Keeping a Sketchbook

A sketchbook is like diary for an artist, a place where you can just let out all your art without any worries. Any person who wants to get better at drawing should have a sketchbook, because it not only records your ideas, thoughts and experimentations, but a sketchbook also gets you drawing and drawing, building your skills with every moment. You will see that the quality of your sketchbooks will be better and better, and what at first was dull then will become almost a work of art for itself :D In a sketchbook you can do aything you want, although some artist prefer to have sketchbooks based on themes. For example you could have a sketchbook only in human anatomy, and another just a "test sketchbook" where you try any kind of ideas that comes tou your mind. And remember that sometimes is not all drawing on your sketchbook, you can write some ideas too, you thoughts, all this is valuable when years pass and you can have a better perspective of how your art has evolved. What can you draw? That is up to you, but I know sometimes is hard to just start drawing. And this trivial things often end up taking more time than they are supposed to. Luckily, I found an article where you can get some ideas on what you can draw in your sketchbook. Read Sketchbook Ideas and Project Starters. Consider your first sketchbook as a beggining of a journey, just imagine all the things you will learn on your way, through a road that is full of surprises. Let freedom and creativity be on your sketchbook and have a lot of fun! :D

Learning How to draw with the Grid Method

The Grid Method is one of the basics methods for accurate drawing. It is used also for making larger copies of a sketch, and to translate little thumbnails to large formats manually. As the name implies, you have to create grid on top of the original image. For this you can draw over the image or put a see-through paper on top and start making the grid. Then you make a grid on the support you want to draw on, and basically copy the source grid by grid, solving the proportion poblems quite easily. In my own opinion, this way you don't learn how to draw like it is supposed to. You can't grid for example a live model, but it is definetely useful when enlarging a small sketch that we have. If you want to see how this method works, I recommend going to The Grid Method in Paint by Grids. They have a nice tutorial over there that will actually show you what this is all about and how you can use it when working with pictures.

Pencil Drawing Tools

When it comes to pencil drawing, we tend to think that we only need a pencil and a paper. That is absolutely correct in a basic level, but in reality we tend to use more tools that can help us in our drawing and in special on the finishing touches of the work. We may need a ruler for planning perspective, an eraser to clear any construction lines, bring white areas and even make textures. Different hardness of lead is also good. A 6B pencil will bring stronger dark areas than a 2H pencil. So it is all a matter of choice, and of what tools uses the artist to feel comfortable. I'm leaving you two links that talk about this, but in the end you should think what YOU need in reality to achieve what you want. Mike Sibley's Tools I Need for Graphite Pencil Drawing Before You buy Drawing Equipment at About.com

Pencil Drawing: A Complete Kit for Beginners - Book Review

This is the perfect introductory kit for anyone who wants to learn the captivating art of pencil drawing. Inside is everything needed to get started, including a 32-page project book filled with inspiring ideas.

Written and illustrated by renowned artist Gene Franks, the project book begins with information on art tools and materials and then covers the basics, such as pencil technique, perspective, and value. It also includes nine complete drawing lessons to follow and learn. Each project is accompanied by clear instructions, helpful tips, and step-by-step illustrations--all of which ensure successful results.

Read more at Pencil Drawing: A Complete Kit for Beginners

Pencil Drawings of Angels

A theme that is often used for pencil drawing is Angels. Every artist has her/his own interpretation of what an angel looks like. We have for example that even though angels are believed to be ents without sex (not male, not female), some artist depict them as men or women. Some angels want revenge, some are peaceful. Even in comics the angels appear (see Angel / Archangel in X-Men) . How are your angels? Male Nude Angel Drawing Angel Gabriel - Myriam A. Kilmer Abstaract Drawings of Angels- G. Stefanov God with Angels - Fragonard Saint Zefrale - Meisan Jaded Angel - BluTack Stripey Angel Thingy - Licia

New How to Draw - Clone Trooper

I love this Star Wars Page. If you remember I made a post about How to Draw Anakin Skywalker. No the guys at Star Wars.com have updated with a new tut featuring a Clone Trooper. You may think this is for children. But what it gives you instead is a look at how artist go from general shapes and proportions to more defined shapes. It shows the construction of the character which at the end turns out to be the most important part when learning how to draw. We could render it like a picture, but if the proportions are off and the "skeleton" is weak, we have nothing but a mediocre drawing. Learn to Draw a Clone Trooper

Court Jones - Celebrity Pencil Drawings

Court Jones does an amazing job making caricature pencil portraits of famous people. from Neo (Keanu Reeves) to Cristopher Walken, court shows us his technique on funny celebrity pencil drawings. In his page you will also find pencil figure drawings, and color paintings. Go take a look for inspiration and then grab a pencil and make your art come true! See Court's Pencil Drawings at Court Jones - Caricature and Illustration

Colored Pencil Drawing Tutorials!

