Basic Colored Pencil Techniques

1. Intro: Hi, my name's Elizabeth, and welcome to my colored pencil Skillshare class. In this class we'll be exploring basic color pencil techniques. We've worked with learning how to control our pencil pressure to develop value scales, layer additional hues of color, as well as layering different colors to create new rich colors in any sort of color pencil artwork you wish to explore. Color pencil is one of my favorite art mediums ever. I really loved the fact that I can come and go with the piece and really spend either a lots of time on something or kinda get something quick down on paper too, as you build up rich color and value in your artworks. So let's get to it. 2. Materials: Supplies you're going to need for this project are a pencil to draw out your design, your colored pencils. There's a lot of different brands out there. I love Prismacolor. I really loved the bulldozer. They create the quality of blacks. But you can pretty much use any code country you want. You will notice that quality differs from colored pencil brand to colored pencil branch. So if you have Prisma colors, I think you're really going to love working with them and they come in so many different size sets. I have pretty much everything has height set that they come in. And then the more that the bigger the set, obviously the more colors you have if you're looking to invest in some colored pencils, start with this MOSFET and then you can kind of build up and you can also buy individually. So some of your colors you're going to go through faster than others, like, you know, like your rods and your blues. Some of the core colors will burn through pretty fast, but you can always buy them individually to restock your CEC, which I really, really love about this brand in particular. So colored pencils, I'm using PRISMA color. I've got my pencil. We're gonna be using a lot of colored pencil for this project. So a good pencil sharpener, A's always great to have on hand something to put your pencil shavings in. So I like to use the top chain of my Prismacolor set for that. And I can just carry it to the garbage and dump it out on paper. The kind of paper you use is totally up to you. This was just in a small sketchbook that I had. It was more about the size that I wanted more than the quality of the paper is pretty thin. I do like working on thicker papers as well. So you can work all the way up to a Bristol board or illustration board, as long as it doesn't have a big tooth or too much of a sheen, like a glossy sheen to it as Schubert, great for your drawing. 3. Colored Pencil Technique: So here is what I've started. I've chosen the color just at random, whatever, whatever I felt like working with today happened to be peacock blue. And I wanted to show you some of the different effects that you can get when you really push your colored pencils to their full richness. So in the square on the left, we just have a value scale going from dark to light with just peacock. Nothing else is added. Remembering that the harder you push, the darker the value you create, and the lighter you push later, the value creating all the way out to the white of the paper. When you really get some control over how much pressure you are applying to your pencil and the pencil to the paper. I really love rich colors and really bold statements in my artwork. So it's harder for me to control my lights and I can go dark pretty fast. So knowing that that's my tendency, I always start dark to light. You can start light to dark and it might be easier to go with whatever your natural tendency as I'm heavy handed with the pencil. So I start with my darks and then I gradually fade it out to my lights. And you go back and forth working your way between the values on the scale. Because you really want to do it subtly. It's very easy to go too heavy, too fast. Colored pencil takes a long time when you're doing it this way. But you're really going to develop some great shading skills as well as colored pencil application, peacock, just by itself, dark fading out to light. Then I wanted to start seeing what colors I can mix together with Peacock to get some different effects. So I started with peacock, I set it up the same way. I did a dark to light value scale. Then I chose to go in with some aquamarine and blend that in. I did the same value scale. So peacock went dark to light moving down, then aquamarine went dark to light moving down. Then I wanted to push my darks even further. So I got out indigo blue, which is a really pretty dark blue on the Navy side of things. And use that to pop the darks even darker. Because I wanted a bigger range in my value scale. So I've got some indigo blue up here fading out. I didn't feed it all the way down because I didn't want to darken my lights that I decided to play around with the lightening it in a different way. So this lateness over here is just the pencil fading out with the pressure. But you can build up a different sort of lightness by putting in some white on top. And that almost is a reverse value scale. Even though we're pushing pretty hard with the white at the brightest point and then you kind of faded up toward your darks. We push down with the white, really heavy. We got a really bold lightweight. And I'm always working on creating a subtle shift and not having it go to extreme where you've got, I got the blacks, where they've got, we've got here's your dark and here's your light. I really want it to go smoothly. So you just keep going back and forth until you achieve that effect. It's different because we have different kinds of blues in here as well as different values of blue. And then we popped the white on top 20 and it gives it kind of our cloudy lightness. It actually is darker in value then over here. But you could control this even further and start out with your white and really build the light values in more if you wanted to. Then in the next square, I went back to my peacock and I did the same thing as here on the far left. I started dark and I fade it, it light. And then without any other blues, I went in with my white and I pushed very heavy to ganache, a bold white and faded that up into the peacock. So that gives you a different sort of light to dark value range than just the pencil alone. There's