I started practicing drawing on traditional media (i.e. not using computer from start to finish) and I find pencil sketches to be the easiest to use because I can vary the darkness of the shading by adjusting the pressure and changing the type of pencil that I'm using.

The only downside is that my scanner isn't good enough to show all the details of the finished product, so here's a photo I took which captures the detail better.

This character is called Yao and he's from a visual novel called "The Smoke Room".