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.
Done
I no longer have the luxury of time I had over the weekend, so I couldn't do as many. But except for the initial circle (and some other stuff on the right most one) , everything about these is free handed. And while it is a bit wonkier, I'm actually really happy.
Realized that one big mistake I made yesterday was rotating the plane marking the side of the head, rather than just changing it's angle against the y-axis (technically, that's also a rotation. But whatever.) so I tried again with the face pointing more and more to the right. And then I flipped over the paper, and started it all over. This time with more circle and ellipse guides and rulers. Still struggling a bit with the looking down faces this way, but it's sooo much better now.
Tried this, without reference. Just systemically doing the angles. And some of them are good. And some of them are ridiculously bad. Especially the six in the bottom-center.
It seems something inside my brain just doesn't want to continue the anatomy tutorial. So I'll stop waiting for the moment where I want to continue it, and start the head tutorial instead.
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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?