Awaken the Artist Within | Understanding Charcoal Drawing Part II

1. Introduction : Hey. Welcome back to another class. My name is Braden Messer. I am an artist, an author, a YouTuber, a tattoo. Basically, I'm about as artist as you can get. So awaken the artist within understanding Chuckle drawing. This is part two of a three part series that I'm making where I'm taking you through, and I'm going to show you how to draw an incredible bull shark. I'm going to be showcasing my three layered method. Now, I've written a book about the three layered method. Drawing the Portrait, step by step lessons for mastering classic techniques for beginners. Yes, I know it's about human portraits and we're drawing a shark, but the three layered method, the way you use it, the way you build tones, the way you use brushes to soften your gradation, all of that is outlined very nicely in this book. I will provide a link to the book in the description of the class if that's something that you're interested in. Now, what to expect? In this class. Going to start off, and we're going to lay down the contour lines of the shark. I'm then going to show you a trick where we can use what I call frame lines to essentially frame the third dimension of the shark. Once we have the contour lines drawn, the frame lines established, I'm then going to show you how we can begin to layer our charcoal. We're going to start off by using soft charcoal with our brush to give us a nice base layer. Once we have the base layer established, I'm then going to show you how we can use medium charcoal for our line work. And building up our tones. We are going to be going in sections so that you don't get overwhelmed. Once we have the majority of the shark drawn, I'm then going to show you how we can use hard charcoals and begin to detail out the shark and really focus in on those small elements and bringing the shark full circle. I'm also going to show you some eraser work, some high value retrievals, saving high values, all of that good stuff. And by the end, you should have a very convincing bull shark. On your paper. So that's pretty much what to expect. Now, make sure that once you've concluded the class, you've made your project, that you upload your project. That way, I can take a look at it. I can give you my honest feedback and critique on it. And then after you've uploaded your project, make sure that you also leave your review of the class by leaving your review, what that enables me to do is actually share your drawing project in my monthly newsletter that comes out the first half of every single month. So this is a great way for you to be able to get not only your name, but your art out there amongst the community here on Skillshare, as well. Now, I know that this is a lot. There's many different variables to the three layered method. And so what I would recommend, just because I've been doing this for a while, and I know what works and I know what students tend to struggle with is just sit back and when you first go through the class, just watch it. Don't bother trying to draw and taking all the information with me at the same time. I really want you to absorb the content and really try to think about what it is that I'm saying, what it is that I'm doing, and the effect that those things are giving me on the paper. Once you've gone through, watched it once, then go through and follow along with me and create your project. Okay? That's a best practice. Now, if you find yourself really enjoying this technique, if you're liking what it's giving you on paper, I do offer one on ones here on Skillshare. It's easy to sign up for those. Just go to my homepage. You can search Messer Creations and Link to signup is right at the tippy top of the page. So, that's it. That's all. And I hope to see you in class. 2. Contour & Form Frame Lines: Okay. So the first of the tools that we're going to need for this one is a graphite pencil. This is just a humble HB. We're also going to be using soft medium and hard rated charcoal pencils. Yes. We're also going to be using three different smudger sizes, number one, two, and three. As well as a hoo hoo eraser, a Pentel click eraser, and a mono zero eraser. We're also going to be using a sandpaper strip for grinding our soft charcoal and a extra piece of paper. I call this my tone check paper. This is for checking our tones before we lay them down onto the drawing. Then last but not least our trustee brushes, two different sizes, a number six, and then a diagonal cut elf brush from a makeup kit. And here we go. All right, so when looking at your reference image, what I do is I focus on the basic shape of the image itself. So, in this case, that is going to be the edge of this bull shark here. And if we think of shape in terms of what it is, by definition, it is the form of an object, or you could think of it as its external boundary, right? So in this step, we're not concerned with what is going on inside of the basic shape of this shark. We're only concerned with bringing out the outside edge. Now, this, of course, is going to be a two dimensional area, right? And what will happen as we progress and as we bring out the charcoal and we start to throw down our values and really mess with the layering of those tones is we're going to achieve a three dimensional appearance, but don't get confused. That comes later. Right now we're only concerned with the two dimensional shape of this shark. And think of it like this. What we're doing is we are more or less framing the drawing for the charcoal to come. So see here I can use this point to this point as a reference. And that's the thing with this specific drawing is that you can use certain points as you are drawing it out to help you kind of nail your proportion sizes. That's kind of the trick when you free hand drawings, right? Is we're not using the grid method or anything like that, so use a reference point, say from here to here. And right about there is where the end of those gills are going to be. I see. I'm a big fan of free handing my drawings. For those of you that have been following me for a while, you know, I just like the freedom. I like the freedom of being able to not only the freedom, but it's also kind of a challenge, and I like that. I like to be challenged when I'm drawing. I like to not get things, you know, picture perfect. So here we are. So I'm all about making mistakes, and that's why I have three different types of erasers here. I'm just going to clean up these lines. Just embrace mistakes, okay? Don't think that you need to nail every single line. That's not what drawings about, in my opinion. It's about having fun. And more importantly, it's about learning from those mistakes. So here with the mouth, what we're gonna do is we're going to draw out the top line of the mouth everywhere. And then the bottom lip here, just kind of streamline that. These are main lines within the mouth. And these are almost like the gums, if you will. So put the gums in there. And then, now that we have that right about here as a reference point, we're going to go up to right about there. And that is where the eye of this bull shark is. So