I promised to tell you about my art materials by providing a glimpse into what I use and why. These posts will be fairly short, listing information on brands, their features and prices, which will be accompanied by a few photos and a YouTube video. The videos will be under 15 mins of informal chat, and will provide some 'nuts and bolts' type info that I hope will be useful.... because materials can be overwhelming, particularly if you're just starting out with botanical art.
Please excuse me for sounding so groggy - I have covid!
Botanical art begins with good drawing skills, and so I'm going to begin with the pencils by introducing you to a few of my favourites. Over the years I have become a bit of a collector of pencils but you really don't need so many and in reality I only use a few of mine. Availability and cost can depend on your location, so the prices here are those in the UK at the time of writing, you just have to Google them to find out about availability, but Jacksons Art and Cult Pens will stock most mentioned in this blog.
1. Faber Castell 9000 Wooden Pencils
In my opinion the best option are the Faber Castell 9000 wooden pencils. Pretty much all of my drawings are completed with these pencils and I can do everything with them from line to tonal drawing. It's a personal thing but prefer the feel of wooden pencils over plastic because l they're a bit more natural, and I also like the control over the sharpening, which I do with a knife and sandpaper.
Above: Wooden pencils in a range of grades from hard to soft, can do all of the jobs within a drawing, from line to tonal drawing.
Faber Castell 9000 have a great range with16 grades from 6H (the hardest) to 8B (the softest). I tend to use grades 6H, 4H, 2H, H, F, HB, B, 2B and sometimes 4B and 6B. You can buy them in a 12 pencil Art set (2H -8B) or Design set (5H- 5B), which retail for around £21 -£22. However, I prefer to buy them individually for around £1.75 each, which is £17.50 for the 10 grades that I use - then just replace the pencils individually when needed.
Above: a selection of Faber Castell 9000 wooden pencils alongside their mechanical pencil.
Above: A very old value scale made when I first started tonal drawings. This shows some of the Faber Castell grades 3H to 5B. If you dont know H means Hard, B means Blackness (sometimes I've seen Bold used) and F sits between the H and B grades and means Fine, this pencil was intended as a pencil for line drawing, but I find H, F and HB all suited to line drawing. When pencils are used correctly tio shade, you should be able to see the difference between each grade. Note: not sure why I did this value chart from dark to light, and maybe I should have sprayed it with W& N fixative - but you can see the smudges in those B grades. Point being here, that if your value chat doesn't show sufficient difference between grades - then you need to do more work on your technique. For this strip I used the continuous tone technique.
Note: When pencils become too short to use - I use a pencil extender, these can be picked up for very little, I buy old ones on Ebay..... because it's good to reuse stuff, also they are beautifully crafted and generally cost less.
Above: Pencil extenders allow you to use those old short pencils, so there's less waste.
Other excellent quality wooden pencil brands include: Staedtler Mars Lumograph, which have a range of grades from 10H to 12B, that's a whopping 24 grades. Also, Mitsibushi Hi Uni, which also has a big range (10H t0 10B) they are about £3.60 per pencil and then there are Caran d' Ache, which is thicker pencil ( and annoyingly wont fit in certain sharpeners). They have a slightly smaller range (4H to 8B) but have a lovely soft buttery feel, they cost around £3.20 per pencil. I like the fact that the pencils wood is graded in different shades from silver to black to reflect the hardness, as seen below.
But bear in mind that there is no standard for hardness or softness, so an HB in one brand will most likely differ from and HB in another brand. You can see this in the image below, where 3 different F grades are compared. Faber Castell (left) is harder than both Staedtler (middle) and Mitsibushi High-Uni (right), with the Mitsibushi being by far the the softest.
I find Faber Castell pencils are slightly harder than other brands, maybe they have more small clay particles in the fillers than other brands, for me the hardness is super important for smoothness in those base layers and that's why I prefer them but Staedtler are similar but very slightly softer, I guess I just don't like that blue colour!
Faber Castell 9000, used for this Lucidia discolor orchid drawing, grades 6H to 6B were used across the drawing. The final scanned drawing below, this drawing is approximartely A3 in size, it takes quite a while to do a full tonal drawing, the hard work is in those inital layers, and this took me in the region of 60 hours.
2. Faber Castell Clutch Pencils TK9400
An alternative to using the wooden pencils is the Faber Castell TK9400 clutch pencils, they have a plastic barrel and a metal grip or 'jaws' which hold the lead. The pencil body is reusable, and new leads are inserted when you run out, so this can be a more sustainable option in the long term compared to wooden pencils but only if you do a lot of drawing. Leads come in packs of 10 and that lasts a long time, although they are in a large plastic box but 10 leads will last a very long time. The pencils are marked with grades on the barrel so you know which grade of lead is in them. The barrel has has a grip to stop it slipping and a slim barrel, which is comfortable to hold.
Some people prefer clutch pencils, it's a personal preference and a slightly neater option, they are easier to sharpen than wooden pencils but you will need a tub sharpener or lead pointer, which is definitely less messy but I actually enjoy sharpening long leads with a knife and dont mind dirty hands.
I find I can do the exact same work as with a wooden pencil as a clutch - although the option to retract the lead in the clutch is handy when travelling.
The range of leads is 11 grades (compared to 16 in the FC 9000), with 4H to 3B in 2mm leads and 4B to 6B in 3.15mm leads. Cost is just under £10 each and the 10 lead refill pack is about the same price, so to kit yourself with 6 grades 4H, 2H, H, HB, 2B and 4B will cost about £60 for the clutch pencils and the same for each of the refils.... but 10 refils for each grade will last a very long time. It's not really worth investing in so many leads if you're only doing tonal work for a course and don't plan on continuing with it.
