Artist's Block

I'm sure most of us who enjoy drawing have come across an artist's block. If you don't know what an artist's block is, it's when you can't think of anything to draw and your creative thoughts are blocked, stopping you from drawing anything. There are many ways that people get over their artist's block, but the most successful way for me to overcome it is to draw a character from a T.V. show or video game. I also like to draw with my friends because they usually give me ideas of things to draw. I'm pretty sure there are some apps to help you get over your artist's block, but I haven't used any of those apps. There is also the simple solution of just not drawing for a while, until a good idea hits you, but other than that, the other ways are pretty good to use too. Artist's block can be a pretty hard thing to overcome, but if you keep on trying, you'll get over it sooner or later. There are all sorts of ways that you can get back in to drawing, you just have to find the one that you feel works the best. So these are the basics of how to overcome your artists block.

Lead Thickness

Like the pen tips, the pencil lead can also have a certain look on your drawing. Let's say you want to start off with a rough sketch and you don't want your lines to be too dark so you can erase easily. Your best choice for a mechanical pencil would be a 0.3 or a 0.5 pencil and lead. The lead is very thin and makes it much easier to create thin and light lines. On the other hand, the 0.9 and 0.7 lead can be much more thick and darker for your finished drawings. For people who use wooden pencils, the lightest you can go is a 10H, and the darkest you can go is a 10B. There is a large selection of pencils with lighter and darker lead, depending on the hardness of the pencil you like to draw in.

There is always the option to just press with more force or less force with the pencil that you have now, but you might not get the same outcome if you would have used the pencil meant for that kind of hardness. The pencils are honestly not that cheap. You can get a nice set of pencils 20-25 pencils and other art materials for about 20 dollars. That's a pretty good deal for all of those art pencils with some erasers and pens for 20 dollars. The set that I bought was probably 15 dollars for 5 pencils. That's all the basics of pencils and pencil lead.

Inking

This may seem like a very obvious tip but make sure to always wait about 30-40 second after inking. If you don't wait long enough for the ink to dry, when you add marker or rub your hand on the paper, it will smear. Sometimes when you ink, you might find it difficult to keep a straight line. My solution to that is to just to slowly do little bits on the drawing. If you draw too much too quickly, you might add a line you won't want. It also depends on what pens you're using to ink. If you're using micron pens, you'll have to wait 30-40 seconds as I said before. If you're using a type of pen that has a lot of ink, you may have to wait longer.

They also have different colored pens so you can add color to your drawings with pen ink. Depending on what size pen tip you have, you may get more ink out of every line. Most of the time, people will use the smaller pen tip for inking the mouth, eyes, and other more detailed lines. You could also use the wider pen tips to ink thicker lines like the clothing and the shoes (if your drawing has shoes). It all really depends on what you like to ink with, if you like to ink. These are just some of the basic tips to get your inking perfectly so that you don't mess up your lines and you come out with a great drawing.