now that we have the basic area of where that eye needs to be, go ahead and we can start to more or less bring out the eye in our outline. And then from the eye and middle of the mouth to right about there, that's where our nostrils are going to be on the bridge of this snout here. There we are. That's coming together. Now here what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna count the teeth. It looks like we got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 910, something like that. Ours gonna put in these teeth here. But you see why I put that line for the gum of the teeth. I wouldn't want to just put the line and then not draw the second line for the gum and then put the teeth in because that wouldn't look accurate to the reference image. Then here it looks like we have these little indents these little gaps between the bottom teeth, so we want to make sure that we outline those indents. And then here we're going to start to put in where these where these bottom teeth go, where they plug into the bottom jaw of this shark. And then sharks teeth are row, right? So we want to put teeth in front of other teeth as they belong in the reference image. That's looking pretty good. I'm just gonna clean this up here. There we are. A nice light hand, okay? When it comes to outlining the graphite, outline a nice light hand. Nice, light pressure control is what we want. Then here, it looks like we have fishy in the background, so we're just more or less putting putting in this outline so that we can get a good idea, a good feel for where these fish are in relation to the shark itself. And in regards to optics, the overall look of this drawing, I want to speak to these fish because we can use these fish to really bring out the depth of the drawing. But I'll speak to that a little later as we progress through this one. Okay. So now, I'm going to put in this little fin, and now here we are. So this is what I call framing in drawing, and I'm going to tell you why it's important. So as I spoke to before, you know, shape is defined by the outer contour and object, right? Which is how your viewer will first perceive it and begin to make sense of it. But it's only going to be two dimensional. So now, Form is three dimensional versus shape, which is two dimensional. Form frame lines, which is what these are, in order to achieve a three dimensional appearance, we must use form lines. This is to help frame the invisible contours of our object. This will help us go from a two dimensional framework to a three dimensional framework. 3. Tail & Rear Mid Section : Okay, so now here's my tone check paper. I've taken some soft charcoal and I've graded it onto my sandpaper strip here. I'm going to take number three smudger, and I'm going to get a nice lower value, a darker tone, right? And I'm going to more or less just start very lightly applying, very lightly applying the charcoal here. And keep in mind with this step to use a very light pressure control. You don't want to press too hard because, of course, this is the three layered method, and the three layered method is all about layers, right? Layer on top of layer on top of layer. And what you'll find is not only with smudger work with brush work and pencil work, if you push too hard onto the paper, if you use too much pressure in your hand, what'll end up happening is you'll end up overworking the paper, right? I see here, I didn't like this line, so I'm actually gonna bring this tail in a little bit. Got to clean that up. There we go. That looks a little bit more accurate to the reference image. And and when you're looking at this, just focus on where those lower values are first. Don't worry so much about where the higher values are. And because you'll be using a lighter pressure control in your application of the charcoal, if you do need to go back through and retrieve higher values with your Monozero eraser, you can most definitely do that. Okay. But see, just like that, it doesn't take very much at all. It doesn't take very much time. And we are off to the races, as they say. But here, if you need to bring out a lower value, right? Convey a darker tone, just continue to work that spot on the paper, and your value will progressively get lower and lower with the more time you spend on a specific area. And then here, there's almost like some ripples some low value ripples on the top of this fin. So this is how we're going to convey those. We're just going to smudge them here. And here, I'm just gonna take my number six brush. I'm just gonna very lightly blend all this together. This is, uh, giving us a nice smooth look and giving us a form of gradation across all of our values here. And this is what I was talking about with retrieving those higher values with our monos or eraser. See how easy that is? Boom. Okay, so now our diagonal cut elf brush. Now, this elf brush, I've only been using for a little bit, but I absolutely swear by it, especially when it comes to sharks because they do tend to have a smoother texture compared to most animals that you'll draw. But as you can see, we're not so much stroking the paper as much as we're using the brush and we're dabbing. So you see that? See how that's how you'll know when your brush is fully loaded, is when you hit the tone check paper and trucal bits fall off onto the paper, right? But here, what I'm doing is I'm more or less I'm pushing or dabbing the paper as I like to call it. What that does is that basically conveys a smooth texture, while at the same time also doing what the number six brush does, it's speaking to that gradation and bringing that out. Now here what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a nice light line with the hard charcoal. I'd want to use a hard charcoal for my line work here just because there's more binder in the hard charcoal than there is in the medium or the soft charcoal. So the lines tend to have a better overall integrity. So you can get a nice, nice thin line, and it's not going to look gritty because of the amount of binder that's in it. But then here, I'm going to bring this line out. I wouldn't want to use a medium charcoal for this. I want to use a hard charcoal, so my line keeps its integrity, even though it's thinner. And then you see what that line, effectively what we've done is we've pushed that tail fin back, and we've brought the body of the shark forward, right? And so what we've effectively done with the use of a single line is that we have elongated the image. And that's just a simple trick of optics there. Okay. So now that I've re solidified that line with my graphite, now I have a little bit better idea of what I want. I'm going to go ahead and we're going to continue with our smudger work here. And then this little fin, looks like there's the bottom side here, so we're going to want to just slowly pack in this lower value. Remember, we don't want to press hard. We we like it when our tools work for us, right? The smudger wants to smudge the charcoal, so just let it do its thing. Now here I'm going to take we're going to apply a line here with the hard charcoal. Kind of more or less bring out that fin. And then here's