Back to Basics: How to Draw a Still Life

1. Introduction: You might surprise yourself. Mm hmm. Hi everyone, and welcome to back to basics, how to draw a still life. I'm Paul Richmond and I'm Melissa Foreman, and we are going to be your instructors for this course where we will actually be doing two different still life drawings, showing you some different techniques for them. We will be using a full range of different types of pencils to create different values or shades in the drawing. And we'll be talking about things like looking for shadows and highlights. How do you make things feel three dimensional? Then I'm handing over the reins to Melissa and we're going to do things a little bit differently. When it's my turn, we're going to work with some charcoal and also graphite drawing pencils. And we are going to start with establishing a mid value and then working on top of that using a needed eraser to pull out some of the highlights, and then adding some of the shadows with some charcoal and some of those same drawing pencils that we used in Pulse. Our goal with this course is to show you some tools and techniques that you'll be able to take with you as you go into doing other art pieces. We call these courses back to Basics because we are going to talk about a lot of the fundamental aspects of creating artwork. Which means understanding value, how it works, how different directional lighting affects different objects. How to establish values through the use of charcoal and graphite and other drawing materials. And how to put all those basics together into making something really great. You'll see just between us, we each have very different approaches. And that's the other fun thing about teaching classes with Melissa, Aside from just getting to like, you know, poke fun at her as we're working through the lessons, It's cool for you to get to see that two different artists can draw the same thing and have two very different results. And hopefully, that will make you feel like you have permission to do your own thing too and find your own style. Feel free to take tips here and there to ignore certain things that they don't work for you and establish your own way of working. Don't ignore anything I say though that would break my heart. Just ignore everything. Cosas, why don't you introduce yourself and let these people know why you're qualified to teach this class. My name is Melissa Foreman. I have known each other a very long time. We went to art school together and we both established professional careers From there on. I am an art director. I worked for a large reading card company. I managed a team of illustrators in hand lettering artists, and I also do my own painting on the side. So I worked with galleries in creating highly realistic surrealistic portraits, and that's something I enjoy doing on the side. So I have a lot of crafting hobbies and other things, so I love all different ways of creating artwork and love to get to share with other people. And I'm Paul Richmond. I also have known Melissa for a long time and latched onto her in art school because she was so awesome and ta***ted. And I said I am going to make her be my friend. So we started a mural painting business together when we graduated. So I've painted a lot of murals with her and with other artists. I also do fine art work as well and show my work in galleries around the world and have collectors everywhere like Melissa, I love sharing my love for art with other people. And what could be more fun than collaborating with my bestie to make some videos where you get to draw and make art right along with us. So, are you ready to get started, Melissa? I am. So read Polly. Let's do this. All right, sharpen your pencils. Let's go. 2. Projects: Okay, in this course, we are going to be making two drawings. So, we wanted to show you what's coming so you can prepare. The first drawing you'll be making is with me. I mean, Melissa will be drawing it too, but I'm the one who's going to be on camera. We are going to draw this beautiful together. We'll be, oh, thank you. You can see there's a lot of subtle shading, a really fine detail in that. The way that we achieve that is by using range of different pencils. Because each pencil has its own value or its own shade. Some pencils are naturally darker and some are whiter. The main idea with this first project is to show you how you can take advantage of those different pencils and use them to their best potential and have it all come together to make a realistic drawing of this flower. Then what are you going to have us do next? Melissa, we see your hands with her. All right Paul. We are moving from flowers to pairs. We get the full range of nature here, we're moving on to a drawing like this. And so this is done a little similar to late Paul's going to teach you how to draw, but we're actually starting with a midtone value on this and we're going to use some charcoal to establish that one overall. We're going to pull up some of the highlights within eraser, and then we're going to establish some of the darker tones with graphite pencils and also that charcoal. And we would love, love, love to see your versions of these drawings too. Please share them with us when you're all finished. Everybody's will look different, mine is different from Melissa's. And I think it's really cool to see how artists all over the world interpret the same subject matters. So take a minute and share it with those, please. Definitely. 3. Materials: We wanted to show you the different materials you'll need as we go through this course. It is completely fine if you don't have everything that we have. You can always make substitutions, use whatever you have handy. But we wanted to go through and show you what we'll be using. For the first project, I will be using three different pencils. One is one is B. Really see that or not? Yes. Oh, you can. Lovely. And a four pencil? The four H is a hard lead. Anything with an H will be good for that. The higher the number, the harder the lead, and that means it will make a lighter mark. It's good for those really light tones. Then the HB is right in the middle of the road pencil. Then the four B is a very soft lead. Anything with a B will be a softer lead. That means it makes a darker tone. It doesn't have to be a four. It could be whatever number you want. The higher the number, the softer the lead will be. Then the other materials that I'll be using for my drawing are a needed eraser, which comes in a little rectangular block, and then you just squish it around and it's a lot of fun. And the stress reliever too, not that we're going to make you stress, don't worry. And then lastly, you'll need paper to draw on. I am using, I have this tablet of watercolor paper, which actually works really well for this. You can use any sketch paper that you want. I like the cold press watercolor paper because it has a little texture to it. I like working with that in my drawing. But whatever paper you have handy, grab that and you'll be ready for my drawing. What do we need for yours? Well, Paul's really similar. I'm going to use a very similar paper to Pol has I have this watercolor pad of paper. It's also cold press. You could use any paper for this. Really, I suggest something with a little bit of texture to it. If you have an nice drawing paper, you could use that if you want to draw in your sketchbook, you could also do that. I would just suggest something with a more texture, not something too smooth or too thin. Also need needed eraser similar to what Paul just talked about. Again, this comes in a rectangle and you can meet it into any shape that you need, which we will be doing during my part of this lesson. Similar pencils to what Paul talked about. We are going to start with using a four B, the opposite of the way Paul is going to show you, move to an HB and then also use a two H, a range of pencils. A pencil sharpener because you want to keep your pencil sharp, it's just easier to work with a sharp pencil. Then I also have something that's a little bit different than what Paul is going to be showing. You have some pieces of charcoal here and you can buy charcoal in all different shapes and sizes. You want something where you can use the side of the charcoal. This does not have a wrapper on it, it's just plain charcoal. I can use the tip to draw with. I can use the side of it. I can use it in a lot of different ways. And this charcoal is actually called vine charcoal. You don't have to look for vine charcoal specifically. Mine comes in a little box like this. But you can buy any type of charcoal that will work for you that has an edge and also a tip that you can use for different purposes. Go gather everything up and then come back and let's get started making some art. Sounds good to me. 4. Project 1: Sketch: Hi everyone and welcome to you back to basics, how to draw a still life. In this lesson, we are going to jump into our first drawing by sketching out the image on the paper. You ready to get started, Melissa? I'm ready to be sketchy, Paul. Okay, let's go be sketchy. We are going to get started sketching out this beautiful rose. I am working with three different pencils for this drawing. You are welcome to do the same, or if you want to just use one pencil for everything, that's fine too. But we thought this would be a good way to show you what the different pencils can do. I pick three that are all very different from each other. Starting with the four H pencil, the H's are always the harder leads. Those are the ones that will make the lightest mark on the paper. Then I have an H B, which is right in the middle. Then I have a four, that's the softer lead. The bees are the softer lead, so they make darker marks. One traditional way of doing a drawing is to start with the harder leads and then work your way up to the softer. I'm only using three, but some hardcore people probably like Melissa would use every pencil in the kit. Right? You would. Hardcore. Yeah. Yeah, we're not doing that today. Don't worry. All right. I'm going to start by just sketching it out. I think I'm going to sketch it with the H B. I don't really like sketching with the super hard lead myself because first of all, you can't hardly see it and also it's harder to erase. You can use whatever pencil you want, but we'll just spend this first lesson sketching this out, getting the proportions to look good, and then we'll start shaping it next time when I'd like to start by just drawing a very simple shape, Not really getting into all of the details. I'm just using like a jelly bean shape for the make sure I like the placement, the proportion, and everything. Before I get to caught up in all the details, I don't even know if you can see that I'm drawing so light. But it's a good idea to draw kind of light so that it's easier to erase. So if you can't see it too bad there, I promise you're doing it right, Paul. Just trust him on this one. Just imagine a jelly bean. I think you can see it. All right. So now I'm going to draw the stem and it curves a little bit to the right as it goes down. I'm just going to let mine fade. I'm not going to go all the way to the bottom of the paper you can do. You can cover the full page if you want or you can draw it smaller and just let it fade like I'm doing whatever you want. Okay, I'm going to just rough in some of those little leaf shapes. There's one that comes up over here. Typically when you are doing a still life drawing, since that's what this course is about, it means you're drawing something that you've actually set up in front of you, objects that will be still and do a drawing of those. But we are using photos since it would look the same to you either way on screen. And probably better through a photo than if we were filming a live still light. Yeah, it's good practice to draw from life. I would encourage you to take what you learn from this course and then set up some still lives and work on trying to draw those to. Definitely drawing from life is a little different as far as capturing light. Because photos capture it in their own way and the way you see it in person will be a little bit different. Okay, this is coming together just beautifully. Those leaves look a little Dr. Seuss. They are, there's interesting shapes there. Just get the basic shape with the squiggle down first and then you go back and flush it out. I