How to Hold and Control Your Pencil

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

inFigure Drawing Fundamentals

3.3M

Mark as Completed

Assignments 88

Lesson Notes

Downloads 2

How to Hold and Control Your Pencil

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

in Figure Drawing Fundamentals

3.3M

Mark as Completed

Assignments 88

Lesson Notes

Downloads 2

Make sure you have a well sharpened pencil and do these exercises as you warm up to draw. 1. Train your shoulder by filling a page with curves, circles and straight lines 2. Train your hand-eye coordination by drawing 2 dots and connect them with straight lines 3. Draw 4 dots and connect them with an ellipse. Ghost it first! 4. Practice controlling line weight by drawing curves and shifting the line weight 5. Practice clean shading by drawing a 6×6 square and fill it in with even tone

@lassek

4mo

Im having a hard time controlling the line weight when using the overhandgrip. Should I sharpen the charcoal often or is it better to focus on the angle of the pencil?

Samuel Sanjaya

6mo

I still have some trouble with shaving the pencil, and I think that's the reason my shading looks choppy. feedbacks/critiques are welcomed.

faye zhang

7mo

These were really fun, and my shoulder is sore now. For anyone who is new to the overhand grip, please don’t give up like I did years ago. It will feel strange at first, but you’ll be more adjusted after some practice. Your drawings will benefit from having cleaner lines that just flow.

Crimson The Vixen

9mo

19/3/2023 Day 22, trying to draw a Side walk with simple cubes as buildings, I understood the basics to I’m proud for that.

Benjamin Green

9mo

Good job! Perspective is hard and takes a lot of practice. I will give you one bit of advice here that will help you reach your goal faster. When beginners start learning perspective a common mistake is drawing outside of your cone of vision. This concept is very technical, and I won't go into a lot of detail on this (involves terms like station point, diagonal vanishing point, etc). From an artist perspective, it is easy to visually understand that when you draw outside of the cone of vision, the shapes will look distorted. If you make sure that you frame your pictures in such a way that the shapes are generally closer to the horizon line, and that all the angles on the front facing corners of the boxes are greater than or equal to 90 degrees (obtuse), you'll avoid visual distortion and this will improve your drawings. If your boxes look skewed, try making sure that the front angle is wider and also the depth should look a lot thinner as it gets closer to the horizon. Keep up the good work =D

squeen

9mo

Not to be a jerk and burst your bubble, but the tops of the building need to recede towards the vanishing point in exactly the same way you did the bottoms. :)

Crimson The Vixen

9mo

17/3/2023 Day 21 of Marc Brunet’s Schedule, this time it’s 1 point perspective practice, I think I get the basic gist of it having a 25 mins draw session. Criticisms welcomed.

Crimson The Vixen

9mo

13/3/2023 Day 20 of Marc Burent’s Schedule. From now on I’ll post an image of the reference! (Which I should’ve done at the start tbh) Criticisms are welcomed.

Crimson The Vixen

9mo

11/3/2023 day 19 with Marc Burent’s Schedule, this time I had to draw a complex, curved in set of volumes. It’s supposed to be consistent of Cubes but it didn’t work out too well. Criticisms are welcomed.

Benjamin Green

9mo

Keep up the good work. Try to imagine the convergence of the parallel lines going back into space as they approach their vanishing points. This will ensure your objects are grounded properly. Hope to see more!

Crimson The Vixen

9mo

8/3/2023 Day 18 of Marc Burent’s Schedule. Stacking different shapes on each-other, though I felt I could’ve done a lot better, especially with overlapping the shapes.

Crimson The Vixen

9mo

7/3/2023 last few days of Marc Burent’s schedule. Don’t have too much to say about it tbh. Criticism is welcomed.

Crimson The Vixen

9mo

28/2/2023 Days 11,12 & 13 Respectively. Each task containing some new surprises and challenges applied with them. Marc Burent’s schedule continues! criticism is welcomed.