another trick. If you want to take a medium charcoal pencil because you want to have more control in tight spaces like this, you can go ahead and you can just very lightly, more or less caress the paper, let the charcoal fall off of the pencil onto the paper, and you see what it conveys, it conveys a lower value, right? A darker tone. And then you can go in with your smudger and you can blend it together, because when you do that with just the pencil, what happens is the charcoal when it lays onto the paper, it looks gritty, right? But when you hit it with your smudger like this, all of a sudden it blends it and smooths out those transitions from, you know, high value to mid value to low value. And then here, you can do the exact same thing for the tail. Thing. And depending on the texture that you're going for, you might hit it like that and you might like that gritty look. That might be the kind of texture that your shark has, so you won't have to hit it with a smudger like I'm doing here. I'm just hitting it with a smudger more or less for blending purposes and I want to smooth out that transition between values. Okay. And then you can go in with your makeup brush and you can just go ahead and smudge it and dab it, and this will just blend it more and more. Then here we're going to take our number six, load up real light. This is where we're going to start having some fun. Start having some fun. If you look at the reference image, you see how there is that point of a little lower value. We want to run our brush left to right, and now we want to run our brush vertical, up and down. But we want to make sure that our strokes are contingent upon those form frame lines that we laid down during our outline phase with our graph. I but real light, real light pressure control here, guys. Don't push the charcoal into the paper because if you do that, again, we're gonna be going back through with our mono zero eraser and we're gonna be retrieving higher values, and we're going to be bringing out that underlying form to give our shark that three dimensional form, right? So we want to be nice and light onto the paper. Nice and light onto the paper with our number six brush. Now, I'm just cleaning this up a little bit. Charcoal will get away from me if you let it, so Okay, so now I'm taking a medium charcoal and I'm making sure that my pencil is sharp here, and I'm going to bring out this line on the underbelly. Now, when it comes to sharks, you can get away with using medium charcoal for your line work, okay? But I caution you not to use medium charcoal for your shark lines on the top of a shark's body. And one of the reasons why is just like this reference image, the shark is fairly close to the surface of the water, right? And because of that, there's much higher values, much higher values on the top of the shark than there are on the bottom. So keep that in mind, okay? Okay, so now I'm going to take my smudger, and I'm springing out and smudging some lower values. Now here's a trick. Make sure your elf brush is dry. Make sure there's not too much charcoal on it. And then start from the line and then pull up. Start from the line and then pull up. This might not seem like it's doing a lot, but trust me, it is. What this is doing, if you look at the reference image, you can make out what I'm trying to accomplish here. I'm trying to bring out that low value directly from the line. And what this will do is this will trick the viewer's eye into thinking that that belly of the shark is rounded, right? I really speak to that three dimensional form, which is the biggest trick when it comes to any drawing, right? That's one of the gateways to realism is being able to bring out form in your drawings. But one of the things you'll find with this elf brush is that and any smaller brush, kind of like smudgers, right? Me control. You can really pinpoint where those lower values are in relation to your mid and your high values when it comes to your brush work. But again, just like what we were doing with the number six brush, when it comes to the elf brush, nice, light pressure control. Okay, now, this is the fun part. So now what we're doing is we're taking our monozur eraser. And we're just very lightly hitting the paper, and what we're doing is we're retrieving those higher values. And at the same time, this is actually a trick where we're bringing out the form with our eraser work because if you actually look at the reference image, there is a lot of higher value like linework like texture almost from the light that's striking the top of this shark. And so this is the technique that we use to achieve that same type of look onto the paper. But the biggest part of this is just making sure that you stay aware to the direction and how you are pulling that monozo eraser across your paper because the eraser is gonna do what you tell it to do, right? It's not going to do anything that your hand doesn't dictate. And so just make sure that you understand what you're trying to accomplish and how you're trying to do it, right? But it's absolutely amazing some subtle lines. And you could think of these as implied lines. But also notice how when you leave gaps between your poles, that actually brings out more texture than if you were to just run that Monozoe eraser and run your high value lines immediately next to each other. There we go. This is coming together pretty nicely. 4. Mid Section Continued & Fins: Okay. Number six, make sure it's nice and dry. And then it's very lightly. We go back over everything that you just did with your monozur eraser, right, all of your high values that you just retrieved. And this is just for blending effect, okay. Alright. So now our number two smudger. I'm just going to go in. I'm going to bring out this fin. We have our low value there. Now I'm just gonna kind of clean this up a little bit. Now, I'm gonna take my hard charcoal, remember, when it comes to line work on the top of your sharks, use a hard charcoal. It'll have a better aesthetic for you, than a medium charcoal will. There we are. It's looking good. Just clean this up a little bit. Looks like there was a little bit of residual from that graphite line. There we are. Okay, so now I'm gonna be checking my tone here with my number two smudger. And let's bring out this let's bring out this fin here. So again, I'm looking at the reference image, and I'm starting where the low values are first. Okay. Remember what I always say, start on the low values, and then your high values will inevitably take care of themselves. And worst case scenario, if you really need to bring out and solidify exactly where those higher values are, because you're using a nice light pressure control with this step with your smudger, you'll be able to go back through and lift that charcoal off with the paper and really bring out those higher values with your monozur eraser. Okay. Remember, we can always go back in and add more charcoal. You can always add more charcoal. The trick is, if you add too much charcoal, being able to bring back a lighter value in that space without overworking the paper, okay? The analogy that I like to use a lot of the