Drawing Materials - Crayons 4 - 5.6 mm "leads"

Crayon is defined in a dictionary as: 

 cray·on  n. 1. A stick of colored wax, charcoal, or chalk, used for drawing.

There are other stick materials which vary slightly from the dictionary definition in their compositions.  They partially fall into Pastels and Charcoal but are really different in their composition and performance. 

Very similar to the Conte crayon of the last post are Cretacolor 5.6 mm "leads" in their composition and behavior.  They are easy to point up in a hand type pencil sharpener or even better, on the Microplane shown in a previous post of

Drawing Materials - Crayons 1 - Chalk & Pastel

Cretacolor 5.6 mm leads. True length of 4.75" is not represented in this photo. From left to right are: Graphite: 2B, 4B, 6B - Charcoal: 1 soft, 2 medium - White - Negro: 1 soft, 2 medium - Sepia dark - Sepia light - Sanguine oil, (Sanguine dry is not shown).

Cretacolor clutch holders.  Top holder is all most 5" long.

I have the top lead holder, which I do not use.  All of the holders are very chunky and not my ideal for a drawing implement.  Being familiar with the contents of our local art supply store, I remember seeing a holder for charcoal willow sticks.  This looked like the solution for me.  The experiment worked out well. I cut off the long wooded handle as I like holding the 5.6mm lead just like a piece of pastel.

From the Top: charcoal holder with 5.6 mm lead,  5.6 mm lead by 4.75 in., and a cut down handle of the top holder.  The tape is only to keep the friction ring from sliding off when repositioning or changing the lead.

Cretacolor "lead" is my first choice in sketching.   I use the point and the side or angle portion for various line weights. For my sketching style I use both sepia values.   I like to use my fingers to blend in lines and smudge in the shadows and contours.  An eraser bring up the high lights.

A studio sketch using the Cretacolor lead on the rough side of the Canson Mi-Teintes sheet.