Graphite Pencil

Using graphite pencils for portraits

Graphite is a natural mineral that was first discovered in the Borrowdale district of Cumbria, England around the middle 1500’s. The local farmers used this strange coal-like rock to mark their sheep. It was originally thought to be a form of lead, hence the description, pencil ‘lead’. In fact it has no chemical bearings to the metal lead it’s a form of carbon.

A small cottage industry making pencils sprang up in the Keswick area of Cumbria, very near to Borrowdale, when it was discovered that graphite could be easily sawn into thin strips. This material that would make marks simply by drawing it over a surface, was being used for a variety of different applications including marking wood for carpentry. It soon became an art tool and the round pencil was developed as opposed to the flat pencil that carpenters used.

By mixing powdered graphite to various clays and waxes, different shades of grey could be produced. The varying degrees of softness or hardness of the pencil material is also affected by the recipe of the mix. The more clay added to the graphite, the harder and lighter in shade the final result would be. Hence we now have a range of different graphite shades and textures, from the very black and soft, to the very hard and grey.

In more recent times, the introduction of water-soluble graphite, using soluble waxes and colour-tinted graphite pencils have created new additions to the graphite pencil ranges available to artists.