That's right, PDM is not only about black pencil. There is a whole world of color out there!! Just look through your window! We even see colors in our imagination, so now you just might wanna add some colors to your work. Colored pencil technique is slow at times, requires a lot of patience, and it won't give you fast colors. However when done correctly it is one of the most beautiful mediums that allows a deep attention to detail. I started painting with colors when I was studying graphic designed, and it was ther when I truly witnessed the power of them. I am leaving you some tuts that can help you discover new territories in art or expand your knowledge on the subject. The Colored Pencil challenge Lessons Colored Pencil Techniques by Kristy Kutch Colored Pencil Quick Tips Colored Pencil Basics

The Mighty 5 Point Perspective

Curvilinear (5-point) perspective is very powerful, as it more closely represents our vision in reality. And, it can be forced to yield the "wide-angle" camera lens distortion, creating a very interesting visual effect. Scott McDaniel, gives us an introduction on curvilinear perspective, although the tutorial is brief you can study the method in more detail by reading books on curvilinear perspective or architecture. Remember always to have fun while learning, and think that by learning some theory about perspective you are steadily increasing your expression power. It isn't too hard, once you get perspective you will never forget, it is like riding a bicycle.! How to draw a 5-point perspective by Scott McDaniel

Book Review - Lee Hammond's Big Book of Drawing

Bestselling author Lee Hammond is known for her clear, basic methods for drawing nearly any subject. This Big Book of Drawing brings together the best projects from her other titles into one super-sized guide. Readers will find: - Popular subjects like people, animals, flowers and nature - An encouraging "You Can Do It" section - Clear step-by-step instructions to guarantee success - Chapters on choosing materials and mastering basic techniques This entire book showcases realistic, appealing artwork that's truly achievable. Anyone can find creative success with Lee Hammond leading the way! If you're looking to learn how to draw and you want to learn from the best, Lee Hammond's books are the way to go. She specializes in real life (as opposed to cartooning) and is very clear on her method. This particular book has everything you could need to know to get started. A definite recommendation! Click Here to Learn mOre about The Big Book of Drawing

Pencil Art Work Link Dump

Hello, today I have some Link Dumps: Photograph Selection Tips when doing a Pencil Drawing. Stu Art Pencil Illustrations Ann Milner's Pencil Drawings Cowboy Pencil Drawings by Doug Watkins Catman's Sketchbook The Coloured Pencil Art of Ann Kullberg

Pencil Drawings by Kobayasi Takesi

These are the beautiful pencil illustrations of Kobayasi Takesi, a japanese artist. This page has some text in japanese. I gotta thank Mr. WCA for pointing me out that you can translate Japanese to English using Google Language Tools. Most of his work is on pencil, he even tells (with a picture next to it) what pencils and paper he uses to achieve his great results. You gotta check out his work. Go to Kobayashi Takesi's Pencil Drawings

How to Draw Anakin Skywalker

Are you a Star Wars fan? Then you'll love this post, if not you will still be amazed in the making of this great pencil drawing of Darth Vader himself as Anakin Skywalker. that's true you too can learn how to draw Anakin Skywalker. I found this link at StarWarskid.com but will work at any age. A great and fun method of improving your portrait drawing skills is to draw characters that you like from.

Ever wanted to draw Star Wars characters and vehicles just like the professional comic book artists? In this step-by-step series, Star Wars artists and illustrators show you how to draw some of the most beloved characters in the saga, as well as new faces and creatures from Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith (available on DVD Nov. 1). So get your pencils and paper ready!

Read the tutorial at Drawing Anakin Skywalker

Mike Sibley's Pencil Drawing Tutorials

Look what I found surfing the web. Maybe you know this page but is still deserves to be mentioned in this blog. It's the page of Mike Sibley's Work. Mike has a lot of quality works, mostly pencil drawings of animals and pet portraits. His technique is remarkable, and on top of that he has a section showing how he work, tips and tutorials. So, if you are looking for pencil drawing tips. This is one place to visit.

