✏️Pencil Skills✏️Part 1✏️

Sharpen those tips, babies, we're about to get broken.

Hellooo, DrawTogether Friends.

Our dispatch this week arrives a little late as I got back from speaking at the Aspen Ideas Health festival late last night! (Were your ears burning, DT GUT?? I was talking about us.) In addition to talking about the power of drawing to create connection, I shared the growing DrawTogether Strangers project and got hundreds and hundreds of health care professionals to slow down, look closely and draw one another. Art & Health = No brainer to us here at the GUT. It’s so exciting to see other people catching on.

It was an joy to see cellist Joshua Roman perform and speak about his new project Immunity (he has long covid and explores the intersection of music and health), and to watch the cast of How to Dance in Ohio perform a few songs (all autistic cast in a rocking musical about autism!) Again: Art & Health. No. Brainer.

If you want, you can watch a little video that Aspen Ideas made about DrawTogetherStrangers here, and below is a fun moment when I got everyone in the audience to draw each other¹. Mwahahaha.

Also, just a quick high five to everyone who experimented with last week’s art assignment based on the sketches of Diego Rivera, and the grid drawings he did for his giant mosaics. Never in a million years did I expect to see that lesson inspire this:

Alfred E. Neumann by Syl H. Brito

And I am THRILLED.

Alright. Let’s get into it.

✏️PENCIL SKILLS✏️ Part 1✏️

First off, forgive me for calling this series “PENCIL SKILLS.” As you will see, it’s a total misnomer. But I wanted to rope you in, and “Explorations in Graphite” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

We haven’t been very medium focused in our work here at the Grown-Ups Table, save for a little lesson on watercolor. So this week we start down a path of the pencil: a dark and smudgy exploration. This deep pencil dive was a request from a GUT member, and I don’t take requests lightly. Also, my friend Ali just gifted me a jumbo graphite pencil and I’ve been LOVING playing around around with it (thanks, Ali!), so the timing felt right.

What we’re doing and what you’ll need.

If you are like me and hoard art supplies, this would be a good time to go to your “pencil drawer” and pull out every single graphite tool you have. If you are not like me (congrats!) then go find that yellow Ticonderoga Number 2 nub in the kitchen junk drawer. That will do just fine for this lesson, too.

Here’s what we’re looking forward to:

Part 1, Today I’ll share a little about the history of the graphite pencil, how they are made (some great videos!), and what they are made of. I will share an overview of different graphite mediums I have in my own materials collection, and explore the marks they make, and learn about the graphite grading system. We’ll test out our personal collections of graphite pencils. (Trust me, you probably have more pencils than you think.) I’ve included a bunch of links if you want to buy some new supplies to try, but if you can, please, PLEASE support your local art store.

Part 2, I’ll show you different ways to sharpen your pencil and explore how that changes what kind of marks they make. (Yes, friends, sharpening graphite pencils is such a deep topic that it can actually be the subject of an entire news letter!) We’ll use this opportunity to do a deep dive into traditional graphite shading and crosshatching, and look at some art made by artists who use graphite.

Part 3, we will push the boundaries of graphite to see new ways of using it, look at artists who experiment with graphite and try some experimentations ourselves.

Of course, I reserve the right to change this at anytime. NO RULES IN ART.

Okay, ready? Great. Let’s do this.

PENCIL PRIMER

What’s a Pencil?

You know it when you see it, right? ✏️

OR DO YOU.

Let’s get clear: a pencil is an instrument you use for writing or drawing. It consists of a thin stick of graphite or similar substance enclosed in a long thin piece of wood or fixed in a metal or plastic case. ² What I think is important about defining pencil (and why i’m using all those italics), is that a pencil is actually a CASE, and not a medium! The medium - meaning the material is left on the paper we draw on - may be graphite. But it could also be chalk or crayon. The pencil is just what holds the medium. It’s the fork to the cake. The record to the music.

Case in point: the word “pencil” comes rom the French word “Pincel” which translates to “brush.” Not paint. Brush.

So what do we call our drawings? Pencil Drawing or Graphite Drawing?

I mean, call it whatever you want. But if we are speaking to other people who make things or care about making things and want to be clear, then it helps to be speaking the same language. So in art speak:

You know those little labels you find in a museum next to an artwork? They usually include the medium the artist used, not the vehicle.

So when we use a graphite pencil to make a drawing, we should be saying “I used graphite to make this drawing.” And not, “I used pencil.” I know it sounds a little uptight, but think about it: if you made a painting in watercolor and someone asked you what you used, would you say “I made this painting with a brush?” I mean, it’s true, you did. But you’d probably state the medium, and say '“watercolor.” Similarly, telling someone “I made this drawing with pencil” is just part of the story. That pencil could contain anything: chalk, carbon, crayon, even paint… Instead, if you used a graphite pencil, you would instead probably want to say “This is a graphite drawing.”

So what is a “Graphite Pencil” exactly??

Okay here’s a fun fact: Lead pencils - often used interchangeably with “pencils” - were never made with lead. NEVER! Lead pencils have always been made with graphite, a mineral form of carbon found inside the earth. Pure graphite is greasy and leaves a black mark, which is why it’s named after the Greek word "graphein”, meaning “to write.”

