Going above and beyond in a sketch

My students have seriously embraced the tactic I taught them about doing pencil sketches first, then going back over the lines with a felt tip pen and lastly, adding some color to the pictures. While it does concern me a bit that a lot of the students' work ends up looking the same, I am happy they are embracing this tactic that is merely meant to get them to be happy with their work.

Here is a recent 1-hour sketch, pen, and color that a student did in my class in the past week.

if you look closely you can see, especially around the top, where they put some pencil lines and decided against them when it came time to use the felt-tip pen to choose something a bit more permanent. Since we ran out of time it remains to be seen if the child is going to want to leave that blank or not but if they do, they can always color in the sky to hide the marks there. This is one thing that this particular student could improve: If you press down too hard with the pencil the markings are impossible to totally take away. Regardless, I am impressed with this particular student's improvement over the past few months.

I also enjoy the fact that the students, generally speaking, are "cool" with not focusing too much on the realism of people and animals when we are doing simple landscapes. I always tell them to "leave something up to the viewer to decide on their own" rather than making everything photo-realistic. Art is a lot more fun when the beholder has to determine what is actually going on and I say "realism be damned".... well kind of... I don't curse in front of the students.

I think that for most people getting involved with this method of lightly sketching with pencil first, then filling in what you like with a felt-tip pen and then later and lastly adding color is a wonderful way to hone skills as well as introduce people to the world of art and to help them discover a talent that they otherwise might not realize that they have!

The best reasoning behind this method is the elimination of frustration: You have a lot of opportunities to correct any mistakes before it becomes something that you can't erase and that's the main thing the kids love. Hell, I love it and I've been doing this for decades! Give it a try! It costs next to nothing to try your hand at it.