can't stress enough. If you haven't done a lot of drawing before, you're going to probably feel tempted to want to jump right to detail. Draw every little perfect lump and bump and shape. But it's very difficult to do that and get the proportions and keep the big picture in mind. Just keep it simple, keep it light. One pro tip for today is when I'm doing the lighter part of my sketch. I always hold my pencil farther back away from the tip and that keeps me from getting tight to detailed with it. That's one thing you can try if you find yourself just being too controlled, detailed too soon. Another reason for drawing light is that you don't want to make deep grooves in the paper with your lines because then when we go to shade it, those get annoying. Yeah. They will show up whether you want them to or not. Yes. Yeah, a light touch is definitely helpful. All right. Getting this leaf in, and then I'm going to go back and work on some of the layers of the rose. One more little Dr. Seuss leaf up here on top. There we go. Okay, now got this petal, comes over here to the right, and then see how it actually at the top curves around so that we see the other side of it and then it comes up and overlaps. That leaf comes down like that. You try not to think too much about what you're drawing. Just look at the shapes that, that always helps Myelo at how the shapes interact, how they overlap, how the two work together, the relationship between different shapes, the size of the scale. All that will be helpful right then. We have this one that comes over here, We have this little guy. There's actually a lot going on here with this flower, Melissa. I know Paul. You thought you were picking a simple one. You knew you were like, uh huh, I'm gonna make Paul draw this Well, you almost picked the one with dew drops all over it. So imagine imagine what you would be drawing right now if you had picked that one. Yeah, I says gone, well, okay. Just getting all these layers in. You don't have to get every little detail because some of it you can work out later as we're doing the shading. But it does help to get things mapped out at this stage. At least the main basic shape so that you know everything's where it's supposed to be, then that will make the shading bit easier. All right? I think if you don't start with a good foundation, a good drawing in the beginning, your shading is not really going to help you. Yeah. You're just going to be shading in a mess. Yeah. You want to kind of take your time and get things in the right place first? Or at least which I've done that before. Like, I'm tired of drawing this. I'm just going to shade it now. That'll help. Let me just move on. I'll just fix it later. It doesn't. I'm sure that's hard to believe that I would do such a thing, Paul. I could never imagine happen. Never imagine wanting to rush things. If only they could have seen us when we had our mural heating business together. Melissa and I, when we graduated from college, we painted murals together. For a while, we had our own little business foreman. Richmond Murals. Yes, my name dot, of course. Mm hmm. Well, let's just say working with Melissa on a mural is very humbling experience. Oh my goodness. We'll have to fill you in a little bit more on some of that in our next lesson because we are about to wrap this one up. Now when we go to the next lesson, we are going to start shading. If you're not quite finished with your sketch, take all the time that you need. With this, you can just pause the video so you'll have the reference on your screen and keep going. But then be ready in the next lesson to start shading it in. Great job everyone. You did it. Okay, so now we are ready to start shading this in, in the next lesson we are going to begin with the four H pencil, which is the hardest lead, so it's going to be a really light tone overall. So you're ready to start with a light tone. Melissa? I am ready to start with a light tone, Paul. Okay, I'll see you then. I'll see you soon. 5. Project 1: 4H Pencil: Hi everyone and welcome back to back to basics how to draw a still life. And in this lesson, it is time to start adding some shading to our drawings. So we'll be using the four H pencil and putting a nice light even tone over everything. You ready to start shading? Melissa, ready to get Shady? Paul? She just can't help herself. All right. Let's go let's do it. Okay. Let's start shading this in. If you are following the same process that I am, I'm going to start with the hardest lead pencil, which is the four H. If you have a whole set of pencils, the higher the number gets, the harder the lead will be. You could use a four H like me, or if you want it to be even lighter, you could 68. Although by that point you hardly even see anything. I don't know why you bother, but the idea of using the different pencils is that you're not really varying the amount of pressure too much that you put on them. You're letting the natural value of the pencil do the work for you and you're building up the layers to get to the darker value. First thing I'm going to do is put a little bit of light value in the background, right along the edge here. First glance, I thought it was a white background. You might have thought that too or maybe you're more perceptive than me, I don't know. But actually, there is a little bit of value in the background because you can see how on the right side that petal is actually a little bit lighter than the background is. It's very subtle, but putting a little bit of value in the background will help to make that petal pop out. I'm not going to shade in the whole paper, I'm just going to do right along the edge and then let it fade. You can go as far with it as you want, but I'm just doing it almost just like a little glow around the flower. That's enough. You want to take your time when you're using this technique and try to camouflage the pencil marks as much as you can. If you want it to be smooth, I mean, it is okay to also shade it where you see the pencil lines. That's valid too. If you want to smooth, you just have to go slow and let each mark help cover up the one came before. Yeah. And just use a light touch like we did last time. Yeah. You can even let your strokes overlap the flower a little bit because we probably are going to use the same technique within the flower. Exactly. That is actually where we are at right now. Before I do that though, I'm going to take my needed as this is a great eraser for drawings because you can shape it to whatever size you need it to be. I'm just going to some of my interior lines a little bit to lighten them so that because it's harder to do that once you start shading. And I don't want it to look really liney, I want it to be more realistic, All right? Yeah. Like Melissa said, basically we're going to shade in almost all of this flower with this shade of pencil. Because everything in the flower except for that petal on the right and a little bit of the second petal at the top where the light is hitting it, maybe about the shape, if you wanted to sketch it out a little. That might stay the white of the paper for now, but everything else you can just shade it all in. How do you see that? Because the idea is that we'll build up additional layers of value and keep getting darker and darker. And being more selective about where those darker values go as we go along. This stage is easy because you don't get the color in everything, colored in everything, that there are different ways of shading. I'm showing you this method of using the different pencils and building up the value and I'm just b***ding with the pencil. Once we get to that stage, there are tools for b***ding also, like little b***ding stumps that are rolled up paper that you can use to b***d your shadows and stuff with. I don't like those as much because they tend to everything. Look at, I don't know, foggy you lose at the structure of the form. I think sometimes with those, but try everything out, see what you like the best. There's something nice about the graphite texture too that I think you can get by using all the different pencils and not necessarily by using the paper stumps. Yeah, it gets a little blurry or a little smudgy, you lose some of that nice texture. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pencil drawing, so why not make it look like one? Just embrace it. Yes, embrace who you are, you little pencil drawing. Be proud. The only parts that I'm not coloring again are just that little section right here at the top of this petal and then the majority of this petal here except for maybe right along the edge on the bottom right side, there's a little shadow there. Otherwise color way. Do you always go in the same direction with your pencil Melissa or do you go in all different directions? When I'm doing a graphite drawing, I like to go in the same direction just because I can try and get an even texture. Yeah, I don't love seeing all of the strokes, so I like to do everything in the same direction because it makes even quality throughout the drawing. Yeah, same here, but I know a lot of people do things differently and some people really like the cross hatching approach. And I think that can make a really interesting texture too. I go for a more smooth even texture overall. Yeah, you use different ways you can do it. Like you could cross hatch like Melissa said, you can move your pencil like in the direction of whatever element you're drawing. If it's wrapping around to the right, you can move your pencil that way and that'll give it a little bit more of a sculpted look. So many options. I think one thing that can help too, if you're struggling with a color photo and drawing from a reference instead of from life, is to make that photo black and white. And sometimes that can help you see value a little bit easier. Sometimes it can be tricky if you're not used to drawing. And trying to convert things from color to black and white in your head can be a little chal***ging at first little tip for you. Oh, look at you with the pro tips. Melissa, teaching me, trying to get me used to the giving a. We'll get there eventually. That was a great step in the right direction. Thank you. Nice try. Yes. Excel***t. Just say it with a little more confidence next time and you're there. All right. Almost finished with this layer at the bottom. Like I said, I'm just going to let that stem false wherever you want it to fade. You just start lifting up a little more and more and more with your pencil until it's going down. Going to come back in here and just break up that edge a little. You can always take your eraser if you want to pull out any other little highlights like I'm doing right here along the edge of that. Then let me just put a little bit more value back in. When we say value, by the way, we're talking about the different shades, light and dark in your drawing. Those are the different values. Being able to see those and replicate them is what will make your drawing look realistic. Mm hm. Yeah. As simple as that. All right, so awesome work. Okay, well, we have now got some value on the paper, but we are not finished yet. In our next lesson, we are going to move up to the HB pencil and start adding in some middle tones. You ready for that? I am ready, Paul. See you then. 6. Project 1: HB Pencil Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome back to back to Basics how to Draw Still Life. In this lesson, we are going to start adding in some middle tones to our drawings using the HB pencil. Are you ready to use an HB pencil? Melissa? I'm trying to think of how I can word this so you can't do any fun like puns. I know I'm desperately trying to think of one over here and I got nothing too bad. You it for me. I'm ready to get started though. Okay. Okay. Okay. Are you ready to do some shading that doesn't just involve coloring in the whole thing? And now we're going to be a little bit more selective. I'm jumping to the HB pencil, which is right in the middle of all of the different shades of pencils that we have. It will be quite a bit darker than the value we were working with before. The idea now is I would choose maybe a dark spot to start in, just so you can see what the pencil is going to do. I'm going to start over here in this leaf and I'm just going to go right on top of the, um, previous layer. And you can see how, because I'm not pressing any harder