Non repro blue pencil

[we66y]

I recently bought some non reproduction blue lead for my automatic pencil.  I've heard about pencillers using it and thought I'd give it a go.  For those who don't know, the big plus of this product is that you don't have to rub out your pencil lines after you've inked.  However as ive recently found out there are some serious draw backs as well. The lead breaks really easily so you can't do rapid sweeping marks and you have to draw slowly.

I was wondering who else has used this product and I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions.

[Danbell]

I use the 0.5mm in a Pentel mechanical pencil and they do take some getting used to. I had a few false starts with the blue lead but use them all the time now. You just have to take on a lighter touch and accept that they're not that good for shading or hatching.

I've never produced very tight pencils so they work well for me and I know of other people who then use graphite on top of the loose blue line which works for them.

you have to ask yourself if it's worth changing your penciling style for the sake of not rubbing them out at the end.

hope that helps!

[Steven Denton]

I experimented with blue line drawing. The advantages ten to be keeping the drawings loose (the leads don't really lend themselves to detailed work) and not having to erase the prelim drawings. You can block shadows and large shapes in with blue marker pen then work the details with the lead. I found this saved tones of time with backgrounds. The down side is that the leads tend to be waxy so if you make mistakes it'd quite hard to erase the dodgy line work and inking over then is still a pain in the arse as the ink wont soak into the paper properly.

Some people lay down the roughs in blue then graphite over the top for detail/corrections then ink with tracing paper of vellum or digitally.

I find it saves time if my art is flowing nicely, it keeps the layouts loose and helps to retain the energy that can be lost in fussy inking. If I'm having trouble getting my pages right first time I find I just waste more paper.