 What's going on everybody welcome back to the art check so this video I want to talk about blending. There's quite a few different materials that you can use to blend it right and a lot of them act in very different ways. So I've prepared something to show you the difference in these blending materials and they range from ordinary blending stumps to the Q-tips and paint brushes which normally aren't really used for blending at all but let me show you how they work. So here you can see I have made a chart showing different materials I'm going to be using and to demonstrate them I'm going to use an HB pencil which is your normal standard typical pencil that you'd find in everyday household. So to test this every one of these boxes just going to put a nice shading in like that. Nothing too fancy I'm pressing pretty hard I want to get a nice application in. Now each one of these little tick marks represents one inch. Alright so let's start off with probably the most common way of blending which is a blending stuff. So to start off I'll get just kind of go in a circular motion just try and get some of that on here and then I'll work it out. Start working that in. Just to see how far you can really blend it. And what I'll do is I'll add a little bit of 4B in here just to make things a little bit darker. I'm going to make it a little bit easier for all of you to see what's going on. Alright so let's try that again. Same thing again. You can probably clearly see how far this blending stuff is allowing me to actually go. So what's nice about the blending stuff is that it'll hold that graph fight in there and you can use it as like a light toning utensil. So you can carry that blend really far with this which is why this is what I will typically use most of the time. These top three are probably the most common to use for blending. Blending styles, paintbrush and Q-tips are less common but they still are quite effective. So let's use a tortellon. So here's the big difference. I get asked this quite a bit so I'll try and explain the difference between a blending stump and tortellon. Blending stump is a solid piece of paper. You can sharpen this and you'll still have a solid rule of paper underneath the initial shaving here. A tortellon on the other hand and we'll have a hole in it. So if you were to press really hard on the tip of it it'll actually become blunt. So you gotta be careful with these but they still work pretty well. What's nice is that they have a much longer tip so you can really get a nice long application with them. Now they will blend similarly to a blending stump but I find it don't last as long as a typical blending stump. I can use a blending stump for quite a few drawings without actually replacing it or trying to even clean it off. And for the most part I don't even try and clean them off. I just tend to use them. I'll keep blending stumps that look like this and have a completely black tip. My store just fine. So you can see here that it has a pretty similar application to a blending stump. Alright so let's try a cloth. Now here's the cloth that I have which you can see has gotten quite a bit of use. So I typically just find a corner of it and just start going along. Now what's interesting about the cloth is that it'll absorb a lot more graphite than it'll blend. So if you accidentally make an area a bit too dark you can easily lighten it up with a piece of cloth like this. So you can see that the blend from this is almost non-existent or it actually blends so well that you can't really even see it. So it's a nice tool to use if you want to make some really nice and smooth blends. So here's a very unorthodox use of blending but because of the texture of a paper towel it can actually make some interesting texture. So by using that it'll soften everything and it'll carry a blend line pretty well. But because of the texture on this it'll create more of a texture blend. So it works nice if you're trying to blend maybe some clothing or just something that requires a little more texture because remember a blending stump will remove almost all texture from a drawing. Alright so here's a paintbrush. Now this is a tool that I don't really use too often but it doesn't really work too well. It depends on what kind of a paintbrush you actually use. This is an oil paintbrush so the bristles are rather stiff and they'll really sort of attack what's on there and try and soften everything. But a paintbrush won't really carry anything. It will however smudge an area that you're working on. But if you want to blend and carry it doesn't do it very well. And the last tool which I recommend if you don't have a blending stump is to use a regular cutesip because it will hold that graphite and will carry it just like a blending stump will. Alright so start off. You can see that it does blend everything and it does carry a lot too. So a cutesip does work but it hasn't last for a long. And so that's pretty much the extent of using a cutesip so. Alright so out of all these cutesip blending stump things don't roll they will but you get the idea that's a tartillion, the cloth, what else we got. Paper towel and of course the paintbrush. These are just a few of the materials that I picked out for demonstrating this blending tutorial. There are a few more out there. You can use different textures of a cloth or paper towel and get different sort of textures but all and all to be honest I will mainly only use a blending stump and maybe a cloth. That's pretty much it. I haven't found too much use for a paintbrush but it does work. It definitely does blend stuff but it's not really the best tool that I've ever used. So I hope you all enjoyed this one and let me know what your favorite blending tool is. And let me know what your experience is if you ever actually got around using the cutesip for your work. It's an interesting tool. It's definitely a very good workaround if you don't have a blending stump so it's always good to hear your reactions with those. So I hope you all enjoyed this one and I want to thank you all very much for watching and I'll see you all later. Take care.