with the pencil either. I'm using the exact same amount of pressure, but it is making quite a darker value. It's still maybe just more in like a middle range. As far as the value scale goes, we'll still get quite a bit darker. But basically now you're just going to go through and shade in everything that is this value or darker in the image. We're just slowly building it up. This is like a very strategic process. Melissa, I bet you are just loving this. Are I am. Could, why am I teaching this? You're the one who loves this kind of stuff. I'm a one pencil boy usually when I'm drawing, honestly. Yep, keep it simple. Totally valid way to do it too. You use just one pencil and vary how hard you press to create the different values. Yeah, definitely. You could totally do that. You might have a little bit more of a chal***ge getting the right values because it will depend more on the pressure you use and depending on what pencil you're starting with, you might not be able to get dark enough or you might not get light enough. Yeah, I guess the advantage is you have more options when you're using all of the pencils, but it is a definitely more time consuming and strategic process depending on how you work. Like, if you're like Paul and you're impatient, it might not be the process for you. Or if you're like me and you spend forever on it and you don't want to spend forever on a drawing, then maybe you just use a couple pencils. When I'm doing a one pencil drawing, I usually pick something on the softer side, so it'll be able to go as dark as I need it to. And then I can just press lighter with it to get the lighter. But it is tricky to get, especially some of those subtle light variations, It's a little tricky doing it that way. You have to try a little bit harder. Yeah, basically there's no easy way. It's all hard. We're still going to do a little bit of that method too. Once we get up to the four pencil, we'll have to press a little harder in some areas to get the really deep shadows, and press a little lighter to get some of the others. Because there's way more than three values in this image, right? Yeah, we are limiting it from the beginning. Paul said four pencils. That's it. Three. Melissa, 33. Oh my gosh. I have four out here. I'm already cheating ever since we've been in college, Melissa was a freaking overachiever. I don't even do it on purpose. It just happens, Put one of those away. All right. So I am working on these pedals now. The ones that are up here I would say pretty much mostly going to get covered with this HB pencil, but you'll see there's a few little spots along the edges where they get lighter. This is where you get to just really start paying attention to more of those subtle things and try to try to leave the lighter spots without hitting them with the second layer so that it just creates that b***d. Okay, coming up here. Now this one gets darker as it goes toward the edge. This is a time to really start looking at your reference. That's your pro tip for this lesson, is spend as much time looking at your reference as you do looking at your drawing. It's tempting to just want to stare at your drawing the whole time and never look at the reference, then you're going to miss a lot of stuff. I think one thing that can be tricky about drawing with graphite is sometimes you'll get little ridges where it will be dark or little areas where you feel like the graphite isn't b***ding as well. I think when you get those dark ridges is you're probably pressing too hard. You might want to let up on your pencil a little bit and be a little bit more gentle with the strokes and then see if that I would if you decide you want to do a lot of still life drawings or drawings of any kind, experiment with different kinds of paper too, to see what you like the best. Because each surface will give you a different effect. Also, I'm working on watercolor paper actually, right now, which I really like. This is a cold press watercolor paper. It's got a little texture. The cold pressed paper are a little bit bumpier. I like that because you can take advantage of that texture, it camouflages some of the lines of the pencil a little bit more. You're using watercolor paper, right? I am, Yes, I am also using a cold press. The difference between cold press watercolor paper and hot press is the texture. Cold press will have more texture, Hot press will not have any texture at all, it'll be very smooth. Hmm, You can use that if you want just a more smooth drawing, a result that's a little bit more polished. But it is a little trickier to use because you will have to be very careful about the way you're using your pencils and the way you're making your different lines. You see everything. You will see everything for sure. It will take some practice, I think, to get used to that type of paper or anything that's a little bit more smooth. Yeah, like Paul said, the texture will actually help hide any mistakes that you make with the graphite itself. I'm a big fan of that. You can see I'm starting on this big petal here. I'm starting to lightly suggest some of the little little y lines that we see in. The nice thing about this technique really, is that it does you just slowly build up. I think because you are taking your time, you see more and you try to bring out more of those subtle details versus like my normal approach, which would be to just be flying through this and I would notice the big contrasty things, but I might not notice all these little subtle details. Yes, now that we're at the HB pencil and we're adding some of the values that are a little bit more nuanced, I think you'll start to see all the different details come out and heart might take you a little bit longer. Yeah, I think we're going to spend at least two lessons on the H B so that we can take our time. Because this is where we are starting to, it almost starts to become like realistic, but just in a lighter, higher key. Mm hm. Yeah, it does start to take shape. You beautiful little flyer. Yes. Once you start looking at that large petal right in the center, you realize all the detail that's in there. Who? There's a lot there's a there's a lot of aging, there's a lot of different ways that the light hits it. Yes. It's going to take a little while to bring out all of that detail. Or at least some of it. Maybe not all of it. Yeah. All right, so we will continue on this stuff in our next lesson, you did a great job. All right. In our next lesson, we're just going to keep doing more of the same, so keep those HB pencils handy. And I'll see you then. 7. Project 1 : HB Pencil Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome back to back to basics how to draw still life. In this lesson, we are going to keep right on shading the middle tones with the HB pencil. You ready, Melissa? I am ready. Paul. Please teach me. Okay, follow me. Let's go Just going to keep doing more of the same. I am using my HB pencil again and I'm just going to jump right back into, I'm working on this big pedal here in the middle trying to bring out some of the details that I see on that. I did sharpen my pencil in between lessons. It's a good idea to keep your pencil pretty sharp while you're working. You can see I'm not holding the pencil vertically like I'm writing. I'm holding it more on its side. It's not the actual tip, but it's a little bit of the edge of the pencil. That's how I like it. But experiment with different positions and see what works the best for you. And it might be that you hold it differently depending on what effect you're trying to get. One of the things that is really important to think about when you're doing a still life drawing or anything that is meant to be realistic is the light source. The way that the light affects the object is really what helps us to understand its volume, its dimensionality In this image, can you tell where the light is coming from? Melissa, can you tell? Tells? Well, I think the first giveaway is just finding the brightest part of your image, right? We talked about earlier. The brightest part is that petal just on the right there. It's very bright yellow. That makes me think that my light source is coming from the right. Then I'll start looking at my shadows. Where are my shadows falling? And a lot of my shadows, especially on that stem, are on the left side of the stem. That makes me think that I was probably right, saying that our light source is coming from the right hand side. Yes, Melissa is used to realizing that she's probably right. Goodness. If you're working from an image that already exists like we are, then just identifying where the light source is an important step. If you are setting up a still life for yourself, then you get to have more control over that. You can experiment with placing a lamp or a little light source in different positions to see what works best. It's usually better to have it coming from one side or the other than from the front. Kind of flatten everything out. If if the lighting is from the front Right. You'll probably lose some of your shadowing that way. Yeah. Yes. Have a less in this one. In this one feels to me, like Melissa said, the lights coming from the right. And I would say like maybe a little bit from the back to you. And you can sort of tell that by how, like I'm looking at the stem. How much of the stem is in shadow versus light? If the light was more from the front, we'd see more light. In what we're seeing a little bit more shadows. So I think that makes me think the light is just a little bit toward the back. This is just coming together beautifully, already is gorgeous. One thing to pay attention to when you're thinking about light source is the type of edge that you're getting that's really important when you're drawing because you either want a soft edge or you want a hard edge. I think this reference does a really nice job of illustrating. The difference between the 21 example would be to look at that leaf that overlaps that petal that is the brightest in the image. Definitely has a hard edge. You see all the detail on it. The leaf is very dark and the petal is very light. You obviously see a difference between the two. Making a hard edge there in your drawing will make that leaf pop out and look like it's on top of that petal. But if you look at that petal that is in the center that has some shadowing on it, you'll notice that there's some very subtle shifts in the shadow itself, the way the light bends across the petal and you get a lot of very soft edges. You're going to use a different technique when you're drawing something like that. Melissa, I feel like that may have been a pro tip. Okay. Paul called it pro tip of the day. Pro tip of the day. Pay attention to the edges and how the light is affecting the edge. That is courtesy of Melissa. Add another thing. I did not Go ahead, add another add another mark in my pro tip to I didn't think a lot about edge control early on when I was first starting out, But you can appreciate that, especially if you look at the way different artists handle it. In traditional paintings, you can see a lot of edges that I would expect to be really sharp are painted. So if there's an area that's just supposed to b***d into the background is a very helpful thing to consider. It can make a big difference even on that petal itself that we were talking about. The petal in the middle with the shadow from the brightest petal on top of it. You can notice at the top of it, the shadow has a harder edge to it and more towards the center has a much softer edge, it b***ds. That's the difference between a hard edge and soft edges. One feels like a subtle shift and one feels like a very abrupt shift. I think that's a rookie mistake that you see in a lot of drawings and paintings. Is the tendency to want to make everything have a hard, hard edge? Yes. So yeah, look at where that actually is happening and then where it's meant to be softer. And then you just want to handle it differently with your pencil. Where one would get a, I guess just a different application of the graphite are direct, more line based application of the graphite rather than kind of a subtle softer. Sh, it's a lot to think about. Huh? It's a lot to think about. Yeah, that's the hard part. Don't be overwhelmed though. If you are new to this, you just take it one step at a time. Focus just on the area that you're working on. You don't have