Many children love to sketch and shade with pencils. It is a beautiful technique that gives dimension to a drawing. All children, especially above the age of 10, should definitely try Pencil Shading.

Before we talk about how to do pencil Shading, let’s talk about what you need to do pencil shading. Actually, this is a drawing technique where you need nothing other than a paper, HB pencil and an eraser.

But there are a lot of serious stuff that is available in the market which you can buy for your pencil shading project. This gives amazing effects to your sketch and they are fun to use.

What type of pencils can you use for shading? What are H, B, and HB pencil?

To know more about this, you should watch this video from LethalChris Drawing. It not only talks about different types of pencils but also tells us you how to control the pressure on the pencil to determine the depth of shading.

You should be also aware of different types of shading techniques.

Hatching, cross-hatching, circling, stippling, squirkling or scribbling are some of the techniques that you can use to create texture to your drawing.

Other than pencils for shading, you would also need a blending tool/ blending stump or a simple cotton swab for blending the marks uniformly. Many do use their fingers to blend but it sometimes might have the effect of oil or sweat in the hand.

You would also need a kneadable eraser for sketching. The kneaded eraser can lift the graphite or charcoal from paper without smudging it. Change the shape of the eraser and it can be used to erase an area of any shape and size easily.

Buy drawing and sketching sets online

If you looking for buying your drawing and sketching sets online, here are some suggestions. (These are affiliated links).

The graded pencils that I love to buy is from Staedtler. This set of soft pencils come in a beautiful tin box with pencils from 8B to HB.

Bianyo Artist quality sketching pencils is another good quality graphite pencil. They have a different range of pencils than Staedtler.

After the pencils, we need the paper stumps. Paper stumps are used for merging. You have a choice to buy Kabeer Art paper stump or the Cretacolor Paper Stumps Set. Here are the links.

The kneadable eraser can be none other than Cretacolor kneadable Eraser Big.

I love to use Bianyo Artist Quality Sketch Pad for sketching. These A5 sketch pads are just the right size for beginners and it is also easy to carry. Many use watercolor paper for pencil shading to get the texture of watercolor paper in their drawing.

Few other things that you would like to have with you are the Sakura Gelly Rolls white Gel pens. This is useful to highlight some areas.

If you are interested to use pens to sketch, here are some choices.

Projects for Pencil Shading

Once you are ready with your drawing supplies, you can start with your sketching. Here are some projects that you can try. These sketches are all done by children between 10 to 13 years.

Draw some shapes

The first stage of learning pencil shading is to control the pressure of the pencil on the paper. So take a blank sheet of paper and make rectangles.Try to shade with uniform pressure. Once you are comfortable using a constant pressure to shade an area, try shading in graduating tones. Here you start with the maximum and then slowly lower the pressure to give a lighter tone. You can try the other way round too, going from the lighter tone to the darker one.

Learning to shade different shapes is also important. The pencil movement should be done according to the shape of the object. Straight lines of shaded texture will not be ok on a round object. It has to bring out the feeling of the shape with its strokes. 

Still life

It is important to know how to do still life. It helps you to learn drawing proportionately. Shading these brings dimension to these objects. Another thing that one learns is to understand the concept of light and shade.

Op art or 3D art

Op art or 3D art uses light and shade to create an optical illusion. This form of art is a pleasure to create and unless done perfectly, will not give the effect. Here is a video where you can see how pencil shading is creating the illusion of this object coming out of paper.

Landscape shading

Take a pencil shading of a landscape or try to take a reference from nature. First think again about the source of light. Then shade to create depth.

Portrait or a cartoon painting

This is one thing everyone loves to draw. And this is the way to learn to shade in a fun way. There are lots of places where you can get references to draw portraits. You need to learn how to do the proportions of a face properly.

Have you tried sketching a drop of water?

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