Think your pencil is sharp?

It isn’t.

Not at 100x magnification, anyway. This is the charoal pencil I was using tonight, and it’s sharp enough to stab someone with. Feels needle-sharp to me. But a little closer look shows this:

And at 200x, it’s even more pronounced:

I tried to take a shot at 400x, but it was too round at that level to get any kind of focus on.

There’s a lot of physics in art. I love revealing new angles on things. Putting a line on paper is a violently physical act. It “damages” both the implement and the surface. Fibers are torn, crystals are shattered. Erasing is violent too. I don’t think having some understanding of what actually happens, physically, when you mark a page, can possibly be a bad thing.