no wrong way or right way. It's just depending on the look that you're going for in your picture. You can also use a colorless blender. This is just the wax of the colored pencil. There's no, no pigment at all. And that'll give you a different effect. That'll kinda, I'll do it a little bit over here. But I always wanna make sure that your tip of your colorless blender is clean because it is going to pick up the pigment that you put layered on top of. It's basically like the idea of a blending stump. If you've used that with your graphite or your Turkle soft pastels, it gives that waxy look that the white does without adding any of the white pigment. But you will kind of lose this grain to your picture. Show it just depends on what you want. This also helps to kind of take your colors even further. And just like layers on another level of wax to really bring the color pigments together. But it does change the color a little bits. Because again, it's that waxy surface versus just the light pencil. So if I go in over all of it, you get kind of see how the right side, it brightens it up a bit, which is a very cool effect to have. But if you're really going for a subtle fade out, probably avoid the colorless blender. It's a great tool to have on hand in those situations. In the last square, I wanted to take my peacock again. And then I wanted to go beyond the blues and really show you the variety that you can get. Because really, I mean, there's the basic color theory of what colors you can layer together and how they'll blend. But I love experimenting and really pushing beyond the general rules of color to see what else I can get colored to do. So I'm going to start very subtle. You want to go slow because your paper can only hold so much of the pigment. It will kind of max out and get so glossy that it can't take anymore. And I don't want that to happen before. I'm done layering and my colors. When you're shading in general, you can go one direction. And then it's kinda nice to kinda go in opposite direction to help fill in your areas. Kind of get a full color effect. Now, this is also really helpful when you're shading with any other dry medium, HIV or pencil, go in different directions, then you don't end up with that streaky effect. Can be cool if you want it. I'll art roles are meant to be broken depending on the effect you're going for. But I don't want that effect right now. I'm gonna kinda keep going diagonally across my horizontal marks. And then also going circles tool. But I feel like I don't have enough control that way. So I tend to go more angular and linear in my shading. So before I get too much starker and want to kind of let that be. And I'm gonna make this one brighter. So I'm gonna go in with what's this guy? This is spring green, pretty fun color. And just kinda see what happens when I layer some of that in. Changes it up a bit. Green kinda takes over the blue. But by having that peacock blue down first, I've changed the essence of the spring green. That's become something new. So let's go even brighter. Let's pop some chartreuse. Helps them chartreuse over there. I love a nice lime green. When you're doing your exercises with your color blending, I want you to work on controlling your pencil pressure. It's really important to get that down. It takes practice. Don't be frustrated with yourself. Just know that in time that will get easier for you. But it's also kind of like riding a bike. If you haven't shaded in a while, you can still do it. But you might need a little bit of a warm-up to kind of remind your hand-eye coordination that who's in charge of the situation? All right, so now we're getting that's pretty, pretty. I want to go even brighter. So I'm going to take my business guy. Lemon yellow ocher, kind of fade that guy up into the chartreuse. And it's all just a bunch of layered value scales with each different pencil color. But as you go, you're going to see some really, really beautiful color passages happen is you're blending those colors together. I'll start wanna do, I'm gonna go in, what is a Sky pier at Green? Certain remind me of a parrot, fish. My kids love activates. We know a lot about the creatures of the sea. And now I haven't really done a ton with different brightnesses of the hues themselves with the colors. But, but because of how I am, because of the pressure, I'm still getting some sort of value there. There's a little bit, I mean, he's her dream blue and green, which are both darker than yellow, but they're not too far off from each other. I want to go a little crazy and I'm going to take, see what happens when we do this. This is process rad. Now, I've gotta be careful because when I layer, because riding green, being compliments look really great together in an artwork, but they blend together to make Brown, which isn't necessarily bad because that could give me a more natural shaded appearance. But I don't want to go to too murky. I'm going to keep this one kinda break. And if things start to get a little muddled, you can always keep layering into this and change that color. That's a little less, a little more pink than I was kind of working out here. So I'm going to layer over that with some ultramarine. It's one of my favorite blues. And change it and kinda pull that, that, that pinky purple more to the blue violet side. Now it's gone back. So easy. There are points of no return with colored pencil. But generally if you go slow, you can kind of catch yourself before things get too crazy. And I do, for some reason, I still really want some purple there. They can't find the exact purple. I want to run off the top of my colored pencil box. I am going to just go for it and go in with some crimson lake and use this plus that ultramarine to push that purple in. That that I've just really want for some reason. I biggest rule of thumb with color is just trust your guy. Does. It'll all be great. And if it's not, you learned something along the way. But generally, if your instincts kind of direct you towards one color over another, it's going to work out fine. And actually I'm going to go back, I want to go back to my peacock and use that color to deepen this even further. It's always great to go back and forth with your colors. So now that one, very different appearance, very bold. There is still some value between the dark on the top left, going down to the bottom right. I can take it even further if I wanted to show well, for fine. You're white also picks up your payment. So I've got some blue on there from doing these earlier ones and we've just rub your finger over it, kinda picks it up there because if I was shooting with blue in one area of my artwork, and then I went to say a yellow, that blue pigments going to carry over on the pencil. And that blue is going to turn a yellow section green. You can turn it into a happy accident. But if you're really not going for green in your yellow area, you could be a little disheartened, especially after the amount of time one can put in on a colored pencil drawing is going to pop just a little EDB to be white down there. Just to kind of broaden it. This, I'm really excited about this color combination. And I could definitely see myself using this in a future project. 