Transcripts
1. Introduction: The most important
core technique of drawing with colored
pencils is layering. It is the key to making
soft but vibrant drawings. I want to show you
today that you don't need loads of pencils to layer. I want to focus on layering if you have a set of 12 pencils. My name's Emma Chambers
and I've been making online art tutorials since 2020. I've helped tens of
thousands of people improve their art and improve their layering on
my Youtube channel. But today in this
course, I want to go through it in a little
bit more detail. I'll run you through all of the materials you'll need
and then we can start thinking about why you
layer and how you layer. I'll go through some of the
extra things you need to think about when layering
with fewer pencils. And then you can see how it works in practice
by drawing this. Let's get started.
2. Class Project - Drawing the Rose: Now for the class projects, we'll be drawing this rose. This is a really lovely drawing that I think is going to be great practice for layering
with only 12 colors. It's got a mixture of not
to complicated colors, but they're also not too simple. Now I will talk you
through everything you need to know to create this. And I will include how
to draw the sketch. If you don't want to
create your own sketch, though, I have included
some sketch outlines. Check that out in
the class resources. Please do remember to upload your roses into the projects. I would love to see
what you've done. All right, let's talk about the materials that you'll need.
3. Materials for Colored Pencil Drawings: Let's take a minute to talk about the materials you'll need, both to draw this rose and generally to draw
with colored pencils. And the first
material you'll need is obviously a set
of colored pencils. Now as I said in this course, we're focusing on drawing
with the set of 12. I'll be drawing with the set
of 12 polychromos pencils, which is a professional
colored pencil. But you don't need to spend
loads on the pencils. You could pick very
similar colors from a pack of
Crayola, for example. Have a look in the
class resources, I've included swatches of all
of the colors I'll be using so you can try and match to
reasonably similar colors. Now, there is a
difference between professional colored
pencils and Crayola, for example, but
I'm not going to cover that too much
in this course. In actuality, I think there's
something that's much more important than the colored
pencils, that is the paper. So in order to be able to
layer and build up the color, you need the right
kind of paper. You're not going to be
able to build up the color effectively on something like printer paper or sketch paper. So I like to draw on something
called Bristol Board. I use a smooth Bristol board. I find that this is nice
and smooth to work on, so it's easy to
control the pencil, but I'm also able to
build up a lot of colors. I'm really able to build
up a lot of the pencil. Next up, you'll need
a pencil sharpener. Now I use a hand crank
pencil sharpener. I use the icon swordfish. This is particularly good
because you can change the blade when it gets blunt rather than having to
bin the whole thing. That said, you don't
need a pencil sharpener. As fancy as this, as long
as you're able to create a really nice and sharp point.
That's what's important. Next up, if you're wanting
to create your own sketch, you will need a graphite pencil, a ruler, and an Azor. And I'll show you a little bit later on how to make the sketch. And then the next
thing you'll need is something that
actually you can't buy, you're going to need to make. I'm talking about swatches, so essentially what you
want is to be able to see what the color looks like
actually on the paper. So what I want to do
is draw out each color from as light as it can go
down to as dark as it can go, and then label it, and that will show me what it
really looks like. I don't want to rely on the
barrel of the pencil or on the lead because it's
not actually very accurate. The last thing you'll need is some way of looking at
the reference photo. Everything I draw, I
draw from a reference. Because I draw realistically, I find this is the best way to create as realistic
drawings as possible. I like to look at the
reference photo on my ipad specifically because I can zoom in if I want to see
some more detail. That said, you could print out the picture and
look at it that way. So you will need a set
of 12 colored pencils, the right kind of paper,
a pencil sharpener. If you're creating
your own sketch, you'll need a graphite
pencil, ruler and Erazor. You'll need to make
some pencil swatches and have some way of looking
at the reference photo. So let's start talking about
layering and how you do it.
4. Basic Techniques: Let's talk about what layering is and why you should do it. Layering is where you
build one color on top of another in a series
of really light layers. It's essentially how you
mix colors together. If you put one color
on top of another, they'll gradually blend
to make a new color. It is the absolute backbone of all colored pencil drawing. Now the main key here is
it needs to be light. It needs to be a series
of light layers. And there's a few ways that I go about building up
these light layers. First up, I hold the pencil further back than
you might expect. Rather than holding it
really close to the tip, I hold it more like about here. This literally stops me
from being able to press too hard and allows me to
create this nice light layer. I also always work with
really sharp pencils. I frequently sharpen. I find that if you try and build up color with a blunt pencil, it just doesn't go down
in as smooth of a way. And finally, generally speaking, I try and work as
smoothly as possible, So I tend to work in
circular motions. So rather than scribbling back
and forth with my pencil, if I make circle
or oval motions, the pencil goes down in a
much more consistent way. And that's going to
help my layering. So the general rule of how
I layer is I like to start with the lighter colors and work my way gradually towards
the darker colors. I then go from
those darker colors gradually back down towards
the lighter colors. Now I'm going to work
in a similar way when only working
with a set of 12. But maybe we'll make
a few adjustments that you'll see when we
start drawing the rows.
