Tips to Improve Your Realistic Pencil Drawing + Shading

Let’s talk about how to capture light with our realistic pencil drawings! When working in pencil—specifically with botanical drawings—there are a few key techniques to remember in order to capture the life behind your subject and to showcase the delicate beauty without becoming too heavy or awkward. In this video I’m going to share some of my favorite pencil shading techniques that I think will help you to take your realistic shading to the next level.

Clear View of Reference:

The first thing you want to start with is a clear reference photo or view of your reference if you’re working from life. I personally work from photos most of the time because it is more adaptable to my frequently-interrupted lifestyle (cue kid screaming in the background). When you’re looking for your reference image, you want to make sure that there is some good contrast between the mid-tones and shadows (not to mention highlights). Images that are too soft can be difficult to translate to the paper and can be more challenging to capture—think of it like a monotone voice. While you can understand what is being said, it’s not only more interesting when there are fluctuations in the speaker’s voice, but it’s actually easier to understand what they are saying beyond just the words themselves. It’s a similar idea for value contrast—variety is what makes it both interesting and easy to see.

Strong Contour Drawing:

Next you want to build a strong foundation with your contour drawing. I like to draw pretty light overall so that the outline isn’t too harsh and distracting when I go in to add the shadows. If you struggle to draw lightly, hold your pencil farther back OR work with a harder pencil lead such as an HB or H. I recently shared the video where I created this exact contour drawing here. In this video I broke down my go-to techniques for drawing accurate proportions and keeping everything to the same scale. If you struggle to capture the outline of your subject you will likely struggle to capture the shading as well! Check out that video to hear some of my tips for a strong drawing foundation.

Plan Out Your Shadows:

Tip 3 is for right before you start working on adding the shadows in. Take a moment to mentally plan out your shadows. Study your reference photo and decide which areas are going to be more “high key” (lots of lighter values) or “low key” (more dark in value). Planning this out a little bit before hand will help prevent going too heavy with your shadows and staining your paper. If you’re struggling with this step, you can convert your reference photo to black and white in your settings and break it down from there.

Start Shading in the Shadows:

It’s time to start in on the pencil shading itself! I actually like to start in the deeper shadows. Some artists will say to work from the opposite side of your dominate hand to avoid smudging, but you can use a tissue or scrap paper to avoid this. I prefer to start in the shadows to give my hand another chance to “warm up”. It takes a minute for me to get into the rhythm of shading well, where my pencil is gliding smoothly and my sensitivity to the different values is ready for “the big leagues”—meaning, the more complicated shapes and gradients.

Warm Up With a Gradient:

If you are struggling to get into the flow of shading well, you might need to make a gradient on a scrap piece of paper to further “warm up”.

Break Up the Shadows into Smaller Shapes:

As you are working, break down the individual shadows into smaller shapes instead of trying to conquer the entire subject with a single swoosh of the pencil. If only it was that easy! Drawing out individual shapes and simply connecting it to the next shape will keep you from getting overwhelmed (see video for examples).

Step Back to Unify Entire Drawing:

Once the shapes have been laid out like a puzzle, you can step back and make sure that they are reading well as a whole. Sometimes you have to make adjustments to the whole to help it make sense within the rest of the drawing. Not every shading project has the wherewithall to behave itself on the first try—the audacity! But having the individual puzzle pieces in place makes it easier to join them together by either lightly erasing or lightly shading again over specific areas to unify them.