The pencil and sketchbook are two vital tools for an artist.
The pencil and the sketchbook are the most important tools in the artist's toolbox. These items help artists develop better sketching skills as well as capture ideas for later pieces of art. Despite this, some artists may not have any idea work with pencils or their sketchbooks. While sketching uses the same tools and skill sets that drawing does, the purpose of sketching is much looser and more open to an element of play that doesn't always exist in formal drawing.
Instructions
1. Test different pencils. Graphite pencils come with soft leads and hard leads. Each of these are numbered with a B for soft lead pencils, and an H for hard lead ones. The soft lead pencils make darker marks, while the hard ones make lighter marks. There's also a variety of colored pencils and charcoal pencils. Each of these tools are suitable for sketching, but produce different results. Knowing what kinds of results you get from different pencils helps you choose the best pencil for each sketch.
2. Carry a sketchbook with you. The artist's sketchbook is a repository for ideas, and you find these ideas everywhere. If you have a few minutes in a coffee shop, sketch your cup. Sketch the wild flowers that grow up between the cracks in the sidewalk. Make practice drawings of ordinary objects like kitchen chairs. This part of sketching is very important, because you're learning to translate the three-dimensional objects in life into two-dimensional objects on the pages of your sketchbook. Open up a book or magazine and sketch the contents inside. Keep these sketches in your book as well.
3. Learn to see like an artist, and allow yourself to develop your artistic eye. This means that you learn to draw what you see. Through this, you develop the ability to translate the lines, composition and light and dark that make up objects into sketches.
4. Identify basic shapes. One simple trick that beginning artists use is the basic shapes technique. You can reduce almost all objects in nature to shapes such as squares, triangles or circles. To employ this technique, look at the object you plan on sketching and see what kinds of basic shapes you see. For example, a bike has two circles with a large triangle connecting the two circles. Draw these elements first before going on to draw the other details.
5. Utilize gesture drawing or scribbling. Sometimes as you sketch you can't quite find the right lines to form an object. Try scribbling in the details of an object. Artists also refer to this sketching method as gesture drawing. Build your drawing through a series of intentionally placed scribbles. Draw and redraw the lines that form an object until the object takes shape on the page. The resulting drawing looks like a series of scribbles, but through them you see that the form of the object has been developed.
