My Old Friend, The Pencil

There was a time, for several years while I was a game illustrator, drawing was mostly all that I did, whether with pencils, pens, or even digitally. Since I started painting more consistently, I don’t seem to draw as often. I haven’t drawn anything in a long time, so as a change of pace, I recently picked up some pencils and created a couple of drawings. I draw much quicker than I paint so I started and completed each in their own afternoon. I am surrounded by lots of things that I could draw, so I set up two different still-life scenes using musical instruments from around my home studio.

The first drawing featured percussion instruments. I arranged two tambourines, a leather-tipped drumstick, a gourd shaker decorated in fur and feathers, and a bodhrán tipper (or beater), which created a fairly complex scene to draw. I knew it would be challenging scene, anyway. Circular shapes, lots of small details, nooks and crannies, angles, textures, reflective surfaces, etc… I simply named this drawing “The Tambourines”. Pretty creative, eh?

The second drawing I named “Fiddle and Washboard”. The washboard is like a busker’s washboard, in which you’d rake your bare fingernails or thimbles up and down its ribbed surface to make percussive sounds. Around the washboard, in various locations, are attached various recycled bits of metal to bang on and achieve different noises. A tiny cat food tin, a ribbed metal soup can, a metal mayonnaise jar lid, the end off of a metal coffee can, a metal sink strainer, and a couple of bells. The smallest bell if from an old alarm clock. I don’t know where the larger bell came from or what it was previously used for – I just know it makes a deep ringing bell sound when struck.

I constructed the fiddle many years ago using a Pirate’s Gold cigar box, that I picked up at a flea market/yard sale, and I used a wooden flagpole for the neck. The box is trapezoid shape, and I carved f-shape sound holes in it with a Dremel tool. I carved the fretboard, tailpiece, tuning pegs, and the bridge, by hand, from scraps of wood. I ran the pole through the entire body of the instrument and attached the carved fret board to it. I wanted to install violin fine tuners, proper tuning pegs and a professionally carved bridge on it, but that has not yet happened. Perhaps someday. Proper violin strings might be an improvement as well. I installed a set of four old used mandolin strings on it, because that’s what I had around. Mandolins and violins use the same tuning, so I figured the gauge of the strings would work. The bow came from a small music shop near me, which no longer exists. I asked the owner if he had a bow around, and he told me that in fact he did have one in the back room, but the frog was broken. I gave him a couple of bucks for it, then took it home and zipped tied the frog in place, in true DIY form, and it kinda-sorta works. It was a fun project, anyway. The instrument sounds like a cheap fiddle. Now to learn how to play it! I’d probably play that washboard or one of those tambourines better.

I decided to draw these displays on sight – no photo, no grid. I would view the objects in real-time and freehand each scene as I saw it in front of me. This is a great exercise in honing your observation skills. There must be a name for it, but I don’t believe the word “plein air” is it. But that is what I did. The subject was 4-5 feet away from me and I sketched it out. It’s also a great exercise in keeping things moving along. I would be limited on time with each drawing, as the lighting in the room changes every few minutes. Therefore, the position of shadows changes quickly as do the tones.

I created the drawings on 11 x 17 white smooth Bristol cardstock. I used 2-3 different graphite pencils, along with a cardboard blender stick to smudge the graphite, for blending and creating shadows. I also use a kneaded eraser and a white polymer plastic eraser to remove graphite when I need to. I find that a metal eraser shield is a very useful drawing tool also. A softy brush is useful for brushing away eraser boogers and graphite dust. I also used a strip of sand paper during one of these drawings, to break down tsome graphite (utilizing some smudging techniques).

I try to freehand straight lines most of the time simply because I’m too lazy to line up a straight edge – I like to be free and keep moving mostly – but if a line i’m trying to make is fairly long, and must be accurately straight (such as the neck of a fiddle, or the long legs of the washboard), I will use a straight edge to achieve that. Sometimes a line needs to be accurate or points may not line up or the position of objects won’t look right. I prefer a clear plastic straigh-edge, so that I can see my drawing through it. To freehand a straight line, I find that pulling the pencil (rather than pushing it) gets me a much straighter line. I’ll add here that that goes for paintbrushes as well. Circular shapes I try to freehand, using the natural arc of my wrist to help me get a nicer line. Turning the paper different directions can also help to achieve the proper arc you’re going for.

I began working the drawing out with a hard lead pencil (I believe I used the 6H pencil), as the harder lead leaves a lighter mark. I use the 6H to create a faint skeleton of my drawing on the paper. Once the objects are lightly and very roughly sketched out to scale and positioned where they look right to me I start fleshing things out with the softer pencils. I partticularly like using ebony pencils. I believe it’s the darkest of the soft lead pencils. It lays down, responds well to different pressures, and blends nicely, and leaves a dark contrasty mark.

I videoed the creation of both drawings and you can watch them on both Rumble and my YouTube channel, to see how I use the tool I have mentioned. The YouTube links are directly below.

Timelapse Drawing: “The Tambourines”
Timelapse Drawing: “Fiddle and Washboard”

Both drawings are available as prints in my webstore.

I plan to draw more in the immediate future, in combination with my painting. The variety of mediums keeps things interesting for me.

Thanks for reading this! I hope you found this interesting and that you’ll go check out the videos. Some folks have told me that they find the videos to be relaxing, as well as inspiring. Subscribe to my YouTube channel (it’s free) to receive notifications when I post new art videos.