Definition Drawing executed with a pencil, an instrument made of graphite
enclosed in a wood casing. Though graphite was mined in the 16th
century, its use by artists is not known before the 17th century. In the
17th–18th century, graphite was used primarily to make preliminary
sketches for more elaborate work in another medium, seldom for finished
works. By the late 18th century, an ancestor of the modern pencil was
constructed by inserting a rod of natural graphite into a hollow
cylinder of wood. Pencil rods produced from mixtures of graphite and
clays, true prototypes of the modern graphite pencil, were introduced in
1795. This improvement allowed for better control and encouraged wider
use. The great masters of pencil drawing kept the elements of a simple
linearism with limited shading, but many artists in the 18th–19th
century created elaborate effects of light and shade by rubbing the soft
graphite particles with a tightly rolled paper or chamois.
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