Animal Textures in Chalk Pastel for the Intermediate Learner

1. Welcome!: Hi friends, welcome to animal textures and chalk pastel. My name is Diane and I've been teaching art for about 18 years. I love teaching and I love making art and I'm so excited to share this journey with you. I hope you're ready to make a beautiful picture today, we are going to be copying this photograph and it's going to end up looking something like this. You'll notice the difference in color in these two. And we'll be talking. One of the things we'll be learning today is how to adjust the color from a photograph or from a reference into something else that you'd like to do. So you don't have to do this. You are welcome to copy the colors in the photograph, but I'm gonna be talking about how to make that leap. If you would like to learn how to do that. We're also going to be just talking about how to build a good base layer of color, how and when to blend. Creating richness and texture with our chalk pastels and specifically with animal textures such as the software and the shiny little eyes and the rubbery little nodes. We're going to be learning how to control the pastel for desired effects or continuing to learn that, assuming you've had some experience with chalk pastels before, we're gonna be talking about navigating subtle color differences. This class is meant for people who do have some experience with chalk pastel, not the complete beginner. And it's just for people who want a few more advanced techniques further toolbox. So you're ready to dive in. I am as well. Grab your cup of tea or coffee and set your scene for a joyful experience today. And let's get started. 2. Materials: So now we're just going to walk through the materials you'll need for this class. First, you'll need a piece of paper to draw on eight by ten or larger. I just ripped out of a sketchbook designed for chalk pastel drawings. Make sure your paper is meant for use with chalk pastel, whatever brand or size you end up buying. You'll need a printout of your reference photo. You can find the link to this in the resources section of the class. Just download it and print it preferably on photo paper because photo paper mix your colors, pop more and you'll be able to see the fine textures and everything better. If you use photo paper, you will need a pencil for drawing and drawing your frame. You will need a ruler to draw your frame. You will need a variety of other tools. This is an eraser in the shape of a pencil. It's wonderful to have for erasing fine details, not terribly essential, but highly recommended. A white charcoal or chalk pastel pencil. A black charcoal or chalk pastel pencil, and a blending stump, which is used for blending fine details. All of these are not essential but great to have and I think you'll find yourself very happy that you do have them for doing little pieces of fur and things. You can also have a separate eraser if you don't happen to have one on your pencil and you can have a pencil sharpener just in case your pencil breaks. No big deal if you don't have a cloth or paper towel nearby to wipe your hands because you do get dusty and dirty during this class. And then finally your pastel set. So you'll need a chalk pastel set. I happened to have new pastels. I don't think there are any better or worse than other brands. I love many brands with pastels, so use whatever brand you like or have. This set, as you can see, is pretty expansive. You don't have to have a set this large for this class, but I do recommend it because it's especially if you're serious about getting into pastel. It's just lovely to have such a wide array of colors to choose from, rather than having to mix colors a whole lot. If you do have a smaller set, you are more than welcome to just use it and mix your colors. E.g. if I'm using a golden brown sometime during the class, you can use yellow and brown and a little white together to make that color. It's up to you if you want to do that. It's also handy to have pastels that are in square shape because they have points on them more easily than the round ones. And for this class you'll need a lot of pointy corners to do little fine bits of fur and things. You can totally use the round ones too, that's fine. These are just a little bit easier. So with that said, we can get onto the class. 3. Mindset: So before we get on to actually creating our picture, just want to help you get into a good mindset for this class. It is meant to be fun first and foremost. So do relax, have a great time with this. Understand that you will make mistakes just like I will. Chalk pastels very forgiving so it's easy to erase. Don't worry about it. You can always just erase mistakes and go back and go over them. It is a class that's meant to load you up with a whole bunch of new skills. So that's great, but that doesn't mean it can't also be fun and relaxing. Also don't stress about it if it feels imperfect or if it looks too blocky in the beginning, especially it's a process of layering. So we go from very rudimentary layers where things are looking chunky to very fine for and textures towards the end. So just know that that's kind of our trajectory. And lastly, if you do feel concerned about anything before you do it, just have a piece of scratch paper nearby so that you can practice a technique before you apply it to your picture. So that's it for mindset. Let's take a deep breath together. My favorite, and let's get started. 4. Drawing the Frame: Okay, so we're going to start by just drawing a six inch by eight inch frame on our paper. So just grab your ruler and measure. I'm going to start across. I have my, my papers 8 " long, 8 " wide. So I'm going to put a couple of marks, an inch in on either side. That'll be my six inch length. And then I'm going to move it up and do the same thing. Make a couple of marks up here. And you can make several. The more you make the straight or your lines will be generally, but three is generally really adequate too is sometimes not because if one is wonky, you won't know it. So then I'm going to connect them. Draw a straight line on both sides. And those are my vertical edges. And then I'm going to do 8 " on the height. And I'm just going to pick a place here. I'm going to line my ruler up at 10 ". And that leaves me a little gutter down here and a gutter up there. If I go eight, whoops, wait, I guess I should line it up against my vertical line. So you have some space. So just make sure you have an eight inch tall or excuse me, eight inch tall frame. There we go. And then same thing on the other side. And just make sure you use the same unit of measure on the bottom of your page that you did over here. I'm using number ten. So I'm gonna go to eight until, well zero. Then I know those will be parallel. Also. If you have a T-square, you can certainly use that to make it even a little easier than this. I'm stuck on the periphery. There. There we go. You can feel free to erase marks or the lines if you want, but you don't have to. That's all scratch paper. And now we can get onto the drawing. 5. Drawing the Head & Body Shapes: So now we're gonna get onto drawing the head and the body, just initial shapes. And for the head we're just gonna do a basic round shape, kind of wider at the forehead and thinner at the chin, but we're not going to attempt to copy any of the fair at all. So the first thing you wanna do is approximate how big the head is. And I'm not going all the way to the very outside of the for, nor am I going all the way to the where I imagine the skull actually might be. I'm going to go halfway in between because I don't want my pencil line to be inhibiting. Like if I go all the way out here, sometimes you follow your pencil line too closely and the fur goes over it and the face gets really wide. Or if you go too far in, sometimes the opposite thing happens and you end up with a really skinny head. So because we have a very fluffy dog, we're just approximating halfway between the two. So I'm going to use the tip of my pencil and my thumbnail to see how wide the head is at the widest part. And then I'm going to see how that compares to the sides of the page. Coincidentally, it's just about half the width of the page. So about that does not have to be perfect. And it does look about centered, maybe a little closer to the left and the right. But I'm not even going to bother checking it because I don't want to be that exact thing. If you want to, you can certainly check your sides to see if they're exactly equal or if you want it off centered a little bit, Go right ahead. Then I'm going to see how tall the head is and compare it to the width and it's just about the same. The other thing is, since these two are the same size, you could just measure from here and move it directly over here. Really either way is fine, but it's helpful, I think, to train your eye to see how shapes compare. Dimensions, compare themselves to one another. So it's nice to say, Hey, this is how high is that compared to the width? Because you might guess that it's a little longer because it kinda looks like a little longer to me anyway, but it's not. So it's nice to break those visual judgments we have by actual measuring. I'm going to make a mark where I think the top of the head should go and where the chin. And it does look like it's a little closer to the bottom than the top, so it's kinda more significant. And I need to make really sure I have enough room for the body there. So I am gonna make sure I have less room at the bottom than the top. I do, but not quite enough. So I'm going to move it down a little bit more. There we go. And that means I'm going to move these marks down a little too. From there, I'm just going to draw my approximate overly circles with a pointy illusion to a pointier chin, but it's still extremely round. Make that a little center. Good enough. Since it's so approximate, that's fine. Now we're going to draw the body. Just imagine there's no ears on this dog. So imagine where the body would touch the head looks like it's about here. And then maybe here. So really on the extreme outsides of the head. And then we're going to see how tall the body is from the approximate top of the head. Looks like about right there. And then we're just going to draw a rounded shape. Body and the tail, as you can see, are blurred out and also very approximate, which gives us a lot of freedom. So that's really all you need to do for this first part of the drawing. And then in the next section we'll move on to the ears. 6. Drawing the Ears: So now we're gonna get onto drawing the ears. And same thing as we did with the face. Just a very approximate sort of wiggly triangle shape. I'm going to start by seeing how wide the ear is approximately. And I'm just going to, oops, that's not the head that I want to make the mistake of putting on the body there. The ear goes on the head. It looks like it attaches just really on the far right side there, which means the middle will go, the left side will go there. And then I'm just going to see how big this spaces. It's about that big, which looks like it's going to throw this ear off. So that means I need to take this here and move it over a little bit to make room for the left ear. Let's try that. Now I'm going to check the middle space again. That looks, that looks better like that space and that space are about equal. Close enough. And then the left ear will be, wow, that's pretty low though. That tells me that maybe that's still needs to move over a little bit. Another way to do this is which I probably should have done is check the right side is bigger than the left. So I'm going to take this center space and move it so it's centered and then I'll reposition the ears. And that way I know I'm kinda working from a good point. That