Blending Tools for Drawing

There are a number of both store-bought and household items you can safely use on your drawings. (Photo Credit: Myra Naito)

When it comes to blending tools for drawing, you can literally use just aboutanything handy. You don’t have to have legit store-bought tools, but you can if you like. None of them are really that expensive.

Let me start off with the one you should avoid.

Your fingers. If you’re just scratching away, sketching in a sketchbook, maybe you can. But if you intend for your drawings to last as long as possible, I’d steer clear of flesh as a blending tool. You see, your skin produces oils and sweat. These oils will yellow your paper over time. That’s why blending tools for drawing were invented…to keep your paper-staining-flesh-oils off the paper!

On to what you can use…

Store-bought items:

Onwon Paper Blending Stumps and Tortillions Sandpaper Pencil Sharpener Pointer Art Blenders with…

• A stump is “a cylindrical drawing tool, usually made of soft paper that is tightly wound into a stick and sanded to a point,” sometimes on both ends. It can be used with graphite (pencil) or charcoal, pastels, or even Conte crayons. They’re great at blending within an area that already has value in…