8H
• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 7H
• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 6H
• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 5H
• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 4H
• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 3H
• STAEDTLER Mars Lumograph 2H
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 H
• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 F

The Soft pencils

  These are the soft pencils of my own made set.

 
Again many of them comes from one manufacturer. As they are a lot of pencils for one picture, i have included a detail picture of them.

From left to right:

• STAEDTLER Mars Lumograph 8B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 8B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 7B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 6B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 6B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 5B
• CRETACOLOR 150 5B
• CRETACOLOR 150 5B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 4B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 3B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 2B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 2B   
• NOMBRE DON DIN 2B
• Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 B
• CARAN D'ACHE TECHNOGRAPH 777 B
• Unmarked pencil B
• Unmarked pencil HB
• STAEDTLER Noris HB
• 4OFFICE 4120 HB 
• Scholine - PROFESSIONAL DRAWING 2300 HB

The lead of the STAEDTLER 8B  is bigger than any other pencil in this set, even the Faber-Castell  Castell 9000 8B is not so big.

These soft pencils are fragile, so be careful with them, The lead may fracture inside the pencil if they drop on the floor and when sharpened the pencil tip may break easily and drop so you have to sharp it again.

As you can see, you can make any set of drawing pencils with all kinds of pencils you can find in local art stores. After some trial and error you will be able to define a set of drawing pencils that you like.

In a following article we will focus on another type of pencils, the mechanical ones and the lead holders.


Until then enjoy drawing

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Working with values

I think that if you want to be able to make a pencil drawing using a photograph as reference, you will need to use a value scale. 

A value scale is a scale filled with shades of gray or unfilled to show the value or shade of each pencil in a range of values from black to white, being the paper the white

It is used to find the values of a particular area of a black and white image, drawing or photograph, by overlaying it and finding areas of similar value through the holes.

How to make a graphite pencil value scale

To have an idea of which pencil to use for a given area of a black and white picture, one thing you can use is a value scale. What i call a value scale is a template printed on card. This template has separate locations to be filled with graphite from the different values you have from 9H all the way to 9B. Then when you have all squares filled with each different pencil you will have a variation of shades of gray or values from black (9B) to almost white (9H), and white is represented by the paper itself. If you make a hole on each value square, now you can compare the values on the original black and white picture with the values on your scale, and when the values match you will know which pencil to use.

 

You should try to apply the same pressure on the pencil when filling the value spaces of each pencil so the result is the most consistent possible. You can cross-hatching it first drawing horizontal lines and then drawing vertical lines over the horizontal ones. Try to fill each space the same way.

 

You can also use a computer generated scale of pure values for you to compare the reference image,

any area no your drawing or to calibrate the values of your pencils.

Always remember that different pencil manufacturers always have different value range for their pencils, so a 4B from one manufacturer probably is different from the 4B pencil of another manufacturer.

I have included a file with empty template value scales I use, i made them in Inkscape, an open source vector drawing application.


click here for the    Value Template


Enjoy drawing.

Pencils Part 1

 All you need to draw is a piece of paper and a pencil  But there are pencils and pencils. So we will talk about one of the main tools of drawing: the pencil. More specifically graphite wood pencils.

My first set of drawing pencils.

 I love these Mars Lumograph Pencils. The original content of the tin box was 8B 7B 6B 6B 5B 4B 4B 3B 2B 2B B HB F H 2H 3H 4H 5H 6H, but i have replaced the extra 2B and 4B pencils with an extra 7B and 8B, so i have 2 6B, 2 7B and 2 8B. As you can probably see, i have used mainly pencils from the 6B to H range. These pencils are very smooth, easy to sharpen and to erase and have a very good value range from 6H to 8B.

Lumograph value range

This is how the value range of the Lumograph series of drawing pencils looks. It starts on 6H the lightest one and goes to 8B the darkest one. The HB stands in the middle and is the normal pencil, the one you will find everywhere.

Normally different pencil manufacturers have different ranges of value available spawning from 9H to 9B. I have heard there is also 10H, but I never saw one.

Pencils are made of graphite and clay, The more clay the pencil has the lightest the mark it leaves on the paper.  They range from the (H)  Hard ones, which have more clay than graphite,to the (B) Black ones which have less clay and much more graphite. 

The hard pencils range from H to 9H. The 9H is so hard that I think I will only need to sharpen it only once, and it seems it will never wear off.

The black and soft pencils range from B to 9B. Usually the lead diameter tends to grow with the higher B value cause they are softer and have tendency to break easily. These ones leave the blackest mark in the paper that graphite can do.

The full value range of graphite pencils

 

... when someone gave me a little A5 pen tablet, about an year ago, I thought that my digitall graphics skills would just explode, as it is easier to draw with a tablet than with a mouse. I did some digital drawings, and decided to give it a try with real life media. So I got a pencil and a piece of paper and gaved it a go. The result amazed me cause i was not aware i could even draw! I made a decision to start learning how to draw. This was last year, and i have spent some of my free time drawing and practice drawing, learning about it, learning about the tools, about paper. I always thought that digital is always better than the analog, but I see how a simple pencil can do wonders that require a lot of investment in hardware and software to be able to produce an approximation.Even the best tablets can't even get near to all that is possible to do with a pencil.

And, of course, i have fallen in love with pencils :)


enjoy drawing