When my sketching mojo disappears and comes back, I will spend some quality time sketching with my graphite pencils. I enjoy using my pencils as it helps me focus on the basic sketching techniques and also learning to look at the shapes I see. I also look for the highlights and the shadows.
Here’s a warmup sketch I did from a still life. A few of you from my workshop will recognize the veggies. I took some creative license and changed the shapes a bit.
Here’s my initial sketch and what I started with. I sketched loosely the outline of each object. I sketched around a few of the highlighted areas and included the base shadows. I added curved lines to show the curvature of the objects. You can see my lines consist of short strokes with a light hand.
In the next picture I used a blending stump to smooth out some areas where my lines were heavy. Blending the dark areas around the edges added some depth and made the highlights show a bit better.
In the final sketch (first picture), I used my 8B pencil to darken the objects further and used the blending stump to smooth out the darker areas to create additional depth and contrast.
Pencils used: Derwent Graphite in HB, 2B, 4B, and 8B
Journal: Leda Art Supply Softbound size Medium (A5)
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