Transcripts
1. Introduction: Layering is one of the
fundamental basics of drawing with colored pencils, and it forms the basis
of all of my drawings. I want to explain today why you should layer
and how to do it. My name's Jemma Chambers
and I've been making online art tutorials since 2020. I've helped tens of thousands of people improve their art. And today I want to cover a really popular topic that I think people have a
lot of questions about. Let's talk about layering. I'll cover all of the
materials you'll need, what layering is and
why you should do it. And then we can start thinking
about how to layer and I can show you by drawing
this pair. Let's get started.
2. Class Project - Drawing a Pear: As I mentioned for
the class project, I want to draw this pair. This is going to be a great, reasonably simple
drawing where we can really look into how
the colors are layered. There's a little bit
of texture here, not too much more than anything. It's a series of blending one color into another which is
going to be perfect. Now, in the class resources, I have included the
reference photo, as well as details of all of the colors that
I'll be using here. Now I will talk you through
the colors so it will make sense why I'm
using what I'm using. But at least you can
make sure that you've got similar colors to
select from yourself. I've also included
some sketch outlines. Again, I will show you
how to create the sketch, but if you don't want to
do that, if you want to use my sketch, then that
is available there. All right, let's talk about the materials that you'll need.
3. Materials for Layering with Coloured Pencils: Before we talk about
any of the techniques, let's take a second to talk about the materials
that you'll need. And first up, I think is reasonably obvious you'll
need some colored pencils. Now, I generally draw with
professional color pencils. I like drawing with
polychromos and prisma color, but you don't need to have really expensive
colored pencils. You can still make
some beautiful art with something like Crayola. The main thing to bear
in mind if you're using a cheaper
brand of pencils, that there's a chance that if you left it in full sunlight, it might fade over time. So if you're planning
on selling your art, for example, you
probably want to invest in some professional
color pencils. But if you're just
drawing for yourself, I wouldn't worry about it. Now, beyond the color pencils, you also need paper. And I think it's actually way more important
than the pencils, despite what you might think, you need a really good
artist quality paper that is going to be able
to take all of the layers of pencil that
you need to build up. So I like using a smooth
Bristol Board paper. I find that it is
nice and easy to work with because it's
so nice and smooth, it's really easy to
control the pencil. But I am also able to
build a lot of color onto that paper and it ends up looking really
nice and vibrant. Next up, you'll need
a pencil sharpener. And it needs to be a
sharpener that can make a really good sharp point. Again, this is one of the
key elements to layering, so I use this hand
crank pencil sharpener. This is the icon swordfish. It has a changeable blade, so I can replace that when it stops sharpening
the pencils as well. But you don't need
something this fancy. Any pencil sharpener
that creates a sharp point is what
you need. Next up. If you're planning on making
your own sketch outlines, I highly recommend getting
a graphite pencil, a ruler and an eraser. And I'll cover a
little bit later on why you'll need these. And then next is something
that you can't actually buy. This is something you're
going to need to make. It is color swatches. This is where you
put each pencil down on a piece of
your drawing paper. And you go from as
light as each pencil can go to as dark as
each pencil can go, and then you label
it, and you do that for every pencil in your set. What that enables you to see is what the pencil actually
looks like on the paper. If you're using the barrel
of the pencil or the lead, it often doesn't
really look like that. It's not a fair representation of what the color
will look like. If you create swatches,
you can see what they will actually look like on the
paper that you'll be using. This is key to my drawing. I couldn't draw without them. And the final thing
you'll need is some way of looking at
the reference photo. So all of my drawings created from a reference photo. I focus on drawing
what I can see. So you need some way of
seeing that reference photo. Now, I tend to
draw from my ipad. I particularly like
it because I can zoom in if I want
to see more detail. That said, you could print
out the reference photo. You don't need to have an ipad. So you will need some
colored pencils, the right kind of paper,
a pencil sharpener. If you're going to be
drawing your own sketch, you'll need a graphite pencil, ruler, and a razor. You'll also need to make
some color swatches. And you'll need some way of looking at the
reference photo. So that's all the
materials you'll need. Let's talk about the basic techniques and why
you should let.
