Pencil Drawing
As you read through this lesson and practice the techniques it teaches, keep in mind that you can submit a completed practice drawing for a free professional evaluation by one of our Instructors. Your practice lesson will be evaluated and you will receive a critique—a free sample of the high-level, one-to-one instruction all of our students receive when they enroll in a Famous Artists School Course.
Learning to Use the Tools of Pencil Drawing
A pencil drawing by George Bellows (click to enlarge)
The first step in mastering any skill is to develop ease and familiarity with the tools you will be using. If you study music you practice notes and scales before you can play a tune. In golf or tennis you must learn to use your clubs or racquet and become familiar with what happens when you use various strokes. In drawing, too, it’s just as true—you must learn to use your tools. Even so simple a tool as the pencil.
Although you’ve been using a pencil a long time, you probably have not learned to use it as an artist. That’s the reason for this preliminary lesson. We want to acquaint you with some of the basic strokes and effects used by artists to create pictures.
The pencil is a wonderful drawing instrument. It is probably the most available and versatile medium used by the artist. In talented hands, the pencil will and has created masterpieces. In addition, it’s an indispensable thinking tool you, like every artist, will use in planning nearly every picture you undertake.
Ways to Draw
There is no right or wrong way to draw. The only thing that counts is the final effect. To best achieve the effects you want, hold your pencil any way it feels comfortable. Probably your normal writing position will work best most of the time. On occasion, you may find such a position too cramped for the kind of lines you want.
Then it will be helpful to hold your pencil more nearly parallel to the paper as shown in the sketches below. Such a position allows more use of your entire arm and is useful in making bold, swinging lines. There is another advantage to this position: it forces you to sit or stand farther away from your drawing—an important consideration for the beginner who becomes involved, too soon, in drawing details.
A normal writing position on the left, and a position where you stand farther away on the right. (click to enlarge)
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