finding the lines

is finding footing for where the ink goes.  that's the essential zen of it:  making the marks on paper is to provide a flightpath, a landing strip, the suggested foreknowledge of where surety lay.  never definite.  simply the surest places to put lines, in the wild mind of the penciler who wishes they were instead inking.  if followed they may not all be Great Lines but they will be True Lines.  not all True lines are Great.  Not all Great lines are True.  this is my general policy.  it leads me, by instinct, by the nose, as i build things.  i'm working on the Kammerer portrait now, and the ticonderoga is the perfect tool for making predictive pencil marks with an eye toward brush.  it's got a wide tip--  a quarter inch, across the head if it's perfectly flat (which mine never is, worn to an ovoid nub)  --and because of the broad body of the pencil it can be held in ways that mimic the deftness of stroking an inked brush across paper.  it's a good pencil.  perhaps my favourite, next to the mechanical drafting pencil i habitually use.  although of late it's been whatever pencil's handiest.  i don't truly have an axe.  i've drawn with chopsticks