Drawspace lesson F03 - Different pencils, different values

Hello,

And welcome to Lesson F03 of a Drawspace art program.
This lesson is all about values. Well, pencil values, that is. It suggests to draw some mountains using all the possible pencil range there is.

The thing is that at this moment I don't have the whole spectrum of the possible pencils, and to tell you the truth, I don't intend to buy them all. I have most of them so I'll use what I have.

Also this lesson is about Atmospheric and Overlapping perspectives, meaning we'll be combining the two of them together.

At some point it was suggested in the lesson to use any of the learned shading method - Squirkling or Hatching. Since there's no challenge again, I decided to do both verisons.

The idea is simple - it's like "Drawing by numbers" method. I will be using my pencils on the marked area and then I'll use it again pressing harder on it.

This is the outline. I didn't add the numbers at first but I thought about the time I'd waste if I keep coming back to the sketch in the lesson all the time... So I added them. And saved myself some time.

After finishing the first plane - the farthest mountain I've realized that I made some mistake here. I made the outline using the HB pencil and so all the outlines are the same value, meaning no Atmospheric perspective in this sketch.
This is the sketch itself.

Like I said before, I've decided to do both Hatching and Squirkling shading, so this is the second sketch.

It was pretty easily done. It took some time, of course but I was patient and manage to finish both sketches.

So for Tip of the day would be this advice: When shading - be patient. It always takes time.

The one thing I didn't understand was the reason of drawing from bottom up, dark to light. Usually it's the other way around...

Also, how the hell people do the edges so smoothly? Experience only?

I wish you a great day,
Dalia