HOME | DD

Description
1. Pencils -

My personal opinion is that mechanical pencils are far superior to traditional pencils. Benefits include- Pencil is always sharp. No trees cut down to provide wood for the barrel and the metal/plastic barrel will pretty much last forever if its a good quality pencil. More durable- the barrel protects the graphite so even if you drop the pencil it very rarely breaks, unlike wood pencils where the graphite breaks if you so much as look at it in a way it doesn't like. Much more precision than a standard pencil. When i draw i tend to zone out and just flow with the pencil... when you have to stop every 5 minutes to sharpen the bugger it tends to interupt the instinctual nature of drawing. Refills take up hardly any room in a pencil case. The only downside is that im yet to find a mech pencil in a grade softer than a B that has a graphite shaft thinner than 3.5mm (as this still requires sharpening with a sanding block). Im guessing that the reason for this is that a softer graphite in a shaft that narrow, cannot support itself without being incased in a permanent barrel. I really wish someone would discover a way to do it because im seriously jonesing for a 6-9B 0.5mm mech pencil!

On a side note... i really wish someone had introduced me to mechanical pencils years ago because my drawing is twice as good when using them!

My Pencils

Aristo D1

HB 0.35mm

VERY pale, VERY smooth. Perfect for pale caucasian skin tones and facial stubble. Also very useful for adding fine weave texture when drawing cotton based fabrics like denim, canvas, tshirts, shirts etc. Also comes in handy for drawing leather by adding a few criss-crossed wavy lines after shading with a softer pencil. It's surprising how this technique can change a jacket from looking like any old fabric to looking like aged leather

Price - under £5

Sakura SumoGrip

HB 0.5mm

Pale and smooth. Standard drawing pencil. A little thicker than the Aristo and therefore better for the initial stages of drawing including marking reference points, layout and outlining as it's less likely to dent the paper on lines you are most likely to want to erase later. Good for slightly more tanned caucasian skin tones, highlights in hair, facial stubble, general shading for cotton based fabrics. I also use this pencil when drawing the final outlines. First the outline is drawn in ink, nib width is dependent on the subject, 0.5mm or 1mm for edge of face, thicker for edge of clothing or objects. Then go over the inked line with the pencil and blend with a paper stump in a parallel motion with the drawn line. This results in a good solid edge but without the weakness of a pencil line or the harshness of an ink line.

Price £5

Faber-Castell TK 9400

6B 3.5mm

The only soft graded mechanical pencil i've ever found. Unfortunately the thickness means that it requires sharpening with a sanding block. Excellent quality mechanism, this one will last a lifetime

Excellent for shading of the iris and creases of the eye lids and darkest part of eye brows (if sharpened to a needle point!). Blending out the edges of inked areas in the hair, ears, folds of fabric, nostrils and mouth. Basically wherever there's ink, this pencil will soften the transition between the ink and finer pencil areas. Excellent for coarse cotton fabrics like heavy utility/military style jackets, dark denim and awesome for leather if you get the level of blending right (not too rough, not too smooth). Also very good (with maximum amount of blending) for objects such as cameras, watches, cell phones, guns, cars. Very useful for shading facial stubble if you just kind of tickle the paper with it in a random twitchy motion (wow, that was technical). Also excellent for all kinds of stone work, plaster, concrete, cement etc if left largely unblended.

Price about £15 and well worth it

Cheap crappy plastic pencil

HB 2mm

Purchased out of desperation when i was pencil deprived but turned out to be quite useful

Due to its cheapness the graphite quality is gritty and rough and crap for blending... therefore useless for most things... but quite beneficial for rough stonework and the like. Good for stubble of a paler colouring. Also good when you have two fabrics overlapping that both require a soft graphite. The roughness and thickness of the graphite gives it a similar look to a soft graphite but still different enough for you to distinguish the presence of two separate fabrics.

Price £1.69 for 5!!

2. Pencil Tools

Most people think drawing requires a pencil and thats it... maybe an eraser for when you balls something up. But here are a few things i could NOT live without.

Tombow Mono Zero 2.3mm Elastomer Eraser

AKA The Holy Grail of Erasers!

