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Joel Hickerson, Grin Dog Illustration and Design. Today we're going to talk about pencil
drawing and what it is. Pencil drawing itself can be a finished media and a lot of people
use it to create a whole illustration of nothing but pencil or graphite. I, personally as a
cartoonist, we usually use my pencil as a starting place rather than a finishing place.
For instance I'll give you an example, when I start drawing, I grab a pencil and I draw
very loosely, very lightly because I know this is just the construction elements that
I'm creating. So I start with a pencil and loosely, lightly creating just the construction
elements I think I might use. The pencil is invaluable for this, because it does, it erases
very easily, especially if I keep it light, okay. I am able to get an expression out of
pencil that is very hard if I start with ink. Okay, once I'm done with my pencil construction
lines then I come back, I do a hard line drawing that goes with the soft line drawing that
I've already done in pencil. The hard line comes in and takes over the construction lines
that I've created in my pencil illustration as guidelines. Knowing that in the end I'm
going to come back and erase them. These lines come off and leave me with a finished outline.
Another thing I can do with pencil is I can come back in after the fact and give my illustration
even more personality with shadows or more subtle shapes to compliment the really heavy
line work that I've done with my ink. That's how I use pencil.