is illustrative of, there we go. Now those are equal. So I'm going to measure those ears again. That's the beginning. So that's gonna be the end of the right ear. This is the beginning. So that's gonna be the end of the left ear. And now that's a little more equal. That's illustrative of there's not one right way to do things, but sometimes there's a quicker way. We have the width of each year. And now I'm gonna do the length from the very center to the tip. And I'm just looking at where the tip of that IRR falls relative to the body. It's sticking out to the right a little bit. And almost the same height as the body, but not quite. So I'm guessing it's going to be right there. But I'm also just going to put my pencil right through the center of the ear to see what direction it's pointing. It kinda goes off the page right next to the corner there. So I'm just going to see did I do that about right? Yeah. Close enough anyway, then let's check out the other ear out of curiosity. Yeah, the left ear is longer than the right. Just wanted to see how they compare. The tip of this year. It looks like it's just about it's a little closer to the body than the right. So about right here. And I'm going to check that direction angle. Where's it pointing? If I put my pencil directly in the middle of the ear base and go through the tip. That looks about right to. So from there I'm going to draw just approximately what I see, something like that. And it's a little rounded at the tip. It curves in, goes out quite a bit, something like that. On the right side. It's going to do something like this. Kinda looks more like a cat right now. And goes away out, way, way out, something like that. Then we can erase our lines on the insides of the ears entirely. Don't need that anymore. Okay. And now we can move on to the tail and the muzzle. 7. Drawing the Tail & Muzzle: So let's start with the tail that's going to be off-center on the body. I can measure from the ear actually to see how far it's going to start right here. And then if I use the body has a starting point and see how long the tail is. It looks like it sticks out to right here. And I'm going to check the direction pointing right to the corner of the page. So that's right. And it goes off behind the ear right about there. So from there we're just going to draw a basic kind of loop shape. By the way, in case you haven't already figured this out, this drawing is going to look really funky. It's not going to look amazing like this dog until we really start adding the pastel. So don't worry, it's supposed to look go a little bit like an alien. And it does. So let's move on to the muzzle. From the chin. I'm going to measure up to the top where the muzzle meets the eyes and just see how tall that is. I already know where the chin is, so that means the eyes are going to be right at that level. But I'm also going to just double-check like how tall this space is above the muzzle. And that looks about right just to make sure that we're placing it correctly. It's pretty much dead in the middle of the face. And then the left side of the muzzle is much more well-defined. You really can't even see much of the right side. But there's a little bit of a pinkish, yellowy edging right here. So we can just draw almost a ball for the muzzle. Let me see how wide it is and just out of curiosity, yeah, it's the same width as height, so we're actually going to draw a straight up circle. Well, maybe a little heavier on the bottom than the top. So overly circle. So that's the left and that's the right. Just kinda making it right in the middle of the face because this dog is looking directly at us. So it's not going to be closer to one side or the other. And then very lightly, I'm just going to draw kind of a whitish on the bottom circle with a skinnier top. And that's it for that. So take your time adjusting it however you need to and whenever you're ready. We can move on to the next section, drawing the eyes. 8. Drawing the Eyes: So now we're gonna move on to the eyes which are very elusive because they're so buried in for especially this one. We'll start with the right one. It's the dog's left on our right, it's a little easier to see, so we'll just start with that one. And we're going to draw the outline of the black part of the eye. So not including this gray fuzzy stuff on the left, the shadow there. We're just going to do the very extreme outside edge of the actual eye. So I'm going to first see how big it is and then move it over here and just guess where I'm putting it. It's very close to the muzzle for sure. And I'm going to put a couple of marks and then I'm going to see, did I even place that correctly? So because this measurement of the head was approximate, this space is not going to exactly equal this, but I want to be in the ballpark. So I'm going to see how big my spaces here. And I feel like it might be just about right. But let me also check from the inside corner of the eye to the other side of the face? That looks about right? Actually, I am I think, you know what, I'm also going to do that. So I'm gonna put my pencil against the edge of the muzzle and against the edge of the outer eye to see the direction my pencil is pointing, make sure both papers are parallel. And then just move it over and see if that matches up pretty well. And it does. So I think that's good. Now I'm going to see how tall the eye is and make marks for that. And again, I'm guessing there's the top, there's the bottom, and I'll see if it needs to move up or down. So I'm going to see how close the bottom is to the chin. Seems like that could move up a little bit. Excuse me, move down a little bit. So I'm gonna do that. Moves a top-down a little. And then I'm going to check it against some other stuff. Especially when you have a situation like this where your lines are placeholders there approximate. It's really great to check it against as many things as you can. So I'm going to check the angle against the top edge of the muzzle. That works. I'm going to check the angle from the base of the imaginary I, which I haven't drawn yet to the corner of the ear. That works. And the other side. Nope. Oh, I'm too far over here. Let me do that again. Yeah. It seems like that I wants to be closer to the center. So regardless of the fact that this and this were approximately right, I'm going to take this and move it over a little bit. Because the ear is a more definitive thing to check against. That tells me that this eye, the whole thing needs to move a little bit to the left. Raise my old marks, and let me check that angle again. That works much better and let me double-check the other angles to see. Did I mess that up or is it gonna be okay? Yep, That will work. I was checking this angle between the corner of the ear, the approximate corner of the ear and the eye, and the eye and the muzzle. And that will still work because this can just be a little bit extra fluffy. So I feel like I've got that I in the right place and I just need to lower these a little bit so that I can make more of a rounded top edge. And then I'm going to draw my eye. It's got just a hint of a corner. But really it's almost a complete circle. Not at all shaped like a human eye. Human eyes are much pointier in the corners and erase all those marks. Okay. That is good for that. I know the left I should be much easier because it's much less specific. So I'm going to take the distance between the two, make a mark and don't worry, this is going to look funky because that left eye isn't so much shadow that it is not going to look like the right eye. It's gonna look like a giant enlarge blob. I just measured the distance across and I'm going to see top to bottom. The bottom is lower than the right eye. The top is higher. And I'm just going to check the angles between the two. That looks right. So then I'm going to draw my super funky, weird left eye. And there we go. 9. Drawing the Nose & Mouth: Now we're gonna get onto drawing the nose and the mouth. So I'm going to see how wide the nose is. Just looking at about where it's placed in here. It looks like it's slightly closer to the bottom than the top, but it looks like it's in the middle of the muzzle, left to right. So I'm gonna guess right there and there. And then I'm just going to check both sides are a little bit or both sides are equal. That's about right and a little bit smaller. The sides are a little smaller than the nose itself. Then I'm going to see how tall the noses move it over. Looks like here and here, guessing. And then I'm going to check the spacing. Looks like it might be a little bit low. Let me check the top space. Yeah, I could afford to move that up a little bit. So, you know, what I should be doing is measuring the space first. I know exactly where to move it to there, and then taking the whole nose and moving it up that much. That's much quicker than guessing. And I'm also going to just double-check the top. Yeah, that works better. The sides. Mark's needs to move up a little bit. Otherwise, I'll be inclined to draw a nose. It's more shaped like a Hershey Kiss and I want one That's more like a mushroom wider on top, center on the bottom. So for right now, just kind of a similar shape to the head. Wide on top, kind of goes to a really, really rounded point on the bottom edge. And then I'll erase my long marks. Put the nose back. The mouth looks like the right edge is directly underneath the edge of the nose. The left edge is more to the left, so I know how that's going to land. So I'm going to just put my pencil right there and see how wide Actually, you know what? This looks like, more of a shadow. I'm not going to measure that, I'm just going to measure the actual mouse. So the left edge of the mouth is still just beyond the edge of the nose about right there. But I'm gonna check and see. Did I make that the right size? Yeah, that looks about right. And then it's very close to the nose itself, about right there. That was a guess, but I'm going to check it. Now. I could go a little lower. Then it's so thin. I'm not going to worry about measuring that. I'm just going to draw a line. And I want to remind you again, this is going to look funky, so don't worry about it. Just draw a little smile. Because that's just what it looks like. We're just copying what we see. Then we'll erase marks. And further, we can also just look around and see if anything else needs to be added. There is a bit of fluff right here on the right side which I'm assuming is part of the palm or the chest, maybe it looks like both. So I'm just going to add a little extension out here to the side, something like that. Then that looks good. The last thing I'd like you to do is just go over all your lines, are erase any dark marks, like get rid of them all together. We don't want those showing up later. Around the black stuff like the eyes and nose. It won't matter that much, but you definitely don't want them showing up in your beautiful white fur. And then go around and lightly erase all your pencil lines so that you can barely see them because this is a white dog and we don't want pencil lines showing through the fur. But we do want to be able to see our drawing, so don't obviously erase it entirely. Just very much lightened what you have. Wipe off any dust. And then we are good to start adding some color. 