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).