to do it all at once or know all the things at shading. And really I think a big thing that me and helps me also when I'm working with new students is just encouraging them to really trust your eyes and what you see and just try to replicate that. A big part of learning how to draw is learning to see and to look closely and to pay attention and try to bring that out in your piece. Take the time to really look at it, yeah. And just take it step by step. Just focus on one area at a time. Don't think about the whole thing in the beginning. Just think, okay, I'm going to start here and I'm going to start shaking this and that's going to help me with the rest of it. It's kind of calming in a way when you do it this slower technique because you're just inching along. Yes. Paul's favorite. Yeah. I like to run through life at the top speed normally. So this different it can be very meditative. Right. I think I am just about finished with the HB player. That doesn't mean that you can only use this pencil now and once you put it down, you can never touch it again. You can always go back and you add in more of any of these values after you have gone through all of the steps. But I think for starters, it's good to just work through them in order because it gives you a process to figure out how you're building up those different shades. Definitely. All right, one more little section right here and we'll be good to go. Like I said before though, take all the time that you need, so if you are not quite finished with your H B layer or whatever you're using for your, you know, kind of middle pencil, keep going. Pause the video, but once we start on the next lesson, I'm going to jump up to my four B pencil. Get ready favorite. Great job everyone. This is looking gorgeous, but we're not finished yet. We are now going to enter the dark tone phase using the four B pencils. Are you ready to get dark and moody? Los Pal? You know, I'm ready for that. You made the dark side? Yes. All right. See then. See you soon. 8. Project 1: 4B Pencil Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome back to back to basics how to draw a still life. In this lesson, we are going to get some of those darkest darks added into the drawing to make it really start to pop. You're ready to make it pop, Melissa? I'm ready to make it pop, Pop. All right, let's get popping. Hey, it's the moment you've been waiting for. Well, at least I've been waiting. It's time to go to our darkest pencil. For me that is the four B, You can use whatever you want and we're just going to jump right back into it. I'm going to go back to the same starting point that I had for the last one, which is this super dark leaf over here. You can see how, again, I'm not pressing any harder than I was with the previous two pencils, but I'm getting a much darker value now. I just like the way too, that when you have this build up of the different layers and the different leads, it starts the graphite just starts gliding across the paper a little differently. The strokes camouflage themselves a little bit more because it's merging with all the graphite that's already on there. Yeah, definitely. I like anything that will do the work for me. Yes, you do. Including me? Yeah. That was my method when we had our mural painting business together. Just makes do everything. It works great too. Yeah, we're decorate. This is bringing back memories of that one day when we were painting the mural in the bank. And I'll tell the story quickly so I can get back to teaching. Teaching, yeah. Yeah. Story time is good to we were up on the scaffolding painting this mural in a bank. I was just not having a good day. Everything I was painting was very good. Everything Melissa was painting was looking magnificent. Flying through it. She was she painted like three or four people, giant people. I was just trying to paint this one stupid. What was it like a daisy? A violet? Violet. Yes. It was just not working out and I was getting angrier and angrier. Melissa was over there just buzzing around, painting beautifully. Was like, Melissa, you have to paint something that looks bad to push you off of the So I know 'cause you certainly couldn't bring yourself to paint something back. I couldn't. I that was a tough decision. Yeah. She couldn't do it guys. And I'm still alive. Yeah. Somehow there were too many witnesses. Yeah, that's probably true. Oh man. Good old the good old days. Yes. Can you believe Melissa still collaborates with me? I know. All right. I came back. Imagine that 20 years later, she just must like to suffer. All right. So you see how I'm just only shading in the areas where I want this level of darkness to create some of the roundness and the different variations of high light and shadow. I'm b***ding it into what's already there on the paper and you just get such a nice rich layering of different values and really start to make this come to life. You can also vary your pressure if you want to. At this stage, I started off using the lighter pressure like I did with all of the other layers. But since this is my last pencil, I am also just paying attention to where I see like the super dark values. And I am going ahead and just pressing a little bit harder as I approach those areas so that it will, I like making my drawings pop, like making everything pop. Yes, I do have to occasionally erase off all the pencil lead on the edge of your hand too. Yes. One thing I do and I guess we can call this a pro tip. Melissa. No tell tell depending on whether you're left handed or right handed. You could put this on whatever side works for you, but I'm right handed. Once I have some graphite on my paper, I'm putting my hand through it to draw on the left side of my paper. And that's not what I want because it ends up all over my hand, like Paul said. And all over my drawing, I will take either a piece of paper or paper towel and I'll put it under my hand as I'm drawing, so I'm not actively spreading graphite all over the place. That's a smart idea. Yeah, it's really helpful for me because I don't like to make a mess. I'm sure everyone is shocked to hear that about you. Look at the difference it makes once you start getting those dark values in there, just really becomes very three D looking. Hmm, yeah. One thing you might find as you're putting this dark value on is that some of your mid tones don't feel dark enough. You can go back with your HB pencil and go back into some areas that you need to. You don't feel like you have to just stick with the one pencil now. You can feel free to go back and forth as much as you need to? Yes, definitely. Sometimes that can even help make the darker layer b***d in better with the other layers. If you go back over it with the HB or whatever other pencils and just work it into the what's the This is also the time to remember Melissa's other protip which was to really pay attention to the sharp and soft edges of the shadows. Where do you see each type and try to bring that out as you go to? Yes, definitely. You'll find out the softer pencil that those edges are even more obvious. You can make them more soft by just b***ding your strokes into the strokes above it or next to it. Or you can limit those strokes to a certain shape in order to make that harder edge look when you're creating a shadow somewhere like I'm doing on this pedal right here. Really pay attention to how far does that value go into that area. Because some shadows spread out pretty far and then others are just right up against the edge and then immediately transition over to the next value that helps to convey what the shape is actually doing to this is fun. Mm hm. I can't believe I only have one more lesson to finish this. Do you think we can do it? I think if anybody can do it, Paul, you can do it. Well, I definitely don't want to eat into any of Melissa's times. She's going to be teaching you a whole different process. Yes. But I think this is a good foundation to start with. Yeah, I'm used to adding in all of those values very intentionally. Mm hm. I'm looking very closely at the reference in front of you. These are all good things. Yes. Just being very mindful of every stroke that you're putting down and why you're putting it where you're putting it. My brain is exhausted. I know taking it step by step but not being overwhelmed. Yeah, you can take as much time as you need to on this. Yes. Just because we're going to be finishing it up in the next lesson doesn't mean you have to. You can work on it as long as you want. All right, I think that is a good stopping point for now and then we will come back and finish this up. Great job. These drawings are coming along. They are looking gorgeous. And in the next lesson, we're going to finish them up. See you then. 9. Project 1: 4B Pencil Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome back to back to Basics how to Draw a still life. In this lesson, we are going to finish our first project using mostly the four B pencil, but you may use some of the others too. So just grab everything. Let's get to work. You ready Melissa? Yes, Paul, let's finish this up. All right. Let's go. All right, let's finish up this beauty. Are you ready? I'm still working with my four B pencil. Just going to jump right back into where I left off on these petals. We're just paying attention to shadows, edges, all the stuff I want to make sure and save p***ty of time for this big old petal here in the middle, Need a lot of love. Yes, the good thing is a lot of it is already worked out with the other pencils I'm just enhancing now a lot of it's much softer. You do just a little bit and then just work it in rather than creating hard edges, right? That might be one where you're just using very gentle strokes just to get some contrast in there, but very subtly. Yes, sometimes when I'm at this stage, rather than doing the big long diagonal strokes like I was doing with the other pencils, I like to just do like little circles or little ovals, especially if I'm just going into a tight spot helps. I like that because it just b***ds out a little easier. I think you can mix up your marks that you're making. Do whatever works for that section. We did so many still life drawings in college. Yes, we had entire classes that were just still life drawing. Still life drawing. Still life paintings. Mm hm. It's a good place to start. I think it's a little bit more approachable than painting portraits or anything like that. Mm hmm. Yes. One advantage if you do painting a flower or something. If you get, you know, one petal a little bit off, no one's going to know. Yeah, Right. It still looks like a few face. It's probably more important to get things in the right spot. Yes. A little more intimidating, I think, but also it's still life is still. Yeah. Nothing's moving. Nothing's changing over time. Yeah. Even if you're doing like a landscape or something. If you're doing it from life, the lighting is going to change very quickly. But with the still life, you can control all of that a little bit easier. Mm hmm. Now, one thing I'm noticing, this is a subtle little detail, but light does this sometimes. I'm doing the shadow right now on that big petal of where the super bright petal is overlapping it. Do you notice how that shadow gets a little bit darker actually? Up towards the upper part, and then it gets actually a little bit down toward the pedal, which is the opposite of what I would expect. But I think it's just because there's a little bit of light creeping in down there or something. Mm hmm. Yeah, you're getting a little bit of that reflected light down at the bottom. I think because it's spherical. Because it's wrapping around in the space. Do you hear my neighbor dog barking? I just did. Yeah. I thought maybe it was Lily, but I guess I never heard Lily bark. So yeah, lilies probably still asleep. She's no dummy. She's cuddled under the blanket. Oh yes. It's like these humans are ridiculous getting up at these early hours. What are you doing that is so dumb. I will, I'll close my window if the dog starts to get too obnoxious out there, but then I will just be a sweaty, angry man. So it's kind of a trade off that you all will have to deal with one or the other. Yeah, Pick your poison, everybody. I would pick the one that does not involve an angry sweaty paw p, y. I'm with you on that one. I like going into these little tight spots like this and just really pushing those shadows like right underneath the flower on the leaf. Because I feel like that just adds a whole lot of depth and dimension right there. Okay, let's get this little leaf in now. How is yours coming along, Melissa? It is getting there. I am working on the petals right now and just defining some of the shapes because I feel like this darker pencil can do that. Define some of those shapes where a lot of them are really just midtones and you lose some of the definition. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's interesting how you're drawing the same thing and you're going over the same surfaces each time. But it's almost like with each pencil you notice different things and you bring out different things. Y, definitely. I'm actually switching back and forth between my HB and my four B fairly often in here just I feel like the harder pencils smooth out some of the softer pencils texture a little bit and make it a little bit more subtle. I like to do that instead of using a b***ding stump or anything like that. I will go back over a softer pencil with a harder pencil H. These leaves are interesting because they are super twisty. Really look at where the shadows hit at each section. It might be different, depending on which way that particular part of the leaf is turning, it's going to be affected by the light differently. Hm, Just gorgeous. What's the weirdest still life that you ever drew? Melissa, do you remember, Oh goodness. Did you ever have to like do one for an assignment and you're just like, I don't know what to do and you pick like some really strange thing, grab random stuff. I can't think of anything. I don't know. Did you have anything? Oh gosh, so many. I'm sure. I'm sure you have much weirder ones than I do. One time I was completely out of ideas and so I just it was a still life painting we had to do. And I just painted the view looking down into my trash can. It's like a wadded up paper and like a banana peel. Oh goodness, that was nice. Was this in college? Yeah. Okay. And then, let's see, one time, this might have been high school. I don't remember. I just got like a whole bunch of my mom's high heels and put them in a pile on the, of course, the table. And drew those which I thought was brilliant. But then everybody else thought that was really weird and like I had some kind of weird foot, foot thing or something like no, I just think they're pretty, the artist is so often misunderstood in our society. Right. I wonder why? Don't worry folks, if you're a creative genius is not always appreciated, it means you're ahead of your time, right? Not I will understand. It's okay. No, but it doesn't mean that you aren't brilliant, right? We're closing in on the end of this one. I'm just coming down to the stem now and putting the dark values on that. Then I want to do one more pass over that pedal. Because here's your approach for this lesson. One thing I like to do frequently, probably too frequently, or at least more frequently than is actually necessary. But I squint my eyes and that helps me to see the overall value structure instead of just getting caught up in the details. And it's a good way to just check, do like a quick check to see if everything is feeling like all the different parts are relating in the same way as your reference. This is a good time to probably do that and see if you need to darken anything or lighten anything. When I squint my eyes and look at mine, it's starting starting to work. I'm pretty happy with it, but I want to come back over here and just add a little bit more value to this petal. Especially on the left side, so it wraps around more. And I'm going to do a little bit of value on the super light one, just kind of over on the right side to wrap it around. And then I'm actually going to use my four H. Just put a little bit on this part. Let's look at this beauty. I love this drawing. Yeah, I came together. Worked out, I did it. Mm hmm. Now, if you need more time, please take all the time you want. Truly, you could spend hours and hours on a draw if you want to. Melissa definitely could. Yes, Paul and I could. No. Yeah, I have to give her time limits or else we're in trouble. Yeah, but you take all the time you want. And there really is a lot of value in taking your time and just really studying something and seeing how far you can go with it. Like what level of detail you can achieve. You might surprise yourself, Y, that is going to do it. Me and I'm excited now to hand the reins over to Melissa and let her lead us in our next project. Oh, here we go. Awesome job, everyone. Great work. You have your first drawing finished, and now I'm going to get out of the way and hand things over to Melissa so she can lead us in our second project. You ready to take over Melissa? I am ready. Palm, that's steering wheel. Okay, Look out, everyone. Come board. Come on everybody. 10. Project 2: Background Tone & Sketch: All right everyone, welcome back to back to basics, how to draw still life. It's my turn to take over. So I am going to be walking you through a drawing. So the first thing we're going to do today is we are going to establish a nice middle ground and work up from there. Paul, are you ready? I am ready to lead the way. Melissa. All right, follow me everybody, let's go and the second part of this video series, we are going to talk about creating a midtone. And working from there, adding values that are a little bit darker, and then also adding values that are a little bit lighter. But we're going to start, instead of with white, we're going to start with a middle gray. And I'm going to walk you through how to do that. I have my paper here. I'm drawing on the same type of paper that I drew on last time when Paul walked you all through the drawing of the rose. This is a cold press watercolor paper, has a little bit of texture on it. I'm actually not going to take up the whole paper, I'm just going to do a little section within my paper in the middle, I also have all the pencils that Paul had us work with last time. I needed eraser, my little pencil sharpener here. But I also have two pieces of charcoal here. This is what I'm going to use to make that middle ground so that medium gray, these are just a soft charcoal. I like the vine charcoal just because I can use every edge of it. I can use the side of it, I can use the tip of it. I can use it however I want. It's going to be really useful for this because I'm just going to use the side of it and go across my paper and create a little square in the center here that we're going to be using as a starting point for the drawling. That's the first thing I'm going to do, is just going to take my charcoal. I'm just going to fill in a square on my paper. I'm just going to build up the charcoal to get that medium gray. And it might take a little while, especially with a textured paper, to get a medium gray on here. You just feel like you can keep going over top of it until you get the value that you want. Again, using the side, I'm not getting any real strokes or lines within here. I just want a tone. It's like if you've painted before, doing an underpainting or just coating your canvas as a way to start. And then once I have a build up of charcoal on there, I'm just going to take my I have a paper towel. If you want to use a tissue or another piece of paper or anything to just kind of b***d it, feel free to use whatever you have in front of you, even if you just want to use your finger. If you don't mind getting messy. Melissa would never do that one. I would not. It would it would make it very uncomfortable to be that dirty. Oh, we have to work on that. So, I'm just going to do another layer of the charcoal. So have a nice break here. And you can just keep doing this until you get the gray that you want and you want it somewhere in between your darkest dark and your lightest white. I like these lessons where we're just coloring in a solid color. Right. Pulled this like just color it just make great coloring time. Yeah, just make it also gray. You don't want any areas to be much darker than any others. You want it to be pretty. Even if you can, if you just have charcoal pencils, if you want to use the side of it, you can. It is easier if you have something a little bit bigger, like a piece of charcoal or even like a conte cron. If you've seen those, you can use the side of that, but you want it to be able to erase. That's how we're going to add some of our highlights. Don't use anything, you can't erase fairly easily. Okay? All right. I need to put we're there to mix this all together. Okay? We've got our gray. This is just going to kind of work as our starting place or kind of our background to build on. All right. I'm going to get another paper towel because once you start putting your hand on top of this, you're definitely going to start making a mess. So I'm going to put A paper towel under my hand. As I start drawing, we all know Paul is the messy one, like so many ways. Okay? So now that I have this, I'm going to take one of probably a softer pencil just so I can see it once they go on top of this. And I'm just going to make some indications as to where my pairs are going to be and then where my table is going to be. I think if you use a harder pencil for this, you're not going to be able to see your lines. So I'm going to use a similar approach that Paul did when he started his drawing in our last section. I'm just going to make some quick indications as to where I think these general shapes should fall and then I'm going to build my drawing from there. I'm not going to go into the details at this point, I'm just going to get a general layout of where things go. You might not even be able to see this part on camera. But just trust me, I am doing something. I swear I think she's lying again, like we did in the last section, we're just paying attention to the scale of these shapes. How these shapes fit together, where the overlap is, how the two shapes are a little bit different, how they're similar. I'm just looking at all of those relationships as we're putting these two things together. I will go a little bit darker with my lines just so hopefully you can see them. This is another one where I think it looks misleadingly simple. At first you think, oh, it's just two payers, how hard could that be? But then you start looking at it and, okay, there's a lot happening. Yeah. Mm hm. There's a lot of lighting effects happening here. So there's a lot of shadowing and high contrast lighting, which is part of why Paul and I picked this one because we thought it was interesting. These are some dramatic little payers, They're very dramatic, they're full of drama. You can see that there's definitely a relationship between these two pairs. They're not getting along currently. All right, that's laying down is just over it. It is over. It is done. The other one is turned away. It's moving on. Okay, so I'm just going to put what I'm going to call a horizon line in here, but it's actually that table and where it meets between the two pairs. And then I'm just going to put an indication on the side. I'm also going to make a kind, a light indication of where I want the edge of the table in the front, because that's going to be a slightly lighter highlight. Then I'm going to put my shadows in here too. One thing to pay attention to while you're drawing is the shifts in light. And not necessarily just the objects themselves, but where things go from light to dark. Because that will help you in this drawing to know where to put the highlights when you start doing that part, where you know where to put the darker values. And it'll just be a little bit easier in the long run if you have a map of where that light is falling. Okay? All right. Look at these little guys. I love it. So now that we have a general indication of where things are going, you can start building up the value in the background. And we'll just do a really quick pass at that. And then we will move on to our next section, where we'll get into adding highlights, more shadows, darker darks. We'll add some more details. This is just a starting point for us. Sometimes we get moving on these values, but we do know that that background is going to be very dark, so I think we can start laying that in now. And once we have that established, we'll know how those other values compare to that. That sounds