wooden stick with a burned tip (used to create underdrawings)
A traditional drawing tool: a wooden stick whose tip is charred to produce a soft, charcoal-like line for preliminary sketches or underdrawings.
Japanese painters sometimes use a burnt-tip stick when creating underdrawings.
Standard kanji spelling.
Variant spelling without okurigana.
Compound of 焼き (yaki, 'burning, burnt') + 筆 (fude, 'brush, writing/drawing implement'). The name describes the tool: a stick whose tip is burned to function like a drawing implement.