{"id":941,"date":"2014-12-03T19:38:50","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T19:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/?p=941"},"modified":"2014-12-03T19:38:50","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T19:38:50","slug":"the-chisel-pencil-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/2014\/12\/the-chisel-pencil-point\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;Universal&#8221; Chisel Pencil Point"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>\nul li {margin:10px 0;}\n<\/style>\n<p>Julian emailed to ask:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> I&#8217;ve always been told to keep my pencil sharp but in your book in the &#8216;Charlotte-portrait&#8217; chapter you mention in stage 4 using a &#8216;flat&#8217; tip.  I&#8217;m not quite sure what &#8216;flat&#8217; means. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_948\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-948\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/chisel_points1.jpg\" alt=\"The universal chisel point\" width=\"300\" height=\"349\" class=\"size-full wp-image-948\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/chisel_points1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/chisel_points1-128x150.jpg 128w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-948\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The universal chisel point<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nI always use a chisel point, which has many advantages.<\/p>\n<p>To achieve that point, sharpen your lead as usual and then, holding it at your normal drawing angle, rub the point off on a piece of scrap paper. Now you&#8217;ll have a flat face surrounded by a sharp edge.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use the edge whenever you usually use a point &#8211; except the edge lasts a lot longer. Unlike a sharp point that wears very quickly, a usable edge extends half way around the flat face. Turn the pencil as you draw to maintain that narrow width of line.<\/li>\n<li>Use the flat face for shading. It cannot draw hard edged or thin lines so the coverage is smoother and more even. And there&#8217;s an added bonus&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Every time you use the flat face you automatically sharpen the edge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I sharpen my pencils every morning and probably don&#8217;t have to do it again for the rest of the day. If you&#8217;re not using the flat face and need to sharpen the edge, restore it by quickly scrubbing the face on scrap paper again. It&#8217;s almost an ever-lasting &#8220;point&#8221;; there is no constant pencil sharpening to break your concentration; and there&#8217;s one more major benefit&#8230;  <\/p>\n<p>You can switch from a broad flat face to a sharp point with a half turn of your pencil. Imagine being able to draw sharp linear detail and then applying a layer of tone to create the three-dimensional shaping without having to change pencils or reform the point.  It leads to very spontaneous and intuitive drawing.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> I&#8217;m aware I need to build the layers thru several applications and blending. Any advice? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Use the flat face of your chisel point and I think your problems will disappear. You can seamlessly build up layers of tone and blend at any stage.  I would add that I personally work from dark to light. Hard grades tend to quickly fill the tooth with clay so soft grades won&#8217;t always successfully layer on top &#8211; but a hard grade will layer over a soft one. So, to build up a darker area of skin tone I first lightly apply 2B to the darkest areas and then build up the whole area with HB or, more usually, 2H. The 2H will burnish the 2B; it breaks up the graphite grains, spreads them more evenly and polishes the result.  Result: seamless and flawless skin tones.<br \/>\n<figure id=\"attachment_943\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-943\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/stage7a.jpg\" alt=\"2B and 2H flat-face shading\" width=\"500\" height=\"316\" class=\"size-full wp-image-943\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/stage7a.jpg 500w, https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/stage7a-150x94.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-943\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">2B and 2H flat-face shading<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\n<figure id=\"attachment_944\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-944\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/stage14.jpg\" alt=\"The completed drawing of Charlotte\" width=\"500\" height=\"586\" class=\"size-full wp-image-944\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/stage14.jpg 500w, https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/stage14-127x150.jpg 127w, https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/stage14-426x500.jpg 426w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-944\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The completed drawing of Charlotte<\/figcaption><\/figure> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julian emailed to ask:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> I&#8217;ve always been told to keep my pencil sharp but in your book in the &#8216;Charlotte-portrait&#8217; chapter you mention in stage 4 using a &#8216;flat&#8217; tip.  I&#8217;m not quite sure what &#8216;flat&#8217; means. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I always use a chisel point, which has many advantages. Sharpen your lead as usual and then, holding it at your normal drawing angle, rub the point off on a piece of scrap paper. Now you&#8217;ll have a flat face surrounded by a sharp edge.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use the edge whenever you usually use a point &#8211; except the edge lasts a lot longer.<\/li>\n<li>Use the flat face for shading. It cannot draw hard edged or thin lines so the coverage is smoother and more even. And&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Every time you use the flat face you automatically sharpen the edge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you need to sharpen the edge, restore it by quickly by scrubbing the face on scrap paper again. It&#8217;s almost an ever-lasting &#8220;point&#8221;. No constant pencil sharpening to break your concentration; and there&#8217;s one more major benefit&#8230;  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/2014\/12\/the-chisel-pencil-point\/\">Read more&#8230;&#8230;.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,56],"tags":[148,150,51,151,78,149],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-lessons","category-tips-tricks","tag-chisel-point","tag-flat-point","tag-how-to-draw","tag-layers","tag-shading","tag-sharp-point"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":956,"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sibleyfineart.com\/_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}