Chapter 3 | USING YOUR ERASER
A good eraser (not smudging!) is an almost indispensable drawing tool. It’s only super annoying if your paper suddenly folds or tears while erasing. I have seen it happen quite often. Therefore, keep your paper taut with your other hand while you erase. You then erase in the area between your thumb and index finger.
Exercise 1: draw something somewhere on your paper and erase it in the manner shown here.
With a good eraser you can draw light in the dark, change shadows and lighten lines. See the examples below. This works best if you use soft pencils (2B, 3B, etc.).
Exercise 2: Draw a nice dark circle (left). Lighten part of the outline with your eraser (right).
This way a a ‘bare’ line drawing (left) could be given some atmosphere by using an eraser. First, the entire line drawing was completely covered with a shade of gray (middle). Finally, some parts were lightened with an eraser (right).
Exercise 4: Trace (or redraw) lightly the next line drawing and try to apply the same steps as above. Feel free to improvise where to use the eraser to draw light parts.
You can clean a dirty eraser with sandpaper.
