How do I shade in tones when drawing people with pencil?

I normally blend the pencil to shade but when I showed my teacher she told me it was horrible and threw it away :( It took ages.. So how do I shade properly? AND how do I draw hair and eyes???!How do I shade in tones when drawing people with pencil?
iv'e never heard of a teacher throwing away work like that either. I do hope you reported her for it. If i did that i would expect to be on a disciplinary for it. I would suggest you work the other way round and blend from the shade rather than towards it. especially if you use blenders, tortion etc... you can get a much more subtle tone that way. I would also suggest not making the dark shades too dark to start with. but build up with layers ontop of each other to get the tones you want. start with a harder pencil like 2B to define your shaped and build your tones. then use 4B/6B just to add a little bit of punch to the really darker areas.



fingers are always usefull for blending. but i would recommend getting paper tortions, I even use the silicon shaper brushes you get for clay work (not the red ones though). there good for charcoal and pastel work too.



another method is to use cotton buds and cotton wool. this is good if you want to get very subtle lighter tones. use a sanding block to create some powder from whatever your using on a seperate sheet. and kind of use it like paint. dip the cotton bud or cotton wool into the powder and gently draw with that. again this works with graphite, pastel, chalks and charcoal.How do I shade in tones when drawing people with pencil?
WOW! I never heard of an Art teacher thowing away a student's art before. That's terrible!! And not a constructive teaching method...Go back to your horrible teacher and ask her to spend some time showing you the appropriate methods you should be using for pencil drawing in her class. If that doen't work, get some books about portrait drawing out of the library (and some other books about dealing with the mentally ill). Good Luck!!