Pencil Blending Tool: How To Make A Homemade Tortillon

The best way to blend your drawing when drawing realistic faces is by using a tortillon. Because instead of having to use your fingers to blend the shadings, which can be a little bit messy and uncontrollable, you can use the fine tip of the tortillion instead, which is more manageable. This can make your drawing much cleaner and your smudges more smoother, which affects the overall appearance of your sketch.

If you don’t want to buy tortillions you can create one yourself with this easy steps. With the use of a paper and a masking tape you can create your very own homemade tortillion. You also need to have a pair of scissors and a pen and ruler to mark the paper with the right measurements.

1. Prepare a piece of paper and make it into 6 X 3 inches.

2. Now, you need to cut the right hand top of the paper diagonally. The measurement of the triangular paper that needs to be cut is 2 and half inches length and 2 inches in height.

3. You should now fold the paper from the right with a small angle. This is to prepare it for rolling.

4. You should now roll the paper from right to left. This will produce a pointed tip for the tortillion. Maintain a good angle to do so, as you keep rolling the paper.

5. Once you’ve finished rolling the paper, it should look like a pencil that has a fine tip. Stop rolling and use a tape on its body to combine them together.

That’s it, you have just created your personal home-made tortillion. Use it to smudge the parts of your sketch you want to blend smoothly. After using the tortillion, just erase the dirt on the tip using the eraser.

You can view the full step by step instructions (with pictures) on how to make a tortillion on my website, www.drawrealisticface.com