Mark Making Practice in Beginner's Pencil Drawing Class

A good book can inspire us to get sketching.  These pages were inspired by Pencil Drawing by Arthur Guptill (more on this book here).  I followed the book's mark making exercise as a warm-up, and felt inspired especially by the marks with varying pressure (top right of the page above).

It can help to reduce the fear of the blank page to start off with mark making, and copying another artist's work is even easier.  Even though in school we've been trained not to copy someone else, copying in art (as long as you give credit to your source) is an important part of learning.

Find an artist you admire and make a copy of their drawing, their marks, even a portion of an artwork.  This process will build your drawing skills and help you to see new ways to solve conundrums in turning a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional drawing.

 Happy Creating!