How to Draw Figures with Pencils- a Complete guide for beginners
I've had a student ask me how to draw with pencils and stuff like that. So one of the the things that I'm going to talk about first is the kind of paper that you have. It's really hard to show but honestly, every paper is a little bit different. There's hot press and cold press paper, and it ultimately has more of a textural feel, more grain to it, and it will hold pencils differently. A rougher paper will have the pencil lead go over it and leave white dots where the lead doesn't reach, while a smoother surface paper will allow you to cover more of the paper. You can get some Starter Bright White Paper https://amzn.to/3xf5RIh
I've got a couple of different things here. The first thing I've got is just a set of traditional pencils https://amzn.to/3d9Ktx5. They are nothing special but they're just pencils and they go in a range from 8B to looks like 2H. (Soft to Hard)
The softer the pencil the darker it goes, but also the harder it is to make a lighter mark. A softer lead will also fill a rougher paper.
You can blend it in different ways, You can either do it with your your finger to smudge it over. So I can just kind of just move it back and forth. But the big thing about the finger is you have to watch your oils on your hand. There's a lot of times that you'll be working and you can leave a fingerprint. And because it's oil, Wipe your hands on some basic cloth, before you smudge with your fingers, or you can use White gloves to help you blend https://amzn.to/3RLAUTU
You also wind up with grit over your work and instead of wiping your hand across the paper you can use something like this https://amzn.to/3L3Z2Px
But ultimately, what this does is just pushes the blend in there for you, basically allows you to kind of blend that outward as you work on it. And so you can get a much kind of cleaner line work like that. So there's the blending those. Now, again, there's different types of pencils like you can grab these sticks here. So this is a art station, graphite led. This is just a graphite block here, if you will. They also have like this. This is a graphite block. And ultimately you shave it with a knife and then you can get your side pencils like this. And it's pretty close to being the same thing as a side of a pencil.
The first thing I do. And this is kind of the the gestural sketch stage I've got, Gestures are about the basic energy and shape of the drawing, It's not about perfection at this point but to get your shapes and natural flow of the figure down
Next you are going to block out your figures, this is about measuring your figure and making sure you have the lights and darks in place.
And then we are going to put in the details, this is where you go from simple shapes to the lines of anatomy and the detail associated with it. If you have questions feel free to ask