4. The Basic Technique for Layering: So let's talk about
what layering is. Layering is where you gradually
build the pencil up on the paper rather than just going in really
hard Essentially, it's our way of
mixing the colors. It's also how we can make a gradient from one
color to another. So particularly if you're
drawing realistically, essentially whatever
you're drawing is just made up of a series
of gradients. Generally speaking,
natural items don't have a very sharp end
of one color and a very sharp start of the next. It fades from one to the next. So by layering, that's
how we can create that. So I think it helps
to understand sort of how the pencil
sticks to the paper. So even with a really smooth
paper like Bristol Board, if you were to look at
it under a microscope, you'd see it's made up
of a series of bumps. When you put a light layer
of pencil over the paper, some little pigment particles
get lodged in those bumps. Then you can put some
more over the top, More pigment
particles get lodged, and bit by bit, it fills up what's called the
tooth of the paper. That's why as you're building
up the light layers, you can see all of these
little white dots. That's the bumps as all of that tooth fills up all the way. That's when you end up with
a really nice smooth color. So let's talk a little
bit about how you layer first up. As I've mentioned, you want to be building up
light layers and there's a few ways that I create
these light layers. Firstly, I hold the pencil much further back
than you might think, rather than holding it
really close to the tip. If I hold it about halfway
down the barrel back here, it literally stops me from
being able to press too hard. If I hold it closer to the tip, I can still press lightly, but I have to have a lot
more pencil control. Also, when I'm building
up the light layers, I tend to try and work
as smoothly as possible. So this is made easier
because of the light layers. I also don't want to be scribbling back and
forth with my pencil. I want to be putting down
some really smooth color which is going to make
a more even layer. I do this by creating
circular or oval motions. So creating all of these
nice circular shapes and it gradually builds up a
really nice smooth pencil. Something else to bear
in mind to create some nice soft layers is to have a really nice
and sharp pencil. It just never goes down as
smoothly or as lightly. If you don't have
a sharp pencil, I find it kind of
goes a little bit. Almost, it feels clumpy. Now, as a general rule,
when I'm layering, what I like to do is start
at the lighter colors and work my way gradually up
towards the darker colors. So I can start off
by looking for the lightest color I
can see in each area, and it's not always
the same in each area. And then gradually work my way up towards the darker colors. Once I've got to
those darker colors, I can then gradually
work my way back down until I get back
to the lighter colors. I'm always pressing
very, very lightly. Although I do find as I gradually build up
more layers of pencil, I have to maybe start
pressing a little bit firmer just because it
doesn't build up the pencil. If I don't, it
doesn't go down in the same way as that tooth
of paper starts filling up. And then towards the
end, I can start adding in things
like little details. So for example, on this pair
I can add in the spots. So that's essentially
what layering is, why we should do it, and a kind of summary
of how we do it. But let's go through it
in a lot more detail. You can see how it
works in practice, we can start drawing the pair.
5. Studying the Reference Photo: The first thing that I
always like to do before I even think about
picking up any pencils, is having a really good look
at the reference photo. I can look at all of the most obvious things that
I really want to be paying attention to so I kind of have my
bearings a little bit. So let's take a minute to
look at this together now. The first most obvious thing I'm noticing are the light
and dark patches. There are probably about four very prominent
patches of light. There's a patch here, a
patch here, here, and here. And it's also
generally lighter on the right hand side and
darker on the left. There's quite a
strong line going down here where the light
and dark are separated. And I think it will look much better if I can get a
reasonably clear line down here and really make this darker section
quite sort of impactful. Now I'm also noticing
that there is an extremely dark shadow
down the bottom here. And it's also very dark
on the left hand side of the stem in terms of the
actual colors on the pair. Generally speaking, certainly
when I think of pears, I think of them as just green. But actually there's
a lot more going on here than just green. There is a sort of light green around here and a light
green around here, and a darker green around here. But this section here is
quite a complicated color. There are some very
bright red sections and then there are some brown, some sort of reddish
brown sections as well. Like around here, there's a
really quite dark brown here. And also here, this is
a kind of greeny brown. And it almost looks kind of
patchy around this section. So I'm going to want to build
up all of these colors. Beyond that, I'm particularly
noticing the texture. So on the most part the
pair is pretty smooth, But it does have all of
these little dots all over the skin that I will want to build
up towards the end. They're not all the same.
The dots around here, I would say, are
generally lighter, a little bit darker around here, but the dots down here
are much, much darker. There are a mixture of dark
green, sort of a mid green, a dark green, and very, very dark, very dark brown, I guess around here. So towards the end, I'll want to build up all of that texture. So those are the main very
important things I'm noticing. To begin with, let's
create a sketch.
