Materials and Equipment – Part 2
Ok, in the last article we got through three of the main hand tools necessary to draw in freehand. To re-cap these are: Staedtler Mars Lumograph 2B drafting pencils, a stock of vinyl erasers cut into strips and wrapped in paper, and a surgically clean, sharp knife to not only slice up your rubbers into strips initially but to trim the end of the rubber every time a completely clean eraser is called for during the course of a drawing (a lot).
Sharpening gear
You’ll also need a good quality pencil sharpener for general use as well as a very sharp knife of some kind (old wooden handled kitchen knives with the blade cut off short are great as the handle feels good in your hand and the blade is solid instead of rattly like in most plastic handled craft type knives) to sharpen your pencils with when a needle point is required for fine detail. While we’re on the subject of needle-sharp pencils you’ll also need what I call a scratch board which is just a board with sandpaper on it to give your sharpened pencil a final touch up to get it as sharp as possible. I use 3mm masonite for this 290mm x 75mm to suit a quarter of a sheet of wet and dry sandpaper (around 240 to 400 grit is best). Just hold the ends of the paper down with four 15mm bulldog clips (fig. 1).time and put up with a lot of use as graphite is very soft and non abrasive. Once you think the sandpaper isn’t sharpening your pencil anymore just take the scratch board outside and tap it on something and a lot of the graphite dust will fall away. To get your pencil to its sharpest possible state use your very sharp pencil sharpening knife to whittle it into a long tapered point and then gently stroke the tip along the scratchboard while also turning the pencil. The final step is to wipe it gently on your pants (or a rag if you don’t want black streaks on your duds) to remove the dust and tiny fragments of graphite which always cling to the pencil tip. The last thing you want on your drawing is unwanted bits of loose graphite and this last step also gives it a final sharpen, the same as wiping a knife on a knife steel after sharpening it on a stone to take the feathered edge off.