Book Review - Pencil Magic

With Pencil Magic, readers will learn to improve their artistic skills with just two simple tools: pencil and paper. Featuring invaluable instruction, this guide will help beginning and advanced artists master the fundamentals of drawing, including: -The spectrum of basic strokes, including sharp, crosshatching, and directional strokes -Drawing styles from quick sketches to blended-stroke drawing -Strategies for capturing measurements accurately -How to paint trees, shadows, paths, and other landscape elements -Various methods of approaching perspective With ten step-by-step demonstrations, Pencil Magic appeals to artists at all levels of artistic ability, while making learning the basics easy. This book is definitely a hidden treasure! The first half of the book goes over basic skills and techniques, design, perspective...the essentials. Then each subsequent chapter tackles a specific aspect of landscape drawings; trees, water, buildings, animals...I mean it covers it all. I am currently a Landscape Architecture student and picked up this book as a way to boost my skills. If you read through it and follow the tips you will be surprised at your progress. Once again, Highly Recommended!

Pencil Drawings of Dragons

Fantasy art is really cool. It's all bout drawing what doesn't exist. It builds your imagination makes you a kid again. When we are young people told us tales of dragons, warriors and princessess. Now we can draw them, relive the images in our heads. These are some pencil drawings of dragons I found on the web. Dragon Pencil Drawings made from the imagination by people that interpreted the images in their head, and made a world of fantasy creatures for us to see. Canadian Dragon Fantasy Drawings Draco's Lair's Dragon Pencil Drawings Weeping Dragon Pencil Drawing by Dominic Koval How to Draw a Dragon - Elfwood Pencil Dragon - Connann FitzPatrick Draw a Dragon - top Quality thread at conceptart.org

Just Draw

We all love drawing with pencils, but the big question is how do I draw better? And ironically the greatest question is the easiest to answer. Practice like mad! Drawing is action, you can think everyday not to draw because you suck at it. Or you can tell yourself "just draw" no matter the outcome. If it's just for you, nobody is going to judge you. It's all part of the learning curve. You may feel you are drawing like always but don't get discouraged by this. It is only your brain playing mind tricks on itself. Don't draw because you have to. It is not an obligation. Like all art is about expression. Once you've learned how to express yourself, and set you free, all you have to do is get better at technique, and again technique is all about practice. Don't forget about some theory too, you can just discover everything by practicing. But books and teachers surely shorten the learning curve. In special it includes topics such as composition and perspective, subjects that have compiled a lot of knowledge over the years. So now what? You may ask. If you like drawing just draw. Beat laziness, nobody's gonna do it for you and I can guarantee you'll enjoy it.

Art Thoughts - Richard Schmid

Once in a while I'll make post like this. Many artists have lived in this world each of one having their own sens of art. And what better to listen to them, thos epearls of wisdom they gave us once in a while. This time is Richard Schmid born in chicago 1934. "If there is ever a conflict in your mind between what you know and what you are seeing, paint what you see, because if you don't the result will look like something that isn't there." "We must see the RELATIONSHIPS between colors, the relative visual warmth or coldness of colors to one another in a complex visual field of many colors. The question to be asked in all cases is not what color something is, but rather what color it is COMPARED TO ALL OTHERS AROUND IT." "Remember--soft edges in a painting are not an end in themselves. They must be APPROPRIATELY soft and should conform to what you perceive them to be in your subject. That is what will make your edges look authentic. Arbitrarily softening everything is like intentionally mumbling when you speak." "Real drawing is a discipline that must be maintained by constant practice. It is like staying in physical shape. Knowing how to do it must be accompanied by actually doing it. Tracing to get the drawing reduces you to the level of a child playing with a coloring book, and it's not as much fun as it was when you were three years old." "When you finish a painting started as a tracing, there will be little sense of achievement, except perhaps for the patience required to color it. Tracing is degrading because you will have denied yourself the freedom to use your own powers of self-expression. Is that really the way anyone should want to be an artist?"

Tip: "Mechanical Pencil Care"

The following tip is taken from LifeTips: Mechanical pencils need more maintenance than carpenter pencils, artist pencils or school pencils. Some brief tips... * Don’t over-twist the mechanism to advance the pencil lead. * Use the correct thickness of lead in your pencils. If your pencil takes .9 mm lead, use .9 mm lead, not .7 mm lead. * Always check the manufacturers’ directions. * Use a soft polishing cloth for the surface, rather than strong cleaning agents or chemicals.