4. Tips and Tricks: As you get started on your colored pencil project, here are some tips and tricks and reminders as you begin working with this amazing art media. Let's actually is very inspiring because doing these little color studies is a great way to kind of one plan out your artwork, but also to experiment and see what happens when you layer different colors with each other before you're committed to your drawing. But they can also prove his great inspiration. So forever like I want to create art, but I just don't know what I want to draw, but I know I want to use colored pencil. Sometimes I'll just get my pencils out and start doing stuff like this and then document it. What colors did I use? And normally I write them down as I go and I didn't do that this time. So I'll have to dig back through my boxes and kind of remember my colors. But this, I'm really excited about this color combination and I could definitely see myself using this in a future project. Practice way, pencil pressure practice with the effects of adding in white versus a colorless blender because they're different. In then practicing what you can do as far as broadening your values both with the different monochromatic colors, you know, darks, mediums and lights. And then also try playing around with combining different colors and don't be afraid to try ones that you're not sure going to work. Because when I look at this up-close, I really I really, really like what I see and I'm not sure that in my head I would have imagined it turning out like this if I tried to pre-plan it, it's going to have a game plan and color scheme in mind. What kind of direction do you want to go? Especially when I'm working abstractly and pieces like this. When I just, I just kinda have a general mindset of what we're kind of vibe. I want to go for it with my colors and then I kind of latch the colored pencils and the project direct me as I go, work very intuitively, kind of see what am I instincts say. And that's how you see I started this one. I started with the very similar to down here. I've got some very bright greens and yellows and then I kind of layered that deep with some darker greens and then it just needed something else. And that's when this kind of turquoise color Kamen. And then the very last part was putting in the black. Because black is a really, it's kind of a crazy thing and it'll definitely try to kind of sneak into other parts. So controlling the black areas, fading into color ones. And especially if you don't like, there's no black here in this green section. And that was very intentional, but I had to be very mindful of controlling my pencil and fading it out before I started getting this part too dark. And then see him on TV with this one. The black was the very last thing to go in. And I tend to work in sections when I do pieces like this. So I might build up a section to its fullness or I might get partway and then kind of jump around and then just kinda go back in and keep building up more values and more richness with the pencils as I go, you know, and then I kinda start noticing like who's getting a little dark. So then I start. When I get to some of these other areas, I started really focusing on bringing back a brightness and have so that I had a nice contrast between the dark passages and these later ones. But then I also wanted to play with the coolness of this value scale versus the warmth that happened here. Taking time to step back from it and really kinda think about where you want the piece to go is very important as you begin exploring this art medium are rediscovering it. Colored pencil is something he worked with before. Just remember that it's all about the process and the artistic exploration. Code pencil, be forgiving to a point, but there are some challenges with this medium. So just give yourself some grace, have some fun, and see what happens. 5. Final Project: So for this project, I'm going to use a circle stencil. And I happen to have in the studio in some special paper from the same sketch book that I was doing my color studies on. So as to our page out trimmed it down and a pencil. And then I'm just going to start breaking up the drawing space by tracing the circles, the edges of the stencil itself. Just to give me the interesting areas to work with. As I navigate this project, it's important to draw a rather lightly with your pencil because I haven't decided exactly what colors are going to go into this piece yet. So I want to have the option to have the pencil lines disappear, just help the color. And if I'm going to have light passages, I don't want a dark pencil line going through it, but I can show you a trick for that too. I tend to draw a pretty heavy handed. So I always have to kinda keep an eye on my pencil pressure and really fight to maintain those lights. Keep trying, kinda flipping it around as I go. And I really like circles and ions. So this tends to kinda be my go-to, especially when I'm not sure what I wanna do for an artwork. But I know that I want to enjoy working on it, especially colored pencil because it takes a bit of time. But I also want to break up the space, so I'm not fighting with the colored pencils to fill a large area. And this piece is pretty small, but this is a pretty small piece of paper. So I don't need to do much, but you can just keep going and tall. Happy with what you