Back to Basics: Drawing Tools 101

1. Introduction: Hi everyone and welcome to back to basics drawing tools one-on-one. How are you, Melissa? I'm doing great. How are you? I am wonderful and I am excited to do some drawing today with everybody. But first, why don't we introduce ourselves? I am Melissa Forman. I am an artist lover of all things, creative and art director, now a teacher. Paul and I have been teaching these classes together for awhile now and we love it. We love making a little creative community with all of you and getting a chance to sit down and learn a new skill and teach it to all of you. I'm Paul Richmond and I live in California. I'm also an artist, a painter, and a teacher. So we're excited to share with you a little bit about what we know about drilling tools. We're going to show you some different ways you can use the full range of pencils and other tools that are available to help make your drawings go smoothly. It's gonna be a lot of that today we're going to learn about all sorts of different drawing tools and what to do with them. I know it can get really confusing. Have you ever gotten one of those box and it had 1 million pencils in it and you just weren't sure what the H meant or what the beam meant in which wanted to use him for what? We're going to go over that today. So hopefully you'll walk away from this class. I wish pencil to use. And when you have your pencils and you should have a couple of different erasers. So we're going to use a kneaded eraser. We're going to use a more plastic eraser if you have something like this, pencil sharpener will come in handy. So any kind of pencil sharper know, will work. And electric pencil sharpener, hand pencil sharpener. We're gonna go over some charcoal tools. So how to draw with charcoal? We're going to make a viewfinder today which will show you what this is and you'll learn all about that. If you haven't had a little paper blending stump, you can grab that too. Sometimes they're called tortilla loans and you're just going to need some paper, so grab whatever you have a sketchbook, watercolor pad, mole skin. Whenever you have the, you are ready to draw in. That's what you need today. And don't worry if you don't have any drawing experience at all. This class is for everybody and it's a great place to start if you are a beginner, but it's also a good refresher for people who have been drawing for awhile and you might still learn some new techniques that you weren't aware of. So hopefully this class will benefit everybody. You ready to get started, Melissa, let's do a poll. 2. Lesson 1: Overview of Tools: In our first lesson today, we are just going to be playing with some of the materials so you can get a feel for how everything works. So grab your pencils, grab your eraser is your pencil sharpeners and your paper. If you have some blending stumps, grab those two. Anything else you have on hand? We're going to show you how to just get started and use the tools in general. So I have got my set of pencils. I have a charcoal pencil blending stump. In 23 weeks. You have anything else other than that? I have pretty much the same thing. I have my paper in front of me. I have all my pencils laid out here. I have my charcoal pencil, I have some vine charcoal. It's just a little bit different than what Paul has where you could use the side of it, you could use the ends of it. Pure charcoal. Okay, let's do it. What are we going to start with? You wanna kinda play with the different pencils first? Yeah, let's try that. So you probably have an array of different pencils in front of you. I have a mixed from everything from six H, Actually, here's the nine h down to 70 B. I have. So what do these, all these numbers and letters mean on these pencils? Well, H stands for hard. Which kinda makes sense, right? So here's my line, nine H here, which is kinda the extreme. You probably don't have anything higher than that, which if you do good for you. Because I don't know if I've seen the higher the H. And then I have seven b here, I pull these two out. So these are kinda my extremes. So b actually means soft, so it would be a softer lead. H would be a harder lead. And then the higher the number, the softer or harder that pencil is. So that's kinda of your range. And then in the middle, you would have probably something called an f. Or let me see if I can find an HB here. Each B is right in the center as well. So that's kind of your middle range as far as soft or hard, they're kind of right in the center. Then you probably have everything in-between. So a harder pencil is going to make a softer market is not gonna be as dark. It's gonna be a lighter gray where a softer pencil is going to make our darker bark. So it's gonna be more black. So if you want something that's richer in contrast has darker darks, you probably want to use your seven or whatever B pencil you have to make the darker portions and then the H to blend softly into the lighter areas of value if that makes any sense. Of course. So what we're going to start by just kinda making a very loose value scale where we'll go really dark on one side and then get lighter and lighter as it moves to the other side. And for this, we're just going to use one pencil to start with. So choose the softest pencil that you have, minus four b. You had, you had even higher number of B, didn't did I have a seven b? So I'm going to use that one. So just start by pressing as hard, as hard as you can. And then as you move your pencil over, we're going to just gradually lift up a little bit so that it gets wider and wider. And one trick you can also use here is your lightening up on the pressure and you could go back over some areas too, if you feel like that left side isn't quite as dark as you wanted it to. You could go back over it. So that's one way you can use these tools a little bit differently. But the pressure is a good way to get a darker mark or a lighter mark depending on what you're looking for. You, how later pressure you can use on this very dark pencil. I already get it as light as possible and get that full range of value. The more, the more values that you use in your drawings, the more realistic they will look. So that's gonna be a big focus on what we're showing you today. How to get those different values using the pencils. And a lot of artists like doing it this way where you just use one pencil for everything. And you vary the amount of pressure that you put on it to get the range of values. And we'll also be showing you how you can use the full set of pencils to get that same effect. Yeah, so just play around, I think play around with this. See how the lead fields see how soft it feels. See how dark you can make that left side. Light you can make the right side. And how softly you can get it to blend from one to the other. Now I have a tool here that I do not think Melissa has. I am extra fancy today. I got one of these little blending stump. And it's just paper that has been kinda wrapped up really tight. And it's great for blending, especially with when you're using a soft pencils. So you just take the blending stump like this and you go over top of the shading that you did with the pencil and you see how it just kind of smooths it out. It takes out all of the pencil lines and it makes it more of an even smooth gradient, in this case. One other trick. So another way of doing that, if you don't have a blending stump as I have a hard pencil here. So I chose the six h. And I'm going to take this hard pencil and i'm, I'm gonna go right over the marks that I already made with a softer pencil. And one thing this will do is help blend that pencil. You have less texture, a softer blend. Just go right on top of it. And it will work in a similar way that the blending tool will, you will get cut out of a softer gradient. They're just kind of work in their softly. You don't need much pressure. You're just trying to add a little bit of value on top to blend one part of the pencil into the lighter part of the pencil. If you are using the blending stump, you'll notice after you use it, it will start to get dirty. And that is a good thing. So don't, don't worry about trying to clean it. It's going to eventually the whole tip will just be covered in graphite. But that's okay because when you use it again, it'll, it'll incorporate that and blends, blend it right in. So don't worry about it getting dirty. Once against journey, you can almost use it for mark making on its own. It almost becomes a tool. Different drawings I'll show you. So here's the, here's my blending stump. I am just going to come over here and you see how I get the value from what is already on there. Sometimes people will even on a scrap paper, put down some graphite with their pencil and then just kinda use the blending stump to rub into that and then take it onto their drawing. If you want just a white value somewhere. If you're using the pencil, just keep playing with different pressures and putting more of your hard pencil on top of your soft pencil off to also notice the difference in how it feels versus the soft pencil. Now the graph that goes down on the paper. The hard pencils almost like a little bit scratchy or I can even hear a difference. The soft pencil, the lead is so soft, it just kinda like falls right off of it onto the paper. But yeah. It almost melts into the paper. Yeah. Alright, so I want to show you a couple other things here now that I've got some value on my paper, I wanted to show you the difference between these two erasers. This one is called a kneaded eraser. It comes in a little rectangular block and then you take it out of the package and just twist it around and make it into a little ball or whatever shape you want. It's very flexible. And then once you have it in a shape that you like or that you want it that will work for what you're trying to erase. Then you just run that over top and you can see it lifts the pencil lead up. And when it gets dirty, you just start to squish it in on itself and it'll clean itself up. It's great. Even when you want to get into small areas, you can take that eraser and make it give it more of a pointy tip. And then you can go in and erase smaller lines or sections. If you want a really crisp, clean eraser mark, maybe you're trying to erase a little highlight or a line or something. You could also use one of these harder erasers that have nice corners. I'll show you that now. T, If you use the corner of the eraser, you can get just a really nice light or very thin edge or line. Not that you will ever have to erase. Melissa probably doesn't even need to own an eraser. Please. So