Pencil drawing techniques

The humble lead pencil made of graphite and clay and mostly cedar wood is the most simplest tool to draw with but using it to make a positive statement can be quite awesome. Pencil techniques are used to express in a drawing what you want to say but equally important in how you say it and this is where technique comes in. You can for instance express shadow in a drawing by normal diagonal shading from right to left, you can crosshatch to build up tone (laying in diagonal shading first and going over this at a different angle usually perpendicular).

You can add more layers over these two but the more you do this the more messier the shading becomes, I would advise three layers maximum. When shading you can use the point of the pencil but you can also use the side of the pencil holding it underneath the hand, in this way the marks the pencil makes are broader thereby filling up more of the paper more quickly. You can use a normal HB pencil and draw lightly with it to achieve a light line or press on more to achieve a darker line. We can use dots like in a pointillist fashion, curly strokes for another effect. The marks you put down on paper are like musical notes and all the notes together make a composition so it is the way and how you place the notes on the paper that makes it a pleasing composition. If you can think of a composition with a variety of shapes and light and darks, see (Light and shade) both in shading and in line, see (Line in Portraiture) we will have a successful drawing. It is the shapes and the light and shade that gives volume and it is the line that gives a drawing life.
 

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