How to Draw & Sketch With Faber-Castell Pencils
- 1). Tape a sheet of drawing paper to the drawing board. The drawing paper should be of good quality, hot- or cold-pressed, but not watercolor paper. Position scrap paper for you to rest the heel and side of your palm on during the drawing process. This helps to keep the drawing surface free of skin oils and transferred drawing dust.
- 2). Make a thumbnail sketch on loose sketching paper of the drawing you want to work on. This will allow you to refine your drawing before working the drawing on the more expensive paper. Sketch out any complex or difficult sections to work out the details. Your sketch paper may have several parts of the drawing as well as a thumbnail before you are ready.
- 3). Select a Faber-Castell 2B graphite pencil to quickly draw the object onto the drawing paper. This type of pencil is easy to erase and strong enough to create good detail on the paper.
- 4). Use graphite powder and a stump to fill in the darkest shadows once the outlines of the drawing are in position. A stump is pencil-shaped, tightly rolled paper that has a point on each end.
- 5). Use softer pencils to experiment with the tonal range once the dark areas are complete. Refine the structure of the drawing to show differences in tone, finer detail and crisper edges. At this stage, check that objects in the foreground are stronger than those in the background and that the shapes of the objects are correct and shadowed properly.
- 6). Erase along highlighted areas using a no crumb eraser and an erasing shield. A shield is a small piece of metal with openings for the eraser to press into. This will make your bright areas stronger and with more contrast. Outline the detailed forms with a 2B or other harder graphite-tipped pencil. You may need to sharpen the pencil with a metal sharpener or sand the tip on a sanding board.
- 7). Check the balance of the background tone. Step back to view the drawing from a distance in order to properly see the tonal qualities. Continue to erase small areas and refine details and tone. When the drawing is near completion, sharpen your pencils and make areas crisp that have become smudged during the drawing process. This may use several different pencils at different levels of softness to achieve the desired result.
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