the kneaded erasers are good even if you don't want to get rid of a line or you make a mistake. It's really not for making a mistake, but kneaded eraser is a tool within itself. So if you want to play with this and just create almost like a tip of the pencil with your kneaded eraser. And just start erasing lines into what you've already done. Or you can even use this to blend in certain ways. So it becomes a tool within itself or you can add highlights or you can lighten some of your areas. If you feel like you've gone too dark, you can use it in that way too. So I will often flatten it out and then just press it on top of an area where I already have some graphite down on the paper. And it will just slowly pick up that graphite until I get the value that I'm looking for. So play around with that and experiment with using the kneaded eraser almost as a drawing tool within itself. Yes, this page is just for playing and practicing and getting comfortable with the materials. So see what happens to when you hold your pencil in different ways. So I'll show you. You can use the side of the pencil and do shading like in a bigger area like this. Or you can shade with the tip of the pencil. This almost more like how you would hold it if you were writing. Seat. See the difference in feel the difference and you can pretty much imagine when different approaches would be better. So using the pencil on its side covers the ground a little bit better, but it leaves a little bit more. At least on this texture paper I'm using, it leaves a little bit more open gaps, little speckles so you can smooth that out with this. If you use the tip of it, it kinda covers a little bit better, but it takes a lot longer. So Different different techniques for different different things. Yes, the side of the pencil will definitely help you feel fill a larger area quicker. So it can be good for that, but you're gonna get a slightly different texture. A little bit of a reference look. And depending on what type of paper you have, it will affect the amount of texture that you have. If you want to just grab some different pencils and try them and see how they feel. See what you like. I think sometimes you can tell an artist's favorite pencil just by looking at which one is shortest. So at mine today And the V is definitely the shortest. So I think that's probably my favorite. That's probably the one I use it the most. So once you start experimenting with this yoke, you'll start to see which one you think feels the best or which one gives you that mid range of value that you're probably going to use for most of your drawings. I think just experiment with what it's like holding the pencil at different points. So when I hold the pencil down close to the tip where the lead is, I tend to be more controlled and it's good for doing like really specific tight details. When I want to be looser. Like maybe if I'm doing a gesture drawing or just trying to get a quick sketch, I'll hold the pencil further up toward the end here, like where the eraser would be if it had an eraser. And I'll draw much looser, that way, more, more sketchy. So I usually like to start off with a little bit harder pencil and very sketchy drawing. And then I'll go in with a softer pencil. And it's kinda commit to the lines a little bit more. You're more familiar with B pencils and you don't use the HB pencil is very often just start playing with Hs and see what they can do for you. There is something that you like about them or is there some way you can use them that feels a little bit different or feels like a way that you could change up the way you draw. Or maybe you've never used drawing pencils. Maybe you've always used on a number two pencil and you've never experimented with different LEDS. Now's a good time to just play with different softness or hardness and lead and see what feels right or lay some on top of other ones and see what you get. What's the difference? You can try playing. Yeah, It is fun. Try different lines, try different shapes. Che, like Paul said, using the side of the pencil to see what you can make and how that feels. We're just about out of time for play time here, so oblique, okay, but hopefully everybody feels a little bit more comfortable with their tools now. And then in all of the rest of the videos here will actually be using some of these techniques to create different drawings. So I'm excited to get into that. Yeah. Sounds good to me. All right. 3. Lesson 2: Viewfinder: So in this lesson, we are going to be showing you how to make a viewfinder. A viewfinder looks something like this. It's usually a blank piece of paper with a hole cut in it. And the reason you have this helps you find a composition that you're happy with. So you remember it around and you draw what you see in the window. We're going to practice making one of these and using one of these. All you need for this lesson is a pencil, blank piece of paper or whatever color you happen to have. It doesn't matter and some scissors. Let's get started. Alright, so for this lesson we are going to be making a viewfinder. So I have a rectangle that I've cut out from black construction paper. It doesn't need to be very big. Whatever size you want is fine. And then we're going to cut out another smaller rectangle inside of this one so that we have a little opening to look through and that's going to help us choose the compositions that we want. So I'm going to fold the paper enough so that I can start a little cut, cut out my rectangle. Rectangles don't have to be a certain size, but I would use a proportion that you think is interesting for other type of drawing you're doing. You could do a square, you could do a rectangle, whatever proportions you want the final drawing to be. Exactly. I might go a little bit farther on this side, so it's closer to the ratio of my paper. So I'm drawing sets when you buy them, they will come with this viewfinder already created. So if anybody has that, you're already a step ahead. But they are super easy to make if you want to just create one for yourself. And the reason I have a viewfinder is it just makes it easier for you to see what you're drawing and where, where those objects end and where they begin, and how to frame anything in your final drawing. Exactly. Alright, so if you have your viewfinder ready to go, the next thing that we will be doing is drawing this beautiful still life that you see on your screen. Except we're not going to draw. The whole thing. What I'd like for you to do is take your viewfinder and hold it up and you could do it vertically or horizontally. We might try a couple of each. We'll do a few different drawings and look through it at the reference image and choose a composition that you like. So you're not going to draw everything. You're going to just zoom in, find something that looks appealing to you. And then once you find it, start drawing it. So i'm, I'm holding it right now so that it is showing just the top-left part of the picture and the flowers and the very top of the orange that's right to the left of it. So that's what I'm going to draw. So we're just doing this as a line drawing today, so no need to do shading or anything for this part. We're just going to have your car minutes. Yeah. Yeah. This will be quick, so don't don't get too detailed. But once you see the composition that you like, start sketching it out. And the idea isn't to continuously hold the viewfinder in front of you as you draw the viewfinder is just there for you to be able to see what looks good to you. So it's gonna be hard to kind of hold it and draw at the same time and look through it. So you need about three more hands, right? Right. Just use it as a guide for what you think will make a nice drawing. So can you work with around you to visualize and see the composition that you want, right? Right. Move it around, see what looks good, see what works for you as far as cropping certain items out of your drawing or arranging the items differently depending on how you're looking through the viewfinder. Just decide what works for the drawing you want to do. Yeah, I think this is one of the most powerful things that you can learn when you're first starting out drawing. Because a lot of my students, I've noticed when you set up a still life for them to draw, they immediately feel like they have to draw everything and they usually will center it right on the page and have a lot of empty space around it because they are trying to make sure they get leave room for everything. But what I love about this and using a viewfinder is that it lets you take a little bit more ownership of the image and you get to create your own composition. You get to choose what looks interesting to you. And the end result would be very different than what anybody else's is because you've chosen a particular angle or particular part of the image that speaks to you in that turns it into something totally your own. Have you find r can be very A very powerful tool if you're drawing outside or if you're drawing from life, sometimes it's hard to figure out what will look good if you crop certain things. And the viewfinder will help you figure that out, it'll help you visualize what will look good as a final drawing. Yeah. The most interesting drawings, I think, are the ones that do have unusual compositions or like in this case, there's a lot of negative space in this drawing, but it works really well. It kinda balances itself out. So it gets you thinking more about composition than if you just dive right in and start trying to draw everything that's there. Alright, I am just about to finish my first one. You can go at your own pace and do as many of these as you want. I'm gonna do a few just to try out different compositions. This is also a great tool if you're doing thumbnail sketches, which are just quick little sketches that help you decide on your composition. Using a viewfinder can help you with that to just think of really quick new ways of looking at it. All right, so there's my first one. Now I'm going to hold up my viewfinder and find a different composition that speaks to me. I think this time I'm gonna go over to the side where the handle of the picture is and kind of zoom in on that part. One thing to viewfinder is really helpful for visualizing what kind of shapes you are going to include in your drawing. Not only the positive shapes and how you're going to crop those, but also the negative shapes. So negative shapes are just the background areas or the shapes around the objects that you're drawing. It really helps you decide what kind of shape you want that background