Using a tortillon is a pencil drawing technique for lightly shading or blending different portions of your picture.

Tortillons are tightly-wound sticks of paper, pointed on one end much like a pencil.

Tortillon

These are used for blending graphite, charcoal, pastel, or colored pencils. Their small tips enable the artist to blend areas too small to blend with the fingers, and they don’t leave the oils on the paper that fingers sometimes do.

When blending, hold it at an angle as you would a pencil. You’ll find as you work that the tip will become darker and more blunt. Don’t throw it away — you can use it again to blend another area of the same drawing or on another drawing.

TO PRACTICE:

Take a 2B pencil. While applying pressure to the pencil, fill in a small area as dark as you can. Continue to your right, letting up the pressure on the pencil, gradually making your graphite appear lighter and lighter until you can barely see it.

Now rub over the graphite from left to right, darker to lighter. Note how the graphite blends together.

If you are working through these lessons with your child, don’t eliminate this neat little tool. Children love to try them.

Do you use tortillons when you’re drawing in pencil?