Drawing realism using a standard block eraser is like trying to write a text message wearing a baseball glove. When your doing a precision drawing, you need a precision eraser and you cant get any more precise than 2.3mm with the control of a mechanical barrel... believe me i've looked. I love this thing

As well as the usual erasing of unwanted lines, its also amazing for adding highlights

Blending Stumps

Rolls of compressed paper used for blending graphite in a drawing. The following textures are listed from highest level of blending needed to least.

Plastic/metal objects - Skin - trenchcoat fabric - t shirts - shirts - hair - leather - denim - stubble - heavy jackets - stone textures

Again... i sincerely wish my art teachers had told me about these bloody things when they were suposedly meant to be TEACHING me about art!

Sanding block / emery board

I used to spend £4 on an artists sanding block which is a piece of wood with strips of sandpaper stapled to it for sharpening pencils on... have since discovered that a pack of emery boards for less than a quid do the job just as well

3. Drawing Pens

I spent many a year drawing with my Pilot G tec roller ball pens, thinking their 0.4mm nib was the epitomy of a fine drawing instument.... oh how naive i was... bless

To any and all artists who cling to their graded graphite pencils, i say get yourself a set of drawing pens, combine the two and you'll be amazed at how your drawing improves! Why stick to one end of the light possiblities available to you, when theres a whole world of shadow that you could be exploring. Just think how uninteresting a Yin Yang symbol would be if you took away the dark half

My pens of choice are-

Copic Multiliner SP Pigment Ink Pens made by Too. Japan

Starting at an ultrafine nib size of 0.03mm!! and increasing to about 0.8mm. Refillable and replacable nibs.

There is also a brush pen which is 9 kinds of awesome!

Price £5-6 each

if moneys an issue theres also an economy range at about half the price.

Particular nibs i use for particular things-

0.03 = edge of eyelids, shadowed areas of stubble, lines in the ears, eyebrows, occassionally the outer edge of nostrils.

0.05 = edge of face, jawline, neck, the line between the lips, edge of iris, lines in dark pencil shaded areas of hair.

0.1 = edge of arms, hands, between fingers, scruffing the edges of thick ink areas in hair.

0.2-0.3 = filling in shadows for nostrils, eyes, ears

0.3 - 0.8 = filling in larger shadows

brush pen = for when a variable line thickness is an asset such as hair and thin dark creases in clothing. Depending on the pressure you use, the pen will give a variable line thickness.

I also keep either an Inkssentials or Uni-ball Signo opaque white gel pen to hand just incase i make a mistake in pen as this is the only way of even remotely salvaging the situation. It won't erase the problem line but it will dull it to the level of a graphite line so that you can disguise it with a bit of graphite shading. The best way is to draw over the line in white then lightly smudge at it before it dries... otherwise you'll end up with a tipex-like blob which looks crap.

4. Other Tools

Patchwork ruler - the quickest and tidiest way of marking out the reference points, layout and initial linework of a drawing. But this still takes a good few hours. If you print your ref picture to the exact size of your drawing paper it makes it easy to just pick a point on the image, measure its position, then measure the same position on the drawing paper and mark the point with a pencil. The more points you mark, the more accurate the drawing. As your drawing ability improves, the less marks you will need to make.

Price £10-£20

Versafine smokey grey ink pad and sponge dauber - invaluable for creating smokey backgrounds and for adding random speckling to stubble. Dab to create speckles, make circular motions to blend and deepen shadow. The older and more ragged the dauber gets, the better it is for stubble.

Price - less than £2 for mini ink pad (will do about 15 drawings) daubers about £1 each

Paper - WHSmith A4 Sketchpad

Perfect for ink and mech pencils which work to their best on smooth paper.

Price £5

Drawing surface VERY IMPORTANT!