6. Sketching the Outlines: All right, so now
we have a bit more of an idea of what
we're drawing. Let's get our sketch down now. At this point, I want to
create a sketch for the pair. I want to create the general outline as well as blocking in any major shapes if
you would like to use my sketch outlines though they are attached to the
class resources, so I always like using
something called grid method. This is where you add a grid to your reference photo and to your drawing paper and just draw what's in each
individual square. Now this pair is actually
a reasonably simple shape, so we don't have to draw
squares that are tiny. But if it was something
more complicated, I would probably
do a smaller grid grid here. Each square
is 3 centimeters wide, and once I've drawn my grid, I want to just start
drawing each square. So let's take a minute to
look at the first square. So I'm starting off by drawing this square
in the bottom left. It doesn't really
matter where you start, as long as you're counting
which square you're in. Now looking at this square here, I'm mostly looking
to start with at where the outline
crosses the grid lines. So this part here, I would say the line
of the square is crossing about halfway
down the grid. Halfway down this square. And this line here, this is pretty
close to the edge. It's probably about an
eighth, I would guess, way along. So I can mark this line here and
this line here. So you can see me
marking here and here. And then I just
need to join them. And then this is obviously
a very small first square, but that's all I need to do. So let's do the
same for the next. And actually it's
not dissimilar. This is probably about half way, but maybe a little bit
higher than halfway. And then I can once
again join this to the other section
we've already drawn. So let's look at the next
section here. This one. This is probably
about a quarter, maybe slightly over a quarter of the way along from the left, so I can mark that in.
And then join this. And then for this line up here, this is probably about two
thirds of the way along. And this line here has
an ever so slight bend, but not a huge amount. And that is literally
all there is to it, just looking at each square, particularly where the lines are crossing the
edge of the square. And mark in what I can see, this is a little bit more
complicated up here. Where the stalk is meeting
the top of the pair, but it's not too bad. So you can see that
I have marked in where the stems are
meeting at the top. And I've drawn the slightly
bumpy top of the pair. And then I can just join all
of these lines together. So once I've gone around
drawing the whole of the pair, really marking in all of
that outline to begin with, there is one other thing that I am going to want
to mark onto here. I just want to be
focusing on also adding in any major shapes, any major kind of
strong patches. So what I'm going to mark
in is the light spots, these light patches here. I just think it's
going to be much easier if I get them marked in, so I'm just going
to use the squares again to work out where
they're going to be. I'm actually going
to be a little bit less precise about this. I'm just trying to
get them roughly in the right place
on the square. I'm not worrying too much about where it's all
perfectly crossing because it's not as clear to see the edge of
these light patches. So once I'm happy with
my sketch outlines, all I need to do now
is erase the grid. So you need to erase
every grid line. It doesn't matter if I
slightly erase the sketch, because I can always add
it back in at the end. Now on my sketch here, it's pretty hard for
me to erase because I have drawn quite firmly with the pencil so that you
can see it on the camera. It's not massively
easy to remove, but when you make
your sketch outlines, you want to be doing it
really nice and lightly, and then you won't
have this problem. It'll erase nice and
easily and you'll be left with a really light sketch, so you're ready
to start drawing.
7. Build up the Basic Layers: I want to begin
here by building up the absolute lightest
base layers. So let's look at the
reference photo. And I want to be
thinking about what the lightest color is
that I can see here. So generally speaking,
the lightest colors are around these light patches. There's this kind of yellowy, earthy color around here. And there's also some very light colors
around the bottom. Particularly around here,
more of a light green. So let's start off by focusing on the top
half of the pair. And I want to be putting down, as I say, a very light
base layer up here. I'm going to put it over the
whole top half of the pair. But working around those
very light white patches, just like when I mentioned
earlier in this course, I want to be focusing
on putting this down as lightly and as evenly
as I possibly can. And I want to put it over the
whole top half of the pair. So you'll notice that I am
holding it about halfway down the barrel and I'm working in some really nice and
light circular motions. I do also have a
really sharp pencil, and I will frequently sharpen
it as I go through here. So I'm really just
blocking this in on the whole top half of the pair. Working around those
light patches, I do want to gently
sort of fade, so I'm going so,
so lightly around the light patches so that
it can fade into the white. As always, I don't want
any really abrupt edges. I want it to all be nice
and smooth so you can see me just lightly shading
around the white patches. And then also as I
work my way down here, as I work to about two thirds
of the way down the pair, I'm just slightly sort of tailing off and
evening off down here. I would say that the main
light green section, I want to start around
this sort of line. So I want to put the yellowy, earthy color at the top and then the light
green at the bottom. So after doing the first color, it should look
something like this. I can then take
this light green. This is the lime peel color. Very light, quite natural, I would say looking green. And I'm filling in the whole
of the bottom section. Now I am holding the pencil a little bit closer
to the tip here. I'm still pressing
very, very lightly, but because I don't want to
go over the edge of the pair, I want to have a really
