How many times, have you sat at your drawing desk driven by a desire to express yourself with your pencil, and you asked yourself how to draw your favorite subject, never knowing the answer?
Don’t worry, You’re not the only one!
It happened to everyone, and many times the reason for your discontent is just around the corner, but you don’t recognize it.
You may have committed one of the 8 common drawing mistakes you absolutely must not make when you’re drawinginpencil.Everyone draws. Sometimes this is just a doodle, something that is done almost inadvertently, while a professor explains something boring, or during a telephone call.
But for some people like you, drawing is something more.
It is not a hobby but a form of art to express yourself.
So, from drawing to drawing, from day to day, the aim for you is to improve your skills, to experiment new techniques and to reach more and more ambitious goals.
Therefore, it is essential for your artistic path, to know if you are making one of the 8 mistakes you can easily avoid when you are drawing in pencil.
Let’s find out together!
1 – Using The Wrong Pencils
What does it mean to use the wrong pencils?
The most important thing for you to know is that you need a quality graphite pencil.
It means that you can’t draw with a random pencil – found in an old school pencil case, stolen from the office, or bought at newsstands – and hope to achieve satisfactory results.
It is good to buy quality pencils, made for exquisitely artistic purposes.
But it is not just a matter of quality, It is also a matter of type: there are soft pencils, medium pencils, and hard pencils.
Here is a little advice: You can use a B pencil to make your preliminary sketch, a 2B pencil to make shapes, and 4B – 6B pencil to add beautiful shadows!
2 – Using The Wrong Paper
It’s not just the wrong pencils that drives you on the path of the 8 mistakes you absolutely must not make.
No, Sir, you can also choose the wrong paper.
You need a sketch pad with a good number of sheets of paper of the right weight, and you’ll need a high-quality paper for your final works. Better if it is acid-free, so your drawings will not turn yellow over time.
Using random sheets of paper and pretending to have good results is a big mistake: at the first erasures, for example, a printing sheet will be ruined!
3 – Too Much Pressure On The Pencil
The pencil is a very versatile accessory. With light pressure, it will tend to leave a light stroke, with more pressure it will leave a darker stroke.
In any case, however, you shouldn’t exaggerate!
Hard pencils, like HB ones, can go through the paper: remember, you’re not sculpting, you’re drawing! Keep it in mind!
In many beginners drawings, it is not at all rare to find real grooves on the paper, which can sadly compromise even a well-done drawing.Common drawing mistakes made by self taught artists: a Guide
7 – Wrongly Proportioned Head
Some artists love drawing people portraits.
And drawing after drawing, they will improve their drawing skills always more.
Yet there are aspects of portraits that, for beginners, remain unconvincing, even after dozens of works. This happens because they are making one of the 8 mistakes we’re talking about:not thinking first at facial proportions. So how to draw them in the correct way?
Well, it takes little: studying the proportions of the faces, and adopting a starting scheme to insert the nose, eyes, mouth, and so on in the correct position.
You must first know that face can be sketched as an oval, and eyes are basically placed on the horizontal midline: this way, there will be no danger of drawing a forehead that is too small!
8 – Do Not Keep The Drawings Well
Here we are, at the last of the most common drawing mistakes that can be made drawing in pencil. Drawings are not particularly resistant works: we are still talking about a bit of graphite dust on thin sheets of paper.
To make sure that they will last over time, it is good to spray on them a fixative spray;
Once this is done – after drying – the drawing should be kept most suitably, in a frame, in a case, or a binder.
Dear artist, always keep in mind these 8 mistakes that you absolutely must not make and your drawings will start getting better immediately.
If you like this article on How to draw in the correct way, I recommend you also check out another useful one: How to improve your drawing skills with these 9 “professional only” drawing tricks</a
Tamara d'Amato
The pencil is a very versatile accessory. With light pressure, it will tend to leave a light stroke, with more pressure it will leave a darker stroke.
In any case, however, you shouldn’t exaggerate!
Hard pencils, like HB ones, can go through the paper: remember, you’re not sculpting, you’re drawing! Keep it in mind!
In many beginners drawings, it is not at all rare to find real grooves on the paper, which can sadly compromise even a well-done drawing.
