Beginner's Pencil Drawing Sketches

The world is full of beauty, and in Beginner's Pencil Drawing, we find ways of seeing & drawing it in our sketchbooks.  

We've just embarked on a new series of Pencil Drawing classes at the Community College of Beaver County, and we're having fun exploring the world with our pencils.

The homework this week is to draw your breakfast or to draw a small piece of your life, daily if possible, even for 5-10 minutes.  When your materials are a few drawing pencils and a sketchbook, it's easy to jump right into making art.

The morning after our first class, I sat at the breakfast table, intending to draw eggs and veggie sausages, but these flowers called out to be sketched.  I started by drawing the scene before my eyes.  

I took the above photo to allow me to put more detail in the drawing after the breakfast dishes were cleared away and the light had changed. In my phone's photo editor, I translated the color photo to black-and-white using a filter.  This helps to clearly see the values in the scene.

I started the sketch with a 2B graphite pencil.

Simple marks lightly laid down were the beginning, and I held the sketch at arm's length to check it now and again.  I began adding tone with a 10B pencil once I felt satisfied with the general layout.

I wanted to show the light values of the lily by creating the darker tones around the flower.

All of the shapes of the other flowers around the lily were interesting to my artist's eye.  It was fun adding in darker values and suggesting the shapes of mums, daisies and leaves.

I took a break from drawing, and when I looked at the photo above, I realized that I wanted to add more dimension to the lily.  It looked flat.

I darkened the values around the lily.  I liked the way this popped the lily forward.  Then I added a few dark spots within the lily, unifying the composition.

Looking at a photo of your artwork or simply stepping back from it lets you focus on the whole composition and assess what needs work.  Or what needs to be celebrated! Sometimes you step back and see that something beautiful has developed.  Make sure to be open to that possibility.

Remember that the more you sketch, the more opportunities for discoveries you create. Each sketch -- whether you love it or don't --builds your drawing skills.

Happy Creating!