Leaving those working sketch lines

One of my art professors in college once said he always felt like pencil art looked ‘incomplete.’ That a pencil drawing looked like a ‘sketch’ or preliminary work leading to an actual art piece, unless it looked like the ‘graphite rained down in a cloud of dust and landed perfectly on the paper.’

But here in this age of AI I find myself more and more leaning in on those sketchy lines. They are like footprints left by the artist, showing their thought process. A line here? No, here instead. I want the viewer to see that first line even if it was wrong.

My current technique for this is to have mechanical pencils with standard HB lead for light sketching and big twist-erasers for when erasing really is needed. Followed by a short-eraser pencil full of dark, smudgy 2B lead. No erasing at this point, just shading the darkest areas and tracing the ‘good lines” to make those stand out against the starting lines.

It works even better for me when I paint only part of the sketch. My hopes are it is like looking at an animation of the process. Sketch sketch sketch, Darken the bold lines, paint. The color seems to seep inward from the edges of the paper.