DRAWING MATERIALS EXPLAINED

PENCIL - Drawing Tips & Tricks 

1) Keep your pencil sharp! Sometimes a nice fine point is exactly what you need to master details in a drawing, but even in saying that, an occasional dull side can be helpful to not create "sharp" edges.

2) Keep your drawing clean. Graphite smears very easily (depending on the pencil you use) and can be messy. Use something like a piece of paper under your drawing hand to stop from smudging your drawing. 

3) If possible, consider working from left to right if you are right-handed or right to left is you are left-handed to minimize the risk of having your hand going over an already drawn area.

4) Pencils have different grades ranging from as low as 9H to 9B. "H" stands for hardness and "B" for "blackness", so a 9H pencil will be very hard and very light, and a 9B pencil will be very soft and black. Harder pencils are sharp and can be used for details.  Use "HB" for mid tones, "H" for highlights and "B" for darker tones.

5) Blending stumps/Tortillions are wonderful tools to use to blend pencil lead around the paper and come in a variety of sizes for large or small areas.

6) Erasers are an essential part of drawing with pencil. There are several kinds, but the most important are the vinyl and the kneaded. Kneaded erasers are pliable and be created into sharp points, but are soft like putty and leave no residue behind. Vinyl erasers and other hard erasers are good for lifting graphite clear through to the paper (depending on how hard you've drawn) and are good to remove large sections.

7) There are several ways to draw including simple shading, hatching, cross hatching, scumbling, stippling etc. These techniques can all be used to shade in selections on your work. 

COLORED PENCIL - Drawing Tips & Tricks 

1) Keep your pencil sharp! Sometimes a nice fine point is exactly what you need to master details in a drawing, but even in saying that, an occasional dull side can be helpful to not create "sharp" edges.

2) Draw a light sketch with a Col-Erase pencil to guide your drawing and coloring. These pencils are the perfect partner for color pencils. They blend with them well, and also let you erase if you make a mistake.

3) Use more than one color. Building up layers of different colors will make your artwork way more interesting.

4) Remove pencil flakes as soon as you see them. A brush works great!

5) Include lights and darks in your artwork, beginning with the lights. To get the darks really dark, add more layers and apply a heavier pressure.

6) Lay an old photograph, shiny side down, over completed sections of your artwork. This will help you to keep from smudging what you have already finished.

7) Keep pencil strokes the same, both in pressure and direction, when filling an area with color.

8) Use drawing paper from the art store for your colored pencil projects. The heavier weight of this paper will allow you to build up layers of color without tearing the paper.

9) Roll your pencil in your hand every few strokes for a new sharp pencil point.

10) Cover your mistakes by coloring over them with a white colored pencil.

11) Do not sharpen in the crank sharpener, use a handheld sharpener to get precise sharpening every time.

WATERCOLOR PENCIL - Drawing Tips & Tricks 

1) Apply the color dry which means dry pigment on dry paper.

2) Wet the paper first to produce a bleeding type effect and/or soft lines.

3) Use various tools, such as a sponge or toothbrush to create different effects

4) After your wash has dried, apply dry layers of color for detail.

5) Create glazed washes (transparent layers of color over another) with either water or solvents.

6) Use a colorless blender marker to blend colors

7) To achieve a think opaque look, dip pencil in water first (eats the lead of the pencil up quickly)

8) For detail, try using a small wet paint brush

9) Try breaking a small piece of lead off into a palette and add a couple drops of water

10)Try back wash technique by wetting your paper, apply one color at one end, and then another color at the other end, watch the colors blend and bleed together.

11) Try dipping a cotton swab in rubbing alcohol and dot the wet colored surface of the paper, creates a cool effect.

12) Apply salt to a wet area, can create sparkly and different effects

OIL PASTELS - Drawing Tips & Tricks 

1) Making Marks - Scumbling, hatching, drawing, pointillism, expressive strokes or carefully blended smooth passages are all possible using them dry. Don't know what these look like? Look them up :)

2) Sketching under Oil Pastels - Start out with sketching a contour drawing on watercolor paper, sanded pastel paper or your choice of good surface.

3) Underpainting - Underpainting is another useful technique with oil pastels. By adding a wash or a flat underpainting under different areas, you can eliminate the white flecks from white paper, create richer color or use complements to build interest.

4) Blending - Oil pastels can mix on the page or on a palette. You can blend them to produce smooth gradients or hyper-realism.

5) Crumb Control - Crumb control is essential in realism and important sometimes even in loose impressionistic or sketchy styles. This article discusses ways of removing or eliminating those annoying crumbs from the paint layer or bare background of an oil pastels piece.

6) Wet Effects - Watersoluble oil pastels with plain water create a variety of transparent and opaque wet effects. A heavy application can be smoothed with a wash or blended. These techniques are the same if you use odorless turpentine, linseed and other oils or Liquin medium with regular oil pastels. The results of different oil mediums will be handled separately in other future articles, odorless turpentine is the one that handles most like this water-based demonstration. 

7) Thinner Wash - Any solvents you use for oil painting such as odorless turpentine substitutes, turpentine itself or Zest-It citrus thinner can be used to get the same effects as water with watersoluble oil pastels. This demonstration of thinner wash with a yellow rose painting on canvas paper shows how the results will look and gives a copiable tracing of the outlines so that you can try this technique even if roses give you trouble.

I will cover linseed oil and other oils used as thinners with oil pastels in another article later, the look is different but the technique is similar. 

8) Tonal Layers - Creating smooth tonal layers without distinct thick or thin areas and strokes is an important technique for realism. These layers of broken color can either work well by themselves or get blended into smooth transitions with a lighter color. 

9) Grass Texture - Grass texture is something many beginners have trouble with. Using descriptive short vertical strokes can create beautiful textures for clipped lawns or wild clumps of tall grass. 

10) How to Draw Grass in Oil Pastels - A step by step demonstration of choosing colors and layering short jagged strokes to create sunlit and shadow areas on a clipped lawn. Picks up where "Grass Textures" left off, shows specifics on how to use color and value to draw grass with an impressionist look. 

11) Reflections and Shadows - Careful observation of the shape and color of reflections and shadows is an important part of realism, demonstrated with a study of three shiny black cherries. The effects can be very dramatic, especially working from life. 

12) Details - Realism demands very small details sometime. Small accurate details or accents can also be important in many other styles. Happily there are numerous ways of achieving detail with oil pastels. This article describes some and links to others. 

13) Sgraffito - Used dry, oil pastels handle in ways similar to soft pastels -- and can do things you'd never think of trying with the dusties. One of these is sgraffito. Lay down one color and blend it smooth, then cover it with a lighter or darker cover. Scraping through the outer layers reveals the first color you put on. If you want white details revealed, just use white for your first layer.

14) Temperature Tricks: You can also use temperature to alter the softness or hardness of both what's already on your painting and the sticks in your hand. If it seems like it won't take any more layers, warm your sticks in your fingers but put your artwork in the fridge for twenty minutes.

Using a warm stick on a chilled artwork will give it a better chance of good coverage. Alternately, you can try a heated drawing surface to melt the sticks as you apply them for an effect closer to encaustic painting. I haven't done encaustic, but I've seen it done well and it shouldn't be that hard emulating it with a heated drawing surface.

15) Tips for Special Surfaces: Every type of paper, board, canvas, wood or glass you work on will demand different techniques. So this section will start with some basics and expand into the specifics of working on different surfaces in different conditions with different tools, mediums and techniques.

So if you're bored, wondering what to do with your oil pastels on a Saturday afternoon, check this section for updates. You might find something new to inspire you. If you've tried something new and weird, don't hesitate to let me know and show me the results!