like a good pro tip for this lesson. That's our pro tip. Get your background figured out. And that's always the part that nobody wants to do because we're always excited about the subject. But the background does really help with the relationships of all the lights and darks. It really does, yes. It helps you judge values much better because values tend to be relative light color. Mm hmm. Okay. All right, so we will move on to the next step in our next lesson. All right, great job everyone. That looks great. I think we have a nice middle tone and a nice base to work on top of, the next phase in this is just to do kind of a light drawling, add some darker shadows, get some things established that we can work up from Paul. Are you ready for that start? I am ready. Okay, let's do it. 11. Project 2: Dark Shadows: Al right everyone, welcome back to back to basics. How to draw is still life. So today we're going to work a little bit on dark shadows and establishing that it sounds like the dark shadow soap opera from the past, but that's not what we're doing. We're just establishing some shadows and we're working up from there. So. Paul, you ready to get started? I kind of like the soap opera idea. All right. Dark shadows did, Yeah, so dramatic. Okay, I'm ready. Let's do it. All right. We are ready to keep drawing on these little pairs. Last time we got everything sketched out, we got some medium gray in the background and we started adding some darker values to the area behind the pairs. So we're just going to keep adding to that, establishing that darker value before we start adding anything else in here. Don't feel like you have to fill the whole space. You just need enough around the pairs to be able to make those pop out of that background. And then also be able to judge your other values based on your darkest area here. When I'm working on this background, I'm using my charcoal a little bit differently than I did in the previous section. I'm using the tip of it rather than the side of it. And that's just going to give me a darker value. Getting some of that in here then if you would like to, you can also use something to smudge this a little bit. I probably will with the charcoal because it tends to be a little bit dusty. If you don't smudge it where graphite isn't as dusty, I don't feel like you need to do that with graphite unless you feel like it's part of a technique that you really like or it helps you in your drawing. I am going to use that with the charcoal. So once I get some dark areas established here, I'm just going to b***d those out a little bit. Are you using the b***ding stump thing? I'm just using a paper towel. Oh, nice. I usually don't use the b***ding stumps just because I just don't love the way they look. I just don't invest the money in them. Usually just something else to smudge it, like a paper towel or just my finger and I'm filling up to it, can use so many different things. Paper towel, tissue? Yeah. A brush, if you want to use a paint brush, you could use that. That works really well, actually. Yeah, That will push the charcoal around a little bit and you have a little bit more control over it. So that might be something that you try and see how you like it. And I wouldn't say that you have to be perfect about how you're getting this background in here. If you're smudging it, you're probably going to get it into some of the shapes of the pairs and that's okay. I've got to write this date down. Melissa, I okay with imperfection. I know he would not let that one go. He is not going to be okay with that. That's amazing. Yeah. So now that I have my darks established in my background, I'm really feeling like the shadow areas under my pairs need to compare to that background. So I am going to use my charcoal to make some of those shadows a little bit darker. Because I don't want one darker area to get all the attention. I want to move it around a little bit. I want some drama under my pairs rather than just drama on all sides. I just want to feel like my values are balanced throughout the image and that they make sense. I don't want just a dark backgrounds and no shadow areas. The reason that dark background is there because it is a shadow, it really does help to work. Figure out the whole images you go instead of just sticking to one spot and doing that all the way to finish. But if you can start to see the relationships of different parts, it comes together. I'm actually going to go in the opposite direction that Paul had us used last time where we started with the harder pencils. I'm going to start with the softer pencil, then I'm just going to start working in some of these areas that are a little bit darker, just so I can establish the difference between the lightest lights and the darkest dark. So I'm going to add a little bit more of a midtone around the edge of the pair and the background. Mm hm. Just so I can start establishing some of these shapes and how they fit together. It's almost the opposite of how we worked before, we worked on such a light background and we built up, this time we're working with that midtone and we're building in the opposite direction. Somos building up to those highlights. It's a very different way of thinking about the values. Mm hm. And again, I'm not using a lot of pressure, I'm just using my pencil, I'm using that four B that Paul had us used last time. Going in the opposite direction and just establishing some of these, not the darkest areas but your next to areas, just some of the shadow sides of the pairs. Up on the stem, there's some dark areas. Just making sure that I'm capturing that, paying attention to where those mid tones are. Because I don't want to lose a lot of what I've already established. I just want to build on top of it. I like working this way because I feel like it starts to feel like you're getting somewhere faster. Yeah, You're taking a shortcut in a way because you're putting all of those midtones in for you before you even start. You don't have to build up to that, it already exists. The fun part here is when we do the highlights, we're actually going to take the needed eraser and just pull out some of that charcoal to make it a little bit lighter. And I really feel like it comes to life when you get to that point. Yeah, very satisfying. Uh huh. But it does feel like it comes together a lot quicker. For those of us who are tad impatient, it is a great technique. Yes, if you find that you like it, there are different ways you can achieve a similar thing too. You could buy gray toned paper and use like charcoal pencils or white colored pencils rather than erasing. Can also buy graphite powder. Comes in a little jar. It's just like pencil lead that's ground up. You can cover your paper with that. That works too? Yeah, that works with a paintbrush too. If you want to try something like that, you just put a little bit of the powder on a paintbrush and you just spread it across the paper. It is something where you have to build up that value slowly. But it's an interesting way to do it. And you do have more control over the way it's used, which you know that I enjoy that part. Control A, Just keep working with your four B pencil. Just paying attention to where some of those darker tones are just slowly building it up. Similar process to last time. We're just slowly getting to the point where these values start making sense. Don't feel bad if it looks weird at first, because every piece of art has to go through an ugly phase. Ward phase, maybe we should say yes, right? It's teenage years, H. One day I will outgrow my awkward stage. Noticed she didn't disagree. I have to say that I love awkward people. They're just more endearing. There's a charm to it. It is, true. Yeah. People who have it too much together. What's the fun of that? Yeah. And then they just, I don't know, you can't trust people that have it completely together. It's got to be something going on there, you got to have something. Everyone's a little bit of a mess one way or another. Yes, definitely. We're just teaching so much in this course. Yes. Life lessons with pure giving. So much more than you bargained for. And you're like, you're welcome. Right. Like that's a class I should be taking. Not teaching, but whatever. Don't tell him that. Oh, sorry. I mean, we are totally qualified to teach you life lessons. I'm sure we've learned a lot along the way. Still work in progress, you know, for sure. Okay, well, I think that does it for this lesson and the next lesson. We're going to keep going with this drawing. Keep adding these values. All right everyone, Great job. We got some shadows established in our drawing. So we have a range from middle tones to the darkest tones. So we're going to start working up from there. So our next phase is going to be erasing some of those highlights, which is a little different way of working. Paul, what do you think? You're ready to give it a shot? I can't wait. Okay, let's try it. I will see you all then. 12. Project 2: Erasing Highlights: Welcome back everyone to back to basics, how to draw a still life. So today we're going to be working more on the highlights. We've been to the dark side. We are now moving to the light side. Paul, are you with me? Move toward the light. Go towards the light. Everyone come with me. I show you how it's done. Okay, here we are, back with the pairs. This time we are going to start with our needed eraser and we are going to establish some of the highlights. Last time we worked on some of the shadows. Now we're going to move in the opposite direction and establish those highlights. I feel like this will give us a good way of telling the difference between the lightest lights and the drawing and the darkest darks, and help us build up the midtones from there. I'm excited. I know I've been very impatient to get my needed eraser in here. Paul told me I could go ahead and do it. So we are basically I said, please can't we because this makes such a difference. I don't know. It just really makes a differ to life. I have my needed eraser here. What I like to do, I think this is a good pro tip for using your needed eraser and how it can work for you. You can actually, that's why it's called a needed eraser, is you can need it into any shape that you need. I like to almost make a pencil point with it. I need it into like a cone shape. I have a little bit of a tip to work with. I can also use the side of it, or I can use the more blunt end of it. I just use this as another drawing tool. The first thing I'm going to look for some of the highlights, especially on the pairs I'm going to going in with my need eraser. And it might take a little bit of work to pull out some of that charcoal, depending on how dark you went as your need eraser starts getting a little bit darker and picking up some of that charcoal or that graphite, you just want to need it again. And that will get out of that dark graphite just to keep it able to pick up more of the background. Oh, look at that. High light popping. Yeah, it really makes a difference. You can use this in different ways. You can tap it on the paper and take up some of that value to make it lighter. You can scrub into the paper a little bit, which shouldn't be a problem. It's a very soft eraser, it should affect your paper unless you're using a very thin paper, just keep working on that and pulling out that highlight until you get it as light as you want it. You have a little bit of texture in your paper. At least I do. Some of that's going to stay, like some of that graphites going to stay. But that's okay. It just adds some texture and some interest to your drawing. Yeah. Actually the little speckles are nice. It makes it feel more per like. Mm hm. Yeah, that's true. That was a part of the plan. At the plan, if you just tap with your eraser, you'll pull out graphite or less charcoal. If you scrub with your eraser, you will pull out more. Just use it in the way that works for you until you get the value that you're looking for. I'm working on that pair in the background, but once I get that to where I feel good about it, I'm going to start working on the other pair, just so I can see the difference between the two. Then I'm going to start working on that table around the pair so I can make them pop out from the background. If you erase too much like I just did and regret it, you can always just like add it back in again. You're