Which is your Favourite Pencil?

[JuanMena]

Yo, was looking at my pencil case, and noticed that my 4B pencil is the shortest.

Right there, the smallest boi:

And that pencil is been with me since 2008.
It's barely used.

I mostly use HB because those are super common.
But 4B it's been my favourite.
Although, I would really love to use a 6B or an 8B even! Alas, 3B and greater are hard to find in my place, and those are super expensive.

4B would be a tone ranging from 50% Grey at it's darkest:

Combined with 80% Pure White Paper makes it look nice, heck, even HB looks nice in that paper... but I digress...

Anyway... what's your favorite pencil?

 

[plasturion]

My pencils became so short that I don't know anymore how they were called. (I just recived them so that's why :] )
I tried with 4H and it feels scratchy but it's like to be a precise and sure.
Even HB doesn't feel same right, surface seems to be irrelevant and kinda more soft and slick with every next B's.
Maybe that's ok, not sure, more important if the pencils are sharpened ones.

watach and marvel, maybe I should draw more...

 

[JuanMena]

I tried with 4H and it feels scratchy but it's like to be a precise and sure.
Even HB doesn't feel same right, surface seems to be irrelevant and kinda more soft and slick with every next B's.
Maybe that's ok, not sure, more important if the pencils are sharpened ones.

Probably already know this, but the H and B in pencils means Hard and Black.
Hard means the pencil has less pignment, thus it's harder and can get sharper points with sharpeners and what not.
Black means that the pencil has more pigment, thus it's made of softer materials, often wax, which is why they feel less scratchy than a 4H or H in general.


It becomes important when you have different types of paper with more or less grain. With more grain, your H pencils will fade one or two tones less.
A hard pencil will definitely scratch and gloss in fine grain paper. Soft pencils tends to gloss less.

But if you worry about glossing in pencil drawings, just use charcoal pencils, which are more expensive than graphite ones, and no, you can't use just a stick of charcoal because it lacks bonding agents. Although, you can make your own charcoals with charcoal and gums.