How to Write Pencil Sketch Image Prompts - Nano Banana 2

Graphite cannot make a smooth tone by itself. Shading comes from hatching, cross-hatching, scribbled tone, or smudging with a finger or stump. Each looks distinctly different, and naming one is the difference between a real drawing and a desaturated photograph with a texture overlay.

“Loose cross-hatching, visible individual strokes” gives you an energetic sketch. “Smoothly blended graphite, soft tonal gradients” gives you a careful finished study. “Rough scribbled construction lines” gives you something that looks caught in progress. Pick the one that matches what the drawing is for.

Ask for it: detailed face with the body dissolving into loose gesture lines, construction lines still visible, edges fading out into white paper. This also fixes the most common complaint about pencil prompts, which is that the results look mechanically even and lifeless — evenness is exactly what a machine does by default.

Paper matters as it does in every dry medium. Off-white toothy sketchbook paper, visible grain catching the graphite, a slight warmth to the white. Pure digital white behind pure grey is the look of a filter, not of a drawing.