to be. How that will help with your overall composition. And sometimes that can be something that's really hard to visualize when she just start drawing. The viewfinder helps you visualize it right away. Yeah. It kind of takes you one step away from the subject so you can see it a little bit more abstractly. Yeah. It really helps you see shapes instead of objects. And that's something that Paul and I always try to encourage our students to do is just see the shapes in front of you. Don't focus on the fact that you're drawing an orange or you're drawing a flower, just look at the shape that it's making and the silhouette. Yeah, don't label, don't label stuff. That doesn't matter what it is, it just matters what the shapes are doing. Yeah. They know people tend to get intimidated once they started looking at something and they know what that object is. Like if they're drawing a face. Like I can't draw cases, I'm not good at it. And that's not true. Faces are just objects and shapes like anything else. You're just, you're just looking at complicated shapes and how they all fit together. And once you start thinking about it that way, It's a little bit easier and it's not quite so intimidating to approach it. Yeah. Just one shape at a time when little section at a time. And maybe you, once you look through your viewfinder, you do want to include all the objects in the still life. You just want to cut out some of the background and, and crop it slightly. Maybe that's what you think is most pleasing to you. So that's definitely an option. Yeah. That's the beauty of this. There's no right or wrong. But it's just about finding the tools and the methods that help you get to the end result that you want. The quickest and easiest way possible. Okay, I'm liking this one to you. You see, I'm not going very detailed here. I'm just trying to get a sense of the composition for each of these. I'm gonna do one more. All right? Now for my last one, I'm going to flip the viewfinder sideways and do a horizontal composition. So let me see what looks interesting. Maybe just the bottom part where I see a little bit of the picture and then focus more on the slices of the oranges. So I'm going to draw a rectangle that'll just represent the edge of my picture plane, kind of like the frame of the drawing. And start with the bottom of the picture here. Same still-life, three totally different drawings. Yep. If you want to try out different pencils as you're sketching to see which one feels right to you and which one makes the kind of marks that you're looking for or feel free to do that. It's also a time to experiment with the different pencils and what feels good to you. Definitely, some people really like drawing with the harder loads. Some people like the feeling of drawing with the software loads. So it's really good time to try out all of them and see what works for you. I will suggest, if you are drawing with a harder lead pencil, don't press very hard with it because it can really make some deep grooves into the paper that you can really never get rid of. It a little harder when you go to shade it. Sometimes the graphite doesn't get down into that part. So that's true of soft pencils. In general, when you're finished laying out your sketch, you just don't want to press very hard with any of them because that then you're not committed to what the lines that you've drawn look like. You can change them, right? Right. I'm part of the nice thing about a sketches. It doesn't have to be perfect. So you can draw a lot of lines until you get the right line that you like. Choose the one that you feel is working the best. That's where your your kneaded eraser can come in very handy at this point. Yeah. You can experiment with that too and see what types of lines you're able to erase. Are you able to erase them completely? What still remains? How dark Can you go and still be able to erase it completely? I think that's a good thing to be aware of when you start a drawing? Yes, definitely. There's nothing worse than getting like really far into a drawing and then realize you have this big like dark line that has made a deep groove in the paper and you can't get rid of it. Yes. That's her doing these sketches is a good way to just experiment and see, see what works. See how the tools work. Too much alike. As you're drawing in line. It's a good way to experiment with different pencils and see which one flows on the type of paper you're using. And depending on what you're drawing, on how smooth the surface is versus how rough it is. It might, it might perform differently. So you might like one pencil on one type of paper and a different pencil on a different type of paper. I'm using a very textured, kinda cold press paper. So there's a lot of little bumps that are showing up in the in the pencil areas, but I like the I like the textural look sometimes. And that's something we we didn't touch on in the beginning. But if you want a cold press paper or you're gonna get a rougher texture. If you want a hot press paper, you're going to get a smoother texture. So you're gonna get a nice smooth gradient with your, with your graphite. You're gonna get a nice smooth transition. If you have a bird this a little bit rougher, you're gonna get more texture. Just depends on what you should think about. Yes. But it just felt different options, right? Yeah. Different things you can play with to get different looks and experiment with what you like. Yeah. All right. We have about a minute left and I'm just kinda going over some of my lines here to emphasize some more than others. That can, if you're doing just a line drawing, that can be a way to really just add some more interest to it so that everything isn't the same. And I like to draw with lines that kind of gets thicker in some areas and thinner and others. Just to me, in the absence of doing any actual shading, it makes the, makes the drawing feel finished even just with lines. Alright, that's a wrap on that. Now if you're into it and you're enjoying drilling different compositions, you can keep going, you could get, you can get so many different drawings just with this one still life image. So that would be a good challenge to give yourself. Sometimes see how many, how many different versions you can come up with using the viewfinder. Good job everyone. So now we're gonna move on to using the skills that we just practiced and a more intense drawing. So you ready, Paula, you're ready to go? I'm ready for intensity. Let's do it. 4. Lesson 3: Drawing with One Pencil: All right, everybody, are you ready for the next drawing, Paul? Are you ready? I've got my pencil. I'm ready. Okay. Well, we're going to need is we're going to need a soft pencils and we're going to practice using this in different ways to get a range of value. So grab yourself pencil, grab your eraser and your paper, and let's go. All right, everybody, Paul, Are you ready for the next exercise? I am so ready made shell. Alright, so for this exercise we are going to be drawing an apple. And we kept the subject matter fairly simple because we're just going to be practicing with a soft pencil and creating value, which is one pencil. So it hasn't been used something I have a six B here. Whatever B pencil you have is good to, good to use, good to experiment with, experiment with. So we're just going to try a full value range with one soft pencil and this should be easy to get. The darker ranges and some of the lighter ranges depending on how much pressure you use. So I have my paper here. I'm just going to start out by sketching my Apple. If you want to draw a bounding box for it, a rectangle, however you wanna do it, that's fine too. So I'm going to just do a bit of a square here. Things always seem simple until you start drawing them. We can get this Apple right now there's a lot going on there. That's true. Yeah. I'm just going to put this apple right in the center. I'm not going to worry too much about composition at this point, just because this is more of an experiment to get used to the tools. So just try sketching out your apple on your paper here. Paying attention to the overall shape. I'm just gonna get that established fairly quickly so we can start figuring out how to get some value in here. Yes, it does not have to be perfect. This is just for practice. Right? Okay. Right. Right, Melissa, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I always say. It doesn't have to be perfect. Yeah. Red. I've never heard her say that once. You have the opposite of what I always say, but for you, it does not have to be perfect? Yes. In order for Melissa to sleep tonight, hers hers does have to be It's a whole thing. We can get into it later, but alright, so the next thing I do now that I have this all figured out where I want my apple and the overall shape. I'm going to start looking at this apple in deciding where the different values are. So where are my darkest darks at, where my lightest lights and that background is pretty intense as far as darkness. So I might just start sketching in and laying in some darker values in the background, there is a shadow on the apple on the left-hand side. So I think I'm going to start there because it is fairly dark. I want to start establishing some of my darkest darks as I'm beginning here. And then I can build from there, experiment with how you use your pencil here. Or do you want to use the side of your pencil? Do you want to use the point? I would say for something larger that's going to blend a little bit more softly, you probably want to use the side of the pencil a little bit more than you would the tip of the pencil. Usually for lines, you want to use the tip of the pencil, but do what works for you. That's just what I think is a little bit easier. I think it's a little bit faster to fill in a large area. I'm seeing that shadow run underneath the apple. Onto the left side. It's very dark right underneath the apple. So that's what I'm going to work on first. And then establishing, establishing some of the shadow on the left side. You generally like to go for the darkest darks and the composition first when your trolley. I do. I like to establish that just because it gives me something to build on. Yeah. Because I know that I'm going to keep building that the darkest dark the whole time I'm drawing. And I'm going to keep weighing my lighter values against that darker value. So I wanted to start building that first. So that's kinda how I approach it. It makes sense because, you know, everything in a drawing is relative and value. Definitely. One of those things. Something can look really dark when