crisp line around the edge. I am holding it a bit
closer to the tip just so I have more control over where the pencil's going. I am still pressing
really lightly though. I'm making sure that I
am not pressing firmly. I think it just takes a
little bit more kind of concentration if you are needing
to hold it near the tip. You see that? As soon as I don't need to be as
accurate though, I do start holding the
pencil further back. That is generally my preferred
way to shade in lightly. Beyond that though, I'm very much doing the same as before. I am making sure I got my
nice and sharp pencil, and working in circular motions, and just gradually letting
this color build up. You'll see that I am slightly
going over that top color. I do want these
colors to kind of blend and sort of
fade into each other, but literally all I'm doing is blocking in these two
shapes to begin with. So before I move on
from this green, I just want to be
thinking about if there's any other places, the pair where I can see more
of a kind of green hint. So I'm particularly looking at up this right hand side here. I think it would benefit
from just having a little tiny bit of
that green added. So I'm just going over the
top of that first color, You can see it's not doing
anything massively prominent, it's just slightly
adjusting and changing the color that's there is mixing these two
colors together. And actually I'm going to
add a little bit around the left hand side of these
light patches here as well. Not a huge amount, as they say. So from here I want
to gradually work my way from these
absolute lightest colors, gradually towards some
of the darker colors. So I want to be taking a
look at the reference, thinking about what the
next darkest color is. So actually, most of the pair, I would say is more of kind of a mid tone
to a darker tone. So looking at the
next darkest color, I feel like I'm straight away looking at more of a mid tone. I'm looking at these
greens around here. Some of them are really quite dark like around the bottom. But some of these greens, particularly around this
area and this area, I think is the color I
need to be adding in next. So this is the
apple green pencil. I've compared the reference
photo to the drawing, to my color swatches. And this is the closest green, I would say, to the green
on the bottom of the pair. Once again, want
to be building up this color along the bottom. Now it's worth
noting that actually this color doesn't go the
whole way along the bottom. We don't want to be going over everywhere where we put
the last lighter green. It's mostly in this shape. So along here and
then along here. This area on this side on
the most part is much, much lighter except for
the odd little patch. So I want to be focusing more on building
this color up on the left hand side
and beginning to build some of the
brightness on that side. Now notice how far back I'm holding the pencil to
help me press lightly. Again, really nice and
sharp pencil, you can see. And I'm building up
in circular motions and you can see how much. The color looks from doing this gradually rather than just
pressing really hard. Now I filled in
along the bottom. I'm going to fill in those
few slightly darker patches on this right hand side here. Because see, I'm not adding
in an awful lot at all. And then I want to see if
there's any other areas where I should be adding a
little hint of this green. So maybe around
this little section here as well as I'm just going to change the shape of
the edge down the side here. From here, I want to be looking for my next darkest color. So now I'm particularly
noticing the left hand section, but more towards the top. And I'm looking at the
slightly more kind of brown, light brown, earthy colors that I can
see all around here. There's obviously some quite bright reds in this top section, and we can look at
that in a second. But I'm looking at more of the browns that are kind
of in the background. So looking at my swatches, I would say that
the closest match is the light umber pencil. So we want to begin building
this up in the top section. So I can start off
by just putting down just really nice
and smooth cover on most of the left
hand side of the pair. Obviously, I'm working around those light patches towards the left because I don't
want to go over those. I want to keep them
really nice and bright. I do want to make sure that I'm sort of fading into
those sections Again, I don't want to really
abrupt edge with this brown. And then looking at the
reference photo again, I'm noticing that
this brown isn't down in a necessarily
completely smooth way. It's actually quite patchy, kind of like the red
is quite patchy. You'll notice along here, this brown is similar. It's kind of almost sorted
into strips and clumps. There's a dark patch
here, for example, dark patch coming around
here, around here. And then there's a
lighter patch here. There's a darker patch here, sort of following on from
the line of the green. And it's a bit darker
here, for example, lighter and more green
here and then darker here. So after adjusting
kind of the general base, I want to begin marking in all of these different patches. So all I want to do, rather than pressing harder to build
up these darker areas, I just want to go over
the areas more times. And you can see quite quickly, it builds up the color so
that it looks a bit darker. Now, as far as following these patches and trying
to build up this color, I wouldn't say it
needs to be perfect. I am looking closely
at the reference photo to try and get it looking
reasonably similar. Right now, I really
want to try and get my bearings on what
needs to go where, but it doesn't
need to be exactly the same as the reference photo. I think that would
just be really tricky. So from here I want to carry on working my way
through the color. So move on to the
next darkest color. So from here, I think
the next darkest color I want to add is a red. I once again used my swatches, comparing them to the
reference photo and my drawing to work out which
red is the closest. And I'm using the poppy red,
it's quite a bright red. I kind of think of it as
quite a standard red. And I want to be putting
