The wide variety of pencils available can be perplexing, so it’s important to know exactly what goes into choosing the best pencils for sketching and drawing as well as how to use them. Despite being commonly referred to as “lead,” the fills in wood pencils are actually a blend of graphite and clay. The harder pencils (such as the H range) include more clay than the lighter pencils (such as the B range), which contain more graphite.
Standard sketching and drawing pencils come in sizes 9B through 9H and F. The hardness of pencils increases from softest on the left (9B) to hardest on the right (9H and F). A pencil leaves a lighter mark the harder it is. A pencil leaves a mark that gets darker the softer it is. Harder pencils can be used to create fine details while softer pencils can be used for shading in darker regions. Softer pencils are much easier to smudge on the paper than hard pencils.
