Grayscale

A pencil drawing consists of many shades of grey right up to black the eskimos can see over fourty shades of white so their eyes are really trained to see variations in scale.you will be working with all of these shades so it is best to learn how to create them and really get used to working with your pencils.

Working on a sheet of A2 paper starting from left to right create as many distinct shades of grey as you can if it is easier for you divide the filmstrip up into seperate equal size boxes each box will have a different shade.

Starting with the first block being white then on to the grey blocks and finally a deep black you will notice that there are many shades of black that you can create.this technique is called creating a greyscale.

Use only an hb pencil for the lesson you can of course experiment with the different pencils afterwards to see what each one is capable of.it may seem a bit of a foolish exercise but understanding your pencils and how to use them is the key to a good drawing

The more blocks that you are able to produce the more your understanding of the pencil and shading or grading.

once you have completed the exercise cut out the blocks and rearrange them you will be suprised to see that each block will affect the shade of the block next to it in drawing this is called chioschuro and it really comes into play with any drawing that you do the different shades, tonal values interact with each other.