Pencil Drawing Techniques: Six Tips to Improve your Drawing Skills

Many people don’t seem to consider drawing as an important art skill. At the begin of your artistic journey, you must have embraced pencil drawing in one way or the other. As an artist, it’s important that you understand the process as well as the fundamentals of drawing. You need to appreciate the fact that drawing often involves taking quality time to observe something, analyze it, and ultimately reproduce it. Drawing involves becoming aware of color, proportion, contrast, and form.

If you’re looking to learn how to draw or improve your pencil drawing skills, the following tips are what you need.

Master Pencil Grip

Before you even think of your subject matter, start by mastering how to hold your pencil correctly. It’s possible you’ve been doing it the wrong way. Or there’s a better way to do it. Rather than using the tip of your pencil, use the side of the lead. Only use the point when you’re working or rather drawing the intricate details. Consider holding your pencil like you would charcoal so you can maximize its utility and also ensure it remains shaper for longer. Hold your pencil parallel to your lines so you can get those sharp, narrow marks when drawing details.

Consider Mixing up Different Shading Techniques

Don’t limit yourself to one shading technique when you can experiment and try out several. To ensure cohesiveness in your work, have all your lines going in the same direction. Shading your drawing this way allows details to pop out in a unique way. A great way to define shape and keep your work in perspective is to work in patches. Add texture and create backgrounds by applying different shading techniques.

Build up your Sketch

When it comes to pencil drawing, you want to plan your work and explore things using loose lines. Don’t be in a hurry to commit yourself with hard, dark lines. Take your time to build up sketches while checking how everything is progressing. Keep rechecking as you draw and only darken your lines and bring in more details at the end. Make sure everything is symmetrical before darkening the lines.

Prevent Pencil Smudges

Well, this isn’t something new for an artist. It should be on your fingertips. It’s just here so you won’t forget. You don’t want to end up with pencil smudges on your beautiful drawing after spending hours or even nights working on your project. So, how do you go about it? Always put a sheet of paper under your hand when drawing. That’s how you stay away from those smudges. It’s good to step away from your drawing or view it in a mirror to see if anything seems to be off.

Know when to Finish

Understand that you’ll always feel like there’s something you can change in your drawing even after you’ve signed your name. You’ll find yourself tinkering with your work and bringing in more ideas on how to improve the drawing. It can be quite difficult to know when to stop. Don’t overdo your drawing. Always make a conscious decision to sign your drawing off and start another one.