How To Draw Pencil Portraits

Learn How to Draw Pencil portraits the Lee Hammond way. Find pencil drawings and pencil portrait tuorials in this page. To go to the tuts just go down a little bit after the pencil portrait links. 8 sections, brief concise explanations:

• Materials & Tips
• Using Grids for Drawing
• Blending and Shading
• Drawing Realistic Hair
• How to draw Eyes
• How to Make your own Tortillons
• Pencil Drawing Step by step
• Progress of the Author

Some history and facts about the Pencil

This link comes directly from Arthistoryclub.com, it's about Pencil facts and history. In fact pretty cool! Knowledge can't hurt right? It has also miscellanea facts about pencil. It says for example that it is the cause of many injuries amongst children. I have to say that I'm no small children but one day while I was running on my house with a pencil in hand I had a little accident and since then I have a mark on my wrist with some graphite in it! Yeah... I waited some years and it seems it won't disappear so I guess I'll start my crime-fighting life as PENCILMAN!!!

Cross Hatching Techniques

I love cross hatching when doing sketches. It looks good and can bring a lot of interesting textures. People often tend to ask me how to do cross hatching, I tell them to just do it. I don't know, cross hatching to me came naturally. Cross hatching is about giving texture, depth, light to your drawing by increasingly adding lines and lines that cross and somehow gradually end up with an interesting result. Some say that you have more control than shading smoothly and I agree partially because it all depends on the effects you want to achieve with cross hatching. Anyway, for those who want to learn more about the cross hatching technique I'm giving you some links for you to check. But whatever you read and whatever doubts you have, just do it, that's where the real learning is. Cross Hatching - Captain Meth Wikipedia Page for Cross Hatching Drew Olbrich's Crosshatching Works Cross Hatching Tutorial - Portrait-Artist.org

Pencil Drawing of People - Japanese

Huh, I recovered this link form my favorites... I found this site at some point during last month. It belongs to a Japanese artist HIkotaku(?) so the page is all written in Japanese, in my PC the only thing I see is this "?????????????????" :P BUT.... his work is pretty awesome and my guess is this page is for his original tutorials, this is the kind of studies that let you understand the human figure as a 3d object. If you are not sure where to click, don't worry neither did I. Just click on those buttons at the left. I guess you don't need to read to understand what he is teaching. Have fun!

Traditional Shading Tutorial by Slux

I've been hanging out at CGtalk, a forum related to CG and found a post made by Slux where he details how he works shading using graphite pencils. You can see pics form his progress and a detailed description of his technique for smearing. Worth taking a look!

Black and White Pencil Drawings - Animals

These are some cool black and white pencil drawings of animals. It's always good to check other's people work to study it. You can see how they solved certain problems in this case could be to learn how they managed to make the hair, so difficult at the beggining. You can even try to copy soe of the works but keep in mind this is for learning purposes only, you must understand what you're doing. the same goes with tutorials. Melanie Philips - Pet Portrait Artist Pet Portraits by Deb Edmund Pam Reed - Animal Reed

Pencil Drawing Tutorial from Elfwood

This is 4 part tutorial/article from Elfwood Tutorials - The FARP. It covers 4 main points: Learning to See, What is Good Drawing, Using Line and Mark Making. This tut is aimed towards begginers but it definetely serves as a reminder of some things to us more veteran artists. It is somewhat short to cover important areas but still useful and has a lot of images to illustrate what its talking about. The link: Pencil Drawing Tutorial -Elfwood

About.com's Drawing Tips

About.com's section of Drawing and Sketching has a good article about improving your pencil drawing technique. It's written by Helen South an Australian artist and printmaker working in graphite, charcoal, watercolour and mixed media. It ha some good tips on lines and shading, you can keep brosing this section of About.com to find more articles. Or I can give you where to go right--->here. Remember to always practice, tips don't make an artist! :D

Welcome To Pencil Drawing Madness

Welcome to Pencil Drawing Madness, I am Paolo Parodi an artist and graphic designer. I hope to share with you all about pencil drawing. this is one of my loves in life. Yours probably too, no other technological tool can feel like the poencil and give us that rich textures. Well please njoy the post and feel free to comment or give me suggestions for the site.