Portrait sketches 📔 Supplies I use!

In this post I talk about my drawing supplies and everything you need for portrait sketches such as this one.

I’ll start by mentioning an A5 stone paper sketchbook (1), I already talked about it before and it currently still is my main sketchbook. However if you’d like to choose something else, Moleskine would be a great choice! You can also look at some Fabriano sketchbooks (they are good in my opinion), as well as Canson.

I have several graphite pencils from 3H to 8B (2) My favorite ones are from Faber-castell and Koh-I-Noor.

A special place takes the Pitt Graphite Matt Faber-Castell 14B pencil (3) It’s smooth, surprisingly dark for a pencil and I enjoy using it!

Next we have all the charcoal stuff: a compressed charcoal bar (4), Faber-Castell Pitt Charcoal soft pencil (5) and Koh-I-Noor Gioconda 8811 Extra Charcoal Pencil (6), both of them are compressed charcoal as well. In my view it’s way better than natural charcoal because it can leave deeper darker marks, it’s softer and more consistent/uniform. However there is a drawback and that is - it can break and crumble easily, especially when being sharpened, so if that’s your particular concern, you might want to use a pastel pencil instead, like this one: Koh-I-Noor Gioconda 8820/12 ivory black (7).

Graphite pencils alone didn’t give me the depth I wanted, even though Pitt Graphite Faber-Castell 14B - is an amazing pencil, it’s still far from black because of the reflective properties graphite has. Charcoal pencils are totally matt therefore their marks look deep and dark at any angle.

On this picture the first one from the left is a usual HB pencil, then goes Pitt Graphite Faber-Castell 14B, then Faber-Castell Pitt Charcoal and Koh-I-Noor Gioconda 8811 Extra Charcoal.

I use erasers of different kinds; this eraser-pencil is from Faber-Castell (8). However, instead I now recommend using Tombow Mono Zero eraser pen (or an alternative brand of mechanical erasers), it’s sooo convenient to use and it doesn’t need to be sharpened. I got mine only recently so it’s not on the picture.

Don’t forget about some standard erasers (9), they can come in handy.

Then we have some tortillons – paper blending stumps (10), and a blending stick (11). Admittedly the latter one can be more elegant and professional but it does the job and that all that matters :)

A round brush (12) I use to soften small delicate areas of a portrait.

And a pencil extender (13), to use when pencils get too short to hold comfortably.

These are the supplies I love using to sketch!