it's surrounded by the white of the paper. But then when you get other values next to it, it can totally change how that looks. So since you already have the lightest light with for the paper itself being white, going dark. Lets you see the full spectrum right off the bat, right? Yeah. I think one other way to approach a drawling is establishing a mid tone first and then working from there. So you could establish an overall mid-tone and then go back and kind of bring out your highlights and. Make the shadows darker. I think that's one way to approach it. For me. It's just easier to see what's darkest and that's kind of a wayfinding point in a way, if I'm building value. So I tend to start there. Yeah. I'm just working on the left side of the apple, since I know that's the darkest side of the apple and that will help me establish some depth and make the apple look more round. And I'm using my pencil more on the side of the pencil or the side of the LED to help blend that, that shadow area into some of the lighter mid tones using different pressures. I'm going to play around with that. Play around with how you hold your pencil. Sometimes named key to doing a drawing with just one pencil, you really have to vary the weight, the pressure that you put on it. We do, Can we do a different kind of drawing? Next you'll see the opposite approach where you use the same pressure and just switch pencils depending on how dark or light you want it, right? Right. Yeah. So this one's all about the pressure you use and how you're using pencil, the side of the pencil versus the point of that pencil. What the different marks are. You could, you could play around with different directional marks depending on what you're drawing. Sometimes that will add depth to something if you change the way your pencil lines go. So does Apple is obviously curved. So if you carve your lines and the way that Apple curves, it will help add depth it was, it will also help you create that texture. That's all the apple skin. So many different ways to approach a drawing. You can really make it very line oriented where you see a lot of, you know, kinda crosshatching lines and different types of pencil lines throughout the drawing. Or you can use the blending stump or even a tissue or paper towel or something and really like blended out and make it much smoother so you don't see the lines at all. It's really a style thing. Yeah. I think as you're working in some of those lighter areas, so you're going to be, if you're starting in the shadow areas like me, you're going to be establishing a darker, richer value, but then you're gonna be working into the mid tones as you go around the apple. So play around with the different pressures and what pressure do I need to get those lighter marks. That's just something that you have to you have to feel you have to experience in order to get that right. It's not necessarily something I can tell you. It just depends on what what piece of paper you're working on, what type of pencil you're holding, how you're holding it, your natural way of drawing two, I know my husband always, whenever he writes, he presses very hard. And so the natural way of doing it, and so he has to work against that if he's, if he's drawing in and be conscious of that. So be conscious of how I can tend to be that way too. You'll make a drawing in my sketchbook and you'll see it 33 pages? Yes. Yes. Whenever he writes out a check, you can see it on every single check under well, he got a nice record then. Your accountant. Yeah. That's perfect. Yeah. So I'm just going to keep going around that Apple is getting to some of those lighter areas. I'm not pressing as hard. I'm using the lines to work around the face of the apple and establish the shape and the volume of it. I'm paying attention to the texture of the apple where those values shift. I think all of that is just something you get used to seeing as you as you draw more often, as you know, how dark is it in a certain area? How light is it in another area? Where's the highlight? Where's the shadow? I know sometimes converting from a color image to black and white can be tricky too, because you're not quite sure how dark it is. Cool, color can be very misleading. That way. I can make something seem lighter or darker than it, than it actually is. So you can always take your reference photos and turn them black and white. If that helps you to see the values of other. Yeah, you can put them on your phone and use your phone to edit them, to make them black and white and then compare it to your drawing afterwards. So see how close you got. Yeah. And how good you are at interpreting a value. So, I mean, the deeper reds obviously got to be a little bit darker if you convert it to black and white than maybe a yellow apple would be. Yellow apple is probably going to be a lighter value. Things to pay attention to as you're working on this. That's a lot to think about. It's a lot I'm giving you a lot to think about here, but all stuff that is good to pay attention to, obviously, you don't have to think about every single thing at the same time. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. I have enough trouble just focusing on one thing. Getting a glimpse into my brain and how much stuff goes through it while I'm drawing. So that's a scary place. It's a scary, scary place for a big jumble of anxious thoughts in there. If you're running your hand through the graphite like I am right now on making a big mess, feel free to take a paper towel. I do this often when I'm working on rolling. I take a paper towel and put it under my hand so I don't create a giant mess on my hand and across my paper. They can be very helpful. But try it. Messes can be fun to China's can be fun. I mean, it could be a way of blending. Just get your hand in there and blend the whole thing. Make it, make it all a big bugs. Really beautiful. Straight. I'm just using small marks here to kind of add to my value and help establish some depth. If you want to bring out your kneaded eraser and pull out some different areas. You can do that too. Like it got a little too dark. So I'm spots. Now that I have more mid tones or my right hand side of the apple, I'm going to work more and my shadow areas to make sure those are dark enough. Little bit of dark all around the apple just to help it pop out from the background and helped me determine how light it should be versus health dark. If you're using softer pencils, they can wear down pretty quickly. So you might want to sharpen your pencil several times throughout this, if you want to keep that sharper point, depending on how you're using it. I think that's the only downside to a softer pencils as you go, you'll go through them pretty quickly. Using them more often. Depending on what type of pencils you like, if you'd like the softer ones more of the harder ones more, you combine different sets. So I have a set that was mostly the soft pencils and then I bought another set that was mostly though the hard pencils just so I could get a full range. So depending on whatever you like, you can buy the set that works for you. It's gonna be gorgeous. Beautiful. If you're having trouble seeing the values and knowing where to put the dark spills and lights. Another thing that I like to do sometimes is just squint my eyes and look at the reference. Because then that kinda helps eliminate some of the finer details and you can really just see big chunks of value. I think that, that's squinting trick comes in pretty handy when you're trying to establish value. Because it really helps you see the overall picture and not the details I know as artists to have me especially tend to get caught up in the details. And that's what we worry about when really, when you're establishing value should be looking at the overall picture, not just the The individual spots are the kinda the details. Yeah. After you get everything on there, then you can go back and be as detail-oriented as you want, right? Yeah, if you want to add every spot on this apple, you can, if you want to add all the lines and details on the skin, which could be really beautiful. Definitely do that. You know, it's interesting when you convert color to black and white is sometimes you'll find that the value is just become the same like on the left-hand side of the apple. Like it really just blends into the dark. They're really not much definition. And the only thing that's defining it is the color and the photograph. That left-hand side really is all dark for the most, most part. Tensile like that would be an example where you should draw what you see and not what you know, even though you know there is an edge to that Apple over there, since it blends into the background, That's exactly what it should do in your drawing. If you're, if you're going for realism anyhow, right? It can be tempting sometimes to want to just ignore the background and only focus on drawing and shading the subject. But like it makes the background, it does add a lot. It does, yeah. It adds a real sense of moodiness and overall feeling to the composition. So I do think it's, it's interesting to add a little bit in there, at least in it. And it just helps you see the values and compare and contrast. You wouldn't, you wouldn't really appreciate the light hitting this apple as much as you do if you didn't have some of that darkness from the background around, right? We have about a minute left. I'm just going to work a little bit more into my shadow areas, just making sure those are really deep and dark. And making sure that highlighted area. So from the background. And we did this whole exercise with one pencil. In the next exercise, we will try all of your pencils so you can see the difference and see what works for you. I know as I'm drawing this, I keep wanting to pick up a different pencil. And do you think giving yourself a little bit there? I'm ready. I had to tell myself, no, don't pick up that pencil, you can do that. And I really wanted to. So you'll find what works for you and what feels good. Okay. All right. Great job everyone. What's next lowest? Well, you want to grab all your pencils. We're going to do another drawing. Use all the pencils this time. All right, let's go, let's do it. 5. Lesson 4: Drawing with Full Set of Pencils: Hi everyone. In this lesson we are going to be making a drawing using the full set of pencils. So we'll be going all the way from the hardest lead to the softest lead. This can take a little bit more time and be a little bit more detailed, which I'm sure Melissa loves. But I'm the one who's going to be demonstrating this one. So