bought a mechanical pencil today. They also had a bargain bin with unpopular lead, so I bought a bunch with different hardnesses, to see if I could figure out what this hardness stuff is about. I couldn't really, though I did clearly feel a difference between the bargain bin stuff and the packet of caran dache leads I also bought.
Day 1350 of learning how to draw: global game jam is over. And our incremental game didn't turn out quite as well as we hoped for, but is surprisingly playable, and even addictive. Mostly because it hides it's biggest balancing flaws behind a layer of not-quite-as-bad UI.
https://dominik-d.itch.io/idle-trash-empire
Day 1349 of learning how to draw: been staring at spreadsheets the whole day.
Global game jam time again
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Yep, it's about hardness, and how dark it is. I read somewhere, that for technical drawing harder lead is supposedly better. So I tested it. But even the 6H is not that different from the HB (and the photo makes it look a bit more pronounced than it is to my eye), so I'm not sure that it really matters for where I'm at.
But the F, 4H and 6H are all from a no-name brand in the bargain bin at the store, and using them feels almost like scratching the paper with a needle, whereas the HB and ? (which was the lead already in the pencil when I bought it) felt a lot nicer to use. If the scratching was due to lead hardness, then F should feel a lot closer to HB then to 6H, as far as I understand. And it doesn't...
So I learned at least something from this.
I wonder how many times I'll break that thin lead in the long term, though I do feel like I've gotten quite a bit better with my pen handling by using the fine liners.
I have a heavy left hand, and couldn't use thinner lead back in the day. Ah, but looking at your stuff, it looks like hardness and how dark it'll get?