The humble pencil

Tonal swatches

Before starting at Broadway Drawing School (BDS) I have been given some homework, a tonal exercise: Using a pencil draw a graded swatch of it's tones through from the lightest to the darkest and repeat this with different pencil grades. A thoroughly tedious task I thought, but it's not until I started that I realised the true nature of a pencil. The higher the H number (6H) the harder the graphite and lighter the darkest tone the and the lower the B number (8B) the softer the graphite, the darker the darkest tone.

Nothing particularly astonishing about that until I realised the following:

• H's are a warm browner colour whilst the B's are a cooler black.
• H's fill the tooth of the paper giving a fine smooth appearance whereas the B's drift over the tooth leaving a grained effect.
• When viewed from an angle, the Hs have a silvery Sheen as opposed to the B's that have a more matt finish.

B pencils

H pencils

A pile of fruit.

Composition of various exotic fruits isolated on white background

A colour image of a pile of fruit to be rendered in a range of pencils. Applying my learnings to this task I started with the darkest darks using my 8B pencil, no line just hatching building layer upon layer through the tones and began to see how I can use different pencils to manipulate the overall effect.

• The pale green grapes with their shiny skins are best rendered in H pencils achieving a smooth shiny appearance, the darkest areas rendered in HB to H2 and the lighter in H6
• In comparison to a kiwifruit with its rough texture achieved using B pencils achieving a rougher surface appearance.
• Bananas, although not shiny are so pale that a B pencil with its grainy finish is not suitable, fine rapid, closely aligned hatchings with an H pencil are better suited to this task.
• The darker skin of a shiny mango can be achieved by initially using B pencils to achieve the darker tones overlaying with an H to fill the tooth and achieve that smooth glossy appearance.

Eureka moment

Graphite has similar qualities to oil paint. The B's are more opaque the H's more transparent. Glazing over B with H can pull the image together achieving a three-dimensional quality. You also have to be very careful to use B's first and build up to the H's as to try and place B on top of H does not hold it slips off the surface.