let's get your pencil sharpened and get started. Are you ready moles? I write all my pencils and ready to go. Good job. Alright, let's go. Alright, here is the subject for our next drawing, this lovely little calla lily. And we're going to use the full range of pencils this time. Now I might skip a few because otherwise this will be a six-hour, the whole lesson. But the idea is, rather than using just one pencil like we did in the last drawing, we're going to let each pencil do what it does best. And so we will not be varying the amount of pressure this time. When we want a darker value will go for a darker pencil. But first I'm just going to sketch it out. And for that I'm going to grab a pencil that's kinda like somewhere right in the middle. I'm going to use the console. Just take a couple of minutes and get the rough lines of the edge of the flower onto the paper. Draw very lightly so you don't make any grooves in the paper that you will regret later. I would say the thing about this particular drawing method is that it brings out more subtlety in the drawing. You jumping from one pencil to the next and letting each one kinda do its thing. It lets the value buildup a little bit more and you get more variety. And I think just really beautiful, subtle rendering, but it does take longer than the other technique. Yeah, yeah, I think you can get a full range with this where it's a little bit harder with one pencil, you have to wait a little bit harder to get it to do what you want, especially in some of the lighter values, if you're using a softer pencil or gosh, if you're using a harder pencil, I can't I can't imagine getting some of the darker areas. It would take a very long time. So right. So I'm just giving the basic shapes. I'm not sure how well you can see it yet because drawing so light, but trust me, it's there if you can't see. And again, don't worry about making it perfect, just get, get something on there that's close because this is really about exploring the, how to work with the pencils, not about making a perfect drawing. Just going to draw the very bottom right here. And I think the thing Paul and I liked about this flowers, it has a lot of subtle value changes that would be difficult to achieve if you are only using one pencil. I think you'll see as you start to render this one, it takes a little bit of work. It takes some switching of pencils to get all of those different values in there. Yes. Now, there are different methods, different techniques for how to go about the shifting the pencils and which ones to use. When. I'm going to show you sort of a very methodical way. This is the way that we were taught in a drawing class and in college. Does not mean it's the only way though really every, everything should be an experiment and you should try different approaches and see what works for you. But I've got the basic shape down. And so what I'm going to do now is start with the hardest lead that I have. For me. That's a six H. I don't know what that might be for you. Whatever it is, it would be the H console with the highest number. And then I'm going to study my reference image for a second. And anything in the image that is not pure white. I'm going to shade with this pencil. So I see some little areas along the edge here. And where the petal is kinda turning over here where it's kinda looks like it might be pure white or as close to white as we are gonna get everywhere else, even the really light areas still have some value in them. So I'm going to take my pencil, basically shade in almost the whole thing. Because this process of using all of the pencils is about layering. You start with the harder lead and you just keep building up until you get darker and darker. And that A process of layering the pencil, the different pencils on top of each other is how you get so much, so many beautiful subtle shifts and relationships in your drawing. So it takes awhile, but it'll be worth it. I'm also going to take it a little bit beyond the edge of the flower because just like Melissa did in the last drawing, I want to have a little bit of a dark value in the background. So I'll go ahead and put some value out there to not gonna go too far with it though. I don't want to have to shade the whole paper, anything but a little bit, maybe here all day pump. I think this one has a similar texture to the last one. So there's a directionality to the way the, the different values wrap around the flower itself. So you can see there's a lot of lines within it. So if you want to show you in a similar way, I think that will, that will help establish some of your values and the flower. So there's a lot of lines that kind of wrap around and form the petals. You use those in your drawing. I think it might help you visualize where those values shift and then help give your flower some depth as well. Yes. Okay, Sorry, I'm just about finished covering the whole thing with my lightest value. And you can see I'm not, I'm not pressing hard. And even when I get up to the darker values, the software lead pencils, I'm going to use the same exact pressure. You'd never shift the amount of pressure that you put on the pencil when you're using this technique, you just let the pencil, the natural value of the pencil do the work for you basically. All right, so now I've got the whole thing covered except for this, like I said, this a couple of little spots where I want the pure white to be. I'm just gonna make clean this up really good with the eraser so they stay nice and clean. So I'm going to skip. I definitely do not think we'll have time to use all of these pencils. So I'm going to skip from six H, two for each name. I'm going to make you kinda every other one type of thing. This time. I'm going to, again, cover everything on the page except for where I want this lightest value to stay and where I want the white to stay. So basically anything that is not this super light value, you're going to hit it again with the pencil, with this pencil now and see how I'm using the same pressure. But it's darker. Part of that is just because this pencil is darker. It's a little bit softer than the previous one. But also it's because you're getting this nice buildup now of the pencil lead from the two different pencils, they just kinda like react to each other and work together beautifully. When you start doing this layering, you can see why this is a bit of a time-consuming process. And it might get, so never go ahead and make it a point where you try this technique and you know, you've tried the one before it and you kinda combine the two. So maybe you like using a little bit of pressure and playing with that. So I think this is something where you can experiment and see what works for you and then decide what you like best. Yes, absolutely. It's good to know the the traditional approach or technique that then really all of art is about figuring out how you adapt the process to make, to what works the best for you in your own vision and your own style. We had one instructor at the college we went to who would just make these massive pencil drawings of like super ordinate, like flowers and plants and leaves that you would take a big roll of paper and it would cover half a wall and he would do it this way, like buildup each thing with layer after layer of different pencil ads. And I just could never imagine how in the world he had time to finish an evil. Now, alright. That is very ambitious. Yeah. They looked amazing and beautiful, but my gosh, yeah, I'm here. Something kinda relaxing about it. Doing it this way that you're not because you are just kinda slowly building it up. I think you don't have to really think quite as hard when you're just making all the decisions at once, right? It's kinda like you get to see the drawing just slowly emerging when you do it this way. It's kinda just like the shadows are starting to show up here. I think it does give you a better grasp on value and how it works too though. And kind of a subtle shifts between light and dark. Because there are, yes, there are so many different things to pay attention to as you're as you're building this up and, and kind of laying things on top of each other. I think it really gives you a good understanding of how light works and how the dark areas play with the lighter areas? Yes, for sure. Also, the way the pencil is just worked together on the end, the way you can create a hard edge versus a soft edge. Nice blend from one to the next. Yeah, I think it really kind of slows you down in a good way and makes you pay closer attention to what you're looking at and really assessing each value separately so that you are slowly building it up and not just kinda going from one extreme to the other, but we're just like very gradually inching our way into the darker values. Yeah. I think it makes you pay attention to the values and not the details. So sometimes you can get very lost in that me being one of those people. But yeah, I mean, I think it makes you look at the overall value first and then go from there. Yeah. You just kinda slowly building it one layer at a time. I'm almost done here with my for-each. And then I'm going to jump to see what's next. Maybe like a to H probability to HUM. I think definitely what the H pencils you don't have to use a lot of pressure. It will create a nice value. And I stopped value if you use very little pressure. Even in this very light drawing, I don't, I only have two different values of near so far. But you can start to feel the light hitting the object. And I think that's what's really cool about this technique is even when you are just kinda starting, you can already see the feeling of how the light is going to impact it. Alright, I'm jumping to my two h Now. Solo hard blood but still obviously softer than what we've just been using. And see once again now when I go right back over that same area, because I want that area to be darker. It's building on what's already there. Plus the softness of the LED is allowing it to just start to get even darker. Look at that. Now, you don't want to cover up anything that is supposed to be white or one of the lighter values that you already have. So you're kinda looking more for what's going to be towards the low, middle. Now you, you just sort of blended into what's already there whenever you are going from one section to the next, just kinda softly. Let the value with the value fade from one section to the next, unless it's a hard edge like the side of the flower or something. But otherwise you can definitely create really soft, gentle blending effects this way. Yeah. And I think this is a really