times in regards to that is it's like cutting hair, right? You always want to cut a little bit of hair off because you can always take off more. Well, in direct relation to charcoal, you can always add more charcoal. You don't want to add too much because it's hard to it's hard to retrieve sometimes, like it's hard to bring that hair back after you've cut it off, right? Okay. So more line work. Hard charcoal, of course, because we're on the top of the shark. We're just gonna go up and pull it. This is real time here. Boom, just like that. All of a sudden, we've solidified the end of the, the fin there. We're just gonna bring this line here 'cause it's folded. There we are. Then here's gonna bring this line up. Just like that. We're not gonna connect them up top. No need. No need. Okay, so now we're switching it up. Bringing out our makeup brush. And one of the reasons why I absolutely love this makeup brush is because you can see the kind of spaces, the kind of tight spaces that you can get into, and you can start blending those lower values, where I wouldn't be able to do that with the number six brush, right? It's just too big of a brush. We with this little elf brush, it's very versatile in that regard. Very versatile. So if you don't have one yet, definitely get one, okay? But here we're just more or less dabbing, dabbing the paper. But we're not pushing hard. There's no need to. You know, I always say, let your tools do what your tools want to do, what they were designed to do. And they'll do it. Okay, here we are. I'm just cleaning this up. Kind of want to kind of redraw this, uh this little fish. I don't know what kind of fish this is, but, he's in the drawing, so we're gonna draw him. And the big thing with these little fish here is just make sure that you outline those big differences that you see between high and low values. Okay. And now, because these values in this reference image are very, very low, very low values. I'm going to use my medium charcoal here. And again, just like with any part of the drawing, I'm focusing on the lower values first. And then what I want to do is I want to run this line right along the belly right along the belly of this fish. Here we go. See that just like that. And I also don't want to pack in that low value because I'm going to be going back in with my smudger and I'm going to be blending all of this. So when you leave breaks in the belly of that fish, like I did, I didn't pack it all in, all of a sudden you have value relationships in a very, very tight space. Of course, value relationships are just that. Those are by definition, low values, mid values, high values immediately next to each other and how they correlate to each other within a greater composition, like a drawing, right? There we go. We're starting to really bring out this fish. And then here, I'm just going to go ahead and add the e of this fish. These are very small details, but we're also working in a very small space, so But again, don't give these fish too much time. Don't worry about giving them too much detail, right? We want these fish to be soft. We want them to be, for the most part, fairly implied because they're not the focal point of the drawing. The focal point is the shark itself. Now here what I'm doing is I'm taking my huhu battery operated eraser. I'm just going back through and just solidifying this line, which is the main differentiator between the low value on the belly of the fish and then the high value that we see on the top of the fish. On. It's looking good. Okay. Now it's time for his little friend. Every fish in the sea should have a friend, so we're going to give him his. But here what we're doing is we're just using our smudger work, and I'll be using a hard charcoal just to bring out some of the lower values that we see on the fish's belly, but smudger work and then monozeroeraser work here. This is just more or less really bring out those boundaries between the fish and the background. Oh and then here's my heart charcoal, 'cause if you look at the reference image here, the lowest value that we see on this fish is on his chin and his underbelly. So but if you notice, I don't want to put any defined lines on this fish. Like I said, I want this fish to kind of be in the background. I want you to know what's there, but I don't want the viewer's eye to be drawn to it in any way. I want the viewer's eye to focus mainly on the shark. Okay. All right. We are cruising right along. You. Okay. So now, just like we did with the back fin, the top fin, I'm using my smudger and I'm just laying down a nice base layer of charcoal. I'm spending a little bit more time on places in the drawing that need to have a lower value. But the trick is a lot of people think that when they need to convey those lower values, they need to use a harsher pressure control, right? They need to use more pressure. Well, you don't need to do that. You just need to spend more time on that specific area, okay? So just keep that in mind. Okay. So then here. Just real light. You'll find you can play around with your hand pressure. More pressure means lower value. Lighter pressure means higher value. Okay? It's literally that simple. And just like riding a bike or just like doing anything, just practice, more practice, and you'll really get comfortable with exactly what your hand needs to do in order to convey a certain aesthetic, right? Takes practice. That's all. So I'm just going to clean this up a little bit. I know it's hard to see in the reference image, but that fin actually curls. So what we have here, this medium pencils remember we're on the bottom of the fish now. So now we can use a medium charcoal for our line work. So I'm going to take this medium charcoal and this fin actually does this. I'm going to solidify the bottom here. This is the very, very bottom. It's actually the backside, believe it or not, away from away from us. But then there's the top line. See that? That's actually what the fin does in the reference image, but because of the nature of the shadows and the nature of how the light strikes that fin, it's not that black and white, if you will. And I'm going to make this look a lot more like the reference image. But a lot of times it's knowing how to look at something, right? It's kind of the art of looking, if you will, when you're drawing because basically what you're doing is you are constructing the image that you're looking at, and you are very much building a relationship with it. So it's in situations like this where it's knowing what to see and how to decipher it in an image. Okay. So now, again, we took our medium pencil to bring out that lower value. Now we're just blending it with our smudge. And you're probably thinking to yourself, Wow, that is a very, very harsh line. We need to soften that up, right? Well, I agree with you. So now what we're gonna do is I'm going to take my smudger, and we're just going to run this smudger right along that line that we laid down with our medium charcoal. Kind of blending this, you know, not too harsh on the hand, pressure, okay? We're just just having fun spending more and more time on it. And see this as we