Your Expert Guide to Art Supplies in the UK
Willow charcoal vs compressed charcoal is the first fork in the road for anyone picking up a drawing stick for the first time, and honestly, it trips up more people than it should. Willow charcoal is a soft, crumbly stick of pure carbonised wood that erases almost completely, while compressed charcoal is powdered charcoal bound … Read more
There’s a particular kind of silence that happens the moment charcoal first touches paper. No scratch, no squeak — just a soft, velvety drag and a mark that’s blacker than anything a pencil could manage. If you’ve picked up compressed charcoal sticks for drawing and wondered why your marks look chalky and thin while someone … Read more
Walk into any life drawing class in Britain, from a Saturday morning studio in Bristol to a Camberwell foundation course, and you’ll hear the same sound: that dry, papery scratch of willow charcoal skating across newsprint. There’s a reason it hasn’t been replaced by anything shinier. Willow charcoal is simply the fastest way to think … Read more
Stand in front of a half-finished drawing at two in the morning and you’ll eventually ask yourself the same question every graphite artist asks: should this next mark come from a sharpened point or a chunky, wrapper-free stick the size of your thumb? That’s the real tension behind graphite sticks vs graphite pencils, and it’s … Read more
Somewhere between a pencil and a piece of charcoal sits one of the most underrated tools in an artist’s kit: the graphite stick. If you’ve ever finished a detailed portrait with a fine 2H pencil and thought “why is this taking three hours to shade one cheek”, you already understand the problem graphite sticks solve. … Read more
A clutch pencil is a refillable holder that grips a single thick stick of graphite (usually 2mm or 5.6mm) in a mechanical clutch, while a mechanical pencil advances thin lead (0.3mm–0.9mm) through a spring-loaded tip with each click. Both are “leadholders” in the loosest sense, but they solve completely different problems, and that’s exactly why … Read more
If you’ve ever snapped the tip off a cheap 0.5mm mechanical pencil mid-sketch and wanted to throw it across the room, you already understand the appeal of the best clutch pencil. Unlike thin mechanical leads that shatter under pressure, a clutch pencil (also called a lead holder) grips a thick 2mm or 3.2mm graphite stick … Read more
Stand in the pencil aisle long enough and you’ll notice something odd: nobody ever fights over 0.9mm. It’s always the 0.5 versus 0.7 crowd, squaring off like two rival football supporters who both think they’ve got the better squad. 0.5 vs 0.7 mechanical pencil for drawing is one of those questions that sounds trivial until … Read more
Somewhere between a soggy 2B stub and a £3 biro chewed to bits sits a genuinely useful tool most artists ignore for years: the mechanical pencil. A good mechanical pencil for drawing gives you a fixed, predictable line width from the first mark to the last, with no sharpening breaks, no wonky points, and no … Read more
There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles over a desk when you open a brand-new tin of pencils. The lid clicks, twelve neat soldiers in graduated shades of grey sit waiting, and for a second you forget that you’re also supposed to be choosing the right professional graphite pencil set rather than just admiring … Read more