This is a short video that will help you render smooth tones with graphite pencil. I recommend using a 2B, 4B, 6B or Ebony pencil for building medium to dark tones and a harder lighter 2H or HB to sketch in the subject with light lines. Always start out very light so that you can easily correct mistakes. Other tools you'll need include a needed eraser and a white plastic eraser. I prefer this pencil-like retractable eraser for detail areas. You'll find it's much easier to avoid smudging your drawing if you cover the areas you're not drawing with a piece of clean scrap paper laying your drawing hand on top while you draw. There are basically two methods to create smooth tones with graphite pencil. Here I'm using the first method, overlapping strokes, to build my tones or shading with an Ebony pencil. Again I go lighter and gradually build darker and darker tones into my drawing, overlapping my pencil strokes in a circular motion. The goal is to cover the strokes with more strokes to get a smoother tone. A dull pencil point helps make for a smoother tone. The second method for creating smooth tones involves blending or smoothing out the overlapping strokes with a stump, torna-lon or a Q-tip. Once I've filled in the negative space or the background, I go back over the positive areas and clean up the edges with my plastic eraser. Sharp edges are nice, but smudge edges are nice too since they give the impression of a natural blurred edge. Some of the areas in the background are darker than I like, so I use the needed eraser to lighten up my tones a bit. I simply flatten out the eraser and press on the tones, removing a small amount of the graphite from the drawing. Now I can go back and add more graphite if I prefer. My drawing is almost finished. Finally I clean up the area with reflected light using the plastic eraser and I blend the tones in the core shadow area of the sphere.