blend it, all of a sudden, boom There we are. That's what we want. That looks a lot more like the reference image. Wonderful. Okay, I'm just taking my models eraser and just kind of cleaning up this line a little bit. Charcoal will run away from you if you let it, so I just want to make sure we take care of that. Then here as well. It's cleaning this up. 5. Gills & Top of Head: Okay. And then here's another trick. If you want to go in and you want more control, but you still want to lower the value on your fins, do this. Just take a medium charcoal, flip it on its side, and then just very lightly lay down more charcoal. Of course, it'll be gritty, right? So you can either take a smudger or you can take your elf brush like this. You can use either or it's up to you and just hit it, soften it up, blend it out. There you are. And also notice on this fin, I'm not going to run a defined line on the top of the fin. I only ran that defined line with my medium charcoal on the bottom, same principle as the rest of the body of the shark, right? You could have a heavy defined line on the belly and the bottom of the shark's body, but because of the nature of the photograph, because of the nature of sharks being close to the surface, that sun, that light is illuminating the top of everything, the top of the fins, the top of the body, the top of the whole body of the shark, so just keep that in mind. Then here, if we want to change this line, we can do that. We can make it more abrupt. We can soften it up. It's really up to you. The main point of these tutorials is to show you guys just different techniques, different tricks, different things that you can do, different tools that you can use to achieve, you know, certain aesthetics. You know, that's really what this tutorials is about. Now, if I was drawing this shark for a client, I wouldn't be able to draw this in an hour or an hour and 20 minutes. I'd probably spend a good ten plus hours drawing it to really bring out as much detail and as much accuracy to the drawing as I could. But in this one, we're just having fun. I'm just teaching you guys my approach, how I would approach it. We're kind of moving it, you know, light speed here, but you know, we're having fun. That's the point. If you can absorb tricks of the trade, different techniques, you know, that is wonderful because then you can take these tricks that I teach you and you can apply them to your own methods and your own ways of drawing. So Okay. So now what we're doing is I just took a hard charcoal there and kind of punched in those gills. Then here, I'm going to take my smudger. When it comes to drawing sharks, in my opinion, what I'm doing here, this is the hardest part is when you look at the reference image, you see that underlying form, which is conveyed visually. By lower values in relation to their mid and high value counterparts. So you can go in with a brush and you can start to bring out the lower values, or if you're uncomfortable with a brush or maybe you've just started drawing with a brush and you're a little unsure on your brush work, you can use a smudger instead, okay? The smudger is your alternative for more control. A lot of times when we're uncomfortable with anything that we do, especially when it comes to creating something or crafting something, we're uncomfortable because we don't feel like we're in control. Okay? So you can do that. You can convey those lower values with your smudger instead of your brush. But now here what I'm doing because I'm taking my number six, and I'm just more or less going through and I'm blending, I'm getting a nice soft look, I'm adding to my gradation. Now, bear in mind, I've been drawing with brushes for years. So for me, I'm very comfortable with them. And if you're not yet you will just takes time. What I'm doing is I'm going through it and I'm basically accomplishing a couple of things with a step. I'm laying down a nice base layer, all the while being cautious to use a very light pressure control, extremely light handed. I want my charcoal in this base layer to rest on top of the paper, okay? I don't want it to get pressed into the paper because I'm still very much going to be going through with my monozura eraser and bringing out and retrieving higher values where they need to be. But here, here's a technique I want to show you guys that is basically what I'm doing is just I'm smudging the paper. When you smudge the paper with your brush, you have more control versus if you swipe, right? So I'm basically just kind of not to mention, it gives you kind of like a shadowy, almost like a blotchy type look. Okay. Okay. So now, as promised, busting out the model zero eraser. And this is where we really get a chance to bring out kind of the form that we see in the top of the gills and just kind of we're able to kind of bring out that waviness of the shark's skin. But again, with this step, it's imperative, especially if you're unsure to just go slow, take your time and be just conscious of the direction that you're pulling. In regards to pressure control, I am not pressing hard at all. If anything, with this step with the monoza eraser, I'm just skipping across the paper, more or less caressing the paper with my eraser, if you want to think of it that way. Because if you press too hard, all of a sudden you're going to have a really, really definite implied line. Versus if you barely hit it, the viewer's eye will look at it and they won't even realize what they're looking at. They'll think, Wow, I see the form in that shark, but they won't understand that it's due to your eraser work. So keep that in mind. But here what I'm doing is I'm going in with my number one smudger. And I'm doing this because I want more control than number two or my number three smudger offers. And I'm just this is where you really get a chance to bring out those lower values and actually start to convey a sense of a sense of texture, right? So now I'm going in with my heart charcoal, and I'm just, uh more or less solidifying exactly where those breaks between these gills are. If you look at the reference image, you can see that it's more value relationships than it is actual line work. So when you go in with your heart charcoal, you can actually just more or less highlight those lower values and you'll get that same type of aesthetic that you see with the gills in the reference image. It's a dance between your smudger work and your heart charcoal work, okay? Then here, just taking my number six brush. Blending for some gradation and now I'm switching it up, taking my ELF brush. I'm just going in and I want to bring out the lower values a little bit more, and I'm using my elf brush for this because I want more control. The elf brush offers more control than my number six brush does. And when it comes to really pinpointing where a shadow needs to be, right, where a low value needs to be conveyed, I actually prefer this brush over my number six brush any day, especially when it comes to drawing sharks, right? And you see how quickly we're able to move, granted, I do have this visual sped up a little bit, but you'll be amazed when you start to work with