An alternative brand is the Staedtler Mars Technico leadholder/ clutch 788c or 780c, the latter having the lead pointer in the cap. I don't much like that idea of sharpenting using the cap because I ended up with bits of graphite dust on my drawing whrn I used this. But Staedtler they are excellent pencils.
Apple: The base foundation made with Faber Castell clutch pencils - 4H, 2H, HB, 2B, 4B with Pitt Graphite Matt wooden pencils 6B,10B and 12B for the darker values
3. Matt Black Pencils
The problem with softer graphite pencils (the B grades) is that they will only go so dark and can become 'shiny' when either too much pressure is applied or too many layers, which creates a burnishing effect - this a pretty bad look for a drawing, and can resist further layers - there are several reasons for this, which I'm not going into detail with here because that's all about technique, but suffice to say a shiny drawing is a problem and if youre doing a course you will no doubt lose marks for it.
Faber Castell make the Pitt Graphite Matt in14 grades HB to 14B the latter being very black! I buy the pencils individually as I only use the softer with grades 6B, 8B, 10B, 12B and 14B. they cost around £2.50 each, that's £12.50.
Staedtler also make Mars Lumograph Black but I think fewer grades may be available. I have a set of 6 HB to 8B but have yet to compare them. They have black pigment in the graphite enabling a darker value to be achieved without burnishing. I'll let you know when I've tried them out.
Above: Artichoke drawing, darker values were added with Pitt Matt Graphite on top of the FC 9000 base.
4. Mechanical Pencils
These pencils are used mostly for line drawing but I also use them for details and creating texture and very small detail in my tonal work. Mechanical pencils load from the top with fine leads, 0.2mm being the finest available in the Pentel Orenz pencils, then 0.3 and 0.35mm, 0.5mm, 0.7mm etc. diameter leads.
The mechanism is more complex than in a clutch pencil and the lead is much finer, as a result they're a bit more delicate and lead is easily broken if too much pressure is applied or, if the lead is extended too far it will continue to break. In some brands the internal mechanism seems to break after a while, probably due to wear and tear on parts, which can be made from plastic and poor quality metals.
I have quite a few mechanical pencils, and mention some of them in the video, my most used are Faber Castell TK Fine 9713 and Rotring 600 but here are a few others:
Above: Pentel Orenz comes in the smallest diameter 2mm leads, they also come in some great colours and cost around £7 I do like these pencils and they have a supporting sleeve to support the lead and prevent it snapping and that small lead is great for details! but the mechanism easily breaks, which is why I have a graveyard of these pencils. The black pencil is the Orenz Nero 0.5mm also has the lead support system with a tube that has an auto feed system that just moves out of the way when you use the pencil, nice pencil but will set you back £42!
Mechanical pencils, come in different shapes, sizes and with different grips: Left to right: Faber Castell TK Fine 9713, Rotring 600, Rotring 800, Pentel Graphgear, Kura Toga and Pro-Use Platinum. I find the grips of the last three too big.
Faber Castell TK Fine 9713
I mostly use a Faber Castell TK Fine 9713 with 0.35mm (extrafine) and 0.5mm (fine) in H and HB grades, which create clean drawing lines. Leads come in 2H, H, HB and B. The pencils cost around £7.75 and the super polymer finelead refils come in packs of 12 for around £3.15. They are a great mechanical pencil at a decent price.
Rotring 600
These mechanical pencils are my absolute favourite, the are more expensive but are very well engineered. I love the grip, weight and balance of the 600 and find it suits my style of drawing but of course that doesn't necessarily mean it will be right for you, so please don't buy one on my say so! Try it out in a shop or from a friend and see if you like it. Rotring make quite a range of mechanical pencils, from the lower budget plastic and rubber grip classic low cost Tikky, which was my very first mechanical pencil many years ago! to the 500, 600, 800 and the Rapid Pro, which all have metal barrels and brass mechanisms for lead advancement which is less likely to break from fatigue. The non-slip grip is great and width is quite narrow in the 600, again, I like this feature because I've got fairly small hands. The Rapid Pro has a broader barrel and the 800 has the retractable tip.
Above: left to right, Rotrinkg Tikky (cost £5 or under), 3 Rotring 600 pencils in red, gold and silver (£37), a Rotring 800 with retractable tip (£58) and the chunkier Rotring Rapid Pro (£39).
You can buy the Rotring leads or can put other brands in them as long as they are the same size in mm. The 600 can be found on sale at times for around £25 but the retail price is around £37 but up to around £50 for some special editions. Leads cost £1.60 for12. This pencil should have a long life because the component parts are good quality.
Vintage Pencils
I also have a few vintage pencils, for no particular reason other than I like them. These are mostly propelling pencils and the correct sized leads leads can be difficult to find, so choose carefully and makes sure they are in working order. I buy mine from Ebay and auctions but dont pay a lot, maybe £10 - £25. They are beautiful little pencils like treasures in their own right. So, if like me, you are interested in vintage drawing materials, they are a great buy.
Below: Top right, a vintage silver lead holder and bottom left is a silver propelling pencil.
Below is a brass propelling pencil with a 2mm lead in my sketchbook.
Vintage pencils come in all sorts of sizes, I particularly like the small ones because i have smaller hands.
Finally
I'm not suggesting that there is anything magical about any of these materials and good drawing comes with hard work but there's something very satisfying about having good reliable equipment to work with and there's no doubt that good quality materials help us in the constant quest to do better.
Learning Opportunities
If you're interested in learning more about drawing techniques, I have a few courses and tutorials on the website. The Botanical Illustration Course, which begins in October, has a large section dedicated to drawing and there are two tutorials: Drawing Perspective and Form and Complex Drawing which are available anytime.
Next time, I'll be discussing more materials and equipment but youll have to wait to find out more because I havent decided yet, maybe paper for graphite.
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