Gegensätze in Graphit

I don’t know if this very one is still made, but to prac­tice cal­li­gra­phy you have the pen­man­ship pen­cils in 4B and 6B, hexa­go­nal or tri­an­gu­lar, and also the regu­lar Hi-​uni up to 10B (9B and 10B having the lar­gest core like the pen­cil in the pic­ture above).

I per­so­nally only tried the 4B (pen­man­ship) hexa­go­nal, and while I do not usually app­re­ciate soft pen­cils (my hand­wri­ting is pretty small, I don’t draw, so I need some­thing pre­cise that I don’t have to shar­pen every 5 words), the pen­man­ship pen­cil wasn’t an ordi­nary experience.
The lead is actually very usable, and even if my prac­tice of cal­li­gra­phy dates from ano­ther era, I can ima­gine it will do well in the inten­ded use. Of course it was no brush, but maybe it could favor­ably compare to these pens with a tiny sili­cone tip that acts like a firm brush? I guess shar­pe­ning will play a role too, to take advan­tage of the large core.

I just recently star­ted using pen­cils for cal­li­gra­phy and let­te­ring work, but it never occur­red to me use a broad core pen­cil for this task. And yes, shar­pe­ning plays a role here, but am not sure how. I’ve seen some videos where the artist varies pres­sure to obtain line varia­tion, but she shar­pens the pen­cil quite often during the course of it. I’ve been using blunt points on soft cores to achieve line varia­tion by chan­ging the incli­na­tion angle, but I’ve got­ten mixed results.

Gonna try my tech­ni­que with broa­der cores and will also try to order some pen­man­ship pen­cils to test them out.

For actual wri­ting, I too pre­fer har­der leads that lasts lon­ger. I too tend to write with small let­ters. As such, my 2H and H Tra­di­tion pen­cils have pro­ven a revelation.

Before fal­ling deeply and madly in love with pen­cils, I used to be a foun­tain pen user, and one of the things I liked the most about them was using flex nibs. I never could have ima­gi­ned that a pen­cil could be used for cal­li­gra­phy, but the truth is, pen­cils are pretty impres­sive tools, for the allow a myriad things to hap­pen. From out­lining, to shad­ing, from making it more easy to write cur­sive (at least in my case), to allo­wing for line varia­tion. Also, with some cores, you can get a wider tonal range that allows for many effects out of the same pen­cil. IMHO, they are the most ver­sa­tile wri­ting instruments!

I will send some let­te­ring and cal­li­gra­phy examp­les with your package. By the way, had a chance to see my Update mail? Any­thing else you need me to send?