Some of the most wonderful work being done today is actually done with a familiar tool: the pencil. Not exotic or expensive, graphite is a medium that yields optimal flexibility for the calligraphic artist, with the sweet relief of working in shades of just one wonderful color: graphite gray, whose warm tones range from the most delicate ecru to the most inky black. With a small kit of graphite stick, carpenter’s pencil, a range of pencils, blending shamies and an eraser, we can understand the kinds of textures that can be obtained, the possibilities of working positive to negative, creating letters with the eraser, and how to preserve the white ground by masking.