 Hello there, it's Sandy Olnock and today I'm going to do something a little different. A student asked me if they could take one of my graphite pencil classes, just a drawing class, in a black colored pencil instead of graphite. And I realized even though in my head I have reasons why I like one over the other for different things, I haven't done any side-by-side test, so that's what I'm going to do today. The brand that I'll be using doesn't matter a whole lot, but I'm using a Statler Mars Lumograph pencil 6B for most everything in this test because it will become as dark or just about as dark as a Polychromos pencil when it's at its darkest. So what I'm going to start with is a value test, how light can it go versus how dark can I make it at the end of this whole column, and I'm doing this with pressure. With graphite pencils, which you'll see in a little bit, you can also get different hardnesses and you can get lighter pencil at the top and then switch to softer and softer pencils, but you can also do that with just one pencil. And I'm doing the same thing on the other side with the Polychromos black pencil. And then I decided I was going to do an eraser test, but I wanted to see how they erase when there's already been some treatment with Gamsol with a blending solution. So just on the very bottom ends of these, I'm using a little bit of Gamsol. You can see how rich and black that will make it will smooth things out quite a bit. And then the eraser test. So I took a Tombow stick eraser, it's one of the mono zero erasers, the tiny nib on it. All the supplies, by the way, are linked in the doobly-do. And graphite erases back to practically white paper, or in this case cream paper in this sketchbook. It erases back down to the paper relatively easily, has a little trouble once the blending solution has been applied, but it does pretty good. The Polychromos pencil has more trouble. It leaves some pigment behind. And that's because the way that a colored pencil is going to go on to regular paper, it's going to stick to it. It's going to stick to the fibers of the paper more. And I just had more trouble trying to get it back to white. I just kept trying to go in there and get more out. And the best I could do was a light gray. But in a lot of circumstances, that might be just fine for what you need. I decided to also use an electric eraser, which is a spinning eraser and it's got this little nib on it. I have other videos on that. I will put a link to one or two of them in the doobly-do down below if you want to go see what that eraser is. It is, for me, a must-have tool. And I found the same thing. The colored pencil was mostly not completely white. And the graphite went back closer to white. Once it had been treated, of course, with the Gamsol, it was a little harder to lift that up completely. Now, blend ability. I wanted to do just a strip across the bottom here, where I'm just going to take some graphite applied with the pencil to the paper. You can do this with both of these pencils. You can grate some of the pigment using a tea strainer. And I'll link a video in the doobly-do as well about how to do that. I decided to just use a blending stump and just doing some straight-up dry blending with these. The colored pencil doesn't do that all that easily. When you're trying to blend into white, it just requires a little more fussing. And I didn't spend a ton of time on it. I tried to fuss a little bit. But if you're doing a drawing, you can do a little more work on it to try to get that to work out better. But if you use blending solution, so I've dipped the end of the blending stump into the blending solution jars that I have, then you get a better blend. And both of them blend a bit better with the wet medium. And especially for the colored pencil, that's because that wet medium is breaking down the pigment so that it starts to turn into not necessarily a liquid, but it does blend a lot better. So pull those pieces of tape off. I wanted a nice cool graphic for my sketchbook. And that's why I'm using some tape to line things up and make things pretty. So next is a test with some lines. This is one of the places where we'll start seeing a difference between the two pencils. A graphite pencil, in general, can get a sharper point than a colored pencil. So if you're doing really fine work, even when I'm using, say, some colored pencil and doing a drawing of some sort, I will often grab a graphite pencil for some of the finer detail work. And what I'm doing here is using a couple harder pencils at the start, getting them really sharp so I could make some very thin lines. And then I can keep going until I get thicker lines just using pressure. With the Polychromos pencil, I only have one option. I don't have multiple pencils that I can use, an HB and a 3B and all that. Because there's not different hardnesses in colored pencils, so you don't have that as an option. And the graphite will also need sharpened a little bit less often than will a colored pencil. And if you know me, you