Sharpening Pastel Pencils
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It’s a topic that we have discussions with students regularly - “How do you sharpen Pastel Pencils?”
A common and very valid question! Because Pastel Pencils are different to other colouring or graphite pencils, they are more difficult to sharpen. They have a chalk lead and generally a thicker casing to house this lead, this makes them tricky to sharpen. So what are your options?
Using a Blade
Since Colin first started using pastel pencils and realised that a standard sharpener wouldn’t cut it, he resorted to using a blade. Mastering this technique takes a little practice but the pay off is worth it. You can get a lot of control over the point and thickness of the lead.
Check out one of Colin’s videos from YouTube where he demonstrates this method:
This technique doesn’t work for everyone though and if you still prefer to use a sharpener then there is a solution.
Why don’t all sharpeners work?
There are a couple of reasons why sharpeners struggle with pastel pencils. One is that they vary in size and shape. For example Faber-Castell have a round casing and Caran d’Ache have a hexagonal casing (and are also slightly bigger). This means that these pencils simply won’t fit in all sharpeners.
Another reason is that the blades that are inside these sharpeners simply aren’t durable enough to handle sharpening pastel pencils.
Years ago we thought we had found the solution with one of the swordfish ikon manual hand-crank sharpeners because they did such a good job. We posted a video showing just how well they sharpened pastel pencils. The video was a success and gained thousands of views. Sadly though we didn’t realise that after several uses, the blade inside started to blunt and would soon stop working.
This soon became a problem and swordfish quickly contacted us to stop recommending the sharpener because they were getting so many complaints about the blades blunting! It simply wasn’t designed for pastel pencils and so we went back to the drawing board.
The Solution
Luckily though, our fellow pastel pencil artist and friend Jason Morgan, found a solution to keep the blades working for longer. Interestingly enough it’s still the Swordfish Ikon sharpener that is the best choice but there is a way to keep the blades going.
The key? A woodless graphite pencil.
Every now and again, if you use a woodless graphite pencil on the sharpener, it will lubricate the blades and keep it going for longer. It doesn’t guarantee the blades from blunting but does keep them going longer.
We’ve included Jason’s videos below where he talks about the solution at the 5 min mark.
If you do end up going for a swordfish sharpener and need to change the blade, there’s a handy video Jason’s made showing how to do this:
Summary
As far as we know there still isn’t a sharpener designed specifically for Pastel Pencils. Fortunately with the above option of either a blade or a Swordfish Sharpener (using the woodless graphite pencil trick), we can continue to use the pencils successfully.
I’m sure that whoever can come up with the Pastel Pencil Sharpener will make a lot of money though!
I hope that you’ve found this blog post helpful. If you have any questions or want to contribute to this article please email us on support@colinbradleyart.com