The Great Pencil Debate
Can a few pencil lines actually make your line work looser? A quick look at when simple pencil structure can help you relax, simplify a complicated scene and draw with more confidence.
SKETCHING & TRAVEL
8/28/20262 min read
There’s a school of thought in sketching that going straight in with pen can give you a freer, more energetic line. No pencil — just commit to the line in pen, and any mistakes become part of the energy of the sketch. This works beautifully in many cases, but I’d also like to make the case that, in some situations, a little pencil can actually help your line work become looser.
That situation can arise when you’re a beginner, but it can just as easily happen to a more experienced sketcher tackling a complicated scene. I certainly find this is true for me. Give me a complicated scene and I can freeze up completely. Will I get it all on the page? Will I fit in the bits I actually want? Will the perspective work? Will everything line up properly? Before I know it, I’m concentrating so hard on not getting it wrong that my line work becomes rigid.
So what do I do when I find myself in that situation? At Owen Labbé’s workshop in Toulouse, he showed us a simple technique that I’ve found incredibly helpful — and it’s this technique that I’d like to make the case for here.
Owen’s technique consists of starting with a simple outline box, which immediately takes away the problem of placement and scale. I know where the sketch is going to sit on the page and roughly how big it’s going to be.
The box isn’t a prison for the sketch — if something needs to wander outside it, that’s absolutely fine — but it gives me enough structure to stop worrying about whether everything is going to fit.
From there, I can add my eye level line, a few large shapes and just enough angles to give me the basic structure. That’s really all I need. Five minutes with a pencil can save the whole sketch.
As you can see, there’s no detail at all. Once I have that basic structure in place, I can relax. I’m no longer worrying about where everything is going to go, and I find my line work becomes much looser as a result.
So if you’re struggling to keep your line work loose, maybe give this a try. It might just be that pencil isn’t the problem - it might actually be the answer.