Many people just draw straight into the sketchpad... BAD IDEA! All you end up with is a bunch of dent lines in the page underneath which either results in screw ups in shading in your next drawing or a wasted sheet of paper. Take the paper out when you want to draw, but dont lean straight on a hard surface or a textured surface... you may think that wooden table is fine but the wood grain that ends up in your shading begs to differ! Best thing to do is lean on a magazine- just the right level of cushioning to aid shading

And thats a basic run down of my equipment

Description
1. Pencils -

My personal opinion is that mechanical pencils are far superior to traditional pencils. Benefits include- Pencil is always sharp. No trees cut down to provide wood for the barrel and the metal/plastic barrel will pretty much last forever if its a good quality pencil. More durable- the barrel protects the graphite so even if you drop the pencil it very rarely breaks, unlike wood pencils where the graphite breaks if you so much as look at it in a way it doesn't like. Much more precision than a standard pencil. When i draw i tend to zone out and just flow with the pencil... when you have to stop every 5 minutes to sharpen the bugger it tends to interupt the instinctual nature of drawing. Refills take up hardly any room in a pencil case. The only downside is that im yet to find a mech pencil in a grade softer than a B that has a graphite shaft thinner than 3.5mm (as this still requires sharpening with a sanding block). Im guessing that the reason for this is that a softer graphite in a shaft that narrow, cannot support itself without being incased in a permanent barrel. I really wish someone would discover a way to do it because im seriously jonesing for a 6-9B 0.5mm mech pencil!

On a side note... i really wish someone had introduced me to mechanical pencils years ago because my drawing is twice as good when using them!

My Pencils

Aristo D1

HB 0.35mm

VERY pale, VERY smooth. Perfect for pale caucasian skin tones and facial stubble. Also very useful for adding fine weave texture when drawing cotton based fabrics like denim, canvas, tshirts, shirts etc. Also comes in handy for drawing leather by adding a few criss-crossed wavy lines after shading with a softer pencil. It's surprising how this technique can change a jacket from looking like any old fabric to looking like aged leather

Price - under £5

Sakura SumoGrip

HB 0.5mm

Pale and smooth. Standard drawing pencil. A little thicker than the Aristo and therefore better for the initial stages of drawing including marking reference points, layout and outlining as it's less likely to dent the paper on lines you are most likely to want to erase later. Good for slightly more tanned caucasian skin tones, highlights in hair, facial stubble, general shading for cotton based fabrics. I also use this pencil when drawing the final outlines. First the outline is drawn in ink, nib width is dependent on the subject, 0.5mm or 1mm for edge of face, thicker for edge of clothing or objects. Then go over the inked line with the pencil and blend with a paper stump in a parallel motion with the drawn line. This results in a good solid edge but without the weakness of a pencil line or the harshness of an ink line.

Price £5

Faber-Castell TK 9400

6B 3.5mm

The only soft graded mechanical pencil i've ever found. Unfortunately the thickness means that it requires sharpening with a sanding block. Excellent quality mechanism, this one will last a lifetime

Excellent for shading of the iris and creases of the eye lids and darkest part of eye brows (if sharpened to a needle point!). Blending out the edges of inked areas in the hair, ears, folds of fabric, nostrils and mouth. Basically wherever there's ink, this pencil will soften the transition between the ink and finer pencil areas. Excellent for coarse cotton fabrics like heavy utility/military style jackets, dark denim and awesome for leather if you get the level of blending right (not too rough, not too smooth). Also very good (with maximum amount of blending) for objects such as cameras, watches, cell phones, guns, cars. Very useful for shading facial stubble if you just kind of tickle the paper with it in a random twitchy motion (wow, that was technical). Also excellent for all kinds of stone work, plaster, concrete, cement etc if left largely unblended.

Price about £15 and well worth it

Cheap crappy plastic pencil

HB 2mm

Purchased out of desperation when i was pencil deprived but turned out to be quite useful

Due to its cheapness the graphite quality is gritty and rough and crap for blending... therefore useless for most things... but quite beneficial for rough stonework and the like. Good for stubble of a paler colouring. Also good when you have two fabrics overlapping that both require a soft graphite. The roughness and thickness of the graphite gives it a similar look to a soft graphite but still different enough for you to distinguish the presence of two separate fabrics.

Price £1.69 for 5!!

2. Pencil Tools

Most people think drawing requires a pencil and thats it... maybe an eraser for when you balls something up. But here are a few things i could NOT live without.

Tombow Mono Zero 2.3mm Elastomer Eraser

AKA The Holy Grail of Erasers!

