Stay Sharp

Summer is still with us, and with it many opportunities to take your notebook for a walk and fill it with both words of wisdom and topographical doodles. Sketching helps to take in a scene, whether or not the resulting image is ever even glanced at again, and you should definitely try it.

Soothing as a sketch session undoubtedly is, the full monty of a complete multi-grade sketching set (see the Viking Rollo kit from a couple of weeks ago) might be a bit of an outlay to start with - so here's how to do it on the cheap.

For most purposes, you only need three different grades to get by, and Staedtler's Lumograph and Koh-i-Noor's 1500 and 1900 ranges provide the necessary for a Pound a stick. Bargain! 

So what are the three grades? Well, you choose - but there's a simple principle to selecting them. First, you need a fairly hard lead which will make only a light mark on the page, for marking the rough outline of your composition; HB will probably do if you're not too heavy-handed, but 2H works better. Secondly, the main work-horse should be softer than HB but hard enough to hold a point for more than five seconds; B, 2B or even 3B will do the job nicely. Finally, it's good to have something nice and dark for shadows and seascapes, and anything from 6B to 10B will suit. The difference between neighbouring grades is rarely enormous, so it's OK to chance your arm on a proximal pencil if the first number you think of is out of stock; as long as there are roughly three to four stops between each member of the trinity, you'll have a lean kit that works well enough, without spending a fortune.

Of course, keeping the points sharp is an inevitable requirement for even the budget-conscious sketcher. There are many snazzy and resultantly expensive sharpeners out there, but for a cheap pocketable solution which works brilliantly without costing an arm and a leg, the Viking Alfa Sharpener is perfection for less than the price of a pint. Go on, give it a go!