Basic Training
Exercise A
In the first part of Exercise A, we will focus on applying pressure in a single direction. Begin your stroke by placing your pencil on the page with a firm Pressure. As your lines moves across the page, gradually lessen the pressure until the pencil lifts away naturally, leaving a tapered, faded line. This stroke is vital for achieving textures that require a soft transition or a fading effect.
The second version of Exercise A reverses this process. Begin your stroke with minimal pressure, forming a light tail, and gradually build your pressure as the line continues, finishing with a heavy stroke. This control allows you to add emotion and emphasis to your line, and speeds up your work by embedding the variation into the stroke with a single motion.
Pressure Affects Your Marks
When you apply less or more pressure to your pencil, you will affect what your line looks like. More pressure will yield a darker and thicker line, whereas applying less pressure will result in a lighter, thinner line. Being able to control the thickness and even the darkness of your lines is very important and will provide you with a good degree of control over your utensil. Even a standard pencil can produce this effect to some degree. A brush would give a more obvious result, most drawing tools are capable of a similar result.
Exercise Five
Exercise B
The next exercise builds on the previous one by combining both a soft entry and a soft exit. Start your line with light pressure, increase the pressure towards the middle of the stroke, and then gradually reduce it again towards the end. This should leave you with a line that fades in, strengthens in the center, and fades out again. This technique is excellent for graceful, organic marks and adds rhythm to your strokes.
Exercise C
Exercise C raises the difficulty by introducing multiple pressure transitions within a single stroke. Begin with firm pressure, then ease off to a lighter stroke, increase pressure again, and end with strong pressure at the end of the stroke.
At minimum, your stroke should have three distinct areas of higher pressure and two lesser. This exercise is a test of your precision and rhythm, and it’s excellent for developing dynamic control that will serve you in more advanced drawing work.
We’re 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 the use of line. We will be discussing how this is possible, about for right now we are going to focus on pressure.
