hi everybody I'm gonna be showing you
how to make the best possible blending
tool if you're working with charcoal
although this also works very well with
graphite this is by far the best
possible tool for blending and it's a
result of many many months of my
research so let me show you how it's
done what you're going to need is a
piece of paper just like this make sure
that it's cut into this shape and it
should be made of regular newsprint
paper or the paper from a notebook the
reason why this paper works well is
because it will make the blending tool
that Italian softer and it will make it
blend better than the regular blending
stumps and Italians what I find is that
the ones you buy tend to be a little bit
hard and then not to blend as well now
what we need to do with this piece of
paper is roll it and we're going to be
rolling it to this sides the first time
you start rolling it make sure that your
fingers are not too dry and you you saw
you want to roll towards this side sort
of if that makes sense
so the first time you roll it it doesn't
have to be perfect because each time you
roll it it's going to you you're going
to be able to roll it tighter so like I
said if you want to create a tip just
keep trying to roll towards this side
towards this edge and you can see that
I've created a nice tip so you just bend
it here and you fasten it with a little
bit of tape and there you have it this
is the perfect blending tool now we're
going to see how it works let's get a
piece of paper and a charcoal pencil and
I'm going to fill in this space here
with some pencil strokes and I'm
deliberately careless with them because
I want to show you how this will soften
or completely remove the texture and
strokes and it works well well with
darker as well as with lighter tones so
let's test it like I said one of the
main advantages of these totally ins
that you can make yourself is that they
tend to be softer than the ones you buy
and also sorry my camera lost focus for
a second now also you can always make
more and another advantage is that the
more you work with them the better and
the better they actually tend to get
because they get fuzzier and softer and
you can actually blend more easily with
them now as you can see I roll this one
very tightly to our fine tip but you can
also modify its shape so that you can
you can modify it so that you can cover
more area when you're blending it
doesn't have to be rolled into a fine
tip that's why I mean now you can see
how easily I'm blending this and you can
see that it's actually very good at
blending blending it thoroughly so that
the strokes and the texture is almost
disappearing
I could work on that and make that even
smoother I just want to show you what it
looks like if we have some lighter value
okay now let's try to blend this
so as you can see this blends really
well and we could go on and make this
even smoother but what you need to
remember is that because this blends so
thoroughly if you want to keep some
texture and if you want to keep some of
the pencil strokes visible you might
want to use another type of blending
tool such as a brush or maybe try to
blend it with gentle strokes so what are
some key points to remember when making
these totally ins first make sure that
you're using a piece of paper that's
shaped like this make sure that you're
using newsprint paper or paper from a
notebook and make sure that you roll it
towards this edge like so so that you
can create a tip and like I said you
don't have to roll it perfectly the
first time around because each time you
roll it you're going to be able to roll
it more tightly and of course like I
said this tool only gets better the more
you use it and eventually if it breaks
you just make a new one it's cheap you
can make tons of it and it works really
well I hope you'll find this video
useful thank you for watching