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Probably the best blending tool to use in drawing realistic faces is with the use of a tortillion. A tortillon is like pencil that is made of paper with a very fine tip that can help you smudge the parts of your sketch to help you with your shading. So instead of using your fingertips to smudge, which is really a little bit messy, you can use a tortillion which is much more manageable specially on the smallest corners of your drawing which is hard to smudge with your fingers.

You can actually buy a tortillion in art shops, but it’s really not that hard to create your own so I pointed out here step by step instructions to help you make one. All you need to have is a piece of paper, a masking tape and a pair of scissors, a ruler, and a pencil to mark the measurements.

1. Prepare a 6 inches by 3 inches of paper.

2. With measurements 3 and a half inches at the top and 1 inch width from the bottom right of the papers, cut the right top of the paper diagonally.

3. To prepare it for rolling, fold the paper on the right on a little angle.

4. Roll the paper so as to maintain a tip that is pointed. Continue rolling it in a constant angle not necessarily the same with the first angle you used.

5. The tortillion will look like a pencil made of paper with a pointed tip once it is finished. Put a tape at the body once you have finished rolling.

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 also view this complete set of instructions with pictures on how to create a tortillion, on my site Drawing Faces. This article, Making A Tortillon For Sketching has free reprint rights.