"When shading, use an extra piece of paper underneath your hand," advises artist Brun Croes. "This will minimise the amount your hand smudges your pencil lines. If you're right-handed, start shading from left to right; if you're left-handed, start at the right and move to the left. There are plenty of sketching tips and techniques to help you achieve different styles and effects.

• It can be relaxing, and it’s pretty amazing to get to see the results of your efforts when you’re done.
• Think about what you want to achieve, not about the lines.
• By doing this, you are learning how to construe an object in your own unique way.
• They will need to rely on mentors to explain the basics of sketching, which will take time if such mentors are found.

If you stick it out and keep practicing your drawing, you can compare your work now to that of you in a few months or years time so you can see how far you have come. The thing is that what is sketching people are all individuals, having their own skills and styles. Knowing these tips will help you to get incredible results, and will help to ease your frustration when drawing.

How Do I Get Started With Sketching: Some Basic Techniques

Above are some examples demonstrating different ways to create form and depth. "It’s important to experiment and find what works best for you, to not only complement but enhance your style," explains Von Rueden. "While I prefer smoother value transitions with the pencil strokes blending in against a thin outline, you may be more partial to cross-hatching against a bold outline."

All you need is a pen and some paper, and let your creativity flow. Crime scene sketches, for instance, are one of the foundations of crime scene investigation and can be a helpful scene documentation tool. The earliest “sketches” or “drawings” date from 30,000 to 10,000 B.C and were mainly found on cave walls in various locations in Spain and France.

Want to learn travel sketching in ink & watercolour?

When you draw from the wrist, you’re more likely to grip the pencil too tightly. Well, in my opinion, one of the best drawing exercises for beginners is to practice drawing subjects in their simplified forms. Kathleen is the Wordsmith at ZenART, resident artist and art editor. When God sent a shower of talents, Kathleen made sure she got a basketful of them! She also shares her passion for the arts through teaching.

They come in different levels of blackness (B) and hardness (H). Personally I have different levels of B for this woodless pencil – 2B, 6B, and 9B. Our blog contains more than 1,200 different engaging drawing tutorials - we’ve listed a few of them above too!