On working with super soft graphite

I did this drawing for Illustration Friday today. The word of the week is Visitors, and I used my husband and a photo of a tarantula for reference. I wanted to try to draw the whole piece, minus the preliminary sketch, in 9B graphite. If you have never worked with a 9B pencil, it is a little like drawing with a warm stick of butter.

The blacks you can get from the graphite are really dark. I used a Derwent Graphic 9B pencil for the body and the spider. I used a Faber-Castell graphite Pure 2900 9B pencil for the background. The paper is Stonehenge.

The object of the exercise was to draw something entirely with a super soft pencil. This is OK, but my anal style would have preferred to go to something harder on some of the facial and spider details. I found both pencils to work well, although the Derwent was easier to handle for the detail. Had I been doing something in a larger scale, the all-graphite-all-the-time of the Faber-Castell might have worked better.

I also love the Stonehenge paper, and use it whenever I want a pristine, white surface on which to draw. It has a crisp body, and perfect tooth for graphite. The surface is not so delicate that you can't erase, and it erases very clean.

I finished the piece with a serious coat of Windsor & Newton Artists' Workable Fixative for Pastel, Charcoal, & Pencil. I usually buy Krylon fixative, but the store was out and only had this. I find it works equally well. Very soft pencils need to be fixed, unless you live in some sort of museum and can whisk your work behind a mat and glass right quick.

This piece is currently on auction on eBay. Just follow any of the eBay links to my store.