How To Draw Blur Effect

Asked • 03/15/19

How do I get a blur effect in pencil drawings?

When drawing pictures with a pencil, I often want to create a more or less solid darker colour in some region. It's easy to shade an area so that it appears a solid dark colour from a distance, e.g. by hatching or cross-hatching, but I'd like to be able to blur the lines in a hatched or cross-hatched area so that the darkness is uniform even when looking at the picture close up.In the past I achieved this using a special eraser I had. As an eraser it was very bad, since instead of rubbing out pencil marks it blurred them and made them spread darkly across a bigger region. This, however, made it perfect for creating uniformly dark areas in pencil drawings.Now that I don't have that eraser any more (or at least, I don't know where it is to lay my hands on it), I'd like to know a better method.**After shading an area with pencil strokes, how can I blur these strokes together to get a uniformly dark region?**

2 Answers By Expert Tutors

Valentina A. answered • 04/16/19

Teacher's Assistant in Drawing/Life Drawing

Try using a stump/blender, its basically paper rolled tightly into a small pencil shape. It works well to blend areas after layering media to create a softer, smooth, and even blurred look.

Joseph D. answered • 03/15/19

Expert Pencil Artist of +10 Years

What i would do is use a smugger to draw. Try creating the gist shape and shade of your object and use the smugger to smear it smooth. basically will do the same as your eraser BUT you will have more control over it and finer detail with the different sized smugger.

For darker areas use more bolder pencils, I tend to not really use anything under a 2B but normally work with a 4B. Layering is also something you should be doing while building the background. The more you refine it in layers the more it will sharpen.

Try it out!

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