10. Coloring the Dog White & Grey: So now we're just going to put a base coat on the dog. And it's fairly straightforward. We're just going to use white and gray. So grab your plain white, have your scratch paper nearby or you can just use the side of your page to just rub it a little bit, make sure it's clean. And then go to town, go ahead and color and you can see even though your pencil lines are mostly erased, they show through with white. So you can color right over those pencil lines. And you're just going to apply medium pressure so that you're getting a nice, pretty thorough base coat. I'm going over my pencil lines into the dirt a little bit because I just want to lay the groundwork for fluff later. Coloring the entire dog white except for the eyes, nose, and mouth. But that being said, it's totally fine to get some white into those parts because it's erasable. And even if it wasn't, you are putting solid black over that at some point so that will easily defeat any white residue. As you can see, hopefully if you're taking this class, you've worked with chalk pastel at least a couple of times before. So you'll be very familiar with the fact that it's very dusty, leaves a trail of dust behind. And I'm going to shake that off into my nearby garbage can, which you can do also if you have one or you can just blow it off. Let me do a little of both. And now I'm going to just use my finger and go around and rub it to get the color very even and really solid as my base. This is one of only a few times we're really going to do much rubbing in this class. We do that on the base coats, but most of our blending is going to be with the body of the chalk pastels themselves. Oh, I forgot my rag. I want my rag to wipe my finger off. Then I'm gonna go in with my gray and just color the areas that have any shadow at all. And this is where you as early as this start to put in the direction of the fur. So even though this is just coloring big chunks of color, we're not concerned at all with adding for texture. Do start coloring in the direction of the fur because you're laying groundwork. So I'm going to color the entire left side, left ear gray, leaving just this part white, left side of the face, making sure I'm coloring in the direction that the firm is growing there. And now I'm starting to mimic the shape of the face, the shape of the fur on the face here. So I'm going way outside of my pencil line. I'm gonna go up to the muzzle in a very haphazard way. I'm starting to cut into it a little bit and just use that or initial muzzle line as a very loose guide. I'm gonna go right up to the edge of the eye with the gray. And now I am being careful because if I get great inside the eye, I'll lose my eye shape because gray will cover the pencil lines. So I'm being careful to just go right up to the edge. Where else? Let's see, under the, under the nose is quite gray. It looks white. But if you compare it to this white, it's certainly quite a bit darker than that. So this is going to lead right into this shadow I just put down. And the whole left side of under the mouth is quite gray. And then here a little bit, I'm just going to put a hint of gray to suggest that it's going to be darker at some point than the right side of the face. And notice this is not the first time you'll see this. I'm really exaggerating how much gray is there, because once you put the gray down, you're going to layer over it a ton with whites and pinks and other things. So It's going to lighten naturally. So you really can exaggerate how dark you're going. In fact, do exaggerate it. Because that's a good way to get contrast. And that's one of the, it's not a huge mistake, but that's one of the things I find people are least satisfied with is they end up with a little bit of a, with a white subject like this kind of a cartoony look but not quite realistic. And it's usually because there isn't enough contrast between dark and light. So really go on your darks here. Knowing that you will lighten them later or not. Some of them you won't, but a lot of them you will add lights too. The tail, I'm just coloring entirely gray until it gets to the body where it gets a little bit lighter. And then I'm gonna put some gray here behind the left ear. And a little bit on the inside of this, I, again, being careful not to go beyond my pencil lines, so kind of turning the pastel so I'm using a corner of it so that I can keep it sharp against the eye. There, even though that's just a hint, I'm going to put a little dab of it right there for funds ease. And I'm gonna get rid of the dust. And we're done with that. 11. Coloring the Background Dark Grey: So now we've got our rudimentary code on the dog. We're gonna put our rudimentary code on the background. So grab your solid dark gray and we're literally just going to color in the background. So the only thing to be careful over aware of is around the dog. You're not trying to replicate the for exactly, but neither do you want just a solid dark line. So you do want to start when you're coloring, start getting real shaggy and leaving. Even if you're not getting right up to the white that you left, you can always put more widen leaves space around the edge of the dog. It's better to leave a little bit more space than you think you need because you can always feel more in with dark gray then going to tight on a dog because it's hard to erase a dark color. So as you're going just pay attention to the direction of the fur and be real loose with it, but leave, leave that room for the fluffiness to come out. As for the tip of the tail, I'm just gonna kinda whisper around that. That's pretty straight right there as well as the back of the body is fairly flat. Then I get to the ears, I'm going to start getting kinda coloring out away from it again in the direction the furs growing. That I'm turning my pastel as I go when I need a sharper edge and a flatter edge, like the flatter edge is good for filling in larger areas. The sharper edge is good for really mimicking that fur texture. So I didn't get the white out far enough. Here are the light gray, but I'm going to leave space for that kinda cut in there and then I have a beard here, which I also didn't really get the light gray out into enough. So I'm leaving some more space for that. Alright, so once you've gone around the dog in this way, you can kinda look around and see if you need to do anything else, then it's just coloring. So you can go in and really color pretty solid, but don't feel you need to colors completely solid, much like the white on the dog's see all those little white specks of paper showing through. That's fine. That's expected, that shouldn't be there. It's part of coloring with chalk pastel. And when you're done, you will rub it together to blend at all. So don't worry about it. Just get most of it covered. So do you use the wide side of your pastel at this point? And just go to town. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit through this section because you don't really need to hear me color so much. And that way you can just pause the video When you're needing more time. You can also skip ahead to the next section is you need to. But we can go ahead and just fill it in. Okay. And now that we're done coloring, I'm going to dump the dust into the garbage and go ahead and blend. And you can always add more color. So if it feels like you didn't color enough and the blending isn't covering very well. You can always add more, but keep in mind this is just your first layer. So I'm seeing lots of little white spots showing through mind, but I'm not going to go back and add more because I know I'm gonna be adding more color later. We're going to put all the gravel in and layer in some shadows and stuff. So this is just really fine for a first layer. Now it'd be a good time to just start the conversation also about color. So you may notice that my gray is a little bit browner than the one in the photo. That's because my printer printed my photo a little cooler than it showed on my computer screen. My computer screen showed a warmer picture, warmer browns, yellows on the dog. This dog is more pinkish, more definitely blue-gray haze, which is lovely. But part of what I want to show you in this class, since it's a more intermediate class, is how to interpret color. So we're not going to be copying this color exactly. Unless you want to go right ahead. Totally fine. If you would if you'd like to choose to do what I'm gonna do and warm up your picture a little bit, then you can follow along with the colors I'm using. I use a more brownish gray, a warmer gray. And as we go through the dog, There's ours is going to be a lot more. Mine is going to be a lot more yellowy and brownish. And this one's more pinky in blue. It's just another skill you can choose to acquire in this class or not. You can totally just copy the colors there, your call. And with that, we can move on to building color on the dog. 12. Building Dark Colors on the Dog: Okay, Now we're going to build color on the dog. Still not attempting to do for actual for texture, but paying, still paying just as close attention to the direction that we did with the light gray when we laid that in. We're going to start by darkening grays and browns. I'm going to take the same gray I used in the background and because it's a warmer gray and like I said, I am attempting to make my picture warmer than this one. This is a cooler blue or this one's going to be warmer and yellower. And I'm going to start putting in dark grays where I see them again, not worrying about actual for just kind of coloring and the approximate direction and paying a little more attention to the specifics. So e.g. here I call it that whole thing light gray very quickly, but the darkest part of that section is kinda down to the left here. And then along the beard. There's a little bit of darker color. And since this is the same color as the background, I'm being careful not to color as hard so that it can stand out against it. There's somewhat going into the muzzle here. Remember to be bold with your darks. You can always erase if it happens to be too much. But in my experience, people tend to be much Shire with the grades and end up with not enough contrast in there, or sorry, with the dark colors and end up with not enough contrast in their final picture. So really lay those in around the mouth, seems to be pretty dark on the left side there. And I'm starting to color like little lines, beer lines there. That's definitely very pink, but gray is a good base for that. And then under the nose will be darker to I'm just going to put in a bunch of little lines using a corner of the pesto. I'm kinda starting to lose my mouse shapes, so I'm going to underline it right there so I don't lose it entirely. There we go. Then just a little bit right here, mainly for variety. A little bit on the inside corner of the eye. Definitely the tip of this ear is quite dark. Kinda coming down into the ear. I'm going to put chunks of it on the back and a bunch in the tail. Curvy lines going over the top there. A little bit more in the back. Just there's a hint of a presence there and somewhat in the base of this ear. And then kinda coming into the body a little bit more on this side. I'm satisfied with that for the dark gray and I'm going to do some browns. So those will layer into the grays. And this is where it really starts getting much warmer than the reference I'm copying. The trick here is value paying attention to the value more than the colors. Since we're changing the colors. As you're going, just make sure your darks are in the same place as these darks and that they somewhat match up. Then you can, you could do a purple dog if you wanted to. You could interpret this into any number of colors, schemes you want. But if you're paying attention to the darkness and lightness being matching between the two. You will be fine. I'm not putting Brown everywhere I had the gray but most places because I do want the gray to exist, have a life of its own. But the brown is the warming factor in these shadows. So I want quite a bit of it. I'm going to add a few of my own brown spots on the back just for fun these a little bit right there to warm that up. Okay. And that is good for the dark parts of adding the color. And in the next section we're going to add some light colors. 