10 Sketching Tips To Improve Your Pencil Sketching Skills This article is brought to you by http://howtodrawpeoplefaces.org Summary: In this article I'm going to give you 10 quick but important sketching tips to help you improve your pencil sketching skills. Keep these tips in mind when your sketch and you will be a better artist for it. Tags: how to sketch people, figure drawing, sketching tips, how to sketch Article: Improve Your Sketching Using These Sketching Tips In this article, I'm going to give you 10 quick and easy sketching tips to help you become better sketching artist. Becoming a skilled sketching artist requires many hours of practice and studies but I've notice a number of common mistakes that beginning artists tends to make. I've turned these common mistakes that I've notice and turned them into this list of sketching tips. As you read through these sketching tips, try to see which one applies to you and make the necessary corrections. So, without further ado...here is your list of sketching tips: Quick And Easy Sketching Tips: <strong>Tips #1:</strong> Don't stress out over making one big sketching masterpiece. Sketching is all about being free and expressing your creativity. But so many artist stress out about coming up with a really big and complex sketch drawing. Don't do this. You will benefit more from doing a bunch of little sketches than you will from drawing one big elaborate sketch. <strong>Tips #2:</strong> Train yourself to see lines in everything that you look at. Look for the horizontal and vertical lines. Follow the curves and focus on them. By practicing this sketching tip, you will teach yourself to draw what you see and you'll begin to draw naturally as it becomes a habit. <strong>Tip #3:</strong> Be aware of the position of your head while sketching. The slightest movement of your head can chance the perspective of what you are looking at and alter the look of your sketch. I'm not saying there is a right and wrong perspective, but if you start out a sketch with one perspective, you need to make sure that it stays consistence.
<strong>Tip #4:</strong> It's normal to stare at a blank piece of paper and be intimidated by it. If you find yourself in this position, simply draw a light border on your page. Not only will this break you out of your paralysis by moving your hand, but the border will help you choose a subject that will fit into the area. <strong>Tip #5</strong>: If you want to make an object look lighter, there is a way to do it without using an eraser. Simply put something darker next to it. This is the contrast principle at work and the brain can not tell the difference. Play around with this sketching tip and you'll find that you can do a lot of cool things. <strong>Tip #6</strong>: Before you drive into a sketch, make light outlines of the shapes to make sure that everything will fit into the page. This way your proportions will look better and you won't find yourself running out of space in the middle of your sketch. <strong>Tip #7</strong>: Sketch faster. Practice sketching faster and you'll improve how you see and also your understanding of lines and form. Plus your strokes will look more fluid and smooth. <strong>Tip #8</strong>: If you are trying to sketch something that look complicated, don't be intimidated. Just break it down into different shapes. Everything a comprised of the basic shapes: square, round, cylinder, and cone. <strong>Tip#9</strong>: A great tool to have with you while sketching is a Q-tip. It smalls and easy to carry around. Plus it works great for blending your pencil strokes. <strong>Tip #10</strong>: Pay attention to the light source when you sketch. Shading is crucial to making a drawing look realistic so make sure you get it right. If the light source is on the right of your subject, then the shadows should be consistently on the left. These sketching tips might seem simple (and they are) but don't under estimate their importance. Keep these sketching tips in mind while you draw and your works will come out much better. If you'd like to learn more, check out this article on human figure drawing.