8B pencil and tortillon

I've been skimming through Fast Sketching Techniques by David Rankin. He recommends using a 9B pencil and a smudging stump (the hard rolled tortillons) to have a range of values and quick application.

As a professionally trained artist, he had to work to relax into, and accept, fast, wonky sketching. Funny to think how he teaches it now, when most of us are trying to go the other direction!

I like the method, 2 simple things to carry that provide a large range of values with a painterly feel, no crosshatching.

And as Rankin says, using the tortillon to add values makes the technique something like a dry, single-hue watercolor sketch.

P.S. I used 8B graphite instead of 9B. 9B is relatively difficult to find!