13. Building Light Colors & Features: So now we're going to focus on the lighter areas of the dog and go in with the gray first and just kind of put lighter kind of suggestions of it along the side of the head here. And a little bit over the eye. And I'm going to pull some more gray from the dark place into the light area on the left side. I'm going to bring that up a little more. I'm going to color some around the nose. The nose has something to kinda nestle into their sum under the mouth. And over here I'm going to press pretty hard and get some grades. Going out into the background. Not too concerned about the exact shape of the firm because we are going to be going over the background a bunch anyway, which is going to negate any fine detail here. But just to cover up any white that's still showing. And over to the right that's a little bit wider, so I'm going to leave that alone. And over here I'm going to put a bunch of gray because that side of the ear is much darker than actual white. But again, not worried about making those fluffy is look perfect. And some light gray on the back here, noticing that the entire back of the body is darker than the widest part of the face. So really we don't want any pure white showing because we are going to put pure white over it anyway at some point to blend. But for right now we want it to read a little bit darker than the face. Let's see anywhere else. A little more right here. And just a little bit at the top of the muzzle kind of fanning out into the, into the pink and yellow on the face. And then we'll move to another light color. So this is another part where you're going to see a lot of warmth added. That is not in my photo. Another caveat, your printer may very well have printed your picture out warmer. I didn't even think of that until now. So maybe you are copying this one-to-one and just using the same colors you see in your reference. Which is totally fine too. But if your printer did like mine and I couldn't convince it to print warmer no matter what I tried. And I thought what a great idea to introduce to this class. Let me just roll with the fact that my printer isn't cooperating. Use it to teach this concept. So that's how we got here. So I'm adding yellow wherever I see those lighter pinks actually, and I am going to add some pink, but my, even my pink is going to be warmer than this one. A little bit. Flamingo, orangey, rosy pink is what I'm going to use. Yellow goes dark on the base of that, are heavy on the base of the ears. And then I'm going to add some tan. So this is going to warm it up as well. And I'm kinda adding this where I see the darker grays, some of the darker pink just to give it some dimension. And I'm also adding a bunch where I see yellow. Because this is, this is kind of acting as like the shadow of the yellow, like the dark relative. Not to vilify the brown, brown is totally lovely color. And then we're going to add some pink. So this was the rosy kind of warm pink I was telling you about it. It's like a dusty rose color. And there's quite a bit of pink in this dog. Here. I'm going to just do slightly less in mind because I also have the yellows and the browns that I don't want to overshadow with pink. But it is nice to have this rosy blush in here. I'm just dabbing that in randomly over the back and I'll put a hint of it in the tail just to give it a relationship to the rest of the dog. There we go with the light colors. Now, the last thing we're gonna do is just put in a dark place holder for the eyes and nose. You can use that same dark gray that we were using for the background and just fill them in pretty loosely. Blow off, whoops, blow off the dust. Try as much as you can to keep the edges sharp. Any edges that are sharp, don't worry at all about the fuzzy stuff, but this outside edge, use the corner of your pesto. Same with this one. You can fill in the center fairly, roughly. The reason we're doing this kind of last is because it's easier to not have to dance around them or be very ginger with the lighter colors in the beginning, it's just nice to have those be vacant. And don't worry if it gets a little misshapen, you will work. You will refine this later in the class. Right now. Just placeholders so that we don't lose them. And we're done. 14. Building Color on the Background: So now we're going to add some color to the background, not worrying at all about any of the gravel or leaves or sticks, any of that texture. Yet we're just kind of darkening the most obvious shadow which is here on the left and lightening in some patches just to give it some variation. So we'll start with the dark. Just pick out a darker gray or if you don't have one, just use plain black color, a big patch on the left to the dog. And you can probably see this doesn't show up very well. And there's a good reason for that is because I'm coloring a dark color on top of another dark color. But it is subtle, so don't worry about it. This is just a layering process. I'm going pretty big, like a little wider than I think I need to because it is competing very much with the background color and I'm going to blend it. So now I'm gonna get rid of this dust, shake it off into the garbage can, and go back and just rub it in with my finger. And it almost disappears, but it is there. It's creating some sense of difference. So now I'm going to just go in and put in some random chunks of it, making sure that some of my chunks actually touch the dog. This is also a common thing that I see is people will tend to, when you're doing a background, stay away from your subject. And what you end up with is like a halo around your subject of the main color. So what we want is the all backgrounds to look like it goes underneath or behind the figure. So really make sure you get some chunks right up next to the dog and blend those in. And that's just really random, like there's very little roadmap here in terms of where large dark chunk should go except for that shadow. And that is good for the dark. So now I'm going to pick out a lighter color. And I'm going to do kind of a light cream color. And this is going to show up much more than the dark DID, but still not very well and I'm not pressing hard. I'm just kinda going in and out of where I put the darks, leaving plenty of the base color showing two. Just to give this a sense of undulation. Again, getting right up next to the dog in some areas so that it does appear to go behind the dog or underneath the dog. And then I'm gonna run those in. And that should probably take care of most of any white paper that was showing through from that first pass with the darker gray. And then we just have a very subtle variation of color on the ground. So you can do that to your heart's content. And then we'll move on to the next section. 15. Defining Dark Greys in Fur Texture: Okay, Now we're going to move into getting more specific with the fur. Still not worried about all these fine little hairs. But now we're going to start defining the fur texture more starting with the dark gray. So I'm not going to use the same dark gray I did before. I'm going to use the one I just used to darken the shadow around the dog because I want it to show up a little bit more. So I'm going to just start on the ear and start coloring a little more precisely. So I'm using a corner of the pastel now and I'm going to vary the direction it's going because the fur is going in many different directions there. I'm also, instead of just coloring haphazardly, I'm going to plant my pastel and flick out. And that's going to start to define for texts like actual fur texture, something like that. And then there's little bits of it on the outside of the ear itself. So I'm just going to put some lines. Don't worry if it feels like see how it's getting really dark here and that's very white. Don't worry about that. We're going to put some white on it later. And we can always erase out. I expect I will have to erase out because I've really gone to town layering my colors there. But I'm just gonna go around the dog and pay close attention to where those darkest darks are. Here. I'm going to put them all in here. I'm gonna do the opposite. I'm going to plant my pastel and flick into the white because I want the blunt end of the shadow to be on the left. And the more kind of pristine little wispy corner to be the white. So I'm, I'm almost doing a negative color addition here where I'm leaving space showing for the white. Here on the left, I'm going to actually take this color and color into this dense on the face because there's this dense right here that I kinda went right over or never rectified with the lighter color earlier. So I'm going to put it in now. And especially since this is the same color as this shadow, it's just kinda easy to do. I'm going around and putting in darkest darks around the muzzle there. Those dark darks are really going to help these light lights to pop out later once we put those in. So I'm doing my best to not color in where I see white here, even though I was kinda sloppy about earlier with the brown, just so that I'm not putting black where I want white because black will compete with it. It's pretty dark, so we want to try to avoid that. One trick you can use also if you're having trouble deciphering where to put this as squint your eyes when you look at your reference. Because that helps, tends to help you see value better. The darks pop out more of the lights pop out more. It'll help you to identify where you need more dark. Right above the nose for sure. Mouse looks fine. There's not any dark over here. I'm gonna put a little bit on the tip of the ear, a little bit into the tail. Just to give it a little bit more dimension. Tiny bit right here and there. And then lastly, just right over the eyes. I'm going to dab it in. I'm just kinda tapping the paper with the tip of the pastel. And over here I'm going to find a really sharp corner. I'm one of my Ns and kind of pull from the eye into the white so that I get the very beginnings of these little white hairs showing up over the I blow off the dust. That is good enough for dark gray. You can go to your heart's content. And then we will meet in the next section where we'll put in some dark browns. 16. Defining Dark Browns in Fur Texture: So now we're gonna go into the fern, do exactly the same thing we just did with the dark gray, but now we're using dark brown. So I'm going to put the dark brown in where I would like to see it. Again, there's really very little brown in this reference. So I'm just going to add over the dark grays in some cases, in addition to the dark grays in some places like here, I want a little more dark brown defining the shadow on the left side of the face, a little bit more on the side of the nose. And the chin. Little hairs a little bit in the tail. Not going to go crazy with the dark brown because I really did a pretty good job of being thorough with it the first time, but this is just going to help to augment however much you want to. A little bit on the back, a little on the inside of the eyes. Just a little bit over here to help the right side married to the left. There we are good with dark browns and we can move on to the light grays. 