Drawing Materials - Pencils 2

Pencils 2 is my way of breaking up the large body of text on Pencils 1.  Actually, I feel that this page is a change of the topic and needed its own Post.

I don't use pencils much any longer except for the crossword puzzles (HB lead) and perhaps an occasional sketch.  During the years in Architecture school and in the profession, we used soft (Berol Draughting 314) for sketches, mechanical pencils for drafting (4H, 2H and HB) with T-Square and triangle, and Prismacolor pencils and sticks for color on drawings.

Figure sketch with Prismacolor Stick

I did sketches in Prismacolor sticks for a while but found them very hard and waxy in consistency.  It was not possible to blend with my finger alone.

For technical  drawings, if you colored in a pair of lines making a wall thickness on the back of the drawing sheet, especially with orange Prismacolor color, and blended it with a tiny drop of lighter fluid on a tissue, you would get a beautifully shaded wall on the final print (Ozalid reproduction).  Doing the shading on the back allowed for trimming areas or errors with an eraser and an erasing shield without messing up the original line work on the other side of the sheet.  Of course, hand drafting is rapidly vanishing by the replacement of CAD computer drawings.  I admit that I also got a CAD system for my architectural office in 1989.  But, I still sketch and do simple cabinet and furniture layouts by hand.