Pencil
The modern lead pencil is not made of lead but is a compressed mixture of clay and graphite in a wooden or plastic casing. It is a versatile and sensitive drawing tool, often used by artists for preliminary studies which can easily be rubbed out, and comes in varying grades of softness and hardness. Pencils also come in a range of colours, and with the water-soluble kind a line can be made into a wash of colour with a brush and water.
Peter Oliver
by Peter Oliver
circa 1625-1630
NPG 4853
Hester Lynch Piozzi (née Salusbury, later Mrs Thrale)
by George Dance
1793
NPG 1151
Jane Porter
by George Henry Harlow
1800s
NPG 1108
Sir William Gell
by Cornelius Varley
1816
NPG 5086
Elizabeth Anne (née Rawdon), Lady Russell
by Lord Arthur John Edward Russell, after Sir George Hayter
1873 (1816)
NPG D22548
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1847
NPG 857
William Holman Hunt
by Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt
1853
NPG 5834
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
1912
NPG 4814
John Lennon
by Cecil Beaton
late 1960s-early 1970s
NPG D17947(123)
John Major
by John Wonnacott
1997
NPG 6410(6)
Parminder Nagra
by Stuart Pearson Wright
2004
NPG 6754
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow
by Benjamin Sullivan
2008
NPG 6859