good way to get used to what each pencil does and how each one is a little bit different from the other one. Yes. You're giving your spending a little quality time with each one with all the pencils equally. It's like if you have kids, you don't want anyone to feel more special than the other. Just take a little time with each of them to see what makes them interesting. I don't know. I don't have kids. I'm probably should not be giving parents. We can imagine if we had children, that's what you should probably do. I don't know. We have no idea how you teach kids. You probably have some idea. Yeah. Ellie have nieces and nephews, so I kinda get to act like a kid along with them, which is great. Well, that's kinda my teaching approach to just describes our general lives. Yeah, yeah. I do think teaching kids has helped me to like, stay kind of young and mentally immature. Going back over the background now it's building up that value. I'm not going all the way to the edge though because I want it to, you know, how to sort of fade from the edge of the flower out. So each time I'm just kinda stuffing in a little bit so that it will, you'll get that full range of values to create the gradient out there. This is kinda like a meditation. You can just chill and just keep going over the same things over and over and over again. A very peaceful kind of drawing. This lily is very peaceful in general. We'll have to find something for the next drawing. Distress them out more. I'm sure everyone. Since you're leading that one, that'll be wonderful. Great. Oh, yeah, look at how it's starting to glow so quick. Really pay attention to to where you see those shifts. I mean, that's what, that's what is great about this technique. It forces you to slow down. So take advantage of that. Like I'm seeing this little bit of reflected light over here on the left edge of the flower. In that just means the shadow side that it gets a little bit lighter right here on the edge because the light is wrapping around. And so I think, you know, that's for me. And one of the big advantages of drawing this way, it really does make me go slow enough to notice things that I might miss otherwise. So take advantage of that. Also pay attention to how you can get more values this way then maybe you could in the last exercise. So is it, Is it a little bit easier to get the light area to blend them to slightly darker area. Using this technique. And maybe what were the limitations last time versus the advantages this time to use a more pencils versus less pencils. I will admit that I am tend to usually be a one pencil. Die. A bit impatient. But occasionally I do like doing it this way, especially if it's something where I want the drawing to have a lot of subtlety to it. A little bit softer, a little bit more realistic, I guess it's good for them. Yeah, so I think definitely if you're someone who enjoys drawing portraits or faces or figures in general, you're going to have a lot of softer shifts, especially in the skin. So you're going to have probably a need to use more pencils if you're doing something like that. Because you are going to want to get some that salty and they're just kind of a little bit more to do with my two h. And then I'm gonna be ready to jump to another one. And if you don't have all the same pencils that Paul does, That's okay. Feel free to shift to whatever pencil you have in an experiment with different harnesses or softness is that way. Yeah, some pencil sets like Melissa was saying, maybe you only have mostly soft lead are mostly hard blood, but you can still do the same exercise as long as you have different, you know, different numbers on each of the pencils, even if they're all relatively similar, they will, it will work. You might just end up with a slightly lighter or darker drawing depending on what end of the spectrum it's at, but they'll still work. And that's totally okay. I know some people that always draw very lightly and they just loved that subtlety tend to pick subjects that are very light and value just because they involve how soft and gentle that looks. Yeah. One of the things that I think is fun about this technique too, is that at any stage of it, you could decide, I like, I like the way it looks, I think I'm done. But for the sake of this demo, I'm going to go all the way to the heart, to the softest. But as long as it is conveying what you want it to convey, it doesn't have to. Go for full value. You can have more of a limited value scale, like right now, even though I've only used three pencils, I can see the light. I can, it looks it's starting to look three-dimensional and I'm very light, overall light way, but it's beautiful in that way. So you could, you could definitely just decide that you want to keep your drawing on the light ends. And it probably depends on what you're drawing too. So if you pick a subject that is very high key or you have a lot of light tones done. Maybe you don't use any of your softer pencils. Maybe you just stick with the harder pencils. You can always go backwards too. Like I just extended the background a little bit over here. And I don't want to end on that soft of a console. So I'm gonna go back to my for-each, just blend it out. So there's different ways you can Use the the range of pencils to like Melissa was showing in that very first video when we were just playing. Sometimes people like to put down soft values first and then go back over top of them with the harder legs and blend them out. So experiment with that as well. You can go backwards and forwards. But just for the sake of making it easier to understand for the demo, I'm working from the heart to the soft floods, but that doesn't mean that's the only way. Alright, so the last one I used was a to H. So now I'm gonna go to F, which is kinda like right smack in the middle. And I've never understood where it came from. I don't know why. But it is a thing. I think I think the pencil people probably just got very burnout by the time they got to that one. And they were like, we're out of letters here, just throw an FNA or whatever. I could see. I could see that being my approach. If I worked for a company, I could do funny enough. You would be trying to schedule another meeting or something so we can all discuss the pros and cons of water it should be in I'd be like Melissa, it's F. We're done. That's a little glimpse into polonaise working relationship. It's a good, it's a good way to collab. You don't want to work with somebody who's too much like you, it's good to have somebody who's kinda Yes, We've always balanced each other out. Yeah. We seem balanced to all of you guys know. Well, that's a whole other issue there, Paul. You've made it this far watching the class, so they must like us. I think you're assuming a lot right there. I know these people, they love us. They can't get enough and thank goodness because we keep making lots more videos. Right? Very busy over here. Please come back. Yeah, because we have so much more to show you. It is true though. I mean, a lot of what you are learning by doing these exercises really applies no matter what medium you're using. If you're painting, you still want to think about the range of values in your work or if you're using colored pencils or, or whatever. Yeah, digital art photography uses these concepts to, I mean everything value I think is one of the, one of the main elements that helps us to understand how to create images. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the viewfinder that we used earlier, it's kind of like a camera. So you're just learning to frame an image in an interesting way, and that's what you do photography. So you can use your, your photo on your camera, on your phone as a viewfinder if you want. Did you take different photos and see what works best? Look how dark that is getting. And like I said, I am not using any more pressure right now than I did with that very first pencil. So this is a great way to really see and appreciate what these pencils can do and also the effects of the layering, because it would look a little different if I was doing it just on top of the clean paper versus on top of these multiple layers of the colon. The other pencils. We'll look at that soft gradation. Oh my gosh, I love this flower is coming though. I say, I think we've made a good choice on this one, Paul, Good job. Yeah. Subtle variations and the flower itself. Really beautiful when you start looking closely. And if you really pay attention to that, if you're drawing will have the same feeling that the photo does it even the way the pedal feels a little translucent and light is coming through it. I mean, all of those subtle effects you can make your drawing have that same feeling. A big part of it is just taking the time to really notice what is causing that and where the values go to create those different effects. But if you can see it, you can draw it. Yep, yep, Very true. So keep looking at you at the photo. Don't just spend all the time staring at your drawing. It's important to keep reminding your brain what is going on in that photo. Yep. Keep comparing as you as you lay down a new value, compare it to what you're seeing and see if it feels right. Yeah. And then look at the relationship to the other values that are rounded. I think, I think that's a big thing about drawing is just comparing as you're going. So just one thing, feel too dark compared to what's next to it. Does it feel to light? How does it feel overall? You know, do the squint trick that Paul was talking about earlier and I was just doing that right when you said it was funny? I called it. Yeah. All right. Now, since we only have a couple of minutes left, I'm going to go ahead and jump all the way to my softest pencil. Now, if we have a little more time, I would do every single one. But I think you're getting the idea and I really want you to get to see how it looks once you get that super dark value in there. So I've got my, my four B and still pressing with just the same, same pressure as the other pencils. But look at how much darker that is. It gives you that nice little bit of drama that I love. But you still have all the subtlety going onto because I'm not putting this everywhere, I'm just putting it where I want the darkest values to be, right? And you probably won't have much in the flower itself. It will probably be mostly the background. Yeah, there's not much in the flower that really is this dark at all. Few little spots in the couple of shadows that are close, but definitely experiment with different types of drawing paper. I think that, you know, that makes