1. Drawing tips & tricks: basic material (and why it is important)
Hello and welcome!
I will attempt to give you a few drawing tips & tricks, which have seriously changed my life. These small tricks have had quite a dramatic impact on my drawings and since I made those very simple changes I have the impression that drawing got so much easier!
Why is it important to talk about the basic material? You might say it's not so interesting, but you will laugh because that already makes a huge difference!
Paper:
If you don’t use a Bristol Extra Smooth Paper, RUN FOR IT! This is absolutely revolutionary! It’s incomparable to plain printing paper, "sketching" paper or any "drawing" paper which you can find under these names in any art stores. Believe me, the difference is just incredible! (I was bit sceptic in the beginning when I first read other artists' blogs about Bristol Extra Smooth, but now I don’t know how I managed to live without it.)
The main difference lies in its extremly smooth paper surface, where the lightest pencil mark is clearly visible on the paper. It permits to draw effortlessly and to have good uniform tones which are not interrupted by paper fibers.
Pencils:
HB/mechanical pencil: These are fine for sharpening the outlines and for meticulous details such as eye contours.
B: For every thing else, use a B pencil which is much softer and allows you to play more with the gray scale.
B5/B7: The higher the B number, the darker tones you will get. These are great to make really black areas.
2H/any H: personally I avoid these! I find H pencils very stiff to draw with and HB is the hardest pencil I go with.
Rubbers: Well personally I like to use these kneading erasers, which I can shape very pointy to erase fine lines. Besides, when you are bored you can make great sculptures with them :)
Try the different pencils and papers, compare them and see if you feel the differences! Check what works best for you.
