Diane commented on my post “The Rules” about Professor 6B and it was funny. Made me realize I had lapsed into a bit of jargon, so here is some clarity for you all. And here is a weird thing – not a single art teacher taught me any of these basics. I learned about them from digging around on my own. Sure, a person can draw without knowing all this stuff, but it is better to know about one’s tools than to just bumble along, particularly if one calls herself a professional!

First, I no longer have all those mugs of pencils on my desk. The colored pencils are in a basket on a shelf overhead. Every so often I have a Clutter Attack, and stuff starts flying out the door. Having unused things, no space, too much stuff in general just bugs me. I’ve mentioned before that I may have whatever is the opposite of that Hoarding problem.

Pencils are not made of lead but the writing part is still called a “lead”. They are made of a combination of graphite and clay: the more graphite, the blacker and softer the lead; the more clay, the lighter in color and the harder the lead. Differing manufacturers combine these things in different percentages, but they all use the same rating system. B = black, H = hard. The higher the number with the letter, the stronger that particular quality is. So, a 6B is blacker than a 4B. A 5H is harder than a 2H. HB is dead center – I’m guessing 50% graphite and 50% clay. If it has only H on it, that is the equivalent of 1H. They assume we will figure that out. (Ditto for B.)

Pretty straightforward, but then some of those manufacturers have to throw a monkey wrench in the simplicity of the system with a pencil called “F”. Excuse me?? I used to think it stood for “funky” because it didn’t fit into the rating system. Turns out it stands for “fine” because it can be sharpened to a fine point. So can every other pencil, so I fail to see the point. Oops, a pun. It seems to be about the same hardness as an H.

The softer/blacker pencils get used up much more quickly than the harder ones. I still have my original 6H from a college art class, although the lettering is worn off the casing. If you drop one of the softer pencils on concrete, you might as well put it in the trash, because it will be broken all the way through and the lead will fall out in little pieces every time you sharpen it. I can hear the collective “aha” as you all realize you have experienced this annoying phenomenon.

One last piece of trivia – those #2 pencils required by test givers to fill in the bubbles are the same as HB. If you look closely at the words on the casing you might even find “HB” written there. It remains a mystery to me why there are 2 rating systems for pencils.

Perhaps next time I will write about erasers (and the lack of them on drawing pencils).