I was today years old when I was told that the way I hold pencil is good for writing letters but bad for drawing smoothly flowing precise lines. I changed my grip from tripod to violin bow OR pen and voila...
Thanks helpyoudraw tumblr for a helpful illustration
I'm also very frustrated with the art teachers at schools. Either I didn't listen to them or they REALLY didn't explain the most basic things about drawing :/ Like "humans invented realistic drawing only some 20,000 years after they invented writing, and for the first few centuries needed hardcore math to get it right", or "every famous artist spends tons of time drawing the same line over and over until the line feels right" or "FFS of course you can use a ruler or whatever, as long as it helps you to get the result that you want".
The criticism I received from my art teachers in middle school was also far from helpful. I bet 99% of people who stopped trying art had terrible art teachers. And the 1% who didn't? Somehow kept drawing despite terrible art teachers.
> Hold the pencil like you would hold the writing pen, but much further from the tip. ... at about 2 inches (5 /cm/) from the tip the grip becomes suitable only for minute detailing, and less than that is impractical.
> This grip is good for detailing, and for small-size sketching on near-horizontal plane (inclined table or board set on tabletop). It is also the grip Wacom tablets are designed for.
SO I was also holding the tablet's pencil wrong, too?! :/
@nina_kali_nina hopefully violin bow. Viola bow is too scary.
@ozzelot@mstdn.social@noplasticshower @nina_kali_nina I hope there is a pen long enough for the double bass bow.
@ozzelot @noplasticshower @nina_kali_nina With German hold, too.
I don't wanna switch to French grip at this point.
(Funny thing: the bass bow is actually shorter than the violin one. I have no idea why.)
@promovicz@chaos.social@nina_kali_nina Another good one: draw with your arm, not your hands. It's steadier because it's heavier. 
@promovicz yep, I already figured it out while practicing the new grip
@Xtrems876@nina_kali_nina so now I learned that the way I write my letters is good for detail work...
@Xtrems876 letters ARE full of details ngl
@Xtrems876 @nina_kali_nina Same. No wonder my handwriting is so notoriously tiny.
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io@nina_kali_nina I did a week long "drawing on the right side of the brain" course where they walk you through the process step by step (and the ways we mis-perceive things). It was amazing. everyone in the class had a great looking self portrait at the end. We could totally be teaching it better. 
@nina_kali_nina I recently started learning how to sketch via https://drawabox.com/ and the first thing they teach is the grip. Makes such a huge difference.
@lanodan@queer.hacktivis.meAlso at least for pen&paper drawing and painting you can use arm motions like at wrist level but also sometimes elbow.
@nina_kali_nina started drawing some years after mandatory art classes in school
i'm doing something between the normal writing and pen grip i guess, works good enough for me
with computer art i work at the pixel level which i'd consider a different set of skills (that i probably got with editing tons of stuff)
@evv42 pixel art is a completely different beast, yeah!!!
@nina_kali_nina @evv42 Yep, needs a completely different grip for starters 
Don't get me started on "perspective was just suddenly invented" but was the result of using a camera obscura to capture a scene 
@nina_kali_nina I think this is also true for people who give up on math. Teaching math well means rewinding history back to before a given technique exists and helping students see the need for it and even try to invent it a bit themselves. But few teachers really even get the space for that explorative pedagogy even if it occurred to them. The results are loads of people who think they hate math or aren't good at it. I was one such person until I re-taught myself.
@roadriverrail yep, school in generally barely explains why things are worth learning, it all feels like such a waste of time
@nina_kali_nina Yeah, bad art teachers do a lot of damage. Like bath math teachers.
(Naturalism/realism as we understand it is only a couple thousand years later than writing. But it is, as you say, tens of thousands of years younger than drawing, though there are some amazingly observant wall paintings of animals.)
@jaykass@mastodon.online@nina_kali_nina wait, you're allowed to do that?
Is this why I suck at drawing? Or is it much more than that?
@jaykass this might be one of the reasons. After I changed my grip and doodled for 30 minutes, I was able to draw pretty flowing lines like The Artists Do. There are many other possible reasons, one common reason is automatically relying on your memorized symbols to "short cut" and "speed up" the drawing process. I'm currently going through "Drawing on the right side of the brain" book, in parallel with "The art and science of drawing". One week in, or roughly 7 hours of drawing in total, trying to draw every day for an hour or so, following the textbook. I can definitely see a lot of progress in my drawing skills. Here is the drawing of my left hand - one from 29th of January 2025, and one from a few hours ago, BEFORE I learned about the way of holding the pencil (I tried to understand why the lines I draw are so... boring and wrong).
@jaykass@mastodon.online@nina_kali_nina my mind is sincerely blown.
Like, of course you can grip a pen or pencil differently to achieve different results. But that never occurred to me.
