Artistic Pencil Drawing Techniques, Easy to Draw for Beginners

 

The technique of pencil drawing is one of the methods used in the art of illustration, especially in sketches, to improve the artistic skills of beginners in this subject. This will help novice learn to master drawing styles, and if you practice enough, you will reach perfection.

To achieve good results, you must know that patience, dedication and effort are needed, not to mention that this technique requires exclusive materials to improve the quality of the drawings. For starters, you need to know that there is a classification of pencils, ranging from those with a soft tip, which serve to give details and fine finishes, to those with a hard tip that helps to give better lines with depth to the image.

If you want to learn artistic pencil drawing techniques, professional graphite pencil artist Jay Greig recommends some methods that will serve as a guide. With this style of drawing, you can capture thousands of scenes such as landscapes, portraits of people, monuments and any type of object that you never thought to portray with these novel methods.

Next, Jay Greig will show you the most exclusive methods of pencil drawing, which will help you capture any person or object on a sheet of paper.

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Hatching, the artistic pencil drawing technique based on lines

Hatching, also called cross hatching is the technique of artistic pencil drawings that consists of outlining the tone, texture and shading of the drawing using parallel lines. These lines must have little space between them, that is, when these lines intersect, they form a crosshatch. After turning into diagonal lines, you can get less or more darkness, depending on the separation left in each space. This will create an amazing drawing.

Circulism, artistic pencil drawing technique

As the name implies, this method uses a series of very small circles that overlap each other. Here, it is not necessary that each circle be perfect, it is only enough that they are small and close together. The darkness or the shadow will depend on the sizes of the circles that are made, explains American artist Jay Greig.

Circulism is useful for penciling people's skin, because the finish is uneven. For this reason, for this artistic pencil drawing technique it is recommended that the circles be made smoothly on the sheet. With the circulismo, you can give special finishes to the pores of the face, which is almost one of the last finishes that are given before finishing the sketch.

Try the shading technique for your artistic drawing

To further improve yourself with artistic pencil drawing, Carson City-based artist Jay Greig recommends trying out the shading technique. It is divided in two ways: open and closed. Both differ in the way the pencil is used, that is, this object can be used at a closed angle, increasing or decreasing the pressure, producing open zigzag hatches, closed parallel lines and separate lines.

Graphite Pencil Drawing

The technique of pencil drawing is the simplest of all, which makes it ideal to start in the art world. The pencil is a very docile and convenient drawing instrument and has a great variety in graphite leads This means that, depending on what we want to draw, we can choose the one that best suits our needs.

 

This technique gives us many advantages, it is surprising to know that with a single soft lead pencil we can achieve a wide variety of tones, from an intense black to a smooth and homogeneous gray. Also, with a hard lead pencil we can draw very fine and clean lines. The pencil is easy to erase and you do not need an exceptional pulse to use a pencil.

“For all this, the pencil is the most suitable instrument to start drawing and to accustom the hand to achieve safe and clean lines. Also, it is the best instrument to start shading, which is so important in the quest to achieve the best results,” says Jay Greig, a graphite pencil artist.

We must not forget that the more we practice, the more we refine the technique. This is very important since drawing is the backbone of all pictorial work.

“One of the methods that has been useful to me personally is the practice of quick drawing. I know that in our beginnings we all want to draw perfect and we are disappointed not to be able to do it and even more if we compare our work with that of someone more experienced than us. I am not saying that it is wrong to compare ourselves, it is more I believe that it is necessary to observe the way how others work, but it is necessary to understand that each one lives the process of refining technique in their own way and at their own pace,” says Jay Greig.

PENCILS AND PAPER

Many graphite pencils in the world are classified with the European system that uses a continuous gradation described by "H" (for hardness) and "B" (for degree of darkness). The standard pencil commonly used for writing is the HB.

Here Jay Greig shares the definition according to the letter and number of the pencil:



6B - Very black and very soft. ideal for dark areas

5B - Less black and very soft. ideal for shading

4B and 3B - Less squishy and a little less black.

2B - It is equal to the number 1.

B - Intermediate between 1 and 2.

HB - Same as 2.

F - Between 2 and 3.

H - Equal to 3.

2H - Between 3 and 4.

3H - Same as 4.

4H, 5H, 6H, 7H and 8H - Increasingly harder and less black.


In Jay Greig’s opinion it is necessary to mention that, when creating an artwork, one of our priorities as artists, in addition to seeking that the work is well executed, must also be that whoever acquires the artwork keep it for a long time and in good condition. For this we must put special interest in the materials we use to make it. The paper generally last less than oil work, so the paper we use plays an important role.