The Basics

Pressure Drills

We are going to be moving onto a slightly more advanced line exercise by introducing variation and technical precision with our final line drill. Using pressure to communicate information is a very important skill, and can provide an artist with an additional tool to help portray the meaning or story behind their use of line. We will be discussing how this is possible, but for right now we are just going to focus on our ability to control this skill. 

Your Pressure Affects Your Marks

When you apply more or less pressure to your pencil, you will effect what your lines look like. More pressure will get a darker and thicker line than you will get when you are applying less pressure. This in turn means that applying less pressure will result in a lighter thinner line. Being able to control the thickness and darkness of your lines is very important, and will give you an immense amount of control over your utensil. Even a pencil can produce this effect, so there is no concern as to what material you use when completing the following exercises. A brush may produce a more obvious effect, but most materials produce such a result.

Exercise Five

We have three separate exercises that we are going to apply here, and we will refer to them as Exercises A, B, and C.

For Exercise A we will be focusing on learning how to apply pressure in one direction. We will start with putting our pencil down with more pressure and as we progress our line across the page we will lessen our pressure slowly, until the pencil leaves the page all together. This gives us a line with a tail that fades away. This stroke is important as it will help you achieve a lot of textures that require a soft break between strokes. 

The second version of Exercise A is to perform a similar line, but in the opposite fashion. We will attempt to start with a limited amount of pressure and build on that pressure as our line progresses. We will start with the tail and work our way up to a thicker line. Being able to control the amount of pressure you are applying adds a dimension of storytelling to your work, and will speed up your work by being able to accomplish various line pressures within a single stroke. 

Exercise B is not much different, but we are going to be getting a soft entry and a soft exit. As we progress our line across the page, we will start with a limited amount of pressure, build as we reach the center of the line, and then proceed to lessen the pressure as we complete the second half of the line so that we have a soft tail at the end, as well as the beginning.

Exercise C is going to be a bit harder, because we aren’t going to be transitioning only once or twice, we will be changing the pressure multiple times throughout the stroke. Starting with more pressure, pulling back and lowering the pressure, before applying more pressure again. You will want to start and end with more pressure, and alternating at least once within the stroke. This means that, at the very least, there should be three sections where there is more pressure and two where there is less.

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