Quick Tips:
Reductive Drawing
Reductive drawing is a great way to create a drawing. It gets you away from thinking about lines and helps you focus on value, tone, and shape. To create a reductive drawing, start with a toned ground on paper. To create a toned ground, use a piece of compressed charcoal to cover your paper with value, then use a paper towel or a cloth to blend the charcoal into an even ground. Use a pink pearl eraser, vinyl eraser, and kneaded erasers to sketch in the basic shapes of your objects. Using your erasers to lighten the value, you can utilize different pressure to get a wonderful range of values. You can also use brushes, cloth, tissue, and paper towels to remove charcoal from your paper. You can use many tools to lighten your values in a reductive drawing. I use stomps, razor blades, brillo pads, steel wool, sand paper, dremels and even orbital sanders. If the paper is thick enough you can get very aggressive with it.
The reductive drawing technique gives you a drawing that feels more like a painting. Use your imagination and have fun with reductive drawing.