it big difference to some people love really smooth paper. I like textured paper like this. I think it just adds a little bit more interest to it, but see what works best for you. Yeah, definitely. I think if you're a more technical person and you like things to be very smooth and overall soft, then you might want something called hot press paper, which is very smooth. Yeah, has no texture really at all. Versus cold press paper, which is more of like a watercolor paper. It, you can get different textures and different weights. So there's definitely a lot of variety out there that you can experiment with. I think for me one advantage that I like about the cold press, the textured paper is that it kinda camouflages the pencil marks a little bit more because you, you don't so much see every single stroke because it kinda, you have the overall texture of the, of the paper. So it kinda, it just makes all the shading feel overall a little more consistent. When you are working on hot pressed or smooth paper, you tend to see the marks of the pencil a little more so you, if you want it to be really smooth, you just have to really take your time and, you know, kinda buff it all out. All right. Just do one more little touch here and then I think we will be good to go on this one and it'll be Melissa's turn again. Perfect. And I can just have called her from the crowd. Favorite. Let's think of ways to torture Melissa, and that's gonna be my projects. All right guys, I think we are good to go here, but just as with any of these courses, if you are really into it and you want to keep working, don't feel like you have to stop just because we are. You can you can stop the video and keep drawing as long as you want to before you go on to the next one. Yeah, there's mine. You did a great job, everybody. Hopefully you had as much fun as we did for our next project, we are going to be doing something called a reverse drawing. I'll see you there. 6. Lesson 5: Reverse Drawing: Okay, Now it's time for our last exercise. Paul, are you ready? I don't want it to be over. I'm having so much fun. Well, hopefully everyone agrees with you. We are going to do something called a reverse drawing. And a reverse drawing is basically where you cover your paper with graphite or charcoal. In this exercise, we're gonna be using charcoal. We're gonna cover our paper, make a light gray background. And then we're actually going to use our eraser to erase different values out of it. So grab your eraser, grab your charcoal, your pencil, and let's get started. All right, I'm ready. All right, So we have made it to the final exercise, the last drawing ready to be doing today. So this is going to be a bird and we can have a soft gray background that we're gonna be building on and creating the bird on top of that. So the first thing I'm gonna do is I have a little bit of physical vine charcoal. You can use graphite, you can use the side of the pencil, you can use a charcoal pencil, whatever you have. This is gonna be very quick. So I'm just going to start rubbing this across my paper and I'm just going to create a soft value that I can build on top of. So this is an interesting way of drawing that gives you a base value to build on top of. So you don't have to go back in and create all that yourself by using a pencil. And it's just a little bit faster. You'll use the kneaded eraser to pull out some of the highlights. You almost use that as another drawing tool within itself. So I am just moving this charcoal across my paper, building up a little bit of value. And then I just have a paper towel here that I'm going to use to spread the charcoal out a little bit more evenly. But just take whatever you have and create a square value here that you can draw on top of. I like the U gets to be the ones to teach the messiest lesson. I know, right? This is Kelly me right now. I don't want to go wash my hands after this. And I know I want to get this everywhere. It's gonna be all over my arms. Yes. Oh, my hands. So prepare for messiness, everyone. Let's see, Mrs. our friends. So whenever you have I just have a paper towel here. I'm just going to use the blend this together. If you want to use a blending stump, you can. It might take a little bit longer that way. Sometimes you couldn't use a paintbrush that will that will work. Whenever you have a tissue is fine. Your fingers, whatever. You're sure. Your shirt if you like messiness. I mean, just embrace it. Now's the time. And if there are areas where you feel like you didn't put enough charcoal or enough graphite on the paper, you could go back over this. If you want to clean up certain areas and make it lighter, you can with your kneaded eraser. Whatever you want. The harder you press with whatever you're blending with the memorial, get a softer value and your paper, I mean, don't, don't ruin your paper. On top of it. Just kinda get a nice soft gray. And that's just going to work as our background. So if you look at the image, there's a nice soft gray behind the bird that's flying. Just going to act as our sky. Okay. Alright. I've got that. I'm just going to go through and clean up the edges here a little bit. Just because I am me and I cannot deal messy edges at the moment. He can do whatever you want. If you like the soft edge, you can keep it. All right? Well, that's what I'm doing. Of course it is. All right. So now, depending on what you want to draw with you, like I have my charcoal pencil here, I have my graphite pencils. You can use a combination of both. We've worked with pencils up to this point where we know which ones are a little bit darker, which ones are a little bit later. Since we're starting with this value, you're probably going to want something that's a little bit softer to make a harder line. In order to draw on top of this. I'm going to grab probably one of my fees. Actually going to grab a fairly soft I go to V here. Nationally might be too hard. I'm going to go into it again. I'm just going to start laying in my bird here, so just deciding where I want to draw it. So the only tricky thing about drawing on top of. This gray, if you want to erase something, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult. But something you can do is take that same paper towel. Just go back and if you don't like a line that you've drawn, you could probably just rub it out. If you've drawn lightly. Go back on top of it with a kneaded eraser. Just press very lightly to get rid of that. So I would, I would sketch pretty lightly in the beginning when you're kind of laying out your bird shape. Quite the lovely bird looked at all of those details in the days. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a very subtle shifts here TO kind of similar to the flower that we draw, that we drew in the last exercise. As you can, very subtle shifts in the grays and the whites. And not a lot of dark, but there is a dark do bring some drama and really make them stand out from the background. So I'm just kind of drawing the body shape first, getting that sketched in. And now I'm going to sketch in those wing shapes. Now remember, you're not drawing a bird, you're just drawing sheets. I don't think they believed me. I don't know. I doubt it, but it's a hard sell, right? That's a bird shaped object that we're drawing right now. And those wings are made up of lots of feathers. But look at the overall shape and draw that first rather than drawing all the feathers. Just one step at a time? Yeah. Any kind of drawing book like it. If anyone had those drawing books when they were a kid that showed you how to draw different animals. And you would always start with shapes. That's kind of the basic premise with anything you're drawing is you want to draw the shapes first. Do you want to figure out what shapes make up this, this creature or this, you know, this object, whatever it is that you're drawing and draw that first. Those books are actually really good, I think for teaching people that, yeah, I used to get all those good check. A good challenge then is to try to do a few of those and then do one where you don't look at all the steps, but you tried to just do it on your own and see if you can find the shapes yourself. Okay, So I have the basic shapes laid in here for my bird. Feet here. Okay? And then the one nice thing about having a value already established is that you can lift out a lot of the highlights fairly easily. So I'm just going to take my kneaded eraser. I'm going to make it into a point. So almost acts like a pencil itself. And I'm going to start looking at where my highlights are and erasing enough of that background to give me some of those subtle highlight areas. I love this part. It's like the opposite of how you normally draw. Because normally you're on a white paper and you're adding darkness to it. Now you're adding the weights. Yeah. And I think for this subject matter, It's actually a really nice technique because there are some really nice subtleties in the bird and the different values that you're seeing. So it works really nicely to help pull some of that out. I feel like this technique is extra good for just giving you that sense of light hitting something right away. I worked in using your pencil and drawing on white paper. I think it sometimes takes a little bit longer before you can feel the light in the drawing, but this way, as soon as you start erasing almost you see it. Yeah. And I think one nice thing about all those feather shapes as you could actually create those really easily with the kneaded eraser. So if you just kind of mold your eraser into a shape and just kinda pull it across those wing shapes that you created. You're going to make something that feels like feathers pretty quickly. It's so easy, it almost feels like cheating. Yeah. And that's just going to create something easier for you when you go back and you put those details in because you're not going to have to do as much work, which is great. I mean, Paula loves that part. Yep, I'm a big fan of this technique. It's amazing the amount of detail that you can get just by using the eraser. Yeah. You know, I'm just kinda creating my marks in the way that the feathers are shaped within the wings. And it's really helping draw out some of that. The light, but also some of the details the bird itself. You know, you can use a more settled technique with the eraser where you just kinda tap it against the background and it'll just kinda pull a little bit at a time that gray. So you get something very subtle. Okay? All right, and then the next thing I'm gonna do is just start building up. So I'm gonna do something similar to what