My go-to for graphite pencils are the Faber-Castell 9000 series graphite pencils. I also use a Faber-Castell mechanical pencil for a sharper point. I also sometimes use graphite powder if I need to cover a large area. For larger drawings, this allows you to add base layers quicker.
For charcoal, I use a combination of powdered charcoal, charcoal sticks, and charcoal pencils all from General Pencil. I use all of these interchangeably depending on the size of the drawing.
- Charcoal Powder
- Charcoal Sticks
- Charcoal Pencils
For both graphite and charcoal, I usually blend with a paint brush, which can be done with any type of paint brush. Other times I use blending stumps.
- Blending Stumps
- General paint brush, vary in size depending on area to cover.
For both graphite and charcoal I generally use the Bristol Smooth paper for a smoother texture. When drawing something that needs more layers, I use the Bristol Vellum. This paper is great for different textures, including fur in animal portraits or trees in landscapes.
For fine lighter details I like to use the TomBow Mono-Zero eraser. This is great for fine detail, but you can also just use a kneaded eraser if you have one of those.
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