How To Hold Your Pencil When Drawing

Contents

How to Hold and Control Your Pencil
- Belongings the Pencil
  - Tripod Grip
  - Overhand Grip
- Decision-making the Pencil
  - Wrist
  - Shoulder
  - Using the Overhand Grip
- Muscle Memory
- Exercises
Video

How to Hold and Control Your Pencil

Source: Mainly based on material from fine art painter Stan Prokopenko (http://www.stanprokopenko.com/ or http://world wide web.proko.com)

Are you tired of messy, wobbly lines? Tired of not having whatsoever control of your pencil? Are you just capable of using a serial of short strokes? Well don't throw in the towel just nevertheless! Attempt drawing from the power of your shoulder! With just a few short years of exercise you can draw gestural, fluid lines similar you've always wanted. By using this patent-pending new arm motion nosotros guarantee you lot'll exist able to complete that bend with ane beautiful stroke! Stay tuned to discover out how you can Alter YOUR LIFE!

Property the Pencil

There'due south two common ways to hold your pencil while drawing:

Tripod Grip

drawing tripod grip

Belongings the pencil with your thumb, alphabetize and middle fingers, like writing. This grip is more comfortable for using thetip of the pencil. Not practical to utilize the side. It's also comfy to control with your fingers to draw verysmall precise lines. So, it's good for pocket-size strokes and thin lines that areuniform in weight.

Overhand Grip

drawing overhand grip

Belongings your hand over the pencil. Your mitt should be relaxed with the fingers and pollex lightly holding the pencil. Yous can still use thetip of the pencil by one of two means. If drawing on a horizontal surface like a tabletop, merely bend the wrist frontwards a bit. If cartoon on a vertical surface such every bit a pad resting on your knees or an easel, you can flip your wrist upside downwardly to use the tip. Along with the tip, the overhand grip allows you lot toutilize the side, which is much more versatile than the tip. You tin getthick soft lines, thin lines, and a transition between the 2.

Controlling the Pencil

Wrist

The wrist serves well forsmall strokes and details.

Since grade school we are accepted to using the pencil for writing. Since writing only requires our wrist, we take decades of muscles memory developed for handling the pencil with our wrists. Though at that place'due south nothing wrong with using our wrist when information technology makes sense, we would exist limiting ourselves if nosotros didn't become across the wrist.

It's ok to utilize your wrist and hold the pencil with the tripod grip for smaller details, but watch out for this…

Since using your wrist doesn't permit longer strokes, we end up cartoon a bunch of short lines to create one longer line. This can get messy and you may cease upward with hairy lines.

Shoulder

The shoulder serves well forcurt AND long strokes. Information technology's much better forsteady lines andfluid gestural lines.

Your shoulder provides a greater range of motion than your wrist. So, when drawing larger shapes, curvy lines, use your shoulder. This is peculiarly useful forgesture drawing. One time you need to add together some piddling details, you can switch to the tripod grip.

Using the Overhand Grip

Property the pencil overhand allows you to utilise the side of the pencil. When sharpened correctly (as I explained in the pencil sharpening video..) this allows you to getlarger strokes of tone. If you lot press lightly and layer ane stroke over another, you tin can gosoft gradations.

You tin roll the pencil frontward or astern tocommand the thickness and edge quality of the line. Use the expanse closer to the tip for a thinner sharper line and utilise the eye for a thicker softer line. And everything between..

As well, you can change the angle of your stroke to control the line thickness. Stroking perpendicular to the length of the pencil creates a thick line similar I simply showed. Pulling the pencil down, parallel to the length of the pencil creates a sparse line. And so y'all don't need to use the tip, though you can.. With a slight plow of the wrist while you're pulling the stroke, you lot can create a line that changes from thin to thick. This variation in line weight adds a good dynamic to our drawings. It's kind of similar using a calligraphy pen instead of a ballpoint pen.

The combination of an overhand grip and using your shoulder allows for the widest range of motion and line type. About of the cartoon can be washed this manner.

Muscle Memory

When nosotros commencement start holding information technology like that it feels weird considering nosotros don't have good control of our shoulder. We've only practiced using our wrists to write. Nosotros need to train our shoulder. It's like playing sports. Echo the move so many times that it becomes intuitive.

Our friends at Wikipedia sayMuscle retentivity is

"a course of procedural retentivity that involves consolidating a specific motor task into retentivity through repetition. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle retentiveness is created for that task, somewhen allowing it to be performed without conscious effort. This process decreases the demand for attention and creates maximum efficiency inside the motor and memory systems."

And so, at showtime, cartoon in this new manner is a distraction. Our heed has to focus on moving the shoulder correctly instead of making decisions about the cartoon.Fight the temptation to revert back to just using your wrist with the tripod grip. Overtime equally you lot develop the muscle retentivity you lot won't demand to think well-nigh it and you'll use the pencil like a Jedi chief.

"Patience you must have my immature padawan" – Yoda

Exercises

Start training you shoulder past filling pages of curves, circles and directly lines.
Draw two dots and connect them with a straight line to train your hand eye coordination.
Or draw 4 dots and connect them with an ellipse. Effort "ghosting" the lines starting time by practicing the motion before making contact with the paper. This is a swell warm up before starting your drawing session.
You can also practice decision-making your line weight by shifting your curves from thin to thick.
Or if you lot struggle with filling in large areas with clean tone, then draw a 6×half dozen inch square and fill information technology in with a clean tone. Information technology helps to shade simply on the downwardly strokes and lift the pencil off the paper on the mode support. Focus on keeping the distance between each stroke consistent and using the same corporeality of pressure each fourth dimension. A very good exercises for hand-stability and pressure sensitivity. If you end upwardly with dark and calorie-free lines, it means either your stroke distance or pressure is inconsistent.

btw, a well sharpened pencil helps a lot…