Pencils

Artist quality pencils are significantly more expensive than student quality pencils. Generally speaking, like most other art materials, student quality pencils are easily good enough.

Further down, I’ll recommend which type of pencils to go for as a complete range. There are only really three golden rules to remember when kit comes to working with a pencil:

Three golden rules for pencils

RUB IT OUT! It’s not just OK but actually sensible and useful to work with an eraser and rub out things that you have drawn and want to change. This isn’t ‘cheating’, its standard practice and something everyone does, so get over it!
KEEP IT SHARP! Like rubbing out mistakes, keeping your pencil sharp is a complete no brainer. Regular sharpening will keep your pencil in the perfect condition, and sharpening will ensure that you are in a position to set the agenda and get the marks you want, rather than having to respond to what a blunt pencil offers you. Make the mark you want, keep it sharp.
NEVER DROP IT! The third golden rule is one that will save you money and keep you drawing when you are down to your last pencil. Never, ever, ever drop a pencil! When you do, especially On a hard floor from waist height, you shatter the lead inside. This then makes the pencil useless as it will break off and block the sharpener you use. Broken pencil lead ends get caught in the sharper - meaning that you have to poke them out with another sharp pencil (supposing you ah e one to hand) or a match or compass point before you can get on and sharpen your pencil so that you can keep drawing.

Pencils

Generally, most people are used to working with ‘a basic pencil’. Most often, this kind of pencil is an ‘HB’ which puts it in the middle of all pencils. An HB pencil is neither soft nor hard but is even a nd constant and best suited to writing notes on paper or marking in lines for basic diagrams.

Pencils though can be much harder or much softer than a standard HB.

You can get the full in depth info on grading and scaling the values of graphite at Pencils.com

Or see this page on each of the pencils running from 9H-9B with an explanation of use

Softer

When it comes to drawing, most people prefer softer pencils. The softness of a pencil is measured in the number of B values it has. The least soft value for a pencil is B or 1B. Then a 2B is slightly softer and a 3B is softer after that and so on until a 9B.

Obviously softer pencils need sharpening more often to keep their point and the softer the pencil, the more frequently it should be sharpened.

Like most things, pencils can be bought cheaply or at a higher price for a premium brand, if you intend using a softer pencil and intend to do a lot of shading in your drawing, you should pick the blue ‘Mars Staedtler’ brand as these have a special characteristic. These pencils will not create ugly shiny areas in your drawings unlike cheaper pencils .

Mars Staedtler blue pencils can be used to draw built shaded areas made from soft and retreated strokes that do not stand out from other areas and which do not create glistening, metallic surfaces that spoil the overall look of the drawing.

Softer pencils can create strokes which can be smudged and smeared with your hands and your fingers.

Harder

Just as pencils get softer by the number of ‘B’ values they have, so too do they get harder by the number of ‘H’ values.

Starting with an H or 1H value, these pencils are progressively harder than the common HB.

H value pencils certainly run up to 4H in value and go on further to 9H (I have never seen one of these). These pencils require much less sharpening to stay sharp with a good point. They can rip softer papers though if you press too hard.

Most people who do art think that there is no use for H pencils but there are a great number of uses for these pencils in specific circumstances. For example, they are particularly good for the following:

Precise and detailed line drawing
Working with technical drawing on plans, projections and blue prints
Working as a linear preparation for water colours or with any wet media where you don’t want the graphite to leak, bleed or interfere with any of the colour in your finished design.

What to get?

For all round general sketching, a good 1 or 2 B grade pencil is the best choice. You can use this for quick notation in an A5 sketchbook or for a more worked to a drawing in a larger format.

Keep a 2H for line drawing and for outlining any drawing before you start working with watercolour or gouache paint.

Rubbers/ erasers

You will also need an eraser. Any bog standard plastic one will do, if it becomes dirty, just rub it clean Ona spare scrap of paper.

For working with softer pencils, you can get an interesting range of effects and strokes with a putty rubber. A putty rubber can help you lightly or ‘half’ rub out when applied lightly or gently and this can help you create subtle lighting effects. (This kind of rubber is also very useful when working with charcoal).

Sharpeners

Finally, no starter kit for pencil drawing is complete without a sharpener. You can use a knife if you know how, but a cheap sharpener is quicker and more effective and will give you the results you want - every time.

If by contrast the items above don’t match your every need, and you want to own the ultimate pencil sketcher’s set, then look below:

Recommended for the full experience

Staedtler set of 12 Mars graphite pencils (6B- 4H).
Staedtler set of 6 Mars Lumogrpah black pencils (8B - 2B).
Staedtler pencil sharpener.
Set of 3 charcoal pencils (soft, medium, hard). Derwent and Faber-Castell sell sets of three, or I also recommend General's charcoal pencils if you don't mind buying individually.
Faber-Castell kneadable eraser (really easy to mould).
Good quality vinyl eraser (Faber-Castell or Staedtler are reliable).
Faber-Castell set of 24 or 36 Polychromos coloured pencils.
Lyra colourless burnishing pencil (doesn't have to be Lyra).
Sakura set of 6 Pigma Micron pens in black (0.2 - 0.5mm).
Sakura Pigma Micron Brush pen.
Sakura white Gelly Roll pen (or any white pen with permanent, waterproof ink).
Faber-Castell set of 24 or 36 Pitt pastel pencils.
Faber-Castell sanding block (or any brand).
Faber-Castell jumbo blender (or any brand)/
Faber-Castell additional white pastel pencil.

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