How to Avoid Smearing Lead when You Draw

Be careful. It sounds pretty obvious, but it's the first step to better quality finishes with graphite. Be mindful, and watch how your drawing is developing, and try not to rest the heel of your hand on parts that you have already drawn on. Any oils from your hand can make smudges permanent. Any loose particle of graphite will get caught in that oil and deposit itself on your nice white surface. Watch what you're doing.^[1]

Use good quality paper. Bristol board with a vellum or kid finish, or Canson papers are excellent for this purpose - they have what's known as "resist" and "tooth" which is critical for a good appearance with a pencil drawing. Don't use thin typing paper or scratch paper to do your masterpiece on - invest in some good quality paper with some heft to it. These papers not only resist smudges a little bit, but they erase cleanly if you do smudge on them.

Think about the softness of your lead. Softer leads: 6B thru HB, with 6B as the softest and HB as the hardest. 2B is the hardness used most often by animators on cartoons. The softer the lead, the blacker the lines - and the more smear. Harder leads: H - 6H - with H as the softest and 6H as hardest, are most often used by architects or for drafting. Remember that the softer your leads, the more careful you will need to be about smudges and fingerprints.^[2]

Get the right erasers. You will need a white plastic eraser - if you're doing a lot of fine details, get one of the "pen-type" ones that you can just click to feed more eraser out. Also, get a kneaded eraser - this is a special type of putty that picks up graphite, and which can be formed with your fingers into just the right shapes. You may also want to look into an electric eraser - these are capable of the greatest detail.^[3] You can also get what's called 'cleaning powder." It's really just a bag full of eraser crumbs, but if you smear a lot, it can help clean up your drawings quite a lot.

Use a brush to remove eraser or graphite crumbs - don't brush them off with your hand. Soft brushes like this can be purchased at any art supply store. Take care not to use the brush for any purpose other than this, though, or you may find that dirt or other foreign stuff will get transferred from the brush onto your nice drawing.

Use a mahl stick or a drawbridge.^[4] If you're working on a large picture, sometimes you just have to put your hand somewhere. Luckily, there are a couple of tools specifically made for this problem. The first, a mahl stick, is nothing more than a length of doweling with a non-mar rubber tip. Holding the stick in your non-drawing hand, put the rubber tip on the desk or the paper, out of the area where you are working. Now put a pencil or a paperback book at the other end of the stick, where you are holding it. Continue to hold onto the mahl stick so that you can move it with your drawing hand. Rest the heel of your drawing hand on the stick rather than on your drawing, and draw. It keeps your hand up off the picture. A drawbridge is similar - it's usually a piece of clear acrylic about 4"x12", with rubber feet on the bottom. Put the drawbridge on the drawing, where your drawing hand needs to rest, and use it to rest your hand on, instead of laying your hand directly on the drawing.

Fix as you work. Get a can of workable fixative.^[5] There are several kinds - make sure you get the workable kind. This is a kind of spray coating which prevents smearing, but it can be erased, and you can draw over it. Don't use too much - it can make the drawing difficult to work on. But used sparingly, this stuff really helps.