17. Defining Light Greys in Fur Texture: So now we're going to do the same thing with the light grays. We're just kinda moving from darker to lighter stuff. So grab your light grays same when you used earlier or you can even use a slightly lighter or darker one. If you feel inspired. And I'm going to start from the outside and pull into the darker grays here to create some fur texture between the light and the dark. Again, I'm planting my pastel and with each stroke picking it up and pulling it in with a wispy stroke. Then I'm going to do the same thing but going out because I want wispy strokes both on the inside and the outside of this year. So I'm starting to get a sense of thrill for going into the background, but again, not too concerned about it. We are going to be adding more detail in the background so we don't want to go crazy with making this perfect yet. I know it's tempting and you certainly can, but you may end up going over it by mistake with your pebbles later. Right here, my main focus is gonna be kind of shaping the outside of the face pretty accurately to the reference because this is all lighter gray against that darker gray. So this is my opportunity to start making that shape more like what I see in the reference. And if you have any blunt ends, um, where you started and flipped out, go back and just dab at them with a light gray and they'll disappear into the darker gray. I'm also starting to focus on getting rid of any whitepaper little bits that are showing through whatever color you're using, whether it was the light gray to dark gray, you're going to use pinks and yellows and browns and whatnot. So you can start to just get rid of all of that. A little bit on the lip there, the upper lip, I'm just dabbing at it with a corner to blend the darker grays. Then here on the right side. And by the way, the white is coming up, we're going to blend with white and it's gonna be so satisfying because you're gonna add all these lovely creamy white and all this color that we're putting in is going to blend and just becomes so gorgeous. So sit tight. It's going to happen and you're going to love it. Put a little bit of gray into the middle of the face, just so that the pink isn't so lonely there. And just dab it into the muzzle a little bit. My main function with this light gray was to define the outside edge a little bit more, get approximately the right shape. And I feel like I've done that and then I added a little bit, so we're done with that. You can go to your heart's content. And then we will meet in the next section where we add some tens. 18. Defining More Lights in Fur Texture: So now we're gonna go in and just add any last tans, yellows and pinks we want there's very little of each, so that's why I kinda lump them all into one section. I'm going to add a little bit more yellow right in the center of the face, kinda going up toward the forehead. Again, exaggerating the amounts because the white is going to come in and just lighten everything up. So this is where we really go heavy with whatever colors we want to dominate in a section. I'm going to add a little more yellow in the back because I don't feel like I did that justice. And a little more at the base of this ear. Little more down here. And then I'll add some tan. Not a lot or I want to put ten it just kinda where the yellow where I want the yellows to be a little darker like on the right side of the muzzle here over the I. In my picture it looks very pinkish, but I'm just adding a ton of yellow because I really want that to dominate. And this is, it's not really yellow, it's a mustard color really, but the yellowish thing around in here. Okay. And then these pink that I want to emphasize a little bit more along this edge the same way I did with the yellow on the top of the head, back looks good. A little bit more in the tail wouldn't hurt. I feel like that's pretty good. So once again, I'd like to emphasize how much darker this dog looks in this one right now. Like look at how much white there is everywhere and how little white I have. That's absolutely on purpose because once you put your white end, it's going to really brighten everything. And these lovely yellows, pinks and grays and browns and every theory and kinda show through and inform the white. So take this opportunity to go heavier with your darks. Don't worry if you don't, if you really feel like, wow, I don't wanna go there. You can put in your white and then decide you can always put more of these in. This is just the more, I guess, efficient way of doing it, but it doesn't have to be efficient. You can layer until the cows come home. And I encourage you to do so because that's where you find your joy. So with that said, we will go on to adding darks in the eyes. 19. Adding Darks to the Eyes: So now we're gonna go in and just add black to the eyes. And this is going to give it both depth, darkness and dimension 0 3Ds. So at first I'm going to zoom in a bit so that you can see better what I'm doing that over so that it's really in the middle for you. And I'm just going to find the pretty sharp corner on a pure black pesto. And I'm going to color. You'll notice there's a little bit of white showing on the left side of this dog's right eye or the right eye for us, the left for him. The inside edge, there's a little bit of light showing. So what we're gonna do is try to outline the actual edge of the eye outside of the white part and dab at it to create that little corner. Blow off the desk frequently so you can actually see what's going on because the dust can obscure what's happening. And then go down. Don't worry about the fact that there's four in front of the eye. You can try to leave space showing for that, but you are going to erase later and put in white. So it's okay if you accidentally cover that up, then on the top edge of the eye were basically outlining the whole thing, giving it a black eyeliner. On the top edge. It's going to be more in shadow because the white fur is covering the eye. So it's kinda shading the eye from the light. So you can go a little thicker there with the black. Try not to color where you see this bright whitish blue highlight in the middle. That very odd shaped just leave an approximation of what you see there and kind of color around it. And then also try not to color in the little white edge of like right next to the iris. If you can, but if you can't, it's okay. That's why we have white chalk pastel or charcoal pencil, and also why we have an eraser pencil. So that's pretty good for that I, for the left eye, it's even easier because there's no highlight to go around. So just redefine the left edge by coloring pretty hard with the corner of your pesto. And then do even though there's very little light showing you or hopefully looking at your reference, but there's very little light showing their highlight, but you can try to leave it as much as you can. And again, don't worry too much about the white for coming over here, but do don't color it solid. Like make some attempt to leave little lines of darker gray showing so that when you erase out those white edges, white pieces of fur, it's not as hard on you. But for the most part you can color this I pretty solid dark black. And I'm just dabbing around where I see that miniscule, a little highlight. So I can hopefully leave some areas showing for that. Okay. So that's just our next coat of darks. And then we can move on to adding darkness to the nodes. 20. Adding Darks to the Nose: So we're gonna do the same thing on the nodes that we did on the eyes. We're going to take the black and color where we see at darkest. You can also take this opportunity. And actually we did it up here at the eyes. I just didn't call it out. You can take this opportunity to reshape your nose too, if you see anything like mine is sort of just a blob. So I'm going to use this to make the left edge stick out a little bit and then dip in where there's a nostril. Whoops, I got big crumb that just came off of my pesto, which does happen. They are crumbly. Then I'm darkening the whole bottom edge of the nose and the whole left side. And I'm going to define the nostril on the right with the dark. Just sort of finding a sharp edge and coloring. We're kinda grinding the color into the paper and then dabbing at it where I feel like it's a little too sharp. So I just want to make it a little bit softer right there. Then I'm just going to take a last look and see the shape. I feel like I could add a little bit the top right side, almost as an outline and to define the shape a little bit more solidly against the face. Okay. There we go with the nose. And that's again, just a basic black coat. Don't worry, you are going to refine this more in later sections. And now we can move on to adding darks to the mouth. 21. Adding Darks to the Mouth: So now we're going to use our charcoal or chalk pastel pencil to add darks to the mouth because that is so tiny. We could use our chunky pastel that we were just using. And in fact, you'll probably find if your case is like mine, that your charcoal pencil is a little bit lighter than the black we just put in. If that's the case, you can always go back with the chunky black pastel, but we're just going to start with this as a way of trying to get most of the definition and just color where you see it. On the left there. I'm pressing pretty hard to get that to show up because this indeed is lighter than the black I just put in. Then under the fur on the right, it's very dark. Don't worry about the little white highlights. We'll put those in later. So that actually will make it very difficult to see any darks you're doing right now because the light is what's really going to help those pop out. But for now, just put in the dark as best you can. I left a little strip of lighter colors showing right there. And I'm just outlining the lips almost like lip liner. And I'm going to dab it over to the left and pull some lines down into the shadow to make it blend there. Same thing here on the right. Dab it over. Makes it look like he's smiling a little bit, which he does in the photos. So we want that. Then from there, grab your black pastel that you use on the nose and the eyes, find a sharp corner or create one by coloring really hard until you get a sharp corner. And just use that sharp corner to further define your blacks. You can just dab it into the corner of the mouth. Corners of the mouth and pull it into the lines you just made with the charcoal pencil. And don't worry, of course we will be going back over this later. Eyes, nose, and mouth are some of the last things we're going to refine after we've done most of the first, so we'll come back to those in awhile. And now we can get on to adding some chunks to the background. 