It’s been thousands of years; humans are using graphite to for various creativities and ideas into real life. Actually, we people use pencil for various purpose and graphite is the main substance behind the making of the lead of pencil. Better to say, the lead of the pencil s actually made up of a mixture of lead and clay. But the here lies the main chemistry. The main formulation of the mixture determines the lead grade, which we also call as pencil numbers. So higher the proportion of lead in the mixture of the lead than clay the more smooth and darker will be the lead.

Right Way to Use Different Kind of Pencils:

Before we start telling you about the grades, it is more important to say that lead grades play an important role among the artists and writers. The artists while doing their sketches use different pencil grades to bring outstanding effects in their work. Again, the writers use it for the highlighting of the lines and marking the lines important with different pencil shades. Though the pencil shades are more popular among the artists than the writers nowadays. So frankly saying if you really want to work with pencils, you will have to know about the various pencil grades and their actual shades.

There are actually two systems of gradation of the leads, European and the American. The European system uses the combination of letters and numbers. In the numbering system, B denotes the soft leads or the leads with greater graphite contents. So the higher the corresponding number, the lead will be more soft and darker will be marks produced. Now the H denotes the lead with higher clay contents. H graded leads are comparatively lighter.

But the American gradation system actually uses only numbers. The HB pencil of the European gradation is marked as #2 in American system. There are no industrial standards for the hardness of the lead grades and the results may actually vary from brand to brand. But better to say that most parts of the world, try to use the European gradation system of pencils, as it is more standard and better to understand.

Characteristic of the H grade: The H graded leads are actually more smudge resistant and always gives dark lines. So they are always useful for the outlines, light sketches, technical drawings and even watercolors. The users who are actually left handed can also take the advantage of this graded pencil. In addition, the hard leads always be a bit more scratchy.

Characteristics of F and HB grade: The main lead grade, which stays at the middle of the whole grade list, is the F and HB. HB is the actual standard lead grade used for normal writing because it’s dark enough to be read carefully with less smudging.

Characteristics of B grade: B leads are mainly the most smooth leads. It’s good for both writing and drawing. They smudge easily but can be also erased with an ease. They are regarded perfect for the drawings and sketches because the artists can easily bring on the brush like expression with these types of pencils. The more the higher B grades the more expression you will find in the pencils. Artists, who are associated with animations, use the 10B pencil over animator paper as it writes like butter and easily creates nice, quick and heavy lines without any friction.

Lastly, you all should know that there are many ways of pairing the leads with paper that will result in a good output. Here are tips that will show you the way of some experimentation. Paring any H grade leads with toothy paper gives you a better drawing and writing experience. The reason behind it is the graphite can adhere more effectively with the textured surface and how rough or smooth it is. So you should always look for more toothy paper when you will be working with the H grade pencils.

We hope that this article really helped you all to gather some knowledge about the use of pencil and their perfect gradations. This was a little tour in the world of pencils, which we really thought because of the ease of gathering proper knowledge. So from the next time when you will be buying a pencil for your work, you will buy it with some proper knowledge and this article will always help you to get that knowledge you needed about pencils.