Graphite party

My graphite tools collection has increased a tad with the addition of some wooden pencils: Tombow Mono Professional in the 4H through 6B range and a few Palomino 2B pencils.



Thus it seemed like a good time to do a couple of Graphite charts to compare their performance and relative darkness among different tools and brands. The first one was done on Strathmore 100 lb. 300 Series Smooth Bristol



and the second chart was done on Lama Li 65 lb. Soft White Laid paper. The Palomino 2B was noticeably the darkest among the 2B wooden pencils. The Tombow Mono Professional pencils have a thick black lacquer finish that feels quite comfortable when sketching with them.

While it's easy to see the difference in darkness between the B and H range pencils, there really was not much difference among B graded pencils when using the same heavy drawing pressure regardless of brand. Thus a 2B pencil would be my choice to take along in a minimal sketching kit since it can easily achieve blacks as dense as a 4B to 6B while keeping a sharp point longer.

Mixed media sketches.



Graphite sketch.