Sketching is a fast and easy way to start your drawing routine and is invaluable in recording details for future painting projects. But unfortunately sometimes even our sketches leave a lot to be desired.
Here is a quick tutorial designed to get you better results fast.. you may be encourage to pop your sketch book into your bag more often when you leave the house or go on holiday.

 

Paper

One of the first areas we can look at is the paper you are using. For the sketch above, a smooth 150g/m acid free cartridge paper was used. Nice paper, but it doesn’t add anything to your sketch. I would first recommend using some textured paper. This will help with the lines we draw so they are not so smooth and uniformed resulting in a lot more mood in our sketch.

Line drawing practice

Beginners tend to draw their images with only one or maybe two types of line.. straight and thick & straight. We need to remember that there are so many textures we will need to depict that we will need more than this one type of stroke in our repertoire to really get some sort of feeling in our sketch.

Before you start on your pen/ink sketch try doing some pencil exercises to get you familiar with using different strokes and ways of showing the various parts of say, an old cottage like in our sketch.

Drawing windows can sometimes be tricky. Trying to portray glass can be a challenge. Try the exercise and rather than just drawing the window frames, color the panes darker to give the window depth.
Also, make sure you draw in the window frames, not just a cross.. colored in or not.. this will make your windows much more realistic.

Grass doesn’t have to be just flicks of pencil randomly over an area. Use a series of short upward strokes for “short & trimmed” grass or lots of strokes on mass, with your strokes going up, to the sides and sometimes down to depict nice big clumps of “out of control” grass.

 

Trees: Using small strokes like you did making grass, use lots of directional “pushed” strokes to create the foliage. Some dots will also be needed here and there for the leaves that are directly in front of you.

 

Light and darks: You don’t always have to draw every object as a “positive” image. Try drawing the "negative" space of trees and bushes giving the impression of shadow and depth.

Now you are ready to begin your sketch.. Here are some other points to keep in mind as you draw.

As you are using textured paper don’t let it go to waste. Let your pen “graze” over the paper to give hints of line where needed and larger, tonal blocks..

Use tonal washes to enhance shapes and shadows. Allow each wash to dry completely before the next application. This way you will be able to control depth of shadows within your work.
I used a warm brown tone for my wash. This helps give the sketch a softer and an older feel.

Click on the image below for a better look..