Pencil Notes

Pressing hard with a pencil leaves indentations in paper that won't release. Erasing becomes a chore and the remaining furrows shadow out like ghosts on the page. However, without pressing down, my intuition finds it impossible to obtain hard edges and dark tones. Last night’s exercises proved that wrong. I spent a couple of hours experimenting with various pencil grades, pressures, and erasures. I worked by naked eye, 3.5X, and 10X. Here are some thoughts based on my experiments:

• Sharp pencils give hard edges and dark tones. Circular pencil movement approaches the paper’s tooth from many angles, essentially filling in the paper.
• Do the softer pencils provide darker tones? Perhaps somewhat, but a sharp 2B in circular motion brings out tones close to a 6B--although the softer pencil is indeed a good deal faster, perhaps useful for filling large areas with a dark homogeneous tone. Using a 6B reminds me of spreading soft butter.
• A sharp 4H is so hard that it can easily indent the paper.

I suspect that each paper behaves differently and I have new paper coming in soon to test that out. I'm seeing how taking the time to experiment can be so, so valuable.