I took a couple progress snapshots on that drawing from last night:
- I’ll just start loosely sketching with a regular ‘ol mechanical pencil to get some pleasing shapes and poses down. A lot of the time I don’t know what I’m drawing until a quarter of the way in. Other times I have a rough idea or theme in mind. Default is drawing furry, shaggy things and going from there.
- fleshing out the sketch more, getting details figured out, and keeping an eye on the pose. I try not to get too stiff at this point; I want the initial gesture and mood to survive because that’s what keeps the drawing fun. I’ve ruined a lot of sketches in this stage by stiffening up or trying to render things too much.
- when I’m feeling happy enough with things, I’ll go in with a soft graphite pencil to bring out the line work. My favorite pencil is a Staedtler Mars Lumograph 8B, I think it’s the softest pencil you can get and it’s capable of creating nice rich darks. It’s got a thick graphite core and it draws like buttah.
- lastly, I’ll go in and darken some of the line work in areas I want to imply depth or shadow. I didn’t do it too much on this one because I started the graphite lines a little dark to begin with, but ah well.