stuck. Right. If you still have the paper towel or the paper stump or the b***der you were using before, you can just go back in and that you might be able to b***d into that space that you've lightened too much, you might not even have to add any more charcoal or graphite. Okay, so I'm going to start erasing out from around the pairs because this table is very light. So I just want to get that value established in here. And I do think it's going to help with the bringing those pairs out. Making those shapes more defined, establishing a broader range of value in your drawing. We're just going to add more depth. What do you think are the characteristics that make a good still life set up? If people are going to, after they finish this course, maybe want to set up a still life themselves. What would be some good suggestions for that? That's a very good question, Paul. I can start with one. While you think, usually I like having more of an asymmetrical arrangement, not having everything just lined up and piled it right in the middle, but like this one where there's interest all throughout and the one pair is standing up, the other is laying down. There's some variety to it. Makes it a little bit more interesting. Compositionally. Yes. Yeah, I think that's really what the differences between a more interesting still life and a less interesting still life is the arrangement of things. And thinking about different shapes, you want objects that are all very different from each other. Maybe one is more vertical, one's more horizontal, ones rounded, one's more angular. Think about things that have some contrast with each other, that don't all feel the same. Because that is going to give you some different heights. It's going to give you some overlap, which is going to make a big difference in how you set up your pieces. You don't want everything set up symmetrically like Paul is saying and kind of in a line, unless you're going for that specific look. But ordinarily, you probably want some rhythm or some interest as far as how you put your pieces together overlapping or, I don't know, just some dynamic way of putting them together that doesn't feel forced. Definitely, Yeah, Don't ignore the background either. Don't just set some things on a table in front of you and then think that you can just invent a background if you're looking at your whole room behind it. Put up a piece of cardboard or hang a piece of fabric or something so that you can actually respond to the values that are really there instead of having to make it up. Yeah, yep, definitely. Now that I have a lot of my highlights in here, I am going back and defining some of my shapes a little bit more clearly. The pairs have some dark values on the edges of them. I am putting those in here. Now I have that broader range of value. I feel like I need some dark darks around the pairs. Just defining those shapes a little bit more. It really changes things once you get the light in the air, it really does. Getting that light on the table, I think makes a big difference. It's a little more difficult with charcoal to think about your edges, but you still want to think about your edges and which edges are hard versus which edges are soft. Just meaning that which ones b***d softly into other values and which ones don't. Yeah, Where I am adding some of these darker values and want them to b***d a little bit more softly. You want to have a little bit more control about how they b***d. I'm going to go in with a paint brush and move that charcoal around on my paper. You can do this or you can use your paper stump if you have one of those. If you want to just use your finger, you can also do that to me at this point. This is just a pushing pole between which values are working, which values need to be darker, which values need to be lighter. And just playing with all of that to get it to where I want it to be. Absolutely. This might be the point in my drawing where I'm switching it up a lot. I'm going from one pencil to the piece of charcoal to paintbrush to slowly b***d it. I'm just judging different areas and then looking at everything as a whole and how it fits together and deciding where I need to add more things or where I need to adjust slightly. It's just, it's a lot of looking back and forth between your drawing and the reference and deciding where things need to shift as you're following along. Don't feel like you have to literally do every step that you see Melissa doing at this point, it's more about looking at your own drawing and looking at the reference, and just trying to do the things that you need to do to make your drawing match what you're seeing. Yes, this is really all about the editing process. The editing process is really an important part of drawing. Like probably the most important part is knowing where things need to change and where you need to adjust. That will just come with time and experience. But the best way to get there is just practicing protip practice, practice, practice. Yes. Okay. Well, in our next last time we are going to keep going with this and keep working on pushing and pulling those values. Alright, awesome job everybody. Thanks for working with me and hanging in there and understanding how to use the needed eraser as a drawing tool. I always think it's fun. Paul, do you enjoy that part? I love it. I know it just kind of brings everything together. It helps add some depth and a range of values. So we're at that point, we're going to be working up towards adding some detail next. So I think that's going to be really fun. Paul, what do you think you would like that? I'm excited to you though. It'll be fun for me as well. 13. Project 2: Adding Detail: Welcome back everyone. To back to basics, how to draw it is still life. So today we're going to do my favorite part. We are going to be adding some details to these pairs and making them just come to life, which oh, I know that's my favorite part. How do you feel about it? Oh, I just can't wait. Somehow. I knew you would be excited. Yes, let's do it. Let's do it. Welcome back. We are still working on our little pairs here, making them very pretty, as Paul would say. Thank you. I didn't even have to say, I'm here for you Paul. All right. We're doing more of adding values. We're doing more of adding highlights through lifting value. And we're just looking back and forth between our drawing and our reference constantly just to see, are we getting the values correct? We're going to do Paul's little squinting trick, just to start out here. You know, I've been doing it all along. I know I can make sure you're doing it. It's so funny. Squint at your reference often. And I think this is a good pro tip to start off our video here. But squinting is a very helpful technique when you are drawing or painting or whatever you're doing, art making wise. Because it really lets you see the overall picture rather than focusing on the details. If you're like me, you're going to want to see all the details and you're going to want to see all the color shifts and you're going to see all the value shifts. You're going to want to really put it in your drawing. But one thing to not forget is how all of the values overall affect what you're doing. I'm going to start squinting and seeing if the areas in my drawing are feeling similar to my reference. The areas of lights feeling light enough, are the areas of shadow feeling dark enough? I'm going to start my drawing there just by checking, checking in with my reference and seeing if I'm headed in the right direction. I think there's definitely some areas where I see that I can get a little bit lighter. I could also get a little bit darker and then I want more of an extreme between the two. That is where I'm going to start off today. Sounds good. And everybody watching maybe in a completely different place with yours. Let's just see what your drawing needs. I feel like we were saying between lessons like this process is a little bit less formulaic than the last drawing. We had a clear step by step, Use this pencil than this pencil than this pencil, but when you're working this way, starting from the middle, you end up really being all over the place. Which is fun I think, but it also is more individualized. Hm. Yeah. It's really more about where you're headed with your specific drawing and everybody's going to be in a different place and getting slightly different results. And that's the fun thing about making art, right, is we all make things a little bit differently. Get a different result. In the end, where I'm at might know where you're at, but that's okay. Yeah, that's one of the reasons we like teaching these classes together. So you can even just see between the two of us how different our results are. Hm. Of course. I know you're all going to want to try to make yours look more like Melissa's, but that's okay. I can accept that. Oh, please, you know it's true. All right. So one thing I'm doing is just making my background a little bit darker because now that I have those dark values on my pairs, I've noticed that noticing that my background doesn't feel quite dark enough, I'm going to add some more value there. Don't be afraid to change things that you've already established in your drawing. I think as you start getting a little bit further, you might start noticing the things that you didn't notice in the beginning. Value wise, things might be shifting as you're adding more of those lighter values, or you're adding some of the mid tones, or you're seeing how things b***d from one area of dark into another area of light. Yes. That doesn't mean you've messed up or made a mistake. Like it's actually a really good thing to notice, stuff like that because everything is very relative and you can't necessarily evaluate all of that from the start. You have to get more on the paper before you can really know what needs to happen. Yeah. True option, drawing is a slow process, something that you build up to over time. Yeah, it's not going to come together immediately and I think a lot of beginning artists struggle with that because they want it to look good from the start and it's just not going to. Yeah, you learn the most from figuring out what needs corrected in your drawing. Don't pass that part or think that that means that you're no good at this. That's the opposite of what it means. If you're seeing discrepancies between your drawing and the reference, then that's awesome, because that means you're really looking at it critically and noticing stuff. You might be at the face where you're noticing it, but you're not exactly sure how to fix it. And that's where I think you have to go back to your reference and really examine what you're seeing. Yeah. What area isn't looking right. That's always a good place to start. And then just compare, go back and forth with your eyes between your piece and the reference until you can figure out needs to change. Yes. Just be really honest with yourself and really honest with your drawing it and really clear about why you're examining it. You're not examining it to make yourself feel bad, you're just examining it to get better, to get to a place where you are more comfortable with using reference and being able to interpret what you're seeing and understanding value and all of that. It's just a learning process. Yeah, You probably will never get to a point where everything looks right on the first try unless you're Melissa. But most of us, you artists who have been working at it a long time still have to look and think critically and make adjustments as they go. That's just part of it. Yes, we will tell you a secret. No artist is ever 100% happy with everything they do. It's just not going to happen. Yeah, Yeah. It's actually a good thing because it means that you are able to look at your work and be critical of it. It's also a curse though, because other people will look at it and say, wow, that drawing is so amazing, I love it. And you may only look at it and be able to see what you would like to change about it. Yes. It also means you're growing right, and you're chal***ging yourself to get better. Mm hmm. Yeah. If you draw consistently over a longer period of time, when you look back on the earlier drawings in the set, you're going to really see a lot of change. Mm hmm. Growth happens really fast when you work consistently. Mm hm. That's true. I mean, that's