22. Adding Chunks to the Background: So now we're going to start putting chunks of rock, dirt, gravel, sticks, et cetera, in the background. Not being at all specific about where and how big and everything is. Just use this as a loose guide and you can make it up as you choose. So start with the lighter colors. So I'm using the ivory color I use on a dog. And I'm just going to start with that big leaf or whatever it is there because it's the most obvious and easy. I'm also not concerning myself with making everything as bright as I see it here. Although if you wanted to do that, let me show you. You can certainly use your eraser and pull off most of the darker color. I'll just show you what this one leaf so that you can understand how to do it. Or not all of it's going to come off. But erase out a big section. And then when you put your pastel in your light pastel see how much brighter that goes on. So if you want to put on some brighter chunks of gravel, That's how you do it. But for my purposes, I'm just going to put on a whole bunch of dabs and dots. And the tendency, as you'll see, my tendency is to make them very evenly spaced, but we don't want that because it's not organic. So we want some right next to the dog. We want little ones, we want big ones. We want them all over the place. We want some in some colors in greater concentration in certain areas. So I'm sort of grouping these ivory ones. And I'm just going nuts trying to make some big ones and little ones going all over the place. If there are two evenly spaced or two evenly sized or if you're coloring all in the same direction, it'll end up looking like a pattern and not like an organic, just ground full of gravel. So take that for what it's worth. And just add a ton of this stuff. Here. My pastel kinda squeaks on the paper because I'm pressing really hard to get it to show up. Little ones. Big ones. Corner one's going out, definitely go off the edge of the paper. Also, if you intend to frame this picture, you do want your background going beyond your pencil lines. I should have mentioned that in the first section, but I forgot. So if you haven't yet, make sure your dark gray, it goes all the way to the pencil lines and beyond that so that when you frame it, your frame has a little something to overlap and there won't be this kind of raw edge showing unless you like raw edges and you want it to show. That's okay for the ivory, I'm going to switch colors. Do some of the brown, knowing I can always go back for more with other colors if I want. And I'm going to overlap some. Don't worry also about the fact that you can see your strokes right now it looks very stroking, but you're going to go back and blend it by dabbing and see what happens to the strokes. There they go. Good-bye strokes. So for right now you're just putting in color. So I've jumped ahead a little bit and added some more chunks. We're going to add some blues and some pinks. Just a few here and there to give it some variety. Pink. Now that we've got enough confetti after parade, it kinda looks like at the moment. We're gonna go back and blend it. To blend this, don't rub because you'll just rub it all into one giant color instead, just go around and dab. In fact, you can even use multiple fingers, give it a little massage. This is all we're doing in this section. And then we're going to add some shadows in the next section to make it look a little more like rocks and less like dabs of color. And that's it. 23. Adding Shadows to the Background: So now we're going to take your darkest black and probably, well maybe we'll see your second darkest black and add some shadows so we're not going to go around and put a shadow around every single one, but I'm going to show you what one is going to look like. So I'm just putting a little bit of a thick line around one and dabbing at it and you see that makes it pop out more. So we're doing this to several, not all and all on the left side because the light source is coming from the right. So we want any shading, any shadow to fall towards the left to make it look cohesive and believable. The ones you don't put shadows around are gonna be the ones that fade more into the background. So definitely pick the larger ones to put shadows around. And then multiple small ones. And every once in awhile stop and go back and dab at them. That way you can kinda see if you're needing to press harder, you need to make thicker lines. Or if it looks pretty good. Remember this is not gonna be photorealistic, it's just an approximation. The background is nothing but a background, so we don't need to make it precise or particularly well finished. We just need to make it look interesting enough to where it's not just a solid color so that our doggy has a nice back backdrop to sit on. So once you've gotten most of your lines are lines, your shadows and around your larger objects, your larger chunks, and some of your smaller ones. Then we can go back and add some patches of dark. That's good enough for now. Now I'm going to take the black and a really dark in this shadow on the left that I had put in before with a darker gray but not a black. I'm going to attempt to go around some of the chunks, but don't worry if you color over some, that's fine. You can even make chunks up out of a completely gray area that had no chunk in it. And just approximate the shadow shape around the dogs. So it's gonna kinda come around in like a half moon there. Oops, I got into some crumbly action happening on my pesto there, right under the chin, sticking out here. And this added bit of darkness will make the dog really look like it's anchored to the ground and having it'll help the light source coming from the right to read correctly throughout the dust. Then once again, I'm gonna go in and dab with my finger so that I don't get rid of all of the texture. I do want some of it to look kind of textured. And I also don't want to get rid of all of my color. I don't want to lose any of my chunk, so I'm just dabbing at the black. And then if that's not dark enough or you want to add more, you can go back and do it again. And then once you're done with this shadow, blow off the dust and just go back and look around, see if there's any other dark areas you want to add. You can really do this for quite a long time if you want to. I'm going to stop pretty soon and move on to the next section. But you do this until you're very happy with it. And then whenever you are ready, you can meet me in the next section, which will be adding some dark grays in the first four, final for texture. 24. Adding White: I know I just said that we were going to be doing dark grays and the final third texture next, but I forgot maybe the most important thing. One of my favorite things which is adding the white. So we're gonna do that first because that's going to really help us to understand where we need more darks. And it's also going to get the fur texture really going on the light parts of the face. So this is gonna be awesome. I have a little bit of green on my white, so I'm just going to rub it out here on my scratch paper side, get rid of that green and go to town. So I'm going to start in the widest part of the face, which is over here on the right. I'm just going to color in the direction of the fur and watch those darks just yield to the pressure of the white. You can see How nice that fur texture looks because of those dark. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier, why we made everything exaggerated the dark so much because the white is going to dominate somewhat. But we want those, those yellows and pinks and greens and all those colors underneath to have a voice. We went heavier with those, but look how much they're lightening up with this white. And now I am paying attention absolutely to the for going off the side. You'll notice as I'm planting my pastel and flicking, it gets dirty with the color in the background. And the more I do that, the more it happens and it kinda gets muddy on the inside of the dogs, that's actually fine because you do want a little bit of the background color blending into the dog, but you can also just wipe it off on your paper, on your cloth or on the side of your page and go back and brighten it a little bit if you need to, if you need to get rid of those little dabs, it's your call. And I'm just going to keep on going down the face here, approximately the direction of the firm coloring now because I'm not worried about the little wispy ends right here. So I'm not picking, picking up my pastel with every stroke. Wipe it off so I can get into this really white part here and keep it nice and bright. And then got some crumbs color out into the phase. Not going to worry too much about that. I'm not gonna do that for over the eye yet because I still have to go back and refine the eye. Here I'm gonna get into squiggly for because that's where it starts to get currently is on the side and I'm even going to use the wide side of my pastel because there's chunks of for not just little hairs kind of going in all directions. Real curly. It looks like this dog is a little wet. It's a nice renamed, beautiful day wherever this dog is the world. So that makes its first clumped together, which is another fun thing to try to replicate. What was the pastels got this big chunk of for coming off the left there, few more coming off the nose into the darker areas of for wiping my pastel off as I need to. Adding those lighter wisps that are now going to really pop out over those darker grays. Lots of crumbs because I'm pressing so hard. And on the left side, same thing, just kinda going over in the direction the fur is going. Coloring up from this fountain shape in the center of the face, over the top of everything. And here it gets a little wavy at the top of this ear. I'm going to be a little more deliberate with my strokes. This ear, same thing, a little wavy. And very bright on the right side of this here. I'm turning my pastel is I need to use the flat edge when I want big chunks. The corner of the pastel when I want wispy little fine hairs. And then there's some of those little black or dark ends I was talking about earlier that you can just color right over after you clean your pastel back definitely has lots of white in it. So I'm going to color in little circles here to get the texture to look fluffy. And also blurry. I'm varying the pressure. So in areas I want brighter and pressing a little harder and where I'm just trying to get a presence of the white over darker colors and pressing very, very lightly on the back edge of the body. I'm going to dab a little bit to make it blurry into the background. And that's going to help with the sharp contrast against the ear there. And then there's some in the tail, some white and the tail got these wisps going out into the mud here. And there we go. 25. Dark Greys in Final Fur Texture: Okay, now we're gonna get into some darker grays and the final third texture. So grab the same one of the same dark grays you use, preferably the darkest one that you used earlier and just go in kinda carefully. And anywhere you see darks needing to happen, just put them in as carefully as you feel you need to. So I'm using the corner of the pesto and adding a few little lines in the ear. Just to help make those whites pop out a little more. I'm going to add some at the tip of this ear. Dab at it a little bit. Where else underneath the eye lid, for lack of a better word and it gets dogs have eyelids. Yeah, of course they do, but this one is kind of hidden by four. We're gonna get a little bit in-between to the corners. Between those little white wisps I just put in just sort of dabbing at it and then coming up from the lip into that for over the lip. Just adding a few little dabs there, darkening this shadow. A little bit of a kind of a dark hair right there that's actually kinda pinkish. It'll start by putting gray there. And then a little bit more into the tail in the back. Just dab at those. And I'm feeling pretty good about that. So I'll add a little bit more here too, just to make that for more furry. On the left side. There we go. And now we will move on to dark browns in the final third texture. 26. Dark Browns in Final Fur Texture: We don't have to add a whole lot of brown or at least I don't maybe you want to add more, but I'm going to take mine and just kind of add a little bit more dark brown where I want both darker and warmer areas. So right over here on the left, I'm kinda putting it into my dark gray. And that's going to not that's not going to make it any lighter. It's just going to make it warmer and browner. Little bit here on the ear. Little bit at the top. A little bit over here just to kinda divide the face from that puff of foot or whatever that is right there just barely. It's not like we have to actively define it, but just trying to separate them a little bit. Okay, Now, let's move on to graze tans and yellows. 