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How to hold a pencil when drawing

How to hold a pencil for drawing.  How to hold your pencil when you draw to get loose lines, artist tip and technique.
Great questions I receive from e-mail:

Hi I love your work! Thanks for putting it up, it has inspired me more and I am learning alot from it!

I have a question, I really like how your lines look so fluid, smooth agile and loose.
What is the best way to get the lines to look like that?

When you draw with a regular pencil, where are you gripping your pencil? Are you holding it near the bottom or in the middle? Are you holding the pencil like how you would write or are you using some special technique to get your lines to look that fluid, smooth and loose?

That's depending on how fast or how tight I want to go.

Tip: Loose and quick drawing, hold your pencil further away from the tip, and use your whole should and elbow (no wriste) to get the most natural arche and flow looseness line quality. The bigger the leads and the drawing pad, the better.
***DRAW with YOUR WHOLE ARM and SHOULDER*** Key key key!

Tip: Tight and detail. Hold your pencil closer to the tip to get control and tight accuracy. The smaller the leads the better result.

Once you practice a lot with big pad and BIG arch of whole arm and shoulder drawing...you can translate that into smaller drawing, but it will loose some of the real looseness of the whole arch action of natural body movement.

Drawing Software & Tools I used and recommended:-Genius MousePen 6x8
-Wacom Intuos3 6X8 Pen Tablet
-Bamboo (Small) Pen Tablet (new from Wacom!) Economy for everyone.Softwares:
-Gimp (Free Download)
-Adobe Photoshop CS2 (Professional software)
*You can just use pencil, paper, markers on this one...just practice rendering.

Basic Photoshop tutorial:-How to Make cool icon in Photoshop by Knuckles930

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-Character Design Tutorial: Dark Valkyrie

If you need any help or support you can
-post questions or comment on the post (seems to be the fastest way to get response)

Peace,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi!
Your work is incredible!
And thanks a lot for posting it all, is so helpfull :)
I love draws and I'm still learning how to draw, and you've been helping a lot!
:)
so, thanks and keep going with the blog, it's awesome!
Anonymous said…
Well done Xia, well said! :)
I was thinking if you could just give us (your fans lol) some more info about you, such as favorite movies, things that inspire you and mabe you show us some photos of you or your studio! How about it??

Keep it up with the blog anyway- it rules!!
Anonymous said…
Hi! I also can just agree with the others!
Your drawings and the whole blog is amazing!
I'm a softwaretrainer and do a lot with photoretouching, but since I'm found this site, I also try digital painting.
Your tips are a great help!
So, thanks a lot!
Best regards from Austria
Martin
idrawgirls said…
Ano>> Thanks brother!!! I am glad you can learn something useful. :) Gotta love the web!

Luca> I will brother, I definitely will. Studio? I don't have one, I live in a small apartment downtown. I know it's embarrassing. I wish I have a studio someday...but it's expensive nowadays unless I move to suburbia which I would totally miss the city. As of now my main studio is Dell XPS on Living room in my apartment (which has nothing on the wall, no working table, just coffee table and a couch) I cruise around the coffee house around town, any where there is a spot...I could work as long as people don't talk to me then they don't bother me. I have a really good focus. So yeah...in a couple of years maybe. :) But I could show you photos from the studio I work for GW. :)

Martin>> Thanks man! I am glad I can get you to pay some interested to digi-painting. You will be surprise what you can really do!
See you again soon! :)
Chris Reeve said…
Surely that must hurt your back doing your work on a coffee table from your sofa?
idrawgirls said…
Chris> LOL, from time to time...but I sit on the floor mostly. And go run and workout about an hour a day so it would stretch my muscle all over the place to avoid any potential cramps. :)