How 2

darthmongoose · Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 3:43 am Post subject: How 2

The title is inspired by an old British kids TV show, where three/four presenters in a studio demonstrate fun facts, games and experiments that kids can understand and sometimes try at home, like 'How do you put a needle in a balloon without popping it?' and 'How can you slice a banana before peeling it?' etc...er..anyway. Enough about How 2, this is a bunch of little tips.

How to get nice looking pencil drawings:

1. You need a GOOD pencil. Personally, I like mechanical pencils. They don't need sharpening, they don't vary in thick or thin-ness and they give wondefully precise lines. I use a 0.5mm HB. Some people prefer to use lots of different grades of pencil, but for drawing characters and comics, H's are too hard and don't scan well, and B's are too thick for precise detail work. H's are good for designers, B's are good for artistic stuff, but if you have good technique, you shouldn't need other pencils for comicking.
2. You need a good rubber. Seriously. A bad rubber can give you bad results even if you're a great artist. A good rubber should be soft, rather than hard, but not too shiny or too crumbly. Look for a white rubber (coloured ones look nice, but are rarely very good) which has a firm, bounciness, but not too hard, maybe the consistancy of cheddar cheese when squeezed, and where you feel rubbery friction when you pull your finger across the surface. Good rubbers generally bounce a little when dropped. Your rubber should be able to rub out both soft and hard lines without leaving smudges. Oh, and always keep your rubber fairly clean, that's important. mechanical pencils have the advantage of not scumming up your pencil case with graphite so badly, but if you have problems with rubber cleanliness, try putting it in an old camera film pot or a matchbox or something.
3. Start light , simply drifting your pencil over the paper, then the more confident you are that a line is in the right place, the stronger you can draw it in. You can then rub out all the scruffy lines softly to clean up the image.
4. If you smudge some graphite with your hand, don't panic! if you have a nice, soft rubber and use it gently, you can just rub it away!
Another cunning away around this, is to put a piece of scrap paper or plastic under the part of your hand that causes the smudging. With this between your hand and the paper, you will find that your smudging reduces dramatically!
5. Some people dislike tweaking the contast in photoshop because they think it 'doesn't look like a sketch any more', personally I think this is a stupid, lazy excuse. A scanner is just a machine, and what looks good on paper will not always look quite the same when scanned in. Tweaking the contrast to make the image look good on a monitor is as basic an idea as putting a nice frame around a picture when hanging it on a wall, or keeping a painting out of direct sunlight so it doesn't fade. The computer is a tool at your disposal as an artist. Pencil drawings can come out with bad contrast easily, and the image will be washy and indistinct, or dark and dingy. Five minutes with the brightness and contrast slider and possibly minimal use of the burn and dodge tools will leave your image looking as fresh on a monitor as it does on paper.

...So that's how you draw nice pencil sketches.
...And that's HOW for NOW!
Next time, I'll probably discuss inking and using markers and pencil crayons.

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"Which part of 'get out of my way' do you guys fail to comprehend?" -Rekki.

ReiDavidson · #1 Rekki Fangirl Joined: 12 Jan 2006 Posts: 79

Couldn't have said it better myself. Smile

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I <3 Rekki, What ho! pip pip, tra la!