know that swatches of anything don't satisfy me. I wanted two real-world tests. So in the center, I decided I would draw a dragonfly. It's summertime and we're getting down to the end of summer, but I saw a dragonfly on my walk this morning with my dogs. So I decided that I would draw a dragonfly. I shouldn't say this morning because if you're watching this, I have edited this a few days ahead. So if there's a thunderstorm in my area and you're wondering how I walked with my dogs, that was a few days ago. Anyway, I can apply the pencil directly to the paper. I can move it with the blending stump. I can switch back and forth between different hardnesses of pencil so that I know there's some of them where I can use more pressure and a lighter pencil or a harder pencil and alternate that with a softer pencil and just keep going back and forth to get the kinds of lines that I'm looking for. For these very, very fine ones, I use a really hard pencil. So I would get sharp lines for all of the little vein work. So you end up with more options if you get yourself a set of graphite pencils because you can do more things with it. You can get more different line weights much more easily, but you can also do that with a pencil. If you just want to get one pencil, I would say probably a 6 or 7B and develop some techniques to use it in a light fashion. And it doesn't get as dark as the 9B that I love, but it'll still work. So I switched the glassine paper to the other side so I could use the polychromos on the right-hand side. And I lifted up the paper because I wanted to try to mimic what was going on on the left and see how difficult is it to do with color pencil versus graphite. And it was fairly difficult. I had to do some very delicate work on trying to use the pencil in a very light fashion and really adjust the amount of pressure that I put on the pencil in order to get lighter lines. And I realized I forgot another leg, too. So I had to go back and add a leg on the other side so that my dragonfly wouldn't fall over. But it was a bit difficult to do. There are a few things you can do to alter those lines. If you get them into heavy, you can take a kneaded eraser and just press it on top and that will lift up some of the pigment. But in general, it didn't come out as delicate and soft as the graphite version. But it still came out relatively doable. I was pretty pleased overall with the result of it. I made some notes now on my sketch. And if you can read my handwriting, you're welcome to download the sketch from my blog. And just noted some things for myself, for my own reference. The graphite pencil has multiple hardnesses available, different types of pencils. And that gives you different lines. With colored pencil, you need to vary the pressure to get those different lines. Graphite is a little more gray and colored pencil in general is going to be more black. I can't say that about crafty pencils as opposed to artist grade. But like Polychromos and Prismacolor and stuff, Luminance, those are going to be good and black. But Crayola, I'm not sure how black they get. You might have better luck with graphite if you're doing that comparison. The graphite in general is more erasable and smudges more easily. It's just a looser, slipperier surface to work with. And colored pencil will grab onto the paper a little bit more. So it's less erasable, but it smudges a little less easily. It'll still smudge. Both of them blend both with dry blending with the blending stump. You can use cotton balls, you can use your finger, use all different kinds of things, makeup sponges, brushes. And on Friday, I'll show you some other blending type of things with a drawing that I'll be doing. And wet blending with the same kind of tools, but using some solution like Gamsol. Graphite produces a reflective surface, so it's a little harder to photograph. So you'll find certain angles will work. You may have to play around with what kind of lighting you have shining on the drawing to be able to take a picture, less reflectivity going on with colored pencil. The graphite prefers smoother paper like a hot press type of paper. I've still used it quite a bit on Stonehenge, which is what I use that has more tooth for colored pencil. This sketchbook is probably smoother than Stonehenge. And the drawing on Friday will be on Stonehenge. So if you want to see how that works in graphite, but cheaper papers, I mean, you can draw with graphite real easily on computer paper. And you might want a little nicer paper when you're working with colored pencil. For me, the paper for colored pencil has been Stonehenge. It's just the best drawing paper I have tried to use. Some people say hot press watercolor paper, but I am totally sold on Stonehenge. So all the supplies are linked in the doobly-doo. I will be back on Friday with a drawing of a horse and that will be in graphite. So please do come back and we'll talk about some blending techniques that you can use both with graphite and colored pencils. I will see you guys later. Bye-bye.