Choosing Paper for Beginning Drawing

Series Summary

Artistic drawings are drawings of any size or style penciled onto paper or canvas. A sketch is a freehand drawing that is not usually intended as a finished work. Historically, artists used a silver stylus on specialized paper called silverpoint to draw sketches. Artists can also use pen and ink or charcoal on regular paper to achieve the same look. Common tools used today for artistic drawings include graphite pencils, inked brushes, crayons, charcoals, pastels, markers or wax colored pencils. Sketchbooks are a popular medium for artistic drawing as well as different styles of paper. What the artist chooses to draw is ideally up to him or her. If you choose to draw a replication of something that is in front of you, such as a model, this is usually called a still life drawing. There are various other inspirations you can find for your drawings including memories or imagination.

In this series of expert videos, you will learn how to draw. Using the techniques you learn here, you can draw a variety of things including a teddy bear figure, as seen in part of these videos. Starting with the first video, you will learn how to choose the paper and pencil that are applicable to the drawing you desire to make. After you have taken this step, watch videos on creating circles and lines using a cylinder. You can also find information on shading and coloring in this series of expert videos. Watch a video demonstration of using a pencil to draw a cone. In the final seven videos, you can view a step-by-step demonstration of an artistic drawing of a cartoon teddy bear.

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Peggy Robertson and on behalf of Expert Village.com, in this clip I am going to talk to you about the different types of drawing paper. Now everybody is familiar with the small sketch pad that you find at the grocery stores or right at the drug store and they are good for practicing on, they are easy to carry, they are small, but if you are going to be doing a lot of drawing or a lot of practicing in the drawing, these can get a little expensive, now a cheaper kind of paper to draw on is newsprint. You can see the big word, newsprint. What makes is different from the sketchpad is it is brown, it is not as thick, it is a very thin piece of paper and it is very cheap and inexpensive. This paper is good for sketching, it will hold your pencil and it would not smear as easily unless you are using a soft pencil. But if you are just going to be sketching usually you use around a 2B pencil so that you can see your lines that you are drawing. Now the difference between newsprint and say charcoal paper which they also have that you do not want to use for drawing, because charcoal paper has a really rough texture and it is usually colored. You can see the texture in it. It actually looks like there is a pattern onto the paper, which is made to hold the charcoal. You do not want it for pencil, because then it does not look as well and you get jagged funny marks with you pencil because your pencil is not charcoal. Now when you get your drawing done, so you really like it, and you want to transfer it to say a final paper to do a finish drawing, then you want to go to a more expensive type of drawing paper that is usually a thicker type of paper, it has got more bind to it. It is wider, it has a smoother finish, so it will take your pencil and hold it well and they come in all different sizes, this is just one of the larger sizes. You can also buy them in small. But this would be for your final, but if you are going to practice and draw, and draw and draw and you have got to practice to get any better, newsprint is your best bet because it is cheapest by far. "