Important Things to Remember- Always keep all the lines you
lay down light enough to
remove without damaging
the paper surface. - Keep your rubber scrupulously
clean by trimming with a
clean, sharp knife used
only for this purpose. - The more refined your line drawing
becomes; the sharper you should
have your pencil. You have to be
able to draw lines with a needle
sharp pencil that are still completely
removable with an eraser, the
sharper the pencil the lighter the
pressure you can use before
irreversibly marking the paper. - Finding mistakes in your drawing
is not only inevitable but good;
the process of freehand drawing
consists almost entirely of looking
for things that bother you and
improving them. When your drawing
stops bugging you it’s time to
sign your name in the corner. - Learn to enjoy the anxiety
drawing accurately creates,
even if you don’t realize it at first
it’s an addictive stress and one
of the reasons you are drawn
to doing it in the first place.- Don’t lay your pencil on the
photo or your drawing, it’s
not a ruler or a tape measure,
you can’t lay a pencil across
a real life scene so the same
apples to reference photos. - Don’t fall into the trap of trying to
‘mark out’ an initial sketch using
these tricks, they will serve you
far better as methods to improve
your existing sketch/drawing. - Don’t draw centrelines on (quarter)
the photo and paper you are
drawing on, that’s still a grid
just a big, fat one. If you can’t
draw freehand without cheating
you’re not drawing freehand at
all. You might as well just give up
and be done with it and buy a
projector, a ruler and a calculator
or a big roll of tracing paper.
The rewards of freehand
fine art drawing are there for
those who seek them,
Brett A. JonesFig 4Fig 4. Checking for correct
proportions, in this case how
many times the purple ball
fits across the compositionPencils Down