Pencil Points

     To the right is a simple diagram of three pencil points that I know of. I'm sure there are more.



      I've attempted the flat head (1) with a Prismacolor Premier graphite pencil, but it’s too thick (~5mm) and too hard for that sort of drawing. A charcoal pencil (2mm) might be a better choice.

      A sharpened point (2) is what I’ve been using so far. It’s the easiest to get and work with, though it makes shading difficult (a tortillon helps with that).

  

     The more common shape I’ve been seeing is a sort of rounded edge (3) used by Vilppu, Proko, and Karl Gnass. The idea is to round the graphite in such a way that the more you tilt it, the thicker the line you draw. If you hold it in the normal, calligraphic, over-the-palm way, you might as well be drawing with (2). So, they recommend artists hold their pencils under-palm in a manner Karl Gnass demonstrates in this video. A thin line can be achieve without tilting the pencil on its head by simply turning the pencil like a paintbrush. Drawing in this way also helps to keep the pencil sharp, which improves workflow.

     The problem is—and I’m sure I’ve said this before—learning to hold the pencil under-palm is like learning how to draw all over again. I guess it would be easier if I’d been working with paintbrushes up until now. I can appreciate the purpose of this exercise. The point is not to think of the pencil as putting ‘ah line on teh page,’ but as a tool for making marks, so you ought to get comfortable with holding it in whatever way makes the mark you want. It’s easy to learn this with brushes, since we were never taught how to hold them in the first place. So you see people holding brushes like pencils and sometimes holding them like a chopstick and tilting them in whatever direction to paint in that direction. A good sketch artist has to learn to do that with a pencil.

      But it’s a pain in the ass, and I might save time in the long run by practicing it now, but that would make learning the rest of this stuff (anatomy, planes, and shading) more difficult. So, I’ve decided to put it off until I’m comfortable with the more encyclopedic details. I’ll reach a point (and I’m almost there) where I’ll look at my figures and think, ‘The construction is accurate, but the texture makes this a sloppy representation.’ That’s when I’ll be done learning construction and be able to focus fully on technique.