A few Messiers

[Talitha]

Thank you, Russ and John.

Steve, i think a 'cotton bud' is what we here in the States refer to as a Q-Tip?

It's a small 3" paper stick with a bit of cotton on each end.. no idea why they named it that, but it seems to have stuck. But we refer to a lot of products by their brand names... Q-Tips, Jell-O, Kleenex and Scotch Tape are a few.

Anyway, if a cotton bud is a Q-Tip, i've used them on lunar sketches for initial blending of heavily shadowed areas. It's much easier to reach for fresh ones than to keep cleaning the very dark graphite from the blending stump.

And yes, you can definitely use your finger to blend, but it's best to wrap it in a Kleenex (facial tissue) first.. some use a small piece of chamois. Fibers push graphite into the tooth (texture) of the paper much better than the ridges of our fingerprint can.