5. Studying the Reference Photo: So let's start
drawing the Rose Now. Before I pick up any pencils, what I always like to do is take a minute to have a look
at the reference photo. I want to take a minute to have a look at what's actually here. It's a bit of an opportunity
for me to get my bearings. Now the first thing
that jumps out to me is the general colors on
the rose bud itself. Now this is a pink rose
bud, but actually, although there are
some pink areas, there's a lot of other
colors in here as well. So first off, you
can see a reasonably bright red around
here in this shadow. And a little bit all
along this line, there's also quite a
dark red along here. There's a reasonably bright, bright red around here, and quite a bright red
around here as well. Now, I'm also noticing
that a lot of, as I say, the areas on this rose aren't
really pink along here. This is almost white with
a little bit of a tinge of kind of a cooler
tone like a blue. So it's almost white along
here and along here, there's also quite a bit of
blue and purple around here. This petal here is
a very cool purple. And all along here, which is generally what happens, generally speaking, the shadows
tend to be a bit colder. Also, you're seeing
a little bit of a purple around here as well. Now, beyond that, I'm noticing that around here
and around here, there's this
reflection from the, I don't know what they're
called, these green parts. So we've got some green
in here and we've got some kind of brown
reflecting around here. And the other thing that I
am particularly noticing about the rows is
this line here. So we've got this shadow
going along here, which is created from this. So when we're drawing this,
we are going to need to draw a reasonably sharp
line all along here. It's not a solid line
all the way down, it's a little bit
lighter in this section. And let's just take a
minute to have a look at this stem down the bottom, so it's not all necessarily the kind of colors
you would think of. It is green towards the top. There's a very deep shadow, particularly on this top half. Then there's a
lighter green section here with a kind of
reddish brown at the top. But as we get further
down the stem, this really turns
into a reddish brown. It's not got any green really
to it as we get down here. So I'm going to
need to bear that in mind when I'm
drawing the stem. So those are the
main things that I'm seeing to begin with.
Let's start drawing.
6. Sketching the Outlines: Now we've had a look at
the reference photo. Let's create our sketch. Now, before we get started, if you don't want to
create your own sketch, you could use mine. It is available in
the class resources, and I've included both a light
sketch and a heavy sketch, depending on if you want to print it out or if
you want to trace. So whenever I
create my sketches, I like to use something
called the grid method. This is where I draw a grid on my reference photo and a
grid on my drawing paper. And then I only draw what's
in each individual square. I'm going to use a
reasonably large grid for this rot because they
are quite simple shapes. But if it was more complicated, I can always put
on a smaller grid. Now bear in mind that
I am pressing quite hard here because I want to make sure that you can
see it on the camera. In actuality, you want to be pressing as
lightly as possible. You will be erasing a lot
of these lines at the end. And you want to make that
as easy as possible. So I just want to be focusing
on one square at a time. And I'm going to start
on this square here. So what I want to be doing
mostly is looking at where the key lines are crossing
the edge of the square. I also want to plot
any other rough marks. I'll show you what
I mean. So down here I want to mark in the edge of where this part of the rose is meeting
this part of the row. So around here. So
this is probably about an eighth of the way along from the right
and just a tiny bit up. So I'll mark here, I
also want to mark where this line is crossing
the edge of the square. So this is maybe a
third of the way along. And I'll also put
a dot around here. This is just under half way, I would say, and almost
underneath this, but slightly to the right. So you can see me
doing this here. I'm dotting in that bottom line, this line about halfway
through on the curve there. And then the line
at the top where it meets the edge of the square. And then I essentially just
want to join the dots, although there are a few bumps, so it kind of wiggles a little
bit, not a huge amount. So I do want to draw
in that wiggle. I can then look at other shapes
within this same square. So this edge here. So this is probably
about halfway, a little bit more to the left of halfway through the square. And this line is a
little bit up from here. So let's mark in where I think
all of these need to go. And then I can again, just join those dots as you
can see me doing. And then that's
pretty much all I need to do in this first square. That is mostly all
that's in here. So let's move on to
the square above. And I again want to do similar, so I'm looking at where this
line is crossing the edge of the square and it's just to the left of
halfway, I would say. I also want to look at where
this line is crossing. So that is about a quarter of the way from the
right, I would guess. Maybe a little bit less. And I can generally look
at the shapes here. So this line is going
down to meet here. Just slightly to the right
of where we marked in. This line is coming
up to meet here. And this line is coming
up to meet here. And once I've marked in where the lines are crossing
the edge of the square, I can then join this up. And then that's pretty much that second square finished already. Now it doesn't really matter what order you work in
through the squares. As long as you make
sure that you're working in the right square. I generally like to work
from the left to the right, but it's completely up
to you what you do. Some squares are a little
bit more complicated, like this square at the top. There are a lot of areas
that need marking in, but I'm just working
at it one at a time. Marking in all of
the key sections for this more complicated
part at the top, for example. And I can just join
them together and because I'm working one square at a time and only drawing what's in each
individual square, not only does it make it easier, rather than trying
to draw a rows, I'm just looking at it like
it's a series of shapes. So it feels a lot
less complicated. But also I can be confident that my proportions are correct. It could be a little
bit wrong, I suppose. But certainly not to the same extent as if I just
tried to draw it freehand. So once I've drawn in
the whole of the rows, all I need to do now is
erase the grid lines. Now, as I said a bit earlier, this will be far easier if you've pressed really
nice and lightly. As I mentioned,
I've pressed much firmer so you can see
it on the camera. So I'm not going to be able
to erase the grid lines to the same extent that
I should be able to. But essentially what
you want to be left with at the end here
is just a sketch. You don't want to see
any of these lines, and it should be a much
lighter sketch than this. You want to barely
be able to see it. And that will stop
this from showing through the color
pencils at the end. So now I've got my sketch down, we can think about
starting drawing.
