Blending and Gradation

Mastering blending and gradation techniques is one form of basic pencil drawing techniques. Of course, gradation blending will help sharpen your eye to identify levels of light intensity, so you can see areas of an object that are light and dark. Practicing gradation blending is also very useful when creating shadows from an object.

You can practice the gradation blending technique by creating a row of boxes. The number is up to you, as shown below.

After creating the row of boxes, blend each box with a pencil of different size. For example, 2H, H, B, 2B, with the same pressure, you can see the difference in intensity of light and dark produced by each pencil.

Then blend each square with one size of pencil. For example, blend the first box with a 2H pencil, then blend the second box with an H pencil, and so on. 

When blending, all is done with the same pressure. Observe the differences in intensity of light and dark produced by each pencil. Then gradation blending can be produced in another way, by creating several rows of boxes like the image below.

Create several rows of boxes, then blend each row with the same pencil, for example a B pencil, but blend with different pressures on each box. You will find that the B pencil can almost match the shadow quality of a 4B pencil.

Then you use several types of pencils, such as B, 4B, and 9B. Color the top row of boxes with a B pencil, then blend each box with different levels of pencil pressure. Observe the intensity of light and dark produced with the B pencil. Then blend the middle row of boxes with a 4B pencil, and apply different pressure on each box. Similarly, blend the bottom row of boxes with a 9B pencil with different pressure.

Blending with the strongest pressure produced by the B pencil can almost match the quality of blending with a 4B pencil, as well as the 4B pencil with strong pressure can match the intensity of blending with a 9B pencil. With a little pressure, the intensity of blending produced by the 4B pencil can match the intensity of blending with a B pencil. Do this with various other types of pencils so that your sensitivity to the intensity of light and dark on an object increases.

For the next exercise, you can try creating a basic shape composition, then on each basic shape give blending with different intensity levels.

Make boxes with various sizes and shapes that have already been distorted. Then arrange the boxes. You can also create shapes using other basic shapes such as circles, triangles, and so on. You can arrange these basic shapes in different ways. Try making various types of sketches, find ideas for other shape compositions, and choose the sketch you like.

After creating a composition sketch of the box shapes, prepare a variety of pencil sizes, I prefer to use a hard size pencil such as H first to give a light shadow on the desired box, then in some parts still with the same pencil I apply more pressure to give a dark shadow.

After determining which boxes I wanted to shade for the light and dark areas, I used a soft pencil like 2B. You can see in the image below that by shading light and dark, the composition of the boxes looks like there is volume or depth.

Practicing composing basic shapes helps you see the difference in light and dark intensity on pencils. Look for other ideas for compositions of basic shapes. Shadow gradation can also differentiate the volume of an object.

Practicing the composition of basic shapes helps you see the difference in light and dark intensity on pencils. Look for other ideas for basic shape compositions. Shadow gradation can also distinguish the volume of an object. When you draw an object, you will understand that by applying light and dark gradation, the object appears to have different volume and light intensity.