this anywhere where I can see a little
hint of the red. So I'm mostly going over
some of the patches that I marked in a second ago with that light umber going
over the patches, building that up a
little bit more. But also just generally adjusting the color of
that light umber all over. Although I think that there is this brown as an underlying
color under the pear, I think maybe it's a
slightly more reddish brown. I don't have that kind of brown. So I can mix it using the
pencils in building it up. And once I built up
the red to this point, I'm now thinking I
just need to build up a few brighter patches. There are a few areas that are
really quite a bright red. I'm particularly looking
at here and here, and here, as well
as around here. So as I say, I don't
want to go over these areas pressing harder, I just want to go over it more times to build up that
more vibrant red. And we don't necessarily
need to get it to the full vibrancy we
can always add to it. We can keep coming back through these same colors and
building up gradually. And I find that's a
lot more forgiving. It allows you to
make more mistakes, can gradually build things
up. I think it ends up leading to a better
finished drawing. So from here I'm
still working from those lighter colors
towards the darker colors. And I'm wanting to fill in
on the bottom section now, a much darker green. So on this bottom section, more so on the left,
because that's generally darker
than on the right. I just want to be building
up more of a deeper green. Now, I am being careful here, particularly where the
green is meeting the red. If you mix green
and red together, it will make brown. And I don't want to
end up with a brown, really muddy section
between the red and green. So I want to overlap these two colors as
little as possible. You'll see that I am
slightly going over the red because I do
have to a little bit. I don't want to
do that too much. Now note that I can
use where I put the green before as a
little bit of a guide here. So I've already marked
out the shape of this bottom section
using the apple green. So now I'm moving on
to this darker green. I can follow that same line, just slightly
changing the color. Maybe if I think something's not looking quite right, I
can tweak the shape, but I can certainly
get a good idea of what needs to go
where by this point. Now notice that I am still
holding the pencil far back. I am still using a sharp
pencil when I'm still working very nice and lightly
in these circular motions. That will be the case
for, I would say, most. Video, Again, on
this bottom section, I want to be building this
up a little bit more. So I'm going over the area again to add more of that green. Now, it's not always
the case that I can build up the color perfectly
in a light to dark order. Maybe we have to go
back a couple of colors sometimes if I think something
is very clearly missing. So for example, right
now I think we need to go back to the light
umber, particularly. This patch here where the red
and the green are meeting. There is an area where
there's quite a dark brown. I'm looking at this area, particularly this kind of
triangular shape here, as well as around
here and along here. Now that I have built up
some of the red and green, I think it becomes a bit clearer that I need to
build up some more brown. There is generally
a little bit of a brown kind of section
around the middle here, I guess it is, where the red
and the green are meeting. So I can gently build
this up a bit more and I'm going to see
anywhere else where I want to put some of
this same color. So I'm particularly looking
around the top edge up here. I did mention that
this looks like a darker brown a
little bit earlier. And I can just keep going over this middle section,
gradually building until I think it's looking a little bit closer
to the reference. Now I very much think of this as we're still trying to get
our bearings right now. Trying to get the right
shapes and colors roughly marked in before we build up
the color a little bit more. And although I don't think it's going to look perfect
at this point, I do want to try and get it reasonably close
to the reference. So I'm just continually
building this up. You can see I've built
some around the bottom, particularly on the bottom left where there is
quite a dark shadow and I've really built up a lot of this
patchiness from here, I can move on to a
darker brown and go back over this dark
triangular area here that I mentioned, really allowing it
to get a lot darker. Again, this is made a lot
easier because I filled this shape in a second ago
with that light umbus, the general triangular shape. The triangular patch
is already marked in. I can see where this needs
to go and I can also work my way around anywhere else that needs some of this darker brown. So the main area is around
the bottom down here. And actually there are
some areas here where I do want to start pressing
a little bit firmer. Along this bottom section, you can see how
dark this area is. It is a very, very dark brown. And then there's a
slightly lighter, but still very dark shadow
just underneath it. It's also very dark
going up this left side, particularly in this
bottom section, it kind of fades from this
very dark section up. And I'd also say it's
very dark around here. So I can start
pressing a lot firmer down the bottom here to
really build up that brown. And then I can gently
fade out as I get a little bit higher to start
easing up my pressure again, I want to be pressing
a bit firmer here because it needs to
be such a dark color. And let's also just fill
in the shadow over to the left hand side and any extra areas that
need to be darker. So as I mentioned, this area up here as well
as I want to add in a few areas down the left hand side,
there's actually quite a dark line, particularly
down the left. And I can just
gradually, very lightly, still build up this pencil to make that a
little bit deeper. I don't want it to be really dark down this left side though. I just want it to be darker
than it is at the moment. So by the end of
this first section, you should have a pair
roughly marked out. It looks very faded. It's not looking
particularly vibrant. But all of those key
shapes are now marked in.
