INTRODUCTION
The pencil is perhaps the most flexible and forgiving utensil for writing, drawing, scribbling, and scrawling in the history of human creativity. In fact, the pencil is the most common of all writing and drawing tools, and it’s impossible to imagine a world without it.
What makes this tool so unique and useful? In a word, graphite, a soft claylike mineral. Graphite’s malleability allows it to be sharpened to a fine point. It also makes it possible for a pencil’s tip to be formed with both a sharp edge and a wide shape. This flexibility allows for a great range of markmaking. Due to graphite’s softness, the mark the pencil makes is significantly darker than that of the drawing tools that preceded it. Before graphite pencils came ...
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