true with anything, right? It's the same with exercise. The more you do it, the easier it gets. But the more you can push yourself to do more. Yeah. Yeah. That's the awesome thing about art, I think, is that no matter how long you do it, we've both been doing it for a while. For a long time. Like our whole life. Yeah. There's still always like new stuff to figure out. You never know at all. You are always going to feel chal***ged because there's always further you can go. Mm hmm. Again, I just keep switching pencils here. I was working with a harder pencil for a while because I just feel like that helps me establish some of my softer mid tones and gets them to b***d a little bit easier with some of my darker tones. And now I'm going back in with a softer pencil and I'm working on some of those areas that are a little bit dark, just to get them to b***d with a little bit lighter mid tones. You do have a lot of reflected light in these pairs. So if you look at the bottom of the pair, actually is a lighter area around the rim of the pair that is a lot lighter than some of the shadow areas. You want to make sure that you're capturing some of that too. Yeah, reflected light is just light that shows up in the shadow side of the object because it's wrapping around the back. Anything spherical, you're going to have a little bit of, like Paul said, like we call reflected light at the bottom just because of the shape you're like we are getting somewhere with these pairs. They are really coming together. I know they look juicy and delicious. Beautiful. Okay, so in our next lesson we are going to keep going with this. We are going to put some finishing touches on this and pull it all together. Can't wait. All right, great job everybody. Hopefully you're feeling a little bit more like this is moving in the direction it needs to. You've got some values established, we've added a little bit of detail. Next time we're going to add those finishing touches on those pairs and get them all tightened up and beautiful. Paul, are you ready? I can't wait to make some tight pairs. Tight pairs. Tight pairs. So you move. 14. Project 2: Finishing Touches: Welcome back everyone to back to basics. How to draw is still life. Today we're working on the finishing touches on our pair drawing. So we're going to get all beautiful and finished and done, and it's going to be great, Paul. I'm so excited. Me too, I can't wait. All right. Let's do it. Come on, last little finishing touches on our oh, they're so yes, they're gorgeous. Yes. Okay. So again, we're just going to start by really taking a look at this, seeing where we're at, what needs to be added, maybe there's some details that you've been waiting to add. Maybe you feel like your values aren't fully established where you want them to be yet. This is just the last look. Anything that we feel like still needs a little bit of work. Any little things that we feel like we've missed along the way, or we want to tighten them up, or we just want to just make it feel even prettier. Hm. It's nice to have that time with a drawing, to just like do those finishing touches and really study it. And it's interesting how I've noticed that a lot of times the things that people comment on about my artwork are almost always the things that I added at that very last moment, like some little my life somewhere or something. They're like, oh, that's beautiful. Always I'm thinking like, well, you know, I worked on this thing forever and you're appreciating this dot. Okay. As long as long as you like it, I guess that's fine. Yes, that's the important part, right? Yes, I can be a little bit of a diva at times. No, I know. Shocking shocker. Okay, so I'm actually starting with the table at the bottom. And you know, me too. Oh my goodness, what happens? Whoa, We are never on the same page. We've been doing this far too long. I'm becoming you. Oh God, I'm even wearing black. Oh my God, I know, and I'm not. Wow, Okay. You guys, this is history in the making. Melissa never wears color and I really never wear black. You get Bizarro, Melissa and Bizarro Paul today. Yes. It's a freaky Friday. Is that the? Yes. I'll just pretend that it's Friday. Oh my gosh. Imagine if you had to live my life for. Oh my gosh. Imagine if we switched bodies. I don't think I could do it. I don't have the energy. I don't know what you would do on this body either because you would just not know what to do. It would be right away. That would be interesting for our husbands as well. Yeah. That's a whole other thing, but we won't think about that too much. That gets a little weird, Paul. Yes. Now you've made it weird. I can't help it. Okay. So I started on the table. You probably for a similar reason that Paul did because the table is not white. So I want to make sure that I'm establishing some of the values in the table. And also making sure that it looks like it's coming out of you and going down because that tablecloth does go down. Yes, I want to make sure that those values make sense, but I'm also someone that likes to move around while I'm working on a drawing, so I don't stick in one area. When I add something somewhere else, I'm like, oh, well this part needs a little bit more value. As I'm adding things, I'm seeing other things. M, yeah, I think that's a good way to work. Yeah, I think it's helpful because it does make you look at things differently, which is always good. Would we even consider that a pro tip? I just I was just going to say it. This just is on the tip of my tongue. You took it before I could say it. Sorry. We'll credit that one to Melissa. Yeah, so pro tip. Now, what is this pro tip of yours now? I forgot. Now I forgot what it was. Oh, I really forgot. Look all around your Oh, okay. Yeah, there was something else I was going to say to you. So you say that part first and then hopefully the rest will come to me. Yes. You're working on one area, be looking around your drawing to see like what else is affected or what else needs to change next. Yes, definitely. I still don't remember what I was going to say. But if it comes to me, I will tell you because I'm sure it was just pure genius. I think she's holding out on this. She doesn't want to give away all all my secrets. I really just lost it. It'll come back. Uh huh. Paul's not buying it. No. I like all the little lump. It's on the pier. That's fun to just with the way you do the shadows and highlights, you can make it feel so lumpy. Mm hmm. Yeah, there's a lot of texture there. Yeah. Something to pay attention to. The way the highlights are. It definitely makes you notice that texture. Yeah, the highlights are not like just in a straight line or in a curve. They're All right. They're all over the place. Yeah, they have texture and movement to them, but you don't normally think about that when you're thinking about a pair. But they do have a lot of texture and interesting shape. Yeah, that's why artists like drawing pairs. They have a very interesting curved shape to them. I think drawing fruit can actually feel similar to drawing or rendering skin in some ways like human skin. Because it has a lot of textural shifts and value shifts, I think it can be good practice for drawing other things. Yeah, Melissa did a painting of me one time and I swear she painted every pore on my face. I did. And you know, the reason I wanted to paint such a large painting of Paul's faces, I just really, there's something about painting skin is just, I've always wanted to, I've always wanted to make it feel like it has life, you know. Like there's, the skin is real like you could just touch it. And that's always been a big chal***ge with paint is to make it not feel like paint. Yeah, make it feel like it's living and breathing and you could just reach out and touch it even though we may all wish to think that our skin is perfectly smooth like, you know, all the filters and things that we use on our photos. I know. Not that I'm saying I would ever, never, never. But yeah, that's that's not very lifelike. No. That's also another good reason for having a directional light source coming from one side or the other. Because when the light is coming from the side, it tends to bring out some of those characteristics more if it was from the front, it can just flatten things out and make it look a little smoother. Which is why a lot of photos of models and celebrities and magazines use frontal lighting. So those aren't always the best references to draw. Sometimes directional lighting isn't the most flattering, but it is more interesting. Yeah, really, in this last step, it's just looking very closely at those values. Adding more subtleties. I would say drawing as you're working on it more and more, you're probably getting more into those subtleties looking at the subtle shifts rather than the more dramatic ones. I think when you start a drawing, it's more about establishing those dramatic shifts. Yeah, like we did, we really started with the darks and we put those in, and then we started with the lights and we put those in because we wanted to make sure that we had both extremes. As we've kept going with this drawing, we've just added more to the mid values and helps things feel a little bit more realistic. And I think adding some of those subtleties really helps the realistic quality of drawing. Mm hm. It does help to figure out your two extremes because then you know where you're headed in each direction. And then you can kind of just fill in all the values in between. Mm hmm, yep. Okay, well that is our pairs and hopefully they're gorgeous. Feeling good about that. Just working on putting a little bit more dark in my background here. I think we're going to call these pairs Finished Beautiful. Okay, so a beautiful job, everyone. Paul. I'm really happy with mine. How does yours turn out? I'm happy with mine too. I know we've done so much drawing today from flowers to pears. It's been great. Absolutely. It's been a blast. Thank you all for joining us. We hope you come and draw with us again sometime soon. Yeah. So we'd love to see what you've done. Please send us whatever you have created today. 15. Closing Thoughts: Well, thank you all so much for spending this time drawing with us. I hope that you have learned a lot of different techniques you'll be able to take and apply in your own way in future artwork. Have you had fun, Melissa? I've had so much fun, Paul. I hope all of you have had fun too. And I hope you found some helpful tips and tricks, and advice that you can use in your art making going forward. Absolutely. And we've said it before, but I think that it's always worth repeating. You know, the goal of these classes is not to encourage you to try and draw like one of us, especially not Melissa. But it's more about finding your own voice, your own style. So it's okay, your drawings look completely different than ours. In fact, that's what we hope for. We would really love it if you would take a minute and share them with us. Because it's so fun for us to get to see all the people out there all around the world who are drawing along with us. And I think it's really cool for you to get to see each other's work too. Mm hmm. And we'd love to hear feedback from you on how this class went for you, what you'd like to do in the future, and anything else you would like to tell us. We'd love to hear from all of you. Yeah. Let us know what you want to learn. Because Melissa and I have so many ideas and we are going to spend a lot more time making classes together. So you might as well tell us what you want. I know, right? We're going to be making stuff anyway. We might as well be something you want. Absolutely. If you did enjoy this course, you'll see we do have a lot of other courses already available. We'd love for you to check those out as well. We are trying to cover all of the fundamentals that artists need in order to really be able to learn how to draw and paint and capture something realistically. And then you can branch off from there and go in whatever direction you want. Exactly, yes. We just want to make you feel more confident in your art, making whatever the style you like, whatever way you like to approach it. We just want you to feel good about it. And that's why Paul and I are here. We love having you as part of our little virtual art community, and we look forward to making some more art with you soon. Until then. Hi everyone. Hi everybody.