Making your own tortillons

Well, I forgot - I last made tortillons some years ago, and they've finally fallen apart.  A tortillon, for anyone who doesn't know, is basically a paper-made pencil/charcoal blending stick; and very useful they can be. I headed to the internet, sure I'd find something, and hit upon Wikihow.  I shall spare you the painful details, but let's just say if you really want to break out in a muck sweat and lose what control you once had of your temper, Wikihow is the way to go. If you'd prefer to make an actual tortillon, though - try this: MAKING YOUR OWN TORTILLON [img=32x32]http://monologues.co.uk/Portraits/Images/Pncil.gif[/img]

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A tortillon is a tightly rolled sheet of paper, the inside of which is pushed out into a pencil shape and used by pencil, pastel and charcoal artists to blend and push colour around on the drawing paper, softening edges and graduating tones.  You may want to try experimenting with various types of paper, the commercial tortillons that I've come across are made from a rather loose fibre paper, similar to thin blotting paper but I've found that just about any paper will do. I make mine from ordinary copy paper straight out of my printer. Very little practice is required to produce your own homemade tortillon.   [img=215x144]http://monologues.co.uk/Portraits/Images/tort1.gif[/img] Take a sheet of A4 paper and mark 1" down on one side and 1" up on the other. Rule a pencil line between the two points and then cut along with scissors. You can now make 2 tortillons.   [img=160x121]http://monologues.co.uk/Portraits/Images/tort3.gif[/img] Starting at the narrow end, try to roll the paper evenly and fairly tightly, towards the wider edge. This can be a bit of an art and does take a little practice but they do last a long time once they are made. They do occasionally come to a point as you are rolling... this is fine.   [img=108x108]http://monologues.co.uk/Portraits/Images/tort5.gif[/img] Once the paper is tightly rolled, hold it firmly and push out the centre with a very thin knitting needle / thick wire or something similar, to form a pencil shape.   [img=101x102]http://monologues.co.uk/Portraits/Images/tort6.gif[/img] You now need to secure the paper with a small strip of adhesive tape and trim any excess paper from the top.

In the event of any confusion, just ask me and I'll send you the method in a drawing - you'll find a tortillon a useful tool: you CAN buy them, but when all you need is a bit of copy paper, a ruler, and a pair of scissors, plus a tiny bit of Sellotape, why bother?  (The website from which I took this some years ago seems no longer to exist.)