Pencil sharpening with a knife

**jester** · January 14th, 2003, 03:59 AM

Can anyone give me a detailled instruction of how to sharpen pencils with a knife? My prismacolor pencils tend to break and the wood to split when sharpening them in a standard sharpener. But when I try to use a knife I tend to cut away large chunks of wood and mine till I get a reasonable pointed end.

Any hint will be appreciated!

Jester

**Blind** · January 14th, 2003, 09:35 AM

Holy cow, Jester... we must be on the same wavelength, I just posted the same question in WIP/Help. I'm having the same problem as you, using a standard sharpener. I think I may pick up one of those battery operated sharpeners and see how that is.

**jester** · January 14th, 2003, 09:45 AM

Please let me know whether this is a better method. retro was so kind to give me an instruction (in German by PM) - I#ll try that soon and let you know.

Jester

**Blind** · January 14th, 2003, 11:22 AM

Can you translate and pass along what retro told you?

**MadSamoan** · January 14th, 2003, 02:17 PM

http://forum.pixeltwisters.com/index...lay;threadid=1

this example is for a charcoal pencil, but it works with prismacolors just as well and you obviously don't need to make the lead point as long as in the example

**jester** · January 14th, 2003, 07:28 PM

Just what I was looking for, thanks very much, MadSamoan. Thanks also to you, retro and Blind!

Jester

**retro** · January 15th, 2003, 02:52 AM

shit, i went to the library yesterday, suddenly remembered that book i saw it from, it was jose parammon, that guy is just great. think he published a book on nearly anything

so there's no need to translate it.

**jester** · January 15th, 2003, 04:02 AM

retro - great (I haven't seen any books from this Paramon yet - but I will look out for him; his style looks like a German Loomis

). For all non-German-speakers: The most important part of the text is that he insists on cutting of tiny/small slices, not large chunks (the mistake I made in my first attempts).

Jester

**retro** · January 15th, 2003, 04:40 AM

he's an italian guy i think. i can recommend every single book of him i think most were published in the 80ies. this one is called "zeichnen mit bleistiften" or "drawing with pencils". i think they were translated into a couple of languages, every library i've ever checked got some of them, so go and take a look.

jester - on the second page in the bottom left corner you see something similar to what i described to you yesterday, i think what i said was just a half-forgotten version of what i saw here some time ago.

also i checked the link above, very interesting. parammon wrote in another book that you should not cut too much of the wood away, cause then the tip tends to break. just sth to think about and try out.

**Jason Manley** · January 15th, 2003, 05:40 PM

THE ABOVE POST with the pictures of how to sharpen is not the best way. you will tend to push down and break your points.

the way to do it is to put the point of the pencil down(at about a 45 degree angle) on a loose sheet of paper on a hard surface. dont push down on the pencil too much as you glide the blade to sharpen...you dont want to break the point with the force...but sharpen the pencil toward the surface the pencil is resting on..pulling down slightly on the pencil to hold it in place and on the blade to cut the wood and material..

This will make it so you keep your filings all on the paper and will be easy to clean up. It will also force the energy more down toward the surface the pencil rests on rather than down against the pencil.

does this make sense?

ask questions if needed

jason

**blankslatejoe** · January 18th, 2003, 02:46 PM

oh, to the above comment about the elctric sharpener:

Most books say NOT to sharpen any softer color pencils(spectracolors for example) in an electric sharpener. The wax blooms up and dulls/gunks the blade. I think harder color pencils (berol verithins for example) are ok though, because theres more clay than wax. I'm not sure how it works, I've just read that a few places.

**MindCandyMan** · January 27th, 2003, 01:26 PM

Thanks for that tip Jason I was breaking all my tips. Hopefully that will help.

**jester** · January 27th, 2003, 03:04 PM

Jason - yes, makes sense! Thanks a lot. Currently I'm trying both methods (i.e. with a knife as well as a sharpener) and am not sure what I like better.

Jester