Drawing realism using a standard block eraser is like trying to write a text message wearing a baseball glove. When your doing a precision drawing, you need a precision eraser and you cant get any more precise than 2.3mm with the control of a mechanical barrel... believe me i've looked. I love this thing

As well as the usual erasing of unwanted lines, its also amazing for adding highlights

Blending Stumps

Rolls of compressed paper used for blending graphite in a drawing. The following textures are listed from highest level of blending needed to least.

Plastic/metal objects - Skin - trenchcoat fabric - t shirts - shirts - hair - leather - denim - stubble - heavy jackets - stone textures

Again... i sincerely wish my art teachers had told me about these bloody things when they were suposedly meant to be TEACHING me about art!

Sanding block / emery board

I used to spend £4 on an artists sanding block which is a piece of wood with strips of sandpaper stapled to it for sharpening pencils on... have since discovered that a pack of emery boards for less than a quid do the job just as well

3. Drawing Pens

I spent many a year drawing with my Pilot G tec roller ball pens, thinking their 0.4mm nib was the epitomy of a fine drawing instument.... oh how naive i was... bless

To any and all artists who cling to their graded graphite pencils, i say get yourself a set of drawing pens, combine the two and you'll be amazed at how your drawing improves! Why stick to one end of the light possiblities available to you, when theres a whole world of shadow that you could be exploring. Just think how uninteresting a Yin Yang symbol would be if you took away the dark half

My pens of choice are-

Copic Multiliner SP Pigment Ink Pens made by Too. Japan

Starting at an ultrafine nib size of 0.03mm!! and increasing to about 0.8mm. Refillable and replacable nibs.

There is also a brush pen which is 9 kinds of awesome!

Price £5-6 each

if moneys an issue theres also an economy range at about half the price.

Particular nibs i use for particular things-

0.03 = edge of eyelids, shadowed areas of stubble, lines in the ears, eyebrows, occassionally the outer edge of nostrils.

0.05 = edge of face, jawline, neck, the line between the lips, edge of iris, lines in dark pencil shaded areas of hair.

0.1 = edge of arms, hands, between fingers, scruffing the edges of thick ink areas in hair.

0.2-0.3 = filling in shadows for nostrils, eyes, ears

0.3 - 0.8 = filling in larger shadows

brush pen = for when a variable line thickness is an asset such as hair and thin dark creases in clothing. Depending on the pressure you use, the pen will give a variable line thickness.

I also keep either an Inkssentials or Uni-ball Signo opaque white gel pen to hand just incase i make a mistake in pen as this is the only way of even remotely salvaging the situation. It won't erase the problem line but it will dull it to the level of a graphite line so that you can disguise it with a bit of graphite shading. The best way is to draw over the line in white then lightly smudge at it before it dries... otherwise you'll end up with a tipex-like blob which looks crap.

4. Other Tools

Patchwork ruler - the quickest and tidiest way of marking out the reference points, layout and initial linework of a drawing. But this still takes a good few hours. If you print your ref picture to the exact size of your drawing paper it makes it easy to just pick a point on the image, measure its position, then measure the same position on the drawing paper and mark the point with a pencil. The more points you mark, the more accurate the drawing. As your drawing ability improves, the less marks you will need to make.

Price £10-£20

Versafine smokey grey ink pad and sponge dauber - invaluable for creating smokey backgrounds and for adding random speckling to stubble. Dab to create speckles, make circular motions to blend and deepen shadow. The older and more ragged the dauber gets, the better it is for stubble.

Price - less than £2 for mini ink pad (will do about 15 drawings) daubers about £1 each

Paper - WHSmith A4 Sketchpad

Perfect for ink and mech pencils which work to their best on smooth paper.

Price £5

Drawing surface VERY IMPORTANT!

Many people just draw straight into the sketchpad... BAD IDEA! All you end up with is a bunch of dent lines in the page underneath which either results in screw ups in shading in your next drawing or a wasted sheet of paper. Take the paper out when you want to draw, but dont lean straight on a hard surface or a textured surface... you may think that wooden table is fine but the wood grain that ends up in your shading begs to differ! Best thing to do is lean on a magazine- just the right level of cushioning to aid shading

And thats a basic run down of my equipment