Although many people think that drawing is a talent, there are actually many helpful hints and tricks to instantly improve anyone's drawings.  In this guide I explain some simple techniques that can help anyone create more interesting and visually appealing drawings.

Choosing Materials

  

The first and most important decision when choosing materials is Pencils or Charcoal.  Obviously most people would have pencils more readily available, but charcoal can be more suitable in some circumstances. For example Pencil can be more useful for precise and detailed drawings, while charcoal would work better to cover large even value shapes with smooth blending.  When choosing Pencil you may consider buying a kit of drawing pencils as seen above to have a  full range (2H- hardest\lightest to 9B- softest\darkest) of values.  However the average person would only need between 2B and 6B.  With charcoal the main differences are Vine and Compressed.  Vine charcoal is very soft and versatile with a large range of values.  Compressed however is very hard and will only give you an extremely dark value which can be nearly impossible to erase  so use with caution. 

Another important tool is the Eraser.  I highly recommend a kneadable eraser.  They can be molded into any shape to erase in a small or large space, and can also be used as a drawing tool itself.  An optional tool that I would recommend is a  Blending Stump.  This tool (which is the white stick shown in the picture above) can make it much easier to evenly blend values together even with pencil(I will show an example of this later).

Using Contour Lines

One of the easiest ways to make a drawing more interesting is the addition of contour lines which is the thickening and thinning of  lines in particular areas.

 before after

The idea is to thicken the line as it curves inward (concave) and at the bottoms to get the "feel" of gravity. Then leave the tops and where it curves outward (convex) thin. Easy enough right? =)

Using Value to Imply Lines

    

In the above charcoal drawings you can see that there are no defined lines but instead you can use lights against darks to create the illusion of line.  This is usually the case in real life therefore this is an important element when trying to render a realistic composition such as a still life.

Starting a Drawing

First off you much choose a subject, which is often easier said than done.  For this demonstration I choose a picture of some sort of elephant ear plant (at least that's what I'm calling it) as seen below.



I often start with what is called a Gesture.  A gesture is a fluent movement of a VERY LIGHT continuous line working from the Inside-Out.  It is NOT an outline.  It is easiest to think of it like a wire sculpture of the subject.  Gestures are usually very quick (30 sec or less). This is just give us a starting point, don't expect to capture the subject exact at all.

This is mine (I appologize that it is a little tough to see since it is so light.)

Next I use a technique called Giacometti named after it's creator Alberto Giacometti.  In this technique we use horizontal and vertical "measuring lines" to find intersections in a drawing to make sure your proportions and relationships are correct.  This can be a very difficult technique to master but keeping it in mind will keep you from making major mistakes in a composition, and when used correctly can guarantee a believable drawing.  Here are some examples:

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As you can see I use the lines to compare destinct edges with what is directly horizontal or verticle.  Take your time when useing this technique and I would recommend using it even more than I did if you really want to see success.  (Sadly because the pictures had to be shrunk down, it is hard to see the detail of the technique).  You may notice that my drawing now looks much different than my original gesture which was actually pretty far off, but using giacometti i saw how it was off and was able to fix my mistakes. 

Next is when it really starts coming together.  I erase all the gesture and giacometti lines and add the contour lines just like I showed you earlier.  Afterwards it looked like this:



Now, it is not unheard of to stop at the contour lines but to demonstrate the blending stump with the pencil I will go ahead and add the value.  If you look back at the picture you will notice that the value is darker around the vein and lightens along the edges of the leaf.  So a start by laying down a dark value and slowly lightening up as i get away from the vien.  However I didn't shade all the way to the edge because some of the graphite will stick to the blending brush and you will be able to use it to add an even light value.  Here is the final product:

   

Showing Depth\Distance

There is an easy way to show depth or distance in a drawing.  The way to accomplish this is to have more detailed in the forground with greater value range(darker darks and lighter lights). While leaving the background faded and without detail.  The following example is a little extreme of an example but make it easy to see the idea:

  (Once again very small)



Hopefully through the use of this guide you were able to learn some new technique to test and experiment with because drawing can truly be a pleasent and rewarding hobbie.