• melbaboutown
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    1 month ago

    It’s been a weird day. I napped through most of it and had a gnarly nightmare.

    Also sharpening graphite pencils last night with a plastic handled boxcutter to practice has kind of left me with a soreness/blister on my non-dominant thumb (where I use it on the back of the blade to give an added push). Maybe I’m doing it wrong. I’ve definitely had to learn to take smaller thinner flatter slices and work more slowly backwards from the tip but perhaps the blade is still a bit dull or I’m doing it in a way that needs more force.

    I also keep nicking/scraping the lead but holding the blade flatter and moving it rapidly up and down isn’t really removing the slivers of wood from the core like the book says it will. Maybe the smaller thinner slices mean the wood doesn’t just get fully chipped off. But bigger slices need more force and risks chipping or breaking the lead which only goes up with the more delicate charcoal pencils. In fact I think I did a slightly better job when I first started out on the charcoal pencils from random Youtubes and an old craft knife.

    I’m now watching a different video and switching up thumbs for a slightly different technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5_13OFfjas