How to choose graphite drawing pencils. Are you looking for the graphite pencil for artistic drawing that best suits your style? Do you want some advice to understand which drawing pencil to buy? Well, you’ve come to the right place: with this short guide, we want to explain to you the main characteristics of graphite pencils available on the market and therefore in our e-commerce. Which ones have a more complex lead, and which ones are softer? And again, which pencils are suitable for artistic drawing, and which ones are designed for technical drawing? By reading this guide on choosing the graphite drawing pencil for drawing ideas easy, we will answer these and many other questions. Indeed it is not enough to have a quality pencil in your hands to become an artist, but certainly, being able to count on the right accessory helps, and not even a little!
Professional graphite drawing pencils: where to find the best ones?
The pencil is probably the most straightforward and most instinctive drawing tool you can find. As children, we are in love with it. With a pencil, we can travel with our imagination and create fantastic drawings and illustrations. I remember that as a child, I had my school case with my graphite pencils, and I was jealous of some of them. Whenever someone asked me to lend him a pencil, I was always reluctant! It wasn’t selfishness, and I would describe it more as “fear of losing my beloved work tool”! Seriously, as we grow up, we change, but those who are passionate about technical or artistic drawing always secretly love their pencils.
And the better we get, the more selective we become. We cannot use any pencils, and we have to find the one with the perfect stroke, correct pigmentation, and solid lead and is easy to sharpen. In short: finding the best pencils, especially if in graphite, is not so simple. Because it is also essential to know how to choose them! After a brief introduction to the history of this fabulous tool, I will explain how you can select the best professional drawing pencils.
A brief history of the graphite pencil
Before seeing together which drawing pencil you should choose, we want to dedicate a few lines to the history of this essential drawing accessory. The most different methods and the most disparate accessories use to draw lines in ancient times, but none of them could compare to today’s graphite pencil. This mineral was only discovered in 1565 when someone accidentally stumbled upon a massive deposit in Borrowdale, England. At first, this material was used by shepherds to mark cattle, and soon after, someone started wrapping graphite chips in a flap of fabric to draw and write without getting excessively dirty.
But how did graphite pencils as we know them to come about today?
The Italians Simonio and Indiana Bernacotti designed these graphite leads inserted in a wooden profile, although some say that the invention is attributed to Konrad Steiner. In any case, over the centuries, the drawing pencil has undergone continuous improvements: at the end of the eighteenth century Nicolas-Jacques Conté, due to the growing difficulty in getting one’s hands-on graphite (due to the commercial block of those years with England) began to mix this material with clay so that you can pressure cook everything at very high temperatures. Since then, the method used to make drawing pencils is just that.
Almost 50 years later, in 1850, Lothar Faber made further improvements to the graphite pencil, experimenting with different degrees of hardness of the lead and introducing the hexagonal information to prevent the continuous movement of the latter inside the wooden casing. In a nutshell, It is the tale of the graphite drawing pencil, a fundamental starting point for every artist.
Various types of drawing pencils: hard and soft leads
As you undoubtedly know, graphite pencils are distinguished outwardly by the shape of the wooden casing, which can be hexagonal, round, or even triangular. But it is not the exterior that makes the real difference, but the interior: there are many different types of mine, to be used from time to time for other jobs. Having to divide the universe of graphite pencils into two large groups, one should put drawing pencils with H lead on one side and B lead on the other.
The H lead, or Hard, is complex, dry, and durable information over time, which allows you to trace exact marks of a color that is not strictly black but rather gray. His stroke is easy to erase. Some examples are 2H, 3H, up to 8H, or 9H pencils. On the contrary, lead B, or Black, is soft, greasy, wears out quickly, and leaves a black mark, not very easy to erase. We all used a 2B pencil or a 4B pencil at school! Halfway between these two groups are the HB (Hard Black) pencils of medium hardness and the F (Fine Point) pencils, positioned more precisely between the HB and the H.
Choose the graphite pencil for artistic drawing
It is certainly not easy to understand from the beginning which is the most suitable drawing pencil for our purposes. Even the H pencils, such as the 2H or the 3H, can be used in the artistic field, mainly for sketching. Thanks to their high erasability, they offer themselves ideally for the purpose. But be careful to use them very lightly to avoid leaving grooves on the sheet you are working on! On the other hand, the B pencils offer the possibility of making an infinite number of hatches and shades, but they need a rubber bread and not a simple white eraser to be erased. Do you want to understand which are the pencils should never be missing on your drawing board? Our advice is to try different ones, understand which ones are right for you and which are not, and perhaps even explore other brands.
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