27. Light Colors in Final Fur Texture: So now we're going to add whatever grades, tans and yellows you want leftover. So I'm going to take the gray and just add a little more definition here because it still looks a little crumbly. I'm just going to use the very corner of the gray and add a little bit more line, a little few more lines there. I'm also going to use it to get a little more definition to this for in particular going off over the dirt. So I'm adding some squiggles and curly curly or hairs, tiny little hairs coming off the left there that'll look a little bit more organic. Same thing on the bottom edge here. And coming off to the right. Just a few larger clumps to make it look less perfectly round. Anymore over here. A little bit in the ear to lighten that up right there. And I'll end up putting some white over that again. Some more in the tail. Feel pretty good about the back and the phase. So add some ten. Now anywhere we want ten, little bit more up here, even though I've already got a good amount, but it looks like I kinda spaced on putting enough white there. I'm going to use this opportunity to warm that up with a little tan. Anywhere else you see that you'd like to put it by all means go right ahead. A little bit of yellow for the same reason. There we go. Just going over the top edge of the eye, right edge where there's lots of pink and this reference, but I'm adding quite a bit more yellow there. And then finally we can go back in with the white to blend what we've just done and sort of just finalize anything that we want brighter. Or we want to use the white to soften edges or get rid of the crumbly texture of the pastel on the paper like up here what I was talking about. So I'm going to really push hard with the white and go over that part. This ear needs to be brightened up quite a bit and the lovely for texture there needs to be emphasized. Get a little bit more white fur sticking out into the dirt here. Now that I'm adding a few more individual strands that will make it look more. I guess paid attention to. So I'm just putting a few strands on this ear and you can see how that really brightens up that area and add some life to it. Same thing here, and I'm going to blur out the tail a little bit more right there and then take my white and put some lines at the top of this year because you're lost quite a bit of definition there. Brighten that up. So really at this point, anything you see that you want to go back and add more to, you can go ahead and do that. You need to add some more flyaway strands to this ear. So it looks a little more organic. Like this puppy did not just step out of a salon. And then just look around as much as your heart desires. Like I've, I've got some little holidays up here where you can see paper showing through. So I'm going to take whatever color seems appropriate for that and go over them. I want to use my background color here actually an add some more between those strands of tail. And we'll do some more of this in the finishing touches section two, I just happened to see it right now. Yeah, Go ahead and monkey with it until you're happy. And then we will move on to refining the eyes and the next section. 28. Refining the Eyes: So now we're going to make this dog look less like a zombie and more like a dog by adding the lights and the sharp edges and refining them basically. So start, we're going to put in that little white section of i on the left side there. I'm going to zoom in so you can see this a little bit better. So this little crescent moon shape on the left side, start by just using your white charcoal or pastel pencil. Make sure it's clean. Oh, mine wasn't. I'm really glad I'm coloring over here. Then just try to draw it and if it shows up, great. Oh, mine shows up. If it doesn't show up, That's where you can use your eraser pencil. Make sure it's clean also by just erasing on the side a little bit and pull off some color first. And that it doesn't matter if you do both either. I'm just doing that to show you how. And then when you put in your white, it will show up better. And keep in mind, we don't want that to actually look white. We just want it to be lighter, like a dark gray, lighter than the eye itself. Don't worry if you pull off too much, It's fine. You're going to put it back in. Now, use your charcoal pencil and put it back in. Like I went way too high above here, which makes him look like his eyes wide open and he's very surprised he or she, I'm gonna put that black back in over the top. And that is the shadow that the lid is casting onto the island. Now see how much more relaxed. Not that the dog isn't excited. It is excited, but we don't want it to be like that exciting. So I'm going to make that little white sliver a little skinnier just by coloring into it with the black pencil. Blowing off the dust. Then I'm going to use the blending stump, which if you've used yours like I've used my He's probably dirty, so just rub it on the scratch paper to make sure it's not the wrong color or too dirty. And you can use it to smear around the dark edge into the fur. If you haven't already, if you've already done this, you can skip this part. But really your eye may look very different from mine. So I'm just doing things that my eye needs and hopefully you can use some of these in yours. But you go ahead and refine yours, however you think it needs to be. Once you feel like you've finished refining everything but the brightest highlight, then use your pencil eraser and erase as much as you can with just kinda putting the eraser down and just pressing hard but barely actually moving it geographically. You just want to kinda pull off a bright spot, one bright spot in the middle. And you may as well do this to the other I also while you have the tool in your hand. So this one I'm doing two because it's like it looks like it has two or maybe not that I was looking at it. That's okay. We're going to make them smaller anyway. So now the highlight looks pretty blue. So I'm going to use my bright, my light blue that I used in the background and use just the corner and just dab in some little dots of blue in the approximate shape I see there. Same thing on the left. And it's okay if it gets too big, what you don't want is for it to be too small because we're going to cut into it again with the black. Then grab your white, find a corner and sharp corner and just sort of plants it and twist just in one or two spots to get it the brightest. And you can do that maybe once or twice, whatever. Just a little bit on the left side. Now those highlights are too bright, which is a good thing. It's better to be too bright than not. So I'm just going to dab each one with my finger a little bit to soften them. And then I'm gonna go back in with my black pencil and cut into them to make them the size I want and even the shape. You can even reshape it a little bit. There's one, and this one's way too big, so I'm going to dab into it and notice I'm making dots. That's because I don't want it to be a solid shape. I want it to be sort of speckled like it is in the picture. So that's good for those. And let's see on that. And I'm just going to go back and refine this I a little bit. The top edge needs to be a little sharper. Bottom edge is good. And that is good enough for the eyes. We will put the overlapping for over the eyes in a different section. So don't worry about that. That's coming up. 29. Refining the Nose & Mouth: So now we're gonna do the same thing on the nose and mouth that we just did to the eyes. We're going to refine them so you can use your black pencil and add any adjustments. I'm going to just reshape my nose on the outside a little and make it a little bit wider on both the top edges. And then on the bottom I'm going to put a bunch of little dabs of dark kind of going into the fur on the upper lip just to make it soft and a little bit right there. Same thing on the left where it looks like there's these little lines from the nose going out into the fur. Just barely noticeable. But it'll create a real nesting effect of the nose just really nestled into that for same thing going up into this shadow on the bridge of the nose of the muzzle, made a little triangle out of it. And then I'm going to pull some little lines with the charcoal pencil out into the surrounding for and that looks a little too refined. So I'm going to take the white pencil and go back the other way, starting in the white and pulling down into the dark, coloring over those little dabs. Here we go. And then actually I'm going to use the blue again because there's this reflection on the top of the nose and just kinda put in a bunch of little dots on the lightest part of the nose because that nose is rubbery in texture. So we want it to look Saudi. And that's really not showing up very well, but that's okay. That's just brightening it a little bit. And then just like in the eye, we put the blue first and then we're going to use the white. I'm going to plant it and twist and see how bright those dots are. When I twist. You don't want them all to be that bright, so I'm just dotting some of them. I'll twist a few, make a little area of it stand out a little bit more than the rest. And that looks pretty good for the nose. So we'll move on to the mouth. And I'm just going to put this highlight in on the right side with the white pencil on little tiny dabs above that highlight. Pressing pretty hard right here to get it pretty bright and it's too big, but that's okay. Just like the I, we're gonna go back in with the black pencil and cut into it to make it a little smaller. So the bottom is thicker, the top is thicker. Then there's a teeny little line going right through that highlight. I'm gonna see if I can get that to show up. If I can't, not the end of the world. That's okay. As long as it looks like a believable dogs live, you're fine. I'm also going to add little tiny lines of black coming out from the lip into the fur for the same reason I did it. So the nose just to get the lip to look like it's nested into that area. Then I'm going to take the white pencil and try to brighten up the bottom right side a little bit of the further below the lip and that'll help the lip to pop out more, actually on the left to a little bit. So I've brighten that up and then I'm going to pull some lines down from it into the surrounding for to get it to look like it really meshes with that for okay, and we are good to move on. 30. Overlapping Fur Onto Finished Eyes: So now we're going to put that overlapping for near the finished eyes. So once again, use your eraser pencil but rub it on a clean area to make sure you get all the stuff off from previous erase things. And you're going to plant it in the white and rub over into the black. Don't worry if this see how the black smear it into the white. Don't worry if that happens, you're going to get rid of it. Just kinda focus on the major strands of white. Don't try to get every little strand taking care of here and there. That's where I erased out the black that just accidentally got on there. And it's also not going to look very sharp, so don't worry about that. That's what the pencils, therefore, the white pencil. Got that. So that's pretty good. That's just basic. Then any dust, blow it off and rub your white pencil on a clean area. And you can kind of put some lines in by planting your white pencil and just flicking it over the black area and see how the blacks kinda blending into the white. Once again, don't worry about that. Just go back and you can either color over it or if it's really dark, you can erase it and then color over it with the white. Blowing off the dust. I'm going to refine the lines over the top of the eye and really just try to get some fine white lines on their coloring every once in a while on the scratch paper to clean it if you need to. I'm going to put some going over the dark gray on the left there. I'm also since I have this in my hand, just going to put a few more lines into the dark over there on the left. And down here. Same thing on the right. This one's a little more straightforward. There's only a couple of really big chunks here. So there's one going there and one kinda cutting across the bottom edge of the eye. So I'm pressing pretty hard with the eraser pencil there to remove, really remove the dark color as much as possible. And then planting the white in the white part of the dog, just kinda flicking over to the right, they're cleaning the white pencils. I need to either on the cloth or on your scratch paper. And getting rid of the black chunks that naturally come from flicking into a dark surface. And there we go with that section of fur. And now we're going to do some refining of the firm near the nose and the mouth. 