So why do we call graphite pencils “lead”? Because when miners discovered an unusually pure deposit of graphite in Cumbria in Northern England in 1564, they assumed it was lead. But it wasn’t, it was graphite. But I guess it took a while to figure that out. 🤷‍♀️

Not long after the graphite pencil was invented in the 16th century , artists found they could use pure graphite pencils to create preparatory sketches for other artworks, like paintings. Only more recently have artists started using graphite to make finished artwork.

Today, pencil manufacturers use a mixture of graphite powder and clay to create lead pencils. The mixture changes the consistency and value of the medium: graphite is the mark making material, and the clay is used to create the hardness/softness of the lead. The more graphite, the softer and darker the pencil. The more clay, the harder and lighter the pencil.

How is a pencil made?

I’ve always wanted to learn how the graphite core gets into the center of a pencil. And with more than 14 BILLION pencils being made around the world each year (!) , I’m fascinated by the whole pencil making process in general, so I’m sharing with you two videos with some great behind the scenes pencil-making.

The first video takes us through the creation of a pencil from mining to writing, including wood harvesting, lead mixing, and offers some overall pencil history and fun facts.

This second video is from the fantastic folks at General Pencil, the oldest pencil manufacturer in the USA, and one of only five remaining pencil factories in the USA. They make about 24,000 pencils a day, including 20 different shades of graphite. This is a great peek into their family owned factory, and it’s a delight to see the General Pencil community hands-on creating the art supplies we love so much!

Alright, now that we know what a graphite pencil is, and how it is made, let’s look at the different kinds of graphite artists use, and do a little experimenting with them.

Graphite Tools

I pulled out different tools from my graphite collection and did some sophisticated scribble testing (aka doodling) to see what they could do, and how their marks are different.

Here’s a general overview, with notes in the captions of specific tools. I’ve included some links to buy some in case you want to try them. I highly suggest you go to your local art supply store and support them! (And if you buy through the links below, I may get a small commission, so thanks for supporting me!)

Graphite Drawing Pencils

Graphite pencils are graded in a couple different ways, with letters and numbers, that tell you how hard and soft the graphite and mark is. Honestly the whole two systems thing is dumb, and they should change it. But for now, think of it his way:

H = Hard, B = Soft. F is in the middle. And the higher the number, the harder or softer it is. Here is a chart I made using all the drawing pencils I have on hand. When I drew the sample at the bottom I tried to use the same pressure so you can see a true range of graphite. (Clearly there is a whole huge range of light/dark to be explored in each pencil, too! But let’s save that for next time.)

Not only does this show you the different makes they make, it also becomes a little personal chart telling you which pencils I use the most! Ha. I didn’t include my Blackwings in this because while I LOVE them they do not use numbers or letters for their softness, and we are trying to learn so. :)

While 2B is generally used in classrooms for writing, HB is generally used in DRAWING classes as the solid starting point - not too hard, and not too soft.

The harder the graphite gets (the more clay used in the mixture!) the sharper, finer line you get, and the lighter the mark becomes. The hardest graphite pencil is a 9H.

The softer the graphite gets (the more graphite is used in the mixture!) The softer, more mushy line you get, and the darker the mark becomes. The softest graphite pencil is a 9B.

There is no better or worse pencil - there is just what you prefer, and what works for the drawing or project you’re working on. I recommend buying a set of drawing pencils and playing around with all of them! A great set to start with is Generals Graphite Drawing Pencil Kit, that has 12 pencils running from 8B - 4H. And as you can see in the chart-demo above, I also love Staedtler pencils. I was introduced to them in my earliest figure drawing classes, continued using them throughout art school, and still use them now. Here is a fantastic full suite at a decent price.

More sorts of Graphite Drawing Tools!

You might remember mechanical pencils as being those plastic yellow clicking ones that would break every time you touched the graphite to paper? Well, there are actually great ones with stronger, thicker graphite and higher quality bodies that have been used by engineers and architects for ages. Upside: you never have to sharpen them, and you don’t need to buy new pencils, just lead. The NYT’s Wirecutter did a review of mechanical pencils. They know more about them than me so here you go.

This was a gift and I LOVE it. It’s a super soft 8B, and the thick graphite core gives it a nice broad angled stroke. Also, a jumbo pencil feels so forgiving and fun. No getting uptight or perfectionist with this chunky friend! Faber Castell makes a tin set of them.

Woodless pencils are just that: 100% graphite with no wood. It’s wrapped in slim plastic so your hand doesn’t get covered in graphite. The fun thing about these is you can use them like a regular graphite pencil with an extra thick lead, or you can unwrap the plastic and use them on their side like chalk or a crayon. The one above is a General. You can get theirs inside this mini-kit of drawing supplies which is a steal.

Speaking of Crayons, this is a fat graphite crayon that is just a big ol’ stick of graphite. It’s great to mess around with - get big varying marks - and also great for frottage (a technique we’ll return to in part 3!) This one is Faber Castell in a 6B, and you can also get sticks from General.

I did a lot of googling to learn how watersoluble graphite is made and came up empty handed. I’ll keep searching. But this wonderful tool is exactly what you think it is: a soft graphite that dissolves with water and becomes much like a watercolor paint. I tried rewetting it after it dried and it behaves much like watercolor in that it’s not totally rewardable, but it is still soluble. So better for layering. General makes them, and you can get them in crayon form as well.

Alright, there you have it! Our first deep dive into graphite pencil land. Now let’s actually do a little something instead of just reading about it. GET OUT THOSE PENCILS BECAUSE…