Artist’s Back to Basic – July 2019

W

hen it comes to freehand

drawing, the pencil in your

hand is so much more than

simply the means of making marks

on the paper. It’s also an absolutely

indispensible tool that allows you to

make any number of proportional

judgements in the course of turning

your blank sheet of paper into a

finished work in graphite. In fact it’s

the only tool you need with the added

elegant serendipity of already being in

your hand every time you need it. This

article will be dealing with some of the

many tricks and techniques a pencil is

capable of as far as making positional

and proportional judgements while

drawing and exactly how to utilize

them to make drawing freehand

accurately a reality for anyone (fig 1).

Any and every subject and

composition is filled with different

kinds of optical illusions which

conspire, sometimes in combination,

to stop you (and me) from accurately

representing the subject as an

accurate freehand line drawing which

is always the first step before any kind

of toning, different textures or fine

detail can be tackled. Let alone the

subtle light effects and reflections or

the minute but all important spatial

and linear idiosyncrasies which are

present in any subject or composition

you may choose to draw and which

make all the difference between

merely competently representing the

subject and creating a fine art work

in graphite which will grab someones

attention and hold it (indefinitely if

they put their hand in their pocket

and buy it). Keep in mind that none

of the following methods of judging

lines, curves and proportions are

worth a thing unless you learn to

sketch and draw with a light hand

so the lines you no longer need can

be removed completely without any

damage to the paper surface usually

many times during the course of a

drawing. This gets back to always

keeping your eraser scrupulously

clean by regularly trimming it with

Magic Pencil Tricks

By Brett A. Jones

Fig 1: The finished

freehand drawing

Fig 1.

Pencils Down