Ronnie Tucker – Pet, Wildlife & Portrait Artist.

Kneadable (putty) eraser, or plastic eraser. Is there a difference?

Dec 28, 2009 art, pencil

An ordinary plastic eraser

I’m sure there are many times when you’ve been drawing/sketching and had to erase a large area, or even redo an piece several times. All that rubbing and blowing off the pieces of eraser that are in your way… not the most pleasant of tasks.

Plastic erasers, while they do the job, can seriously damage the surface you’re drawing on as they are quite stiff. They also disintegrate as you use them leaving all those tiny bits of eraser on the page.

There has to be a better way… and there is!

a Kneadable/Putty Eraser

A kneadable (or putty) eraser is the exact opposite of a plastic eraser – it’s flexible and doesn’t disintegrate, nor does it damage your drawing surface.

The idea behind the putty rubber is quite simple, think of it as being a soft, pliable, eraser, similar in texture to Blu-Tac, that you can shape. This means that not only can you erase large areas, and nothing will break off, but you can shape the putty to be more precise in what you’re erasing.

You can even ‘draw’ with the putty eraser by removing pencil to create negative shapes, but I’ll write a separate article on that.

To continue using the putty rubber, you simply stretch and manipulate it until you have a clean piece to work with, which won’t last forever as eventually you’ll have a black putty eraser with no clean parts!

At that point you have to erase it, and buy a new one…

Tags: drawing, eraser, graphite, kneadable, pencil, plastic, putty, rubber, sketch, sketching