your brush, especially if you're new to it, just how quickly you can bring out different aesthetics onto your paper. There we go. Just like that. Being about a boom. Wonderful. Okay. So now I am switching it up. We are going back to our smudger. And I want to start bringing out the nose of this bull shark. So of course, form is important. So what we're gonna do is we're going to focus on kind of the bridge of this nose. We're gonna kind of solidify that. And then right here, see where we're going to pole. Just like that. See that? Direction. It's the direction that you pull with your smudger work that'll give you that form. See how it kind of looks like it. There's almost like a little little bridge to that nose now. And we did all of that with our value relationships. Now, herms gonna pull up it. Away, up and away. Up and away. There we are just like that. And that was real time. That was real time. That's literally how fast you're able to convey form if you just if you just know what you're doing with this specific technique, okay? All right. And remember, if it looks harsh, if it looks greedy, don't worry. Brush work. Just like this with a number six, blend this together. Nice, light pressure control. We're blending, bringing out lower values. That's all we're doing here. Okay. That's all we're doing. 6. Bottom of Head & Mouth : Alright, so now take a medium charcoal, and it's time to give this shark an eye. So I'm just referring to the reference image, and I'm just looking at how the line work around the eye is. And then there's a little bit of little lower value shadow right here coming off the side of the eye. And then what I want to do is I want to actually, I think I'm gonna clear this out. I want to bring this, uh, people down a little bit. Let's bring it down a little bit. Just got to re solidify it. Pack this in. There we go. Oh, yeah. There's an eye. Okay. So now we want to make that eye look like it's sunk in to the head just a little bit. So this is how we're gonna convey that. I'm gonna take our smudger, and I'm just going to refer to the reference image, and I'm gonna start to add all of the lower values around that eyeball. Then, of course, the brows it connects, you know, the snout of the shark or it connects. Layer upon layer. That's all we're that's all we're trying to do here. Then just take our number six, just kind of blend it and just see how that immediately gives us a smoother look, a smoother texture. Just kind of bring out the edge of the nose here. We'll take a medium charcoal. What I want to do is I want to bring out the nostril of this shark. Again, like that fin. It doesn't necessarily look like that in the reference image, but that's just because we have these lower values, all the shadow work that's immediately around it, so it's there, but because of that shadow work, you can't really see it in that regard. So again, it's just knowing what to look for when you are looking at your reference image. Then here, there is some low value around the top lip of the sharks. We want to start bringing that out. For me, drawing sharks, I think my favorite part of drawing sharks is the mouth. So that's where we get to bring out those teeth. Then here we have an interesting texture here. Um, it's like, kind of kind of skin or it's where the shark's mouth contracts, right, when it opens up its mouth to eat its prey. And so we're just going in with our heard charcoal and bringing that out. Then we put it in a fine line right here. Hard charcoal. Right out there. I want to make sure that I want to make sure that these lines have a nice mid mid road line quality to them. The one here. Same thing. Kinda bring it up and over. I just kind of want to let that fade. Just kind of fade. There we are. Okay. And then taking my smudger. I'm just kind of pulling up immediately from that line. And this will make this will make the mouth look like it's like it's kind of round. If you look at the reference image, you see how it's round, right? Right, right in through there. Well, that's how we do it. We take our smudger, go from the line, then pull up away from the line. And that gives us a nice round look. Then here we're just running our sputters left or right. It's kind of given us that kind of a blotchy look that we see on the chin, kind of the gullet, if you will, of this bull shark. But, guys, when it comes to running, you know, low values, you can either do it with your smudger or you can do it with your brush or you can do it with both. I tend when it comes to sharks, I actually prefer smudgers because just like this, I I'm able to kind of convey that quick, little low value line that we see in the center of the cheek of this shark. Smudgers are amazing when it comes to shark texture in regards to their skin. So Brush works more for just very big areas of low value. And then, of course, gradation and smoothing and blending all of your values together. Okay, then here what I'm doing. I'm just really trying to solidify the bottom of this shark's gullet here, the bottom of his mouth. Start run that line, and I'm pulling up from the line. See that? Run that line, and then I'm pulling up from the line. And if this looks great, don't worry. We're gonna hit with a smudger. We're going to hit it with brush work, and we're really gonna we're really gonna bled it all together, and it's going to look it's gonna look good. It's gonna look pretty for us. So that's what we want. Blending it all together. And notice how, if you take your smudge and you do a line or something like that, if you notice kind of along the cheek of this bull shark, there is a lot of, like, scarring and stuff like that. So that's a way that you can convey scarring on your sharks with your smudger work. Am is taking my number six, and I'm just kind of more or less blending this all together. This is softening it up, giving us a nice smooth texture. And then, of course, if you want to load up your number six, you can go in and notice I'm only doing this because the value of this reference image is so low, right here. But but I actually like to run the base layer with smudgers and then I like to hit it with the brush because I can really kind of pinpoint my value relationships and exactly where my high values are in relation to my mid and my low values. And then here what I'm doing is I'm building up the bottom lip of this shark with my elf brush. And you can do this with a brush or you can do this with a smudger. I just wanted to show you this so that you can understand that this part of the drawing can be accomplished with brush work. Remember what I was saying earlier. You know, a lot of what I'm trying to accomplish with you in these tutorials is more or less what your tools are capable of and what they can do for you. And then what you do with them that's up to you. Okay. This is starting to look somewhat like a shark. It's a toothless shark. You don't have no teeth yet. But he's going to. We're gonna give him some teeth. Very soon here. I got some runaway charcoal. Just gonna clean this up. Okay. Alright, so now actually what I'm gonna us I'm gonna take my medium charcoal, and I am going to bring out a fine