C.K. Sample

This is something I need to get back into the practice of doing:

The first thing to do is to get in the groove. Practice drawing lines until you can lay them down in fairly predictable parallel strokes. Do it in boring practice sessions or just start working them into your drawings. Try greying gradations, filling boxes from pure white to solid black — space the lines far apart in the first box, then halve the distance in the second box, then halve it again in the third and so on until your final block is completely black. Next, try crossing your vertical lines with horizontal ones, weaving darker and darker gradations. Then lay a diagonal set of lines over the grid, upper left to lower right, then cross back upper right to lower left. Try keeping them as regular and even as you can, so you can create various sorts of grey with various sorts of combinations of lines. Don’t make yourself nuts just experiment with lines at 45 and 90 degree angles.

I’m Mr. Unsteady hand with longer lines. Always have been. That’s one of the reasons I tend to work mostly in small, short, and erratic lines, pointillism, or blind contour. The chaos of the strokes adds character to these types of drawings rather than detracting from them. In any case, this type of practice would do me a lot of good, so I think I am going to start following this advice religiously (without making myself nuts about it).