I'm 20 - just got out of my teens But age doesn't really matter! Just start and practice, practice, practice, and grow at your own pace because everyone improves at different speeds, especially if they're not like, taking classes or something. There's still an enormous amount of time, especially if you're just 11. This is how I was drawing when I was about 12 or 13: [link] :'D

Hi! It depends, on many of my graphite works I don't use any smudging techniques *intentionally*. On those I use really hard pencils to do very light, subtle values, and sometimes my hand will have accidentally smudged the graphite, creating a haze that I would erase, but sometimes use to my advantage.

Recently though, I've been using cotton strips of fabric to smudge (very, very little), but I haven't uploaded any examples of that on deviantart. Generally, I like to control all my values by drawing them in with the pencil, rather than smudging

Oh, yeah! :'D I'm just currently doing a lotta art school projects, which are more about practicing and learning rather than creating finished, refined pieces, so while I am doing a lotta art stuffs, I don't really have much worth posting on here.