If you notice, the other half of her clothes isnt finished. It's the only photo I have of this before I gave it to grandmother. I used graphite pencils and...
Vellum board.

This is one of my most realistic graphite portraits. I hope I can get used to using vellum again!
Here's another shot in another angle

The advantage of using vellum board
vellum board is office paper, its smooth, acid free and thick. Most often this is used for printing cards, calling cards etc.
Many artists here in the Philppines use it because of it's fine and smooth texture which actually helps artworks to look fine as well.
Anyway, as you can see in my artwork, its detailed and when you smudge your pencil, it produces a very fine and the coverage is good.

This is a portrait of my aunt
This is regular paper, sketchpad paper which is:
textured
acid free
and slightly yellowish or cream colored but hardly noticeable.
Most visual artists recommend textured paper because it helps create automatic textured effect with less effort.

The rest of the pictures here are done with textured paper. Somehow it's harder to smudge and blend but in some cases textured paper is more appropriate.
spreading color on it is easier too since the colored pencils pigment stick faster to it.

My uncle
the teeth here are hardly marked with hard lines. Its to avoid making the teeth look dark/ stained or with black lines which is associated to decay.

When smudging the graphite on the face, its okay to not leave any white paper on the areas on the face. you can always

erase it with a kneaded eraser
What is a Kneaded Eraser and How to Use one
its like clay, you can mold it and erase fine lines or small areas with easily controlled pressure!
When you dab your drawing with the eraser, it creates highlights which give it a 3D effect.

This drawing of my aunt was rather difficult. I had to repeat this twice since I couldnt get it properly but...

Repeating an artwork will be worth it the second time
Somehow you memorize facial features and you get to look at it long enough to realize where you did it wrong.

Similarly, this other portrait of my aunt I also did twice.

This is one of the most accurate I've done! This is my aunt too.

Then,

This is edited by a bit, I gave it a warm hue.

I copied this from a picture of a photo, again its challenging to copy from a not so HD picture
I hope I was able to copy it well

Lastly, Brown paper

Brown paper gives your art an extra tone

it will automatically serve as a midtone, a neutral one.

Then you have your CHARCOAL pencil or GRAPHITE PENCIL (anything dark or pigmented) then WHITE or LIGHT COLORED pencils as highlights.

n

For this, I used charcoal and chalk as our art professor instructed us to do
this is a classical piece we copied.

The brown paper is large so, this is quite a big piece, it took me 2 weeks to make this.

You can also use ink for both brown paper, textured paper and vellum board.

this is a self portrait in distorted grid and then still life using pen art.

keep it up guys!

and

No matter how hard! keep going!

Which of the three kinds of paper do you like?
Any comments and observations?
I hope this has helped you somehow in choosing paper for your art. Now you see some good options!

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