If you or your child wants to work on improving your drawing, invest in a few drawing pencils. I say “invest”, but they are actually very inexpensive (about $1.00 per pencil).

Drawing pencils are different from the pencils you find in the school supply section of the store. Usually these pencils don’t have an eraser on the top, and their leads vary in hardness. The softer the lead, the darker the lines; the harder the lead, the lighter the lines. Pencils with softer leads are marked with the letter “B”, while pencils with harder leads are marked with an “H”. In her book Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces, artist Carrie Stuart Parks says to think of it as “B” for “BOLD” (softer lead, darker lines) and “H” for “HARD” (harder lead, lighter lines).

I’ve found pencils ranging from 9B (darkest) to 9H (lightest). The higher the number, the darker or lighter the lead will be. In the middle is an HB (the same as a #2 pencil) and the F. If put in order, the number/letter combination on the end of the pencils would be like this:

8B 7B 6B 5B 4B 3B 2B B HB F 2H 3H 4H 5H 6H 7H 8H

I like the 2B pencil, because it can go quite dark, but you can sketch lightly with it if you need to. If you or your child has a heavy hand and presses too hard, start with a 2H or 4H. These pencils come in sets with about 8 different pencils, ranging in cost from $5.00 – $10.00. I prefer to buy just a few when starting out, however, for about $1.00 for a package of two. As noted in the list, I recommend a 2B, HB, and 4H. Darker pencils are nice to have if you have a want to create a very dark area on the paper, but because the leads are softer, they tend to smudge more.