we did in the last exercising. When you use kind of a maybe something towards the middle to begin with, start adding some of my values. We're gonna top of that kind of lighter middle gray, a creative than the background. So where's my B pencil? I'm going to go in with my B pencil and just start adding some of those darker values. I'm not using a lot of pressure. I'm just building on top of what I already have. This is a good technique to use if you're ever in a life drawing class and you're doing a maybe a longer pose of a model. It, it lets you get to the highlights and shading a little bit quicker and you end up being able to capture a lot more if you have a limited amount of time with the subject. There are also other ways you can get this look too. That might be a little less messy, even if you are somebody who doesn't want the mess, you can use, you can actually buy toned paper. So like paper that is gray or tan or, or whatever, you can even buy black sketchbooks. But then instead of using the eraser, and in those cases you would use a white charcoal pencil or a white colored pencil to add the highlights. Yeah, which can also give you some really nice subtle shifts in value. A different way of working, but that's something that I always enjoyed when I did figure drawing is working on a colored background or a gray background. Yeah. It says, it lets you add value quickly but also very subtly, which is very, very nice effect. I'm just going to work solely here and just build up our values in different areas. Just working on that top wing now and adding in some of the darker areas. And charcoal and graphite are two different media that work really well together and can blend really nicely together. Graph, I will give you those really subtle variations. And charcoal can give you a really nice, dark, rich, darker value in there. So feel free to combine the two. I think that's really ideal to in a drawing it to be able to have both the subtle stuff, but then also to get that bold contrasts from having real deep dark values. Yeah. I'm not yet having to use much pressure at all here. I'm just kinda layering on top, just very similar to what Paul taught us in the last exercise. Using those marks I made with the kneaded eraser to couldn't act. And so as a guide for where I want the feathers to go. Oh, this period, such a QD. Your proof? I do. It is a very peaceful subject manner. We must have been feeling things that were peaceful today ball. I know everything we picked because it's just been very calming. Yeah. We must need more. Next time. We'll pick some real crazy stuff. That's what would have happened if I had let you pick you up. You should see some other things that we draw in the classes that I teach by myself. Who like what? Any good examples? For some reason I tend to pick a lot of pictures of people like jumping up in the air are doing okay. I don't know, like karate moves. You do enjoy the dramatic. I do. Like people wearing really wacky costumes. That's a favorite. I see that. This is what happens when left unsupervised. Yeah. So if that's your thing, other classes, but you really enjoyed drawing people jumping. Yep. And strange costumes. Like you to see that evolve all like lining up right now based on blocking, blocking the classes. I enjoy a little more subtlety. Like the understatement of the gears. Just a little little more. Please. Like we said, Paul and I are a little bit of a contradiction. And a good way. That's what makes our classes good though, because you get to see two different approaches. And you know, there, there are as many different approaches to art as there are artists everybody's going to do there, do their thing. I think sometimes the danger of taking of all classes from just one person is that you can start to feel like their way is the only way. So I like these code labs because he can see other options. I think everybody has a slightly different approach, right? Or something that they naturally flock to. Woo-hoo. Okay. Never mind that. I'm saying You keep saying guacamole. I can write. My brain is that at the moment. Right? I'm just going to keep building up that net value. C. I got like five p Here. I go in and add some darker spots in here. Definitely if you're drawing something smaller or something a little bit more delicate with more detail, feel free to get a nice point on your pencil. It definitely makes a difference. I know some people draw with a mechanical pencil to which is much more technical, but you can get a very sharp point if that's what you're looking for. What do my students was using mechanical colored pencils the other day I had never really, wow. I know a lot of people will use something called a lead holder as well. When you could put different LEDS in that depending on what you like to draw with. So you can buy anything from a super hard lead to a softer lead. Yeah. I know in college that was something people did a lot. What will they come up with next? We're just felt like too much work for me. So I didn't use the lead holder very often, but you know, a lot of people really liked it. Now paying attention to where some of my darker areas are. Good. Nice thing about this bird is it has a lot of interesting shapes and subtle variations within those sheets, but it also has some interesting lines that you can use your pencils to create. This bird has it all, has it all. I think if you wanted to focus on getting every detail in here you could, because there's a lot of detail on the wings and subtle changes throughout. So I think it's something you could definitely spend more time on if you're enjoying this. Yeah. You could even use your, your viewfinder and choose to draw just a part of it if you wanted to, like maybe just focusing on just the bird's head and the wings or something like that. I think the viewfinder is a great, a tool for all different kinds of art pieces to help you to really kinda create your own compositions. Or yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the viewfinder can work for whatever you're working on. Definitely outside of just drawing tools you can work for you. Yeah. Like said Paul said, be excellent for paintings. Sure. You know, it's really helpful to stop and think a little bit about composition before you start, even though nobody wants to take time to do that in me. But the results are, are they speak for themselves when you do. It's trying to get these feet. And here these feet has some really interesting shapes. Some nice, It's a nice contrast because you get some really dark, darks there. I'm working with my five right now, just kinda going as dark as I can with the graphite. And then I'm gonna go in with the charcoal and add a few details that I can't really get as dark with the graphite. A way to finish this up here. You're going to finish moles. Well, you know the finished, right? Yes. We got to stop sometime. A finished drawing doesn't always mean like fully rendered in detail from corner to corner. It can show whatever whatever makes the drawing feel finished to you is what is right. And I'm working very soft here. I'm not going into a lot of detail. I'm just laying in these values and if I wanted to go back in and add more detail, I could establish, I'm sure you probably will pull this back out. Some point, you can stop me. Nope. I learned that a long time ago. I used to paint murals together and as you can imagine, we had different approaches to that too. I actually have a paint brush here and I'm just actually going to use this to smooth out some of the charcoal. So definitely something you can, you can use to spread out some of that value. If you want to use your opinion, your blending stump, that would work really well too. I just want to experiment with the charcoal because there's suddenly a really nice about the way the charcoal flows onto paper. Create some really subtle variations in value with the charcoal. Why he said it really like it mixes nicely with the graphite and kinda, you know, go, go, you use it at any stage. But I kinda like doing a lot of the drawing with the pencil first and then taking the charcoal just where I want that real punch of dark. One other tool that we're not going to necessarily demonstrate right now, but that might be helpful for you guys is to if you, if you make a drawing, whether it's a pencil drawing or charcoal, and you want to make it so that it doesn't get smeared when it's finished. You can buy different types of spray fixatives that you can spray, spray your drawing so that the console or the charcoal won't smear as easily. That's always a good thing, especially if you have it in a sketch book. A lot of times I'll draw in a sketchbook and then close it. And the drawing kinda gets smeared on the back of whatever pages, you know, in front of it. So spray them down when they're finished. You can even use it as a work at a workable fixative is you're going yes. It's actually called workable fixative and so you can spray it but then you can still keep drawing on top. Yep. So then you won't smudge it as you're working, you can keep building on top of it and not have to worry about getting your hand in the middle of it. Yeah. If you decide you do want to spray one of your drawings, make sure that you stand at upgrade. You'll wanna do it outside really cause any kind of spring as opposed to outside, but yes. And wear a mask? Yes. What did they ask? Be safe. But if you put it upright instead of having it laying down flat, then you won't get like drips on it. You don't want you don't want food sprayed it drip on your paper? No. Okay. I think we're about ready. Oh, beautiful work laws as always. Lovely YouTube. Great job. I love doing reverse drawings. I hope you try that again with some different types of subject matter. Thanks for hanging out with is everybody This has been so much fun, Paul. Yes, it does. 7. Closing Thoughts: Great job everybody. We hope that you enjoyed this class and that it gave you some new understandings of how to use all of your drawing tools. And we hope that you keep experimenting and trying different things. There's no one way to use the tools. There's no right way or wrong way. Feel free to experiment, try different things. That's what Pauline idea, right? Ball. Bright. And then we just teach it and pretend like we know what we're talking about. One day this could be you. But we had so much fun hanging out with you today. We hope that you enjoyed it and got something out of it and feel free to join us for another class in the future. Yes, we have a lot more to come, so we'll see you again really soon. Thanks everyone. Thanks everybody.