Six sticks of tightly rolled paper, each one sharpened to a point at both ends and each a step thicker than the last. Local shops sell them as a drawing paper pen; artists call them blending stumps or tortillons. Either way, this is the tool you rub a pencil drawing with when you want grey to become smoke.

A finger will smudge graphite too, but it smudges everything within a centimetre of where you put it and it leaves skin oil on the paper that never takes pencil the same way again. A stump gives you a controlled point instead. The finest one in this set will soften the shadow inside a nostril or an eyelid without touching the line beside it.

That is what the graduated sizes are for. The two thickest are for laying a whole background down flat or blending a sky; the middle pair suit folds of cloth, hair masses and the shading on a cylinder; the two thinnest are for the small dark places a broad tool ruins. Because both ends are pointed, a stump also lets you keep one end for light tone and one for dark, which stops your highlights turning muddy.

They are made of paper, so they work by dragging pigment rather than by adding it. Load a tip on a scrap of graphite or charcoal and you can draw with the loaded stump directly — a soft, edgeless mark you cannot get from a pencil at all. When a tip goes grey and slick, rub it on fine sandpaper or peel a little of the paper back and the point is clean again. Nothing is consumed except paper.

Set against the other blending kit we stock, the arithmetic is simple. Our Cretacolor Artist's Accessories Set is Rs. 3,000 for nine pieces and includes a sanding block and a kneadable eraser as well as the stumps. This is Rs. 250 for six bare stumps and nothing else. If you already own a kneaded eraser and a scrap of sandpaper, the cheap set is the whole tool.

One honest limit: paper stumps are for dry media. They do the work on graphite, charcoal, chalk pastel and soft coloured pencil, and they will do nothing useful in a wet wash. Cash on Delivery is available across Pakistan including Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and stock, your city and delivery charges are confirmed on WhatsApp before dispatch.

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