That is the question asked by many a cartoonist
Whether ’tis nobler in the work of drawing to suffer
The scratches and harshness of the HB pencil,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them by using the softness of the 2B ?
To HB, to scratch – No more…
Choose 2B (and as Wham once said) Choose life!
Apologies Shakespeare, twas all in the name of good fun.
So, what’s it for you – 2B or HB?
Are you a stationary victim like myself and can’t walk past the callings of a new pencil, black felt tip pen or marker?
I always love a trip to the office store, but I have to admit, I don’t know what an HB pencil is. Shows how little I use pencils!
I love a stationary trip too, but tend to buy black felt tips.
Pencils have a grading system starting at the lightest grey of 9H, then grading to softer graphite (9H, 8H, 7H…). The middle is HB (considered the standard pencil) and then (HB, B, 2B, 3B…) to the softest and darkest 9B. H is for hardness and B for blackness. Engineers traditionally used the H series b/c being harder meant more precision to the line. Artists tend to use B b/c of the softness and ability to add texture/depth to line work, designers hang around the middle (3H to 3B). And then there is the 21st century, we use pixels.
I never thought I’d say this, but pixels seem easier to me. 😉
Yep, you’re right
The engineer in me is about to come out when I admit I like to use different pencils according to what I am doing. While I use CAD programs for most of my formal work, I still need to sketch a lot and so sometimes I use a 4H, sometimes a HB, sometimes 2B and some others, too. Felt pens are nice, too. And, like Carrie Rubin, I like trips to the office supply store. Oh, and thanks for the Shakespeare, it reminds me of high school.
‘thanks for the shakespeare’ – that made me laugh. My daughter is currently studying Shakespeare for the very first time and I must admit, it didn’t bring back fond memories to me at all. It was like reading a book through a dictionary to interpret what was actually being said.
PS. You don’t often talk about being an engineer… what discipline are you?
Mechanical. My fond memories about Shakespeare in high school involver getting high marks. At least, methinks I got high marks, ’twas a long time ago… 🙂
🙂 I think I remember you saying you were mech elsewhere. Good vocation choice.
I just use an ordinary lead pencil since I don’t practice engineering and besides work doesn’t give us any choices.
I remember when we went from pencil to biro and got our pen licence at school. Obviously, work assumes that once you have your biro licence, there’s not turning back.
I’m old enough to remember ink wells which were built into the school desk. We graduated from chalk sticks on slate to scratchy pen nibs which never failed to make an ink blot on the paper, for which we were punished by a ruler being rapped on bare knuckles. I was that ink monitor whose duty it was to fill the ink wells! All hail Mr Biro!
Wowa, ink wells! We used desks that had ink wells, but no ink. That would have been a messy disaster. Ink monitor sounds like a position of power – Go Alan!
In my Engineering Graphics class, back in the day… we used several different pencil types. Usually the harder/lighter for when we were measuring and plotting things out, then go over the official lines with the softer/darker pencil to create the finished drawing. I don’t work as much by hand these days and when I do I finish in ink rather than a darker pencil… but I still have and use many of the tools I bought way way back then for that class.
It reminds me of how times change. In our engineering class we were moving to CAD. It used to be non windows based and had a control panel instead of a mouse with four coloured buttons on it, shaped like a diamond. I never did get the hang of it, but luckily we’ve moved into the world of windows.
They had computers (of course) when I was in college, but the CAD classes weren’t part of the Electrical Engineering curriculum. I could have taken the courses as electives, though, had I stuck with my major… which I ultimately did not… for completely unrelated reasons.