Pencil sketching is drawing with a pencil. It is both the general technique of drawing, and a method of reproducing photos. For the latter, the negative image of a photograph is placed in a photographic enlarger in a dark room. The image is projected on to the paper where the sketch is to be done. All the light shades are penciled until the paper is all the same shade.

In history, the use of "pencil" sketches were preliminary drawings that allowed the artist to put the ideas for a larger (fresco or oil painting) down on paper. Pencil sketches are inexpensive and allow the artist to try out different ideas before committing to an expensive and time consuming painting or fresco.

The use of a modern pencil however (i.e.: a stick of graphite encased in a wooden holder) did not come into use until modern times, the artists of the Renaissance made sketches using a silver stylus on specially prepared paper (known as silverpoint), that is similar to a modern pencil sketch.

Even in the Renaissance the drawing came into itself as an art work onto itself when Michalangelo and Leonardo da Vinci created sketches for frescos that were never completed in Florence.

Pencil drawing is often mostly pencil erasing, that is once the graphite from the pencil is placed on the paper the harsh lines are smudged using an art gum eraser to create shading and fullness. When skillfully done the drawing in pencil will resemble a black and white (or rather a "grayscale") rendering of a photograph. Two kinds of erasers are common in pencil drawing: art gum and hard rubber. Art gum will not totally remove the graphite from the paper but will create the aforementioned shading effect; hard rubber will remove the graphite to "clean up" the drawing by removing the unwanted lines or to bring the drawing into perspective.

See also

• Drawing

Drawing