Pencil Shading

Pencil Shading:

Shading is the essence of putting the body to your drawing. To achieve the different effects of such a broad area, you have to practice. You need to do sweeping strokes on a piece of paper, again and again.

Also try different grades of papers, there are many different papers out there for the artist these days. Though I would suggest you start with plain drawing paper. As you will be doing allot of ground work. You will be doing wide sweeps of the hand, to small sweeps. Leaning your pencil on its side to see how the grains will come out. What you are doing is training your hand, as you spend more and more time experimenting with different shading.

In short...you are training your mind to coordinate with your hand. Till you get to the stage in exacting what tone you need in a certain area of your drawing. When all this comes together, then you will create finished drawing that has texture and depth.

Don't worry.... I had to go through all this when I first started my studies. Drawing lines, pencil shading till the cows came home. And when you have been out of it for a while. It is always good to get into a little practice. A bit like riding a bike really - you never forget once you have learnt.

It might sound a little boring. I know; you want to get right into drawing. But just like anything "Rome wasn't built in one day" so you have to persevere and get the ground rules right first. We have all had do it some time in our artistic career. So one step at a time.

Pencil shading has a wide spectrum of color, with every swish of your hand, pressure of your pencil. You are creating a new tone. How can one such pencil of graphite create such richness in shades. Well its all up to you and how you handle it. Its not easy, and takes time. You need to decide how far you want to go, how proficient you want to become.

Its your choice, the true masters of pencil drawings out there who bring to life, drawings that truly reflect a living art back at us. Is wonderful, I have spent time in this area. And could have put long hours, day in and day out to achieve the work of these truly wonderful artists in pencil. And did venture into it so far myself. And found as I practiced more and more, the faster I got. If you stop for a while, you will find that you need to go back and practice; again building up your skills.

If you want to learn drawing to progress onto other mediums, than just spend enough time to become proficient in drawing as the building blocks for, painting, pastel to name a few.

Remember that when you start shading a subject, don't get carried away just shading in like a coloring book.

Think about how the marks relate to your figure. And shading is all to do with shadows and highlights. Find the point where your light will be coming from your page. Because the way the light settles on your figure, this depicts where your light points will be on your figure.

Artist ~ Andrea Balch

Lets return from Pencil shading to Drawing Techniques

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