Hello my friends and welcome to another Tuesday of tutorial!
I am Leonardo Pereznieto and today I will show you
how to sharpen a pencil, for drawing.
It may be a little bit dangerous, so please do it carefully.
And if you are very young, do it under the supervision
of an adult.
And if you are VERY adult, do it under the supervision
of a young person [laughter].
Hold the pencil firmly… like this,
and with the other hand we will use a knife,
which we will hold, also firmly like so.
I push the blade with the thumb of the hand that is holding the pencil.
Like this.
To be able to control it well.
Just take a very thin layer at a time.
Do it slowly and do not go in very much.
Just lightly.
I am speeding the video, a little bit, so that it doesn't take
forever for you,
but this is done carefully, and slowly.
You can use of course this other type of blade,
but I feel I can grab better these big ones.
Once we finish with this, we can go toward the tip
and take that off.
Also in small layers like so.
What we want to accomplish now, is to expose a longer section of
the lead.
You also do this little by little and carefully.
And, once you are exposing the lead, do not put pressure on it, because it
can be break really easily!
Especially if it is a charcoal pencil.
Sometimes some of the glue stays on the lead and in this case
you just have to scrape it off,
with the blade.
And I will take more wood off, from the back.
Remember to do all the cutting movements away from you.
And always taking thin layers of wood.
You want to expose about one inch of lead.
We are almost there.
And the part of the wood that we are cutting, not counting
the lead, I leave it usually a little bit smaller than that.
Let´s say about 3/4 of an inch.
None of these need to be exact, of course.
It seems a little short, still, so I will expose just a little bit more
of the lead.
We take some more wood from here.
Alright.
Very good!
Let´s check it...
Yes! this is about one inch, that it´s pretty good!
And I don´t normally measure it I just do it by eye, because it doesn´t
need to be exact.
But I wanted to show you so you got an idea.
Now, the next step is optional: I sometimes start sharpening
the lead like this, with the knife.
To make it smaller toward the tip
and to take off that angle that is toward the end, and that comes
from factory sharpening.
Or you may skip this step entirely and go to the next one, which is to sharpen
it, with a sand paper.
I usually do this step with the blade, when I know I will draw a lot of detail
and therefore I want it thinner.
And then either way, I do use a sand paper.
This is a 320 grit, or it can also be a little bit thinner
like 400.
I have already used this piece a lot as you can see.
You may rinse it to water to clean it a little bit and then use it again.
Ok so we lightly rub the lead on it, with the pencil almost horizontally.
The pencil is like almost laying on the table.
And I am constanly turning around the pencil, so that it doesn´t become flat.
On one side.
Let´s check it!
It is looking pretty good!
But I will do a little bit more because we want to make sure, we get rid of that
edge, or ridge, that is toward the tip.
And the more we sand it, obviously, the more sharp it becomes.
This is looking pretty good!
At this point cleaning with a rag or tissue paper to get the dust off it.
At art stores you can find sharpeners like this, and like this, which work very
well.
But they are obviously more expensive than the regular sand paper which works as well.
At this point I will clean the wood just so that ithis doesn´t look dirty [laughter].
And I try to smooth out any edges.
Good!
I like it!
The reason we sharpen it like this, is so that we can use this side of the lead.
This is great for sketching!
Because it leaves a wider and softer line. So when you want this effect, hold the pencil
almost parallel to the surface.
And when you want a sharp line, lift the pencil a little bit, to get it.
This type of grip comes very handly also to shade it rapidly.
By the way, if you want to learn the best ways to hold the pencil, to achieve the different
types of effects, I recommend you to watch a tutorial on that, that you can find at the
end of this video.
Sometimes I sharpen two or three pencils in advance, so that when I am in the flow,
drawing, I don´t need to stop, when it gets blunt.
And by the way, I love sharpening the pencils!
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And I will see you on Tuesday ;)
Subtitled by Grethel Trejo