line. I'm gonna run this line all the way back to the gills, all the way back. Boom. There we are. And now what I'm doing is I'm going to take my smudger. And again, I'm going to run that smudger right along that line, okay? Right along the line. But I want to be careful that I don't go on the line, I go on the line, what will happen is the charcoal will get pushed off into the white space, and that's not what I want. That'll compromise the integrity of my line. And I do not want to do that. But now I'm just basically going back through with my smudger, and I'm just building up those lower values and exactly where they need to be, okay? Now here, I'm actually going to take a hard charcoal. I'm gonna run another defined line. Okay. And here, I'm just gonna change the angle of this mouth a little bit. Then solidify where those gaps are going to be. There we are. Okay. This is starting to come together. Then here what I'm doing is I'm just going through and you can just run back and forth, or you can do, you know, nice tight little circles with your mono Zero eraser. But I mean, you have all the power, really. That's what it boils down to with this technique is you can go in and you can retrieve high values all day long if you want to. And remember, with these tutorials, there's only so much I can do in the time that I'm given. So I'm trying to show you what's going to benefit you. And then move on to the next thing. But then reclo looks like this shark got, like, a hook or something. So we want to put in some low values there. And then here, this is texture. This is a trick for texture. So you see this, see what I'm doing? Just nice little light poles. A lot of times when you look at photographs of sharks, um, you know, the ocean is a big wild place, right? So a lot of times sharks will, you know, they'll get caught caught in nets or they'll, you know, get in fights with other sharks or, you know, another sea creature of sorts and they'll have scars on their skin and stuff, blemishes, if you will. So with your monozura eraser, especially on top of lower values, you can really kind of bring out those scars and, uh and solidify that aesthetic. And then here, think of this technique as a form of, uh cross hatching, how you'll cross hatch with a pencil. You can do the exact same thing with your monozero eraser here. This is very subtle, though, very light pressure control. But what this is basically doing is this is really bringing out that underlying form. A lot of times when you think about when you think about your viewers, you're trying to basically trick their eye into thinking that what they're looking at is three dimensional when in fact, it's only ever going to be a two dimensional reality, right? That's the trick. Okay. So now, medium charcoal, medium charcoal. I want to start off by first outlining the basic shape of these teeth. I really want to solidify where those teeth are. Okay? That's the first step. Front, back, front, back, boom, there's that. Okay, so now now that I have those teeth solidified, now I'm going to go in, and I'm not going to press hard, but because I have my pencil, I have pinpoint control, and I'm able to go in and I'm able to start laying down that charcoal. Exactly where that charcoals at, okay? And also notice with this shark's mouth, we want to have more charcoal compact underneath the top teeth, and then less charcoal compact closer to the bottom. You see that difference? And then what we'll do is we'll go in with our number one smudger and just very lightly go ahead and blend everything. There we go. This is looking good. Yeah, I just blending this together. Okay, now here, what we're doing for these little indents is you just push it and pull it. Push it and pull it in. And you can just use the residual charcoal on your smudger from when you were blending inside the mouth. And then we're just kind of want to throw a lower value onto the gums of this shark. All of a sudden all of a sudden, this is really starting to come out. That is what we want. It's starting to look like a shark. And then if you want to, you can go back through, and you can redefine where those teeth are at. But that's totally up to you. You don't have to do that if you don't want to. 7. Final Details : But just blend and blend until you're satisfied with the way it looks. But I think, you know, one or two hits with the smudger, and you'll be fine. Okay. So now I want to kind of lighten this up a little bit. And what I want to do is I want to run a nice mid tone, nice mid value on these teeth, kind of give them some texture. There we go. That looks nice. That looks nice. Okay. So now, swapping it out for my elf brush. I'm going in, and you notice how when you look at the reference image on this shark, the nose and more and actually the bottom of the nose is really where we have a lot of low value. Then here we also have some slight, you know, um, changes in value. And so basically what we're doing is I'm just going through and I'm targeting and looking at the reference image in anywhere that needs to have a blend or anywhere that needs to have, you know, that lower value brought out. I want to use my brush for this step because we're getting close to the end of this drawing. So rather than having a gritty look, I want to have a nice smooth look. And here with the mode zero eraser, I'm just going through, and this is pretty much for texture. We've reached the point in the drawing where we have our base layer of our charcoal laid down pretty much everywhere. And this is where we're able to go in and really bring out exactly what that texture looks like and exactly where it falls within the greater drawing, right? Okay. So sloading up. Is the thing. You know, anywhere that has texture or has fluctuations in your value, you know, this is a way where you can bring out that smoothness. Whenever you're drawing sharks, you definitely want to be using brushes. I mean, you can clearly see why. They give you so much control. They give you so much versatility within the greater drawing itself as far as being able to switch from pencils to brushes to smudgers to erasers, you know, being able to use all of those tools in tandem with one another really does give you a nice solid, aesthetic, one that a lot of people seem to like, and, and, of course, you learn in the process. You know, anyone who's been following me for a while knows that I'm a big fan of just learning, I'm just making mistakes and learning from those and taking what you learn and applying it to your next drawing, right? Drawing's a lot like life that way. You know, it's not about getting something picture perfect. It's about learning and having fun, man. That's the big thing. I like to I like to have fun when I draw, and I'm sure you do, too. And that's all we're trying to do. Min about a boom, ya. Okay. This is starting to starting to come out. Okay. But in regards to the brush work, one of the things you'll find that you'll like a lot with a diagonal brush of this size, whether it's an elf brush or, you know, a brush from an actual makeup kit, is that you have a lot more control with this brush than you would say with