Pencil Drawing: Create Art with a Few Strokes of a Pencil

Think you can’t draw? Think again! Drawing is easy and fun with these two techniques: contour drawing and shadow drawing.

Materials:

• white paper
• a pencil
• black marker or crayon
• an eraser
• an object to draw

Contour Drawing

You can draw any object around the house. Try an old doll, a coffeepot, an old shoe or something that has an interesting shape. I’m going to draw an old shoe I found in my closet.

After choosing an object, you need to line up your paper with it. You want to be able to just move your eyes a little bit so you can easily see what you’re drawing. Some people like to put in guidelines and it’s probably a good idea. Use a pencil and put in the end of the shoe, the toe, the bottom line, the top line, and where you see you’re going to have some shoelaces. Make your pencil lines pretty light because you’re going to want to erase them when you get through with your drawings.

It doesn’t really matter where you start, but try to choose a simple place when you first start. The more you look at the shoe, the better your drawing is going to be. You want to go pretty slow and just kind of inch along. We’re not in a race and we’re not trying to see who’s going to get through first. You really want to get in every single detail. Work very slowly. Some people say, “Oh, I messed up,” and they want to start over. If you make a mistake, just come back in with a line again and correct it. When you finish your drawing, no one will ever notice.

This kind of drawing is called the contour drawing because you’re doing the contour or the edge of the shoe. Just go in a continuous way around the edges and when you see a new shape, you can stop, put in the shape and add the details. When you get to the shoelaces, try to stop for a second and look how they’re laying. When you’re actually finished with your drawing, you can use an eraser to erase those guidelines. I really paid a lot of attention to the stitching, the edges, all the shapes and other details. That’s what you’re going to want to do when you do your drawing.

Shadow Drawing

Instead of working the outside edges, with shadow drawing you work on the inside part. Start very small figures. As you get more comfortable doing this technique, the drawings can get bigger and bigger. For this technique, it’s good to use a model, like a sibling, parent, friend or pet.

When you start, the head should not be any bigger than the fingernail on your little finger. You’re going to go back and forth, back and forth. Keep looking at the model.

Draw back and forth, come down, get in the hips and the legs. Finish up and look at the model to make sure you’ve got everything in that you want to put in. Now you’re finished. You may want your model to strike another pose and draw several small figures on the same page. When you’re doing drawings like this, you’re not going to make a perfect one every time. Remember that this is practice. When you become more comfortable, you can let your drawings get bigger.

Related posts: