Speed Draw: Shading Hands with Hatching

Hands are notoriously tricky to draw, so when I saw this beautiful hand positioning in Michele Bajona's drawing, I knew I had to try it! I've been working on hands and feet with a teen student, and this was a perfect challenge.

In this speed drawing, I fill in the shading on the right hand without a reference—just using anatomy knowledge and intuition. Did I get close? Watch and decide!

Speed Draw: Shading Hair with Graphite

Watch as I build value and texture in the hair on the right side of this portrait, keeping the graphite pencil strokes natural to capture the flow and volume of curls. The key? Direction, depth, and subtle shading!

Blending Large Areas with Prismacolor Pencils

This speed draw (filmed while teaching via Zoom—apologies for the camera quality!) shows how I blend large areas like the table using Prismacolor colored pencils. I also test out Brush and Pencil Brand Colored Pencil Powder Blender—not totally convinced yet, but still experimenting!

Check out how I use sighting and structural lines to create accurate proportions by hand for my portrait outlines.

A year or more ago I found the Erasable Podcast and their Facebook page which opened the door to obsessed PENCIL GEEKS LIKE ME! Thank goodness, because as a lone pencil geek, my students and people found me odd. But in this group, I have a mild interest in pencils and while I don't collect them, I use a heck of a lot of pencils day-to-day! So here was my first trade with a fellow pencil geek, and it definitely was fun enough to want to trade more!