Most people who enjoy drawing will probably have their own tried and tested methods, ideas and techniques. Lets face it, there are only so many things that you can do with a graphit or color pencil - no matter how clever you are.
Pencils
Some pencil artist today prefer to work with mechanical draughtsmans style pencils. These mechanical pencils have numerous advantages over regular pencils. They are a constant length and so a constant balance, the leads are more regular and they don't need sharpening as such.
also sharpen my pencils with a scalpel as opposed to a pencil sharpener, it maybe takes slightly longer, but this way I find I can get exactly the profile of lead that I want - impossible with a pencil sharpener. This is certainly not necessarily the best way to work and I wouldn't dream of suggesting to anyone else that they should do the same, it's just what I personally have gotten used to doing.
Other Useful 'Bits'
As well as the pencils and whatever paper or board I'm using when drawing, there are a few other items that I always try to have at hand before I start. By far the most used pieces of kit that I have are my trusty 'wet and dry' boards. These are simply pieces of wood or hardboard with 'wet and dry' fine grit paper glued onto them. These file boards are used to maintain a needle sharp point on my pencils, this being essential for really fine work. Another useful byproduct of my 'frantic filing' is the build up of graphite powder on these boards - very useful for rendering clouds, or large areas of smooth shading like the sky or background tones.
I usually apply this graphite dust with either cotton wool, a soft bristled watercolour paint brushe, or applied with the tip of a cotton bud for shading smaller areas. Cotton wool and cotton buds also work very well on graphite applied with a pencil for smoothing or fading the edges of previously shaded areas. Obviously different tones being achieved by using different grades of graphite dust, just the same as using the pencils.
Mistakes
Like everyone I make mistakes (Far too many actually) and on those occasions there are really only four options. They are the plastic rubber, the electric rubber, the putty rubber and the trusty 'Blu Tack' option........ (okay, maybe there are five options - if it's really, really, REALLY, grim - I may just bin it!). 'Binning' option aside though, I do still tend to use the putty rubber for rubbing out initial 'light' sketch lines when drawing out. But generally by far the most effective method of removing graphite without affecting the surface of the paper is Blu Tack.
regards,
Sanjeev AK Menon
sanjeevakmenon@gmail.com