8. Brighten up the Colours: Now we've got all of these very light base layers marked in. I want to gradually start building up the colors
a little bit more. So we're still building
up all of these layers, but now I really want to focus on making everything
a lot more vibrant. So I'm going to
generally work from the darker colors towards
the lighter colors. But I'm mostly looking for the most obvious difference between my drawing and
the reference photo. So to start with, I would
say that I particularly want to be making
the green section a lot darker. Now I'm using a
pretty dark green for this. This is olive green
and I, once again, want to be building up all of
the color along the bottom. Now as I work my way
through these layers, as they build up more pencil, I do find I need to
start pressing a little bit firmer if I want
the pencil to show up. As I do this, I do start to hold the pencil
closer to the tip. Although you will notice
that I'm not holding it right at the tip,
just closer than I was. But I am still working in those circular motions to try and make this as
smooth as possible. And I do also still have
a nice and sharp pencil. Even if you're pressing
a little bit firmer, you should still
have a sharp pencil. I do think it makes
a huge difference. I'm just lightly going over the whole of this green
section down here, and then I'm pretty happy that I filled in those darkest greens. I want to maybe start
brightening up some of the more midtone greens
so I can go back to that more vibrant
apple green that I used in the first section when we were building
up the base layers and first see the darker green. You can see that it's not really changing the
contrast of that green. It's just maybe
making the color a little bit more vibrant and
maybe smoothing it out. I'm also going to use this
green to go over most of those brighter green
sections along the bottom. And as I say, I would say I'm using more like a
medium pressure. Now, I want to be looking at all of the areas where I
can see this green. So particularly
around the bottom, mostly the bottom left, but there's also a hint of green over to the
left around here. So around this side you can really see quite
a bright green. I think a lot of
that green is maybe created from the kind
of bluish background, But it's certainly giving the
pair a little bit more of an interesting color that's going to make it
look more realistic. So once I filled in some of this brighter green
around the bottom, I want to still be working
my way through the greens. And working my way mostly through a lot of the
greens that I used before. So from the darker greens
towards the lighter greens. But right now I'm
really focusing on bottom section. I'm not really worrying about the top,
the more reddish browns. So let's move on
to the lime peel. It's that kind of quite
light earthy green and I can build that up over the
top of those other greens. This is kind of changing
the very vibrant apple green into a more kind
of earthy green, I guess. Now as I say, the more color
that I build up the firmer, I do need to press, and
I would say that I'm using a reasonably
firm pression. Now you can start to see that
I'm pressing a lot firmer. It is making a more
solid block color and it's generally smoothing
all of this section out. Now I'm going to put
this green going a lot of the left hand side. As I said, I can see a lot
of green up this side. I didn't necessarily
want to be building up too much with some of
those darker greens, but I can start pressing
lightly with the lime green to really start adding
a hint of this color here. Well, more than a hint, really. And then I also want to be
using this green to blend the darker green a little bit better into the
lighter green section, make it a smoother, more natural looking transition
between these areas. And actually, there's
quite a lot of green that I can build up, particularly around
the edge around here. So before I move on
from this green, I want to be thinking about
if there's any other areas within the pair that I think should have a
hint of this green. Actually, I think
I'm going to put a little bit of it over quite a lot of the pair because
the lime peel green is, it's kind of an earthy,
yellowish lime green. I can see some of that in
actually most of the pair. So although around
here for example, this is a kind of reddish
light under brown, it does have that kind of
back note of earthy green. The same up here I would say,
particularly around here. So let's add a light amount of this color over
most of the pair, making sure that
I'm very careful as I go around those light areas. I do really want to make sure that I'm fading that color in. And I also want to make
sure that I'm going this right hand side as well. And I think that that
has made the pair look a lot more kind of cohesive. It makes it a bit
easier to see what the main color is that's
going to be missing next. So from here, the
reddish brown sections aren't looking prominent enough, they're looking way too faint. So actually I'm
going to move on to a brown that I haven't
used up until now. This is the sienna brown. This is kind of a reddish brown. I always think of
it as a red toned, like a very dark red. And I'm going to lightly go over all of the sections where I put that red and that light
under that brown before. So I still want to be building up that kind of patchy look. And just making a
brighter color here. And actually from here, I think it needs
more of that light umber to slightly
adjust the color again, make it a little
bit more earthy. You can see that as I
build up more colors, it is increasing the richness. And I think the
more colors I add, the easier it becomes
to see what's missing. So from here, those particularly bright red patches have
kind of been lost. There is still a lot
of red in the pair, but it's not that
really nice bright red that I can see on the reference. So I'm going to go back to
the same red as before. And with kind of medium
pressure, again, I would say because light
pressure isn't building up the same amount of
color as it was. So with that medium pressure going over all of
