c1532 in E. Law Hampton Court Palace I. 364 Redd ocker for pensellyng of the new tennys play.

1706 B. Buckeridge Ess. Eng. School in J. Savage tr. R. de Piles Art of Painting 402 Had his Colouring and Pencilling been as good as his Draught.

1753 W. Hogarth Anal. Beauty xii. 96 Whether they are..made by the pencilings of art or nature.

1839 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 45 530 Not by the minute pencilling of the pictorialists.

1891 Dict. National Biogr. at Hondius, Abraham Hondius..painted numerous hunting and sporting scenes with a firm pencilling and good colour.

1992 M. Bishop Count Geiger's Blues xix. 90 Stalwarts has its own comic and six or seven alternate superheroes, depending on who's doing the writing and penciling.

1621 in D. Yaxley Researcher's Gloss. Hist. Documents E. Anglia (2003) 151 Rayling, penceling & contoring of wall & stearecases.

1875 E. H. Knight Amer. Mech. Dict. III. 1659/1 To draw a line of white paint along a mortar-joint in a brick wall, to render the joint more conspicuous and contrast with the colour of the bricks. This is termed penciling.

1991 N. J. Moore in J. Blair & N. Ramsay Eng. Medieval Industries ix. 229 ‘Pencilling’ often performed by bricklayers from the mid 16th to the early 17th century..; it was commonly in red, black or white, or some combination of them.

2003 Tennessean (Nexis) 20 July 1 w The outside layer of red brick was also embellished with a decorative touch—white lines between the bricks, called penciling.

1788 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 78 227 The colour of the Cuckoo's eggs is extremely variable. Some, both in ground and penciling, very much resemble the House-sparrow's.

1878 P. H. Lawrence tr. B. von Cotta Rocks Classified (new ed.) 83 The linear foldings or pencilling of frequent occurrence in gneiss.

1909 W. Bateson Mendel's Princ. Heredity (new ed.) ii. 42 Pencilling [in fowls] is a dominant to its absence.

1971 F. Hamilton World Encycl. Dogs 659/1 Pencilling: Dark lines divided by strips of tan on feet of Manchester Terrier.

2003 Mother Earth News (Nexis) 1 Feb. 36 Female Brown Leghorns are medium brown with delicate penciling, darker brown wings and salmon breasts.

1803 Lett. Miss Riversdale I. 325 The friction of his pocket had so completely defaced the pencilling.

1830 A. Cunningham Lives Brit. Painters (ed. 2) I. 331 He used to sit and fill his copybook with pencillings of flowers.

1835 N. P. Willis (title) Pencillings by the way.

1845 ‘G. Eliot’ Let. (1954) I. 187 Thank you for the pencillings... I see that many are obvious and important emendations.

1886 J. A. Symonds Renaissance in Italy (1898) VII. viii. 24 Ariosto's bright and many-coloured pencillings, were..distinguished by..firmness of drawing.

1942 W. Lewis Let. 27 Jan. (1963) 314 It was splendid..to know, from the spirit that petillated from your pencillings, that all was well with you.

1966 Jrnl. Ecol. 54 p. vii/2 Errors [in the lettering of Figures] can..be avoided if these are..typed on another separate sheet in addition to the light pencilling on the Figures themselves.

1986 Associated Press Newswire (Nexis) 5 Jan. The first major exhibition of almost 150 of his paintings and pencilings of oppression, opening with a doomsday drawing of ‘The Last Men’.

1831 N. P. Willis Poem at Brown University 178 Beneath The spreading trees, fine pencillings of light Stay.

1916 Science 6 Oct. 496/2 The whole vault of the heavens was alive with light. Light in patches, bands and arches; in streamers, sheets, and delicate pencillings.

1936 C. L. Morgan Sparkenbroke vi. vii. 551 He saw a pencilling of light shine under her door.

1876 tr. B. Fraenkel in tr. H. W. von Ziemssen et al. Cycl. Pract. Med. IV. 80 (heading) The application of fluids [to the nose, larynx and pharynx]. (a) Pencilling.

1806 J. Grahame Birds Scotl. in Poems (1807) II. 18 The tasteful Power, Pragmatic, which presides, with pencilling hand, And striding compasses, o'er all this change.

1835 E. S. Wortley Village Churchyard 61 The sweet inscriptions of thy [sc. the Moon's] pencilling ray—And every soft memorial of thy sway—He'll banish from his bosom.

1887 Daily Tel. 12 Mar. 5/2 A registration fee..is extracted from every member of the pencilling fraternity [sc. bookmakers].

1967 P. J. Kavanagh On Way to Depot in Coll. Poems (1992) 51 There's Blackfriars and Westminster and out-of-sight Lambeth and concave pencilling skyscraping Vickers.

1985 Brit. Poultry Sci. 26 409 The pencilled phenotype has been presumed to be caused by the presence of a pencilling gene.

2002 Washington Times (Nexis) 9 Mar. b2 Giants of the past [sc. comic book artists] such as..penciling dynamo Dick Giordano, George (Iron Man) Tuska and the man who helped define Spider-Man.