In the spirit of making things, this is a little work in progress for a web comic I do called, TALES FROM THE HEARTLAND. If you’re curious, for my comic, and iillustration work as a whole, I don’t use non-photo blue pencils to break in forms. Main reason behind that is when I go to ink, the wax in the blue pencil, regardless of hard you erase, can prevent the ink from taking to the artboard to varying degrees.
What I do do is use mechanical pencils, one at 2.0mm lead for breaking in the image and for thick lines & black fields, and then .7mm for refining and details. As for the weight of the lead, in both instances I use HB. Which is middle of the road for weight, not too hard, not too soft, works perfect of me.