the red sections, really brightening it up. It's very much in the same areas as we built this up before. And you can see how
much more vibrant, very, very quickly
that has become. In fact, maybe it's a
tiny bit too vibrant. And I want to tone it
down a little bit, make the more shadowed areas a lot more prominent so I
can go back to that very, very dark brown, that dark. And again, I'm going over the same patches
that I did before. So this kind of triangular
section around here, as well as this section over to the left is
particularly dark. And you can see,
even though we're building up so much color, one on top of another, it's firstly building up to look really quite
nice and natural, but it also still
looks nice and smooth. It's not looking patchy. And that a lot of that is because of having
a sharp pencil. So let's just tweak the
shadow a little bit, add to the shadow down here, and then as I'm working my way towards the lighter colors, I once again want to be thinking about the main color
that's missing. So I'm thinking I want to add in some more of that same green, that lime peel green, a lot of those same areas
that I've built up. So I'm focusing a
little bit more now on the lighter patches, so anywhere that hasn't got
a huge amount of color. So particularly over on the
right hand side around here, this is all looking a little
bit too light at this point. As I'm working my way back down towards those
lightest colors, I can go back to the
ginger root that I used at the very beginning
to really start blending all of these areas together sort of one final time. This is almost my lightest
color I'll be using. So you can see that I am
now pressing quite firmly because I've built up and
I've layered so much pencil, there's a lot of pigment on the paper that
enables me to be able to blend this and press Burma to get it all
to all merge together. But I'm not going
over everywhere, I just want to be going
over these lighter areas. And you can see that that's just smoothing everything out. I'm going around the
edge of this light patch as well as this area here
that just looked a little bit kind of patchy so I can
smooth out that patchiness. And then I'm just generally
going to work my way from the left to the right,
going back over the top. Similar to what I did before but pressing a bit
firmer now I want to, again, make sure that I'm going around these patches of light. I don't want to lose those. I do maybe want to make
it come in a little bit. I think the patches were maybe a little bit too big
and then at this point, I'm generally happy with
how the pair is looking. In the next section, I want to be really
brightening up those colors a little bit further and
adding in any final details. But by the end of this section, you should have actually
a reasonably good pair that looks something like this.
9. Add in the Details: Now at this point, most of
the pair has been drawn in. I now want to focus on tweaking
all of the final colors, still layering all of those
colors on top of each other, and adding in the final details. So I once again want to be comparing my drawing to
the reference photo, to the Swatches,
and thinking about what the main color
is that's missing. And so actually the main
thing I want to add in now is I really
want to brighten up, particularly this
section to the middle, slightly to the right,
The middle here. I would say that I
can see a kind of yellowish orange
in the reference that I don't have in my drawing. So I can use my swatches to work out which color
looks closest. Then I'm just going to
lightly go over the top here, adding this into any
area where I think it needs just brightening
up with this color. So mostly on the right hand
side, but also around here. I think this all
needs brightening. And then I'm going to keep
working my way through thinking about what the main
color is that's missing. So from here, once again, I think the red sections
aren't looking bright enough. So let's go back to that same red going
over those same areas. And you can see again
how quickly it brightens up just by building
the same color on top, over and over again. From here, I want to
use that darker green to make this area a
little bit darker. It looks too light
of a green now, so I can use this to lightly go over the top and
just tone it down. And actually I'm going
to go over a lot of these brighter green
areas to tone it down. And I'll do that on both sides. I don't want to put as much on this right hand side because it does need to
be a lot lighter. That said, I think it's a
bit too light right now. And then before we move
on, I just want to blend and smooth out some
of these patches of light. So I'm going to use
the white pencil. Using the white pencil
over the top of pretty much any other color is going
to lighten it slightly, but it's not going to turn
it into a bright white. So I can use this
white pencil to quite firmly go over these
spots of light, blend this area out, make it a lot smoother. And that has, I think, made the general
underlying colors of the pair look much better. The whole pair looks
really nice and smooth, and I'm happy with the general colors that
have been built up. At this point, I want to start thinking about adding in
some of those details. So right now we haven't
drawn in anything for the stalk at the top and
also on all of the pair, I want to be putting
in a load of dots. It's a very spotty pair, which right now
we haven't drawn. Now it's kind of similar. We want to be layering these spots over the top of everything we've already built. And even though we've built so much pencil on here
up until this point, I can still get
more pencil down. I can get down a lot
of layers of pencil. Now actually the spots on the pair aren't all
the same color. There are some spots that
are quite a light brown. So that light umber
color, I would say. There are some spots that
are more of a green, quite a dark green, some
of the spots around here. And then there are
some spots that are really quite a dark brown. So again, around here there's
some dark green spots, there's some dark brown spots. There's quite a lot
