There are many styles of drawing, surrealism, and contemporary. However, the most untainted of all art is the imitation of realistic image. Realism is the replica of something that is the same image of what you glimpse; what is real.

Realistic drawing is the style of art that is difficult, but nowhere near as complex as most of the people imagine.  There is in fact very little discrepancy between cartoons and realistic drawings.  The only most important differences are the color values and the shading.

To make cartoons the artist use excessively dark colors or bright, and are simply recreated using the colored pencils. Realistic drawings cannot be done simply using the colored pencil, as generally it may never create a “real-life” look with colored pencils.  However, paints and pastels can easily create the values needed for every-day colors.  These colors should be merged more to give a great realistic effect to the cartoon character.
Picture of any style can seem unexpectedly realistic with the accurate shading.  Just have a look at most computer-animated movies today, and you will notice many obvious instances of realistic drawings done with tremendous proportions or exceptional characters.  It is actually the apposite shading that makes the art look more and more realistic.

When you are up to make a realistic sketch, you should keep the following things in mind:

Learning to make realistic drawing, Mr. Pencil suggests that first is to begin to perceive objects all around us as simple shapes. The most important thing is to perceive the things from an artist’s point of view, and then comes the technical skills. The four basic shapes are, square, triangle, circle and rectangle.

Mr. Pencil recommends taking these basic shapes in a 3D mode and now the circle becomes a sphere or a ball, the square becomes a cube, the rectangle turns into a rectangular cube or a cylinder and the triangle turns into a pyramid. Therefore, as you start on drawing the bodies, animals, flowers, and faces of people, you actually should first draw out these basic shapes. It is easy to draw these shapes than trying to draw all of the multifarious details all at once.

For instance, if you are drawing a portrayal of a person, you first draw out the basic shapes. Once you have the shapes, you work on the shading. Shading is the magical power behind your realistic drawings. It is what makes your drawing to transform it from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. There are many types of shading methods available. One of these methods is crosshatching.
Crosshatching is technique of shading done using two or more sets of crisscross parallel lines. These graded markings specify light and shaded areas in your drawings or paintings.

As per the opinion of Mr. Pencil, it takes a great amount of practice and time if you want to learn the basics of drawing, your skills will show in your quality of realistic drawings. For practice, first make a column of about five blocks. Then using a 2B pencil, make the end block as dark as possible on its right. Keep that block white on the other end. In between, you shade it in a graduation from dark to light.

Notice that as you increase the lightness of the value, you lighten up on the pressure of the pencil .Begin by making a linear crosshatch. Make your lines as dense as possible. Do not try to rush go slow. Lines could be crosshatched in four directions, two diagonals vertical, and horizontal, use just two different directions for light tones. You should use all four directions for darker tones.

You can try it by spacing the lines closer or far part .You may also change the pencils to a 6B or 2B to see how diverse your results might be. Your pencils must be sharpened. You will also get unusual results if your pencils are dull. Your hand should be able to draw precise and accurate. This takes practice and time.

It can be fun and profitable to create realistic drawings and illustrations. Crosshatching, and shading, are just two main elements of making the realistic drawings. Mr. Pencil suggests that the key to getting high quality is practice and more practice.

Soft sketch pencils
On the other hand, soft sketch pencils are designated the character capital B. These sketch pencils also vary their degree of softness. The degree of softness varies like 0B, 1B, 2B and so on. As the number goes higher, the pencil goes softer. Let’s say like a 10B pencil has very soft graphite compared to a 5B sketch pencil. Such sketch pencils are best used for shading since the shades produced are of great quality as required in sketches usually. One can take up a soft pencil from Mr Pencil and work their way up the list since the softer the pencil you choose, the darker the line you get. The reason for this is quite simple if you think a bit. Mr Pencil suggested that when you press on a softer graphite pencil, it breaks away more easily than does in a harder sketch pencil getting you a thicker sketch.

So how would you sketch a figure with these varying types of sketch pencils? As per Mr Pencil, here is a way that best suits all. You can first start the outlining of your sketch using an H pencil since the basics are important and if you get something wrong, the markings are light since you used a hard sketch pencil and it’s easy to undo it. Just try to get a picture of your sketch in this stage, do not hard on the pencil since it only wastes your energy. You use a hard pencil to get a light sketch so that you get the right frame and then proceed with darkening with the image dimensions. After this, you have a sketch outline. You can start with your darkening of the sketch. Use soft pencils of higher number when you need dark shadings or sketch patterns. You can optionally blend the pencil markings too by nudging the graphite on the paper sketch using a finger to get a smooth uniform shade.

Mr Pencil also suggested to experiment with the variants of pencils so that you will figure out which ones to use and in which situation or for which pattern of the sketch. Trying this will finally leave you with one final pencil that you may feel is best for all purposes or maybe you will have a set of 2-3 sketch pencils just for your sketches every time. Depends on your style, but the final choice will be yours on which sketch pencils suit you and your sketching style.