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My doodles kept looking flat till I shaded with the side of the pencil lead instead of the tip
Been doodling little cartoon faces in a cheap notebook for about 3 weeks and they all looked like stickers. Flat and boring. Then a gal at a coffee shop in Sacramento saw my page and said to turn the pencil sideways and rub the lead flat on the paper. Tried it on 4 sketches that night and the shadows finally look soft instead of scratchy. Takes maybe twice as long per face but the difference is huge. Still messing up the noses though. What do you all use for soft shading, your finger or a smudge stick?
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the_derek7d ago
Four sketches in one night is a solid test run, and the side-of-the-lead trick really is the fix for that sticker look. Something nobody brought up yet: the paper itself is doing half the work here. Cheap notebook paper has almost no tooth, so graphite just sits on top and you get those hard edges no matter what you shade with. Try rubbing the flat lead on the back of the page, or under your hand on a scrap, to build a tiny graphite dust pile, then pick it up with a rolled up bit of paper towel. You get way softer shadows than smudging straight on the page, and the noses get easier too because you can drag a thin line of dust for the side shadow instead of pressing hard.
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