of dark brown spots around this left hand side here, around here, and around here. So I want to be building up these dots in a
series of colors. So I'm starting off
here with the light umber and you can see I'm just going over
and placing dots. Now, I'm not doing this
completely randomly. I am looking at the
reference photo and kind of roughly trying to
follow where the dots are. Because the dots on
the pair are random, it's very hard to
naturally be that random. I find that if I try
and put dots randomly, I end up evenly spacing them and it doesn't
look very natural. If I try and copy roughly where the spots are
on the reference photo, I find it makes a much better, more natural looking,
spotty texture. So I don't need to be
trying to get all of the spots in perfectly
the right place. But if I do use the
reference photo as a little bit of a guide on
which spot needs to go where I find it looks a lot better. So gone down that right
hand side, let's go down, particularly the left hand side, where the light patches are. And the main thing
to remember is to just have a really
nice and sharp pencil. Honestly, it's going
to make all of this so much easier
and it's going to look far better around
the middle, around here. I do need to make
some larger dots there because it's
a darker section, just generally bigger
and look a bit darker. But I don't want to
make really harsh and sort of perfect dots
like I have elsewhere. I want to make
kind of faded dots because that's closer to what it looks like in the reference. It's all part of that kind of dotty and patchy texture
towards the middle. So I say, gone over all
of the pair with that light umber pencil,
getting all of those really light
dots marked in. I can use the dark
umber pencil to maybe start filling in some of the dots that need to
be a little bit darker. So again, I can look at
where these dots are on the reference because I don't want to be putting this brown, this darker brown
over all of the dots. I really only want to
be putting it over the dots that need
to be a lot darker. So for example, how this
dot is much darker, this dot is much darker. Some of these dots are a little bit darker
but not as much. And this dot, they're
not as dark as this one, but they're certainly darker
than the light umber. And I can again, use
that reference photo as a little bit of a guide. I then also want to be building up dots on this bottom section, along here with
this darker pencil. The last little section
of this drawing, I'm just going to focus
on the stalk at the top. So starting off by drawing
in this little patch here, which is a kind of
greeny section, and I can use the
same green that I've been using for
a lot of the pair. I then want to again, be looking for the
next lightest color. So I'm particularly
thinking about, again, this light umber pencil. I have used it a lot throughout
the pair and I can add a smooth and even layer of the pencil over the whole
of the top section. The only areas that I'm leaving is the very light patches. So along here, along here and maybe a couple of
little spots along here, you'll notice that there's
a light strip in here. And then it's got a darker color down this right hand side. And obviously all of
this left hand side, I can also work around
that green patch, maybe slightly fading the
brown into the green. And then I'm generally
going to work my way from the lighter colors
towards the darker colors. So I can use that reddish brown that I used a bit earlier, fill that in anywhere where
I can see a hint of that, and then I can move
onto the dark umber. This is the darkest
brown in my set, for all of those
particularly dark areas, mostly down the left hand
side of the stalk here. And I want to be kind
of fading that and blending that into the
brown sections around it. So I am holding the pencil
very close to the tip here, you'll notice,
because I need to be so precise on where
this is going. Because we are in the kind
of fine detail section and as I get towards the top, it's not necessarily
as smooth color. It gets a little bit patchy. So it's kind of got these
lines coming down here, down here, down here. And it's generally darker
on this left side. And then once I'm happy
with that darkest color, I can once again work from the darker colors down
to the lighter colors. So I'm going to go back
to that reddish brown. That sienna brown go
back over the area. Really help to start blending the darker color
into the lighter color. And then I can move
onto the light umber and use that for the lightest areas except
for the whites. So just slightly blending
around the edges here, maybe making this patch
a little bit darker. Then actually I'm going to
use the ginger root pencil, the pencil that we've used a lot in the lighter areas
at the bottom, to just blend and smooth
out these light patches. I think it's going to
really go together, the light colors on there and the pair if I use
the same color. Finally, let's just
put some white over at the top just to lighten
it up a tiny bit. And then I'm going to
do some final details. So I'm going to go
back over the stem one last time with that
particularly dark brown. The dark umber just to make the darks as dark as I think
they are in the reference. And I'm going to add the
odd little final tweak with the white pencil
here, for example. I just want to lighten where the stalk is meeting the
pair, and then that is it.
10. Summary: All right, and that is
the end of this course. So the key to layering is working really nice and lightly, gradually building up the color by holding the
pencil further back, having a really nice
and sharp pencil, and working nice and smoothly. As a general rule, I like to start from the
lighter colors, gradually work my way
towards the darker colors, and then back down towards
the lighter colors. And then I can add in
any final details. Now please do upload your pairs. I would love to see
what you've drawn and please review this class
if you have enjoyed it. I hope you found this
course helpful and I look forward to seeing
you in the next one.
Gemma Chambers, Pencil Artist