your number six brush. The thing that I like about the diagonal cut on this brush is if you're blending something like this, but then, let's say you need to go in, where the eyes at and you need to blend just a very, very thin section of paper, you flip the brush up on its its sharp edge, and then you can go in and you can actually get a nice gradation blend with just that one side of the brush. So that's a little trick. I mean, I like how versatile that style of brush is because with the number six brush, you don't have that same versatility. The number six brush does about one thing and one thing really well, and that's blending, right? Because it has a round head on it, it can't be flip flopped like that. It takes up just as much surface area on one side as it does when you flip it on the other. So Okay. So now what I'm doing is I'm taking my monozur eraser, and this is more we're basically accomplishing two things here. I'm focusing on the shadow work, the way that the light is hitting the front half of the shark. But then I'm also adding texture to the shark's skin. So Then here, check this out if you pull up up and away, right from the edge of the shark's nose. This will speak to your viewer, and this will give the nose just that much more form. And this is we've kind of reached kind of the final stage of this drawing, where now that all of the base layers and shadow work is pretty much laid down, now you get to have a lot more fun, right? Now you get to go in and you get to bring out those subtleties that you see. You know, one of my favorite artists, Leonardo DaVinci, in his drawings and especially his paintings, he would talk about how when you spend so much time looking at something, you need to take a break and you need to walk away from it. Then when you come back to it, you're going to notice a lot of things about your drawing that maybe you didn't notice before and that rings true, especially in detail work. Detail work is what I call subtle work, right? It's work that a lot of drawers tend to overlook, but a lot of times it's what you don't see that really makes a drawing pop in regards to others. Bigger what we're doing is we're just darkening these values. And then here, I know I didn't specify the needed eraser, but I just wanted to show you how if you make a mistake and you go a little bit too low in value, how you can take your eraser, and you just roll it, roll it on top and see how that actually gave us a little bit of texture, too. And then just blend it real quick. Boom. There we are. I just wanted to show you guys that. Okay. So we're cruising. And what I'm doing, I'm taking my Monozero eraser and I'm just more or less, this is for underlying form. Okay. So now, texture. If you actually look at the reference image, you see how there's all those little dots kind of all over the skin of the shark. Well, this is how we're going to accomplish that aesthetic, okay? This is a hard charcoal. It's going to hold its integrity when we go to hit this with a brush, okay? And blend this. But you see how all of a sudden we have that same type of texture that we see in the reference image for our shark. Real light, real light pressure control here. Just doing, you know, big, you know, swooshing circles. And now, a dry number six, dry number six, very lightly hit it, and this will blend the charcoal in that texture, but it won't completely compromise the integrity of that look, right? But that's a little trick that you can use for bringing out texture. Texture is the big thing in any drawing. Texture is what will make or break you. It doesn't matter if you're drawing a bird, a shark, a horse, a person. It doesn't matter. Texture is the variable. That's what changes from drawing to drawing. If you know subtle tricks where you can convey certain types of textures like what we just did, that's a trick that not a lot of people know of a lot of people who would try to go in with the tip of their charcoal pencil and it.it over and over again versus just flipping it on its side. Seemingly using a light pressure control and caressing the paper, and you're able to move super quick, right? Time is money, especially when it comes to art. So the faster you can move, the more product you can bring to market, the more money you'll make, right, enough jibber jabber. I got another fishy I got to make. So here. Same principle as the other two fish here. This one's in the back of the viewers mind, so I'm just going to hit it with a smudge. I'm gonna spend more time on the areas that need to have a lower value. I'm do a little bit of high value retrieval here just to give it a little bit, a little bit of sass, a little bit of character. There we go. And then I'm going to take a dry elf brush. I'm just gonna hit it. A little bit of gradation. Oh, that's it. I'm not gonna put a define line on that fish. I'm not I don't want the viewer's eye to look at the fish. I want the viewer's eye to look at the shark. Okay, so now remember how I said there was, like, a little must have been a hook or something in the shark's mouth here. This is just This is detail work. That's what this is. This is a hard charcoal, and this is just detail work. You can literally spend hours on detail work, literally, hours. But, you know, because this is, uh, you know, only an hour and, you know, 15, 20 minutes tutorial, there's only so much I can do. But what I would do if I were you is I would spend probably a good hour, literally just on detail work. And that'll really elevate your drawing above the rest. So now what I'm doing is I'm just taking a heart charcoal. I'm just kind of running a nice nice soft line. And I know it looks gritty, but I'm going to take my symmetry here, my number one. I'm just going to run it right along the shadow here of this fish, and then right along that line, just like this. Just nice light poles. Going to blend this line into existence. This is going to solidify the form of the top of the shark for us. There we go. That's looking good. That is looking good. I'm gonna take my little elf brush here and just kind of blend this lip a little bit more. I want this lip to be a little darker so it looks like it's actually above the kind of the goal to the shark here. And then I'm just gonna clean this up. Charcoal everywhere. Even with the three layered method. Charcoal everywhere. Just go to kind of clean all this up here. That's looking pretty good, pretty good. But guys, the cool thing about this method, especially if you're new to drawing or if you're just learning about the three layered method for the first time, is that it offers a lot of autonomy for you. Like, you can go back through and you can add and add and add and nine times out of ten, because of the nature of the method, you won't be overworking the paper. So it allows for you to make mistakes, and it allows for you to um, to learn from those mistakes and fix a lot of those mistakes. A lot of methods, especially in drawing, don't allow for you to learn from a mistake once it's made, especially with a specific drawing. But this method does. So I hope you learned one or two things in this video and good luck in your future drawings.