Which hardness is best for a graphite pen?

Graphite pens come in nineteen different types of hardness. That is a lot to choose from!

The softest graphite pen is the 9B, the medium hardness is the HB and the hardest is the 9H. If you got a graphite pen at school, it was probably an HB. The B’s (from B to 9B) give away a lot of graphite, producing darker lines and wear out a lot faster than the H’s (from H to 9H), that give away less graphite and produce lighter lines.

When you come into an art store to buy graphite pens, the choice can sometimes be a little overwhelming. If you’re new to drawing, perhaps you end up the way I did when I started drawing – with a lot more pens, different hardness and different brands than you originally planned for. Nowadays, I buy a lot less when it comes to different hardness of the pens, but the kinds I buy, I buy in great quantities. So the question is, what did I learn?

I learned that you don’t need the full scale of graphite pens. Instead of having the pens producing lines with different tones, I realized that it’s much better to learn how to draw different tones using different pressure with your hand. In that way you don’t end up changing pen ten times a minute and you can concentrate a lot more on what you’re actually drawing. So instead of buying all the 19 different types of hardness, I only use three. The ones I use are the 4H, B and 6B. I’m not saying this is the perfect mix for everyone, but the idea is that you use one pen with a fairly neutral hardness, from say HB to 2B, that you use for the midtones in your drawing. You also need a pen with harder graphite to produce lines that are light, but never grainy. I use a 4H, but you can choose any pen from 2H and upwards that suit you. My third pen is a soft 6B that I use for the dark tones of the drawing. The 2B goes a long way, but when I need a really dark tone the 6B does it for me.