Crimson The Vixen

9mo

23/2/2023 Working on the last few days I haven’t posted yet. criticism is welcomed.

Crimson The Vixen

10mo

19/2/2023 Day 7 of Marc Burent’s Schedule! This time I was Drawing Cubes floating in “various” angles! (Even though I don’t think I tried to bring variety due to lack of perspective knowledge). Note to Self: Next time look up References of Cubes in different angles before attempting.

@kugeltisch

9mo

Hi Crimson, love the dedication! :D if you are searching for perspective Knowledge here is a site that explains drawing a cube really great: https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes

Crimson The Vixen

10mo

18/2/2023 Day 6 of Marc Burent’s Schedule. This time I was tasked with drawing more complex shapes, (which was hard to even start thinking about, honestly). I don’t think anything I did was anything too complicated, I think the was you needed to start with something simple, before then playing with the shape’s form. all Critcs are welcomed!

Crimson The Vixen

10mo

17/2/2023 Day 5 of Marc Burent’s schedule, this time I found myself drawing Cylinders of various sizes, pretty fun exercise!

Jesper Axelsson

10mo

Nice! - The end furthest from us should have a more open ellipse. - Keep in mind to always make the ellipses perpendicular to the length of the cylinder. Hope this helps :)

Crimson The Vixen

10mo

16/2/2023 Today on Day 4 of Marc Burent’s Schedule is about shading a sphere with the light source! (The ‘A’ you see above them) is which it’s pointing towards! I think I got the cast Shadow better near the bottom of the page. any and all Criticism is Welcomed!

Crimson The Vixen

10mo

15/2/2023 Day 3 of Marc Burent’s schedule. This time it was Drawing circles overlapping while introducing 1 Point Perspective into the mix. I struggled a lot with this one so criticism is welcomed!

Crimson The Vixen

10mo

13/2/2023 I’ve started a new day by day schedule featured by Marc Burnet, an online YouTube Art teacher. day 1 consistence of Spheres that forms an ellipse. I would like to know where I can improve on my one’s and/or wonder if there’s any videos for suggestions on methods.

Lin

10mo

I love how you are able to understand the volume in the sphere, I can see that in the way you curve inwards towards the end. I would recommend practicing on your line confidence, try practicing what line you want to make before setting it down on the page. I see many lines around the circle alone. Give it a go, you're doing great.

@bonnieblue

11mo

Hi there, you mention a pencil sharpening video, but I can't find it in search. Thank you for your time Terrie

Crimson The Vixen

1yr

20/12/2022 Trying to “Hold and Control” exercises provided by Proko, tell me how I’m doing and where I can improve.

@eszter

1yr

Learning about the overhand grip, how to sharpen a pencil and how to draw using the shoulder has been really eye opening to me thank you again @Jesper Axelsson for refering me to this video. This week I have been doing the exercises provided here and a few others every day as a warm up. I especially struggle with keeping my lines straight whilst switching from thin to thick so i will keep on practicing that.

Jesper Axelsson

1yr

Nice work @eszter 👍 - When practicing line quality for figure drawing you most likely would want to draw the lines in a rather quick stroke; a single swoop (the line will probably be misplaced and at the wrong angle 🤪). With practice this can result in a really clean line. When you draw a line slowly it usually ends up wobbly, since you balance the direction throughout the stroke. It's a good idea to practice drawing both quickly and slowly. Try different speeds and see how it affects the marks you make. - I fell into the trap of grinding line quality exercises, because I thought "I have to get this down perfectly". But I wouldn't recommend doing that😅. If line quality exercises are new to you, it could be good to have a little bootcamp just to get started, but after that keeping it as a short warm-up is the better idea, in my experience. Line quality is something you'll always have to work on, and as you study more drawing, you'll be informed about what type of line work is required. Keep up the good work💪

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Stan Prokopenko

Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.