Drawing Techniques- Line thickness

Changing the line thickness in a drawing creates a more interesting and dimensional piece.  Making a line thicker can pull a section forward making the thinner line recede.  A thicker line can make a section look more weighted like someone putting more weight on one foot than another.  I also do this in creating leaded glass windows-  using thicker and thinner lead within a piece to move areas forward and backward.  

Drawing Techniques- using symbols

Use symbols or shapes as background, texture, shading or to define an area.  Matisse is a good example of this.  Shapes and symbols are used in aboriginal art and each shape has a particular meaning.
The painting below is titled Dancer which I painted in 1994.

Drawing Techniques- shading/light to dark gradation

This technique helps to develop light to dark gradations using pencil.  The trick to this is to layer building from light to dark.  If you try to draw light and then dark it will not have the gradation look.  You will end up with distinct lines showing the difference of light and dark.  You can also do this exercise doing hatch and crosshatch.

Drawing Techniques- drawing opposite side

This will stretch your brain- as you are drawing something think of what the opposite side looks like and draw it into the piece.

Drawing Techniques- hatch/cross hatch

Hatch and cross hatch are used to shade areas, add definition and shape.  If more shading is needed cross hatching is great.