Welcome to Learned, a short, weekly look at language, education, and everything else under the sun. I’m Joel, amateur linguist and professional slacker. And,this week, we're reading the instructions.
subscribe | unsubscribe | comments | twitter | about
It's been a goal of mine to become better at drawing for a very long time. Every few months, I take another stab at it, filling up a notebook with odd sketches and maybe brushing a few techniques I learned way back when. Then I spend a bunch of money on new tools with every intention of learning how to use them properly, only to have them join the ever-growing collection of "one days" gathering dust in a basket under my desk. So, in an effort to break this cycle, this week, I decided to really get into pencils.
Pencils
The two pencil sets I have right now are: a Staedtler Mars Lumograph set of 6 soft lead pencils for sketching and drawing and a set of Royal Langnickel pencils. Now, aside from the length of the name and description, there are a few differences between the sets. The Staedtler set contains 6 pencils. They're a lovely shade of blue and packaged in a nice tin. The Royals, on the other hand, is a set of 4 pencils, two graphite sticks, and a sticky blue/black eraser, all packaged in a much cheaper and flimsier tin.
The thing these sets have in common is the numbering on the pencils. Staedtler: 2B, 4B, 6B, 7B, 8B, and HB. The Royals are nearly identical, save that there are two 2Bs, one of which is a graphite stick and the 8B, which is the other.
This all begs the question - what do these numbers mean? And, are they any relation to the good old number 2 pencil that was required for any and all scantron graded tests back in my school days?
The best answer I found comes from Pencils.com (and who knew that was a thing?):
...using the letter “H” to indicate a hard pencil. Likewise, a pencil maker might use the letter “B” to designate the blackness of the pencil’s mark, indicating a softer lead...most pencils using the HB system are designated by a number such as 2B, 4B or 2H to indicate the degree of hardness. For example, a 4B would be softer than a 2B...
In other words, the pencils in my kits range from a Hard Black to a softer, blacker 8B. So far, this isn't all that surprising. I mean, just looking at the pencils and trying them out tells you that much, but it's good to see that there's a system in place and it's worth remembering that the lower the number, the harder the graphite inside the pencil.
As for the good, old, Number 2, Mental Floss explains:
An American #2 pencil (roughly) corresponds to an HB pencil on the rest of the world's scale. The lead is not too dark and not too light, and it's not too hard or too soft.
Great. So, armed with that knowledge, how am I supposed to be using them? The same Mental Floss article begins to shed some light on that question:
pencils numbered below 2...are popular with artists because they can help create a wider spectrum of tones
Searching for more clarification brings back a lot of results from artists who are only too happy to show me exactly how to use all those pencils if I just buy their drawing kit, or book, or video series, or some combination thereof. Still, buried in the middle of all that, are several sites and videos that show exactly how much detail can be created by using various pencils to create lines of various widths and depths (e.g. pressure on the paper). These lines can then be blended and finished with a variety of tools and techniques to a wide range of effects depending on just which pencils made the lines in the first place.
Which seems kind of a let down. Like, that's it? I had hoped to find some immense secret, some hidden technique that would let me suddenly draw a thousand times better than I can now. But, no. No secrets, just a slightly opaque numbering system for doing what seems perfectly obvious in hindsight: practicing.
subscribe | unsubscribe | comments | twitter | about
Stay safe, stay curious. Learn something.
Joel