Pencil Sketching Step-by-Step

Daily sketching improves your ability to use different art media.

For an artist, sketching can be likened to a musician who plays musical scales before embarking on more difficult pieces of music. The goal isn't to make great art through sketching, but rather to improve the skills you'll need as you embark on more difficult pieces of art. Sketching activities keep your skills sharp, refine your ability to use different art media and can give you ideas for new projects. Sketching only requires a few sheets of paper and a variety of pencils.

Things You'll Need

• Sketchbook
• Pencils

Instructions

1. Carry a sketchbook and your pencils with you to capture life's most fleeting moments. Carrying a sketchbook is different than carrying a camera. You can put down on paper the images that first grab your attention. The camera doesn't filter this information out. What emerges is your view of the world, one of the most important skills you'll need as you develop your artistic voice.

2. Sketch daily. Try different kinds of pencils. For example, draw the same subject with a hard lead pencil and then a soft pencil. Notice how the results differ.

3. Break down the items you see into their most basic geometric shapes. For example, a bird can be reduced to a circle for its head, an oval for the body and triangles for the beak, wings and tail. Add specific details, such as the exact curve of the beak or the ruffle of individual feathers later. This exercise helps you accomplish a couple of things in your sketches. You block out the shape of the subject quickly and you achieve the proper scale of the thing you are drawing in relation to the size of the paper.

4. Make gesture drawings in your sketchbook. Gesture drawings develop your observational skills and teach you how to get the details of your subject down quickly through a series of scribbles. As you observe the object you are drawing, try to recreate the curves and angles of the lines of the object. If you don't get it quite right, try again. It isn't necessary to erase the extra lines. Eventually, the shape of the object will emerge from your page. This exercise works well as a corollary to the basic shapes exercise and takes your line of action exercise to the next step.

5. Practice some of the exercises artists write about in their published sketchbooks. Flipping through a few books will give you insight into the artist's process of making art. Artists such as Thomas Kinkade, James Gurney, Danny Gregory and Sarah Simblet have published books on sketching and drawing. Pay special attention to how they use other media in their sketchbooks; for example, employing colored or charcoal pencils instead of plain graphite.

6. Keep your old sketchbooks and refer to them often. Over time, they will show you how you have improved. Try doing newer versions of old sketching exercises using different pencils. Compare the results.

References

• "Keys to Drawing"; Bert Dodson; 1985
• "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way"; Stan Lee and John Buscema; 1978
• "Sketchbook for the Artist"; Sarah Simblet; 2005
• "An Illustrated Life"; Danny Gregory; 2008
• "The Natural Way to Draw"; Kimon Nicolaides; 1941
• "Simpler Times"; Thomas Kinkade with Anne Christian Buchanan; 1996

Resources

• How to Draw and Paint: Learn to Draw
• Window to Art: Gesture Drawing, Part 1: Introduction
• Portrait Artist: Gesture Drawings
• Artists Network: The Art of Scribbling
• Drawing Lab: Gesture Drawing
• Cathy Johnson: Some Helpful Books: An Artist's Biography