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

typical

 

dangit, paper!

 

you might be asking yourself why in the name of horus am i using a ticonderoga, a lumber pencil, to refine my sketchy-ass linework & demented anatomy.  because it's a broad, dense lead that you can carve into a useful shape, and the lead works well with bristol board.  same essential reason as why i use felt-tips, and brushes: the necessity of a tool with a variable line width.  you can turn a standard pencil lead on its side and maybe achieve the ticonderoga's line-thickness: but i don't have to alter my grip or turn the pencil sideways to achieve the effect.  all i have to do is rotate the pencil and the line widens.  it's a very easy and intuitive thing that allows you to modulate your line width, you just shift forefinger and thumb and boom, wide.  so that's why the ticonderoga, which i'll be the first to admit, is a clumsy-feeling implement to hold.  it's like trying to pencil with a ruler, at first.  the hand is accustomed to cylindrical implements so the rectangular pencil is a li'l weird.  but it's well worth it.  i call it a "lumber pencil" because that's how i was introduced to them.  my dad used them all the time, and i'm pretty sure he drew up the schematics for building the geodesic dome we lived in using a ticonderoga.  it's just what you have handy.  and they're hard as hell to break.  that's another bonus.  traveling with them there's less chance the lead will have snapped because you threw your bookbag too hard or something.  the body of a ticonderoga takes temper tantrum exhibitions of strength to break