31. Refining Fur Near Nose & Mouth: So I'm going to now refine the firm near the nose and the mouth. So on. Around the nose in particular, it looks like I need to add a little bit of blue actually. Just to kinda, even though I'm not copying the colors exactly, they're blue is great for shadowy areas because it makes them look a little cooler, more shadowy. I'm going to put some blue down here on the left. Just the same blue I used in the background. And I'm also going to add some brown to these kind of wet strands of fur around the mouth. And then a little bit of pink on top of that. So I'm just kinda putting in some thick lines coming down and going up into the beard here. Very thick, very unapologetic. Something like that. Then I'm going to grab a dark purply red and go over those just to give a hint of that color to these so that they're not just pure dark brown. It'll help make them look a little bit rosy, like they are in the picture. But because it's adult purple, it's not going to overdo it. Then I'm going to take the white and help to refine that area. So I'm going to start in the white and pull down. It's going to cover up a lot of what I just did at the top, but the bottoms are what I want to show up. So I'm just kinda planting the white and flicking down. And then on the left I'm going to use gray because that's in shadow. So I don't want it to be as bright as it is on the right side. Something more like that. And I'm dabbing a little bit of gray underneath those clumps of fur also to further define them against the fur underneath the lips. So that's kind of your background for then lastly, because I just accidentally went over it. I'm going to take my black and put my shadow back right here. And dab at that. Kinda going into the fur on purpose a little bit to make it look kinda blurry right here, because that's what the photograph implies. There we go. 32. Adding More Chunks to the Background: So now we're gonna go back and just add more chunks to the background because we can or not, if you don't want to, if you like your background the way it is, leave it totally fine. But you can also choose to go back and add even more. The reason to do this in stages is because you're building up the dog in stages to naturally, as the dog becomes more refined, your background might seem a little more rudimentary than you would like, so you can go back and just add to it. So I'm purposely focusing on the right lower corner because that's where the light is really coming from. So that's kinda naturally where there might be more noticeable detail. Not that anybody is focusing on the background, but that's where I put all my lights and then I'm gonna go in and put some browns. And I'll spread the love around with this one because it's a slightly darker color, so it's not as noticeable. But it's just going to give me a little more texture. Sort of randomly putting it everywhere. I have to remember to make some bigger in some smaller chunks. I'm not gonna put any more in the shadow because I don't want to lighten my shadow. Then you can just choose which colors you want to use. Or maybe you want to add a few different colors that you hadn't used the first time. That's fine too. Remember to get some right up next to the dog too. And then I'm gonna go around and do the same load off. We'll also does get through the same kind of blending I did the first time. And then add a little bit more black shadowy stuff in for a few of these dab at those. A few more. At this point, you're probably extremely diverse and comfortable with chunky background, so you can just go to town. I'm going to actually add some more black patches up here towards the left because it's the opposite corner from the brighter area. So that makes more sense to have it a little more shadowy, a little darker, little bit more of that. And I'm feeling pretty happy with that. So I'm going to stop there. You can continue as much as you want. Next thing, we will add some small bits to the background in the next section. 33. Adding Small Bits to the Background: Now this is optional, but if you want to, you can go in and add a really tiny bits in the background. And I'm just gonna do a bunch in this foreground part because that's the foreground right corner because that's like saying where it was most focused. But see how I just naturally tend to make them really evenly spaced. So we don't want to do that. I just like as long as I'm talking, I'm not paying as much attention. So I tend to evenly space everything. But I'm gonna go back and add a bunch to make it very uneven. And then I'm going to dab at them. And I'm gonna do a different color. I'm just kinda planting a corner and wiggling it a little bit. I guess I need to go a little bit more to the left here. Not quite as much as I did here. I like that really concentrated look, but I need to make it look like it fades off a little bit more like it's not just a section of small bits. You use the pink down at those. And I'm gonna put a few. I should have done this with the other colors that originally, but I didn't. I'll go back for those. I'm going to put a few just way back here so that there's some suggestion of a marriage between the background and the foreground. Even though this area, I want a little bit blurrier than the front area. So go back and put some of these other colors back here. Just a few little dabs. There we go. So go ahead and again do it until you're totally happy with it. And then we will work on some finishing touches together. 34. Finishing Touches on the Dog: So now is your opportunity to look at your dog and do anything you wanna do to make it different, better, add stuff, take stuff away. So I'm going to use my black pencil and just add a little bit more black at the tip of the ear. There it is. I was looking for that kind of definition and I just wasn't getting it earlier. So I'm adding little bit more edging along that year to make it pop out a little more. And then I'm going to grab the white and go back and pull into that black a little bit. I would use the pencil because it's skinnier, but the pencil doesn't go on as richly as these pastels do. So I prefer the pastel is if I'm trying to really get the color to pop more. There we go there. Same thing for the, for in front of the, I feel like I want a little more richness there. So I'm going to use the pastel stick even though it's thicker and try to find a corner to make thin little lines. There we go. And then color white over the black part. That got stuck there. Pull up some more lines into the phase out, a little bit more white on the bottom edge lip and pull some lines into the further below it. And a little more, a few more kind of random furry things sticking out from beneath the dog and dab at them because I want them blurry, but just a little more for then up here on the tail, a little more brightness. So you kinda get the idea. Just pick whatever thing you want, things you want to refine and go back and mess with it until you're really happy. Feel free to erase, add takeaway. Just kind of work it until you feel like, wow, I can't believe I did this. It's beautiful. I'm really happy with it. I'm proud of it. And then when you're done, you can be done and we'll move on to signature. 35. Signature (optional): So if you would like to sign it, you can try the black pencil. Just make a mark and see if it shows up. Really doesn't show up. So I'm going to try the white pencil. That's better. So I'm gonna just write my name very tiny in the bottom corner. And notice it's not that obvious. We don't want it to be obvious. We want it to blend with your background. So don't try to make it too big or too dominating. And use either black or white, whichever one seems to show up the way you want it to. But it should be subtle. And within about a half inch, quarter inch of your side of your page so your frame will not cut it off. And then that's it. My friends. I hope you had as good a time with this as I have. I'm so happy to have been on this journey with you. Let's move on to preserving our picture in the next section and then we'll wrap it up. 36. Spray Fixatif (optional): Alright, so now we're going to talk about how to preserve your picture if you would like. This is optional, but I do recommend it because it will help your chalk pastel to not smudge as much. It will still be smudge tool, so do protect it. But after you put the fixative on it, it won't be as module. So you can get any brand of fixative. I happen to have this one. It's called workable fixative, and that just means that it's not super permanent. So you could go back in and rework the chalk pastel again if you want to after you've sprayed it. So what you do is hold your drawing up and hold the cane about 18 " away oh, excuse me. Before you spray on the drawing. Definitely test splits a little bit out into the air and definitely be outside for this because it stinks and it's not good for you to breathe. The test spreads is so that it doesn't get little drops on your picture. So you just want to make sure that it's nice, fine mist, then hold it about 12 to 18 " away and just in a circle, kind of allow the MIS to blow onto the picture and wave it around to dry. You can do a couple of passes. I usually do two to three just to be extra thorough. And that's it. Then you can even leave it outside to dry if there's nothing that's going to drip or land on it if it's a nice day. And that way you won't have it outgassing in your house or you can bring it in. It's up to you, but that is how to preserve your picture. 37. Congratulations!: Alright, We did it. I hope you had a great time taking this class. I really had a great time teaching it and drawing right along with you, just to recap things we worked on and learned about today, we're building a good base layer and when and how to blend on the base layer and subsequent layers. We talked about layering for texture and richness, how to kind of emphasize the darks and then have faith that the lights later would brighten up the picture. We talked about replicating different natural textures, such as the softness and fineness of the firm, rubbery little nose, the shiny little black eyes. We learned something about controlling the pastel like when we want it really soft and blending and when we want sharp, little pointy edges and lines for creating different effects, we navigated subtle color differences and talked about how to interpret one of the colors, the cooler colors from the photograph that I had, to warmer colors in the finished picture. If you chose to do that. Again, totally fine. If you copied whatever color is your printer gave you. And hopefully we had a great time. Thank you so much for joining me today and I wish you the best on your artistic journey. If you are interested. I also have classes in charcoal, oil, pastel colored pencil, watercolor, or acrylic or oil paint, just a variety of other mediums. And I do encourage you to take classes from as many instructors as possible because I personally feel that the more people you learn from, the richer and more in-depth your artistic education and experience will be. So I wish you all the best and thank you again for joining me today.