Realistic graphite pencil drawings! This artist has a really good sense for humor. First picture, with this donkeys is for me the best of all! Black and white pictures are great. Looks like some old photos, but they are more beautiful! Pencil art is great! Drawing executed with a pencil, an instrument made of graphite enclosed in a wood casing. Though graphite was mined in the 16th century, its use by artists is not known before the 17th century. In the 17th–18th century, graphite was used primarily to make preliminary sketches for more elaborate work in another medium, seldom for finished works. By the late 18th century, an ancestor of the modern pencil was constructed by inserting a rod of natural graphite into a hollow cylinder of wood. Pencil rods produced from mixtures of graphite and clays, true prototypes of the modern graphite pencil, were introduced in 1795. This improvement allowed for better control and encouraged wider use.