In that case, here's some homework for you:
INDENTING BASICS
INDIRECT INDENTING
GRAPHITE INDENTING

You've produced some interesting lines and shapes and your indents are quite sharp. I think you used a thick and thin stylus, which is good practice. I use my thicker one for whiskers, anbd the thin one for tapering the ends of hairs.

In a few places your shading is dropping into the indentations. You really need to use as much pressure as your paper will stand to get good depth. And I find shading obliquely across the indents works best; using a broad flat tip to your lead. Shading along the length often fails to prevent graphite entering the indent, and shading directly across it usually guarantees it will happen. It will also occur where the indent is quite shallow, so use lots of pressure when indenting.

This is a very useful technique, but always look for an alternative first. Except for a few uses (whiskers, for example) indenting produces a too-perfect line that conflicts with surrounding natural drawing.


I like your experiments with the varying weights of shading, and dots and lines. Nothing else will teach you how this technique will work for you. It's so dependent on your paper, pencils, how you apply the graphite, and your personal style. But do be careful to not over-use it.


Personally, I would never use it for that. Indenting produces a too-perfect line for many applications. So, it's good for whiskers with their parallel sides, but not good for organic uses such as wood grain, which we expect to be quite varied.

Also - to be more technical - wood grain has rings. Those rings have one hard edge and one soft edge. Growth stops in Winter, springs into life in spring (dark, rapid growth) and then slows over Summer (wider, lighter part), until it slowly stops in Winter. BUT indenting produces grain with TWO hard edges, which is unnatural.

So, before you use indenting, first look for suitable alternatives. Indenting can work in a drawing but the line it produces is very mechanical, so it often looks false and unrealistic. As I mentioned, I use it for whiskers and in areas of high contrast - for example, where the hairs of a dog's top lip overlap the shadows within the mouth below, or in the shadowy insides of its ears.

Finally, you often need to blend one or both ends of an indent into the surrounding drawing. For example, the root of a whisker needs to appear to growing out from between the surrounding hairs. And stitches need to be blended in at both ends to make them look as though they're coming up through the fabric and going back in.

All that's required is to draw a tapered line in the indent itself - starting dark at the root and then feathering to white. I usually find a 2H works well for that, or an HB if I need a darker root.


Good results, but I think you've discovered why I don't use this technique. Others do, to great effect, but I always find my indentations are soft-edged and break down easily under shading - no matter how much pressure I apply.

However, it's a good technique to know about. And, if you're uncertain about indenting on an actual drawing, it does allow you to plan the placements first on the overlay sheet before committing them to your paper.