@jaykass I know right? T_T
I'm so thankful my first art professor here at uni I had, first day, was literally, you are holding your pencil wrong for drawing.
Great class, enjoyed it very much.
@skatercat@mastodon.au@nina_kali_nina Great tip. I once did a life drawing class but have forgotten nearly everything.
@nina_kali_nina Artists often internalise a lot of techniques and stop noticing them, and so don't teach them. I had to interrogate my teacher on a few occasions before I stumbled upon some of them. The pen grip is still useful for small details, BTW. Also, try long lead sharpening. You can discover more of the various techniques by scouring youtube too. I learned a lot of them this way, which didn't stop me from getting frustrated with myself, and giving up for now, anyway
@dozymoe@mastodon.social@nina_kali_nina the last two images are chopsticks holding fingers
@LevelUp@corteximplant.com@nina_kali_nina these are grips I learned from gesture drawing classes and they really do help a lot. Sometimes I fall into the habit of the writing grip but the violin grip is one of my faves tbh.
I wish my tablet pen had a better rubber grip for this, it feels like the economic grip is mostly designed for that writing grip tbh. I like my apple pencil though because I can use these grips with that.
@kodaian@fedi.catboy.agency@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt huh, i tried the pen grip and the brush one and to me it feels like drawing with my left (non-dominant) hand, it's very weird
@kodaian I had to doodle for half an hour straight to be able to draw a line with it, but it was worth it
@kodaian@fedi.catboy.agency@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt fair enough, guess i'll keep trying and see if my technique improves
@kodaian good luck! The advice that I got for the practice is to try and draw the thinnest line I could, to the point it stops being visible from 3-5 metres away. After I managed to do this consistently, as a side effect I also could draw other types of line intentionally. Not that I'm good at it, but I think I'm getting a gist of it
@lina@nina_kali_nina huh, i've always been taught my way of holding a pen [when writing] is "bad" or weird but apparently i've been doing the pen grip [and also switching to brush grip for.. details, how could anyone guess]
guess that's why my handwriting has some bells & whistles from cursive calligraphy but isn't even remotely cursive :p
As an artists' model who has worked with dozens if not hundreds of different tutors... the ones I rate are the ones who make sure people know the basics. How to position an easel. How to hold a pencil. Drawing from the shoulder not the wrist.
That kind of stuff.
@nina_kali_nina i was taught this in primary school but somehow i still can’t get used to it
@xarvos I heard that's true for some people! I find the brush grip more convenient than the recommended violin bow grip, too
@nina_kali_nina surely I must have found a way to hold it where everything looks bad. 
@ouroukaye so, there's no bad or good grip per se, but there's a good grip and a bad grip for different situations! Using the grip I knew I can draw angular lines of even thickness, and that's rad. But I couldn't draw pretty circles and ovals, and I couldn't draw pencil lines that change thickness - now I can if I want to! I'm sure I'll use both. Each skill like that is a weapon!
@ouroukaye yep, I generally feel like I have more axis of freedom at the expense of having controls altered and perhaps a bit less precise at super tiny details
yet for the position of the hand, I am closer to the bad one than the others, but I don't feel confident to change it yet. Also I work on a high flat table on a small but thick drawing book (14 x 14 x 2 cm), which does not seems to help with other hand positions, some seems more suited for "vertical" work stations.
thanks for the advices and feedback
@ouroukaye no problem :D I am an absolute beginner, so I just share what I just read. Glad you find it helpful, that's all
@nina_kali_nina thanks so much for sharing this !! 
@nina_kali_nina It's the first time I've ever seen it, and after trying it for a few minutes... Why did no one teach me that? Turns out, that my drawing doesn't seem to suck nearly as much as it did beforehand.
@foxes here are a few more:
- "your page ought to be same size as the rectangle you made with your fingers when you use them as viewfinder, or the proportions will be very off",
- "drawing an outline of an object first will result in accumulating the errors",
- "if your sketchbook is lying on the table, the image will be stretched and perspective will be all funny because the angle you're looking at it from constantly changes"
Lots of know-hows %)
@nina_kali_nina back in elementary school part of the evaluation for my adhd and any special accommodations was pencil grip. they remarked positively about me having a mature tripod grip. i vaguely remember non art teachers discouraging anything else. my art teachers never went over different grips
@ORCACommander T_T nooooooooooooo
@Alkaris@meow.social@nina_kali_nina Gesture Grip makes me think someone's about to cast a spell. xD
@nina_kali_nina I'm a hook-handed lefty, and as far as I can tell, the way I hold a pen or pencil isn't good for anything... including writing.
@elysegrasso aaah, that sounds tough! Doesn't mean you cannot draw with the grip that you have, though.
@nina_kali_nina This was helpfull. Thank you. I tried this way and my fingers and hand don't hurt like they used to.