Craig Nelson - Secrets of Drawing: Start to Finish

Just about anything that can make marks or tones may be used for drawing. The yellow-jacketed no. 2 graphite pencil with an eraser that we are all familiar with is usually our first drawing tool.

However, even graphite comes in various degrees of hardness, offering a variety of tones. There are many other types of mediums that all have unique characteristics and therefore offer unique drawing opportunities. Try as many as you can.

Drawing mediums are referred to as either dry or wet. Both types can be combined in countless ways to produce everything from quick, hard contour lines to rich, graceful gradations.

Dry Mediums

Charcoal pencils and sticks

Graphite pencils and sticks

Pastels, soft

Colored pencils

Oil pastels

Pastels, hard

Cont pencils and sticks

Wet Mediums

Watercolor

Colored inks

The proper drawing tools combined with your chosen mediums and surfaces will help you achieve your artistic vision. Here are some tools you may find useful.

Tortillions

Sandpaper

Erasers

Pencil sharpeners

Art knives

Brushes

Artists graphite is a combination of graphite and clay. It is a specific type of pencil that produces silvery blacks, and it comes in sticks as well as pencils. The higher the proportion of graphite to clay, the softer the medium.

Graphite comes in degrees of hardness from 8H to 6B (the H refers to hard and the B designates black). Hard graphite (H) is good for fine details. Soft graphite (B) can produce a wider range of tones than hard graphite and is good for large tonal areas. Soft graphite requires sharpening more often than hard.

Forms of Graphite
Pencils are best for detailed work while graphite sticks are good for creating large tonal areas. Mechanical pencils, for which a variety of leads are available, are a favorite of many artists.

With point