create it. On our rage. Fairly happy with that. I'm going to do just a little bit more to give me some more interesting shapes to work with as each shape area, each space is going to be a different different color passage that I get to play with. Sometimes as you move the stencil around your current discover shapes that you hadn't thought about, that you really enjoy. You bet different art concepts like repetition and pattern. Aco, different shapes. So fun. That's what are, it's really all about having fun. I kind of like the section here. I want to repeat something kind of like that, add some interests but also kind of mirror that design aspect. That looks great. I'm happy with that. All I did was traced the edges of my pencil to kind of capture some lines, some shape, break up the picture plane. So what I can do now before I go in with colored pencil is I'm going to take my eraser and I'm just going to lightly go over with the flat edge of it, lightened my lines because I don't know exactly what colors I want to use yet. I want to have some weight passages, so excited to create ranges of value in my pieces. So I can have a lot of contrast. But I don't want these pencil lines to have to be something I have to work around. You can like I can make the outer edges of all of these shapes darker. And that's one way to kind of hide the pencil. I want the freedom to be able to go through and do white areas on the edges job. And a 10 limits the possibilities. So you can already see how light these are getting. And it doesn't take long, just a quick little dusting over with the eraser. And then we'll be all set to start experimenting with different colored pencil combinations and values. And if you're really light handed with the pencils begin with, you probably can skip this step. You tend to be heavy handed like me. This is a great way around it. And ready to get out my colored pencils and have some fun. You can apply color pencil technique to any type of imagery you'd like to explore in your artwork. And it does take some time. So be patient with yourself as you learn how to control the pressure that you apply with the pencil as well as the colors that you create as you mix them together. There will be moments where you try color combinations and you're like, I didn't quite work out the way I thought it might. And then other happy accidents and surprises along the way. So I highly recommend you have a small notebook where you can kind of test out different ideas before you take it into your bigger project. But I also recommend that for this class you were pretty small, gave herself some time to really explore the techniques without trying to create enlarge artwork. And then as you become more comfortable with it, you can take your artworks as large as you'd like to. So this size is good for our practice and experimentation aspects as you're learning the different techniques. And then what I did for my final project was I just cut a piece of paper out of this and trimmed it down so that it was kind of a manageable size for the space that I was creating it. And the amount of time I wanted to spend on this project, you're gonna wanna regular pencil to kind of break up the space and kind of map out what you're going to work on. You can use any shapes you want to. So for this piece, I just used a circle stencils and the edges of it as well as the circles on it to create different lines and kind of break up the drawing space so that I had areas to work with, map up my abstract design that way you can kind of intuitively and organically let the composition come together. You're going to want to sharpen our on-hand to make sure you can keep those tonsils nice and sharp so you have full control over where your color goes as well as summer to collect those shavings, because we're going to be sharpening our pencils a lot. So if you're a sharp nerves like mine and it's just an open-ended one. I tend to use the lid of my colored pencils, right? So I'll have my pencils open and then I just use this to collect the shavings. It's kinda works pretty great. And so here we have the finished artwork that I created, combining all the colored pencil techniques that we learned in the initial steps of working with colored pencil. So I always began initially with just one color and of creating a value scale with that. And then layering additional hues that are related and then popping some of the white even brighter if I want to. And then kind of building additional richness when I start blending other color families together. So you can see a lot of that reflected here, where we've got some monochromatic areas just focused on one color and different brightnesses and darkness essays and a different pencil pressures to get the range is there. And then I've got other areas where I've blended quite a bit of color together. You see down here, but my thumb, there's a lot of cool versus warm for contrast. And just kind of naturally happened as I built it up. There's some areas that I'm less excited about, but it happens with every artwork and it's all about the process for me. But there are some exciting color combinations in here that I'm excited to explore in future colored pencil pieces. And we just see what you come up with and what color combinations you try. Make sure as you're working through the lessons that you post, pictures of your color studies, height of all get inspiration from each other. And I would love to see your in-progress photos from your full pieces to remember, they can be very smart. They don't have to be a long time this piece. So you can work very small and still get some really great color work done, especially if you don't have a lot of time. We're going to have a lot of fun together. So let's get going. 6. Final Thoughts: I've really loved sharing colored pencils techniques with you, and I can't wait to see what you create. So please be sure to post your projects in the project section. As you explore the different techniques, please be sure to also post your in-progress as well. I'd love to give you feedback along the way and kind of share in the artistic process that we're exploring in this class. And don't forget to leave a review. I'd love to have your feedback, but how I can make this class in future classes even better until next time.