7. Build up the Base Layers: So now we've got our sketch
down, let's start drawing. So all I want to do in
this first chapter is block in some very basic
shapes and colors. We just want to begin to
get our bearings on this. So the most basic colors
that are in this is the rose bud itself is kind
of red and the stem is green. So we're going to use just
red and green to begin with. So let's start with
the red and work from the left to the
right of the rose bud. And then we can fill in the
green of the stem shortly. So I'm going to start on
the left hand side here. And what I'm doing, the most important
thing I'm doing, is working very lightly. I want to be able
to build up a lot of colors over the
top of this bud. For now, all I'm wanting
to do is mark this in. But I do want to allow myself to make mistakes or to be
able to correct things. So that's one of the reasons
to be working lightly here. Now, the main way that I
am working lightly is, first off, you'll notice I'm holding the pencil further back. I'm not holding it
really close to the tip, I'd say I'm holding it about
halfway down the pencil. Now this stops me from being
able to press too hard. It really makes sure that I can do that nice
and light pressure. Now where in this bottom
corner I'm wanting to build up a little bit more color rather than pressing firmer, I'm just going over the area to allow that
color to build up. So let's take a minute
to have a look at the reference photo and I'll
show you what I'm seeing. So I started off by drawing
in this triangle here. You'll notice that
it is darker down here and also darker
up this side. And then it gets much
lighter up the top. So I started off by
blocking this shape in. I can then move onto
the rest of the rose. A lot of the area around here, as they mentioned when
we were looking at the reference photo,
is very, very light. So I'm not going to need to
add a lot of the red here. I'm going to want to focus
on this line going up here as well as this
line going along here. And just add some general
shading around these areas. I'm looking at this little
wiggly triangular shape here and I'm also noticing
this lighter patch here. I want to get that marked in. So here I'm just marking in
that line that I mentioned. Now the other thing that I'm particularly
wanting to do whilst putting down these
base layers is not only work very lightly, but also try and work as
smoothly as possible. A lot of the rows
is very smooth, it doesn't have a huge
amount of texture to it. And even if it did
for base layers, I don't want to
build up texture. I want to just block
in the key colors. The best way to get down
the color as smoothly as possible is to work
in circular motions. So the small little
circle or oval motions, just very gently going over the same areas to gradually
build up the soft color. Now I can't stress enough that it doesn't need to look perfect. At the end of this, we're
really just wanting to get something down on the paper that we can then build off of. So here I'm marking in
that line of that shadow. And then once I've
marked in the line, I can shade using those
circular motions. Up from this point, I'm just going to continue
working from here, just blocking in these
very basic shapes. Now, this is all made a lot
easier because of my sketch. You can very faintly
see it here. But because I took the time
to do an in depth sketch, I have a vague idea of
what needs to go wear, and it's generally just
making my life a lot easier. You'll notice that the
sketch is extremely light. Do you want to make sure that
I keep it extremely light because I don't want to have thick lines showing
through at the end. Now, the only other
thing that I'm particularly thinking
about whilst putting down these base layers is
how sharp my pencil is. Now I find that
it is far easier. If you can keep a sharp pencil, you keep it sharpened. It means that not only can you get the color to
go down smoother, but it just gives you
a lot more control over where the pencil is going. But the good news is, because
we're working so lightly, it doesn't need
sharpening too frequently because it's not wearing
down particularly fast. So here I'm just drawing in this light patch here and then I'm going to carry
on working my way up. So marking in this
darker lip along here. So that is this section here. You'll notice that it's
got a darker shadow down the bottom and then it is
lighter towards the top. And I am just going to slightly shade the bottom a little
bit more than the top. I don't want to do too
much at this point because I'm going to build up a lot more with other colors. But I just want to
begin to mark in particularly the kind of central light line between
the dark and the light, And then I can start drawing in the shapes around the top. Now, these are actually
all reasonably simple, I would say, particularly because of the sketch
that we've got. But basically, there is
a light line along here, there's a light line along here. So I want to work
around this line. There's quite a crisp line going along here, so
I can add that in. And then this line here, where I can shade
up from this line. I also want to be blocking
in this whole section here, this kind of triangle. And making sure that
on this triangle, I leave this patch
nice and light. And I'm really not
doing anything more complicated than that. I can't stress enough that at this point you don't
expect it to look amazing. You just want to be getting something down that
we can build upon. Now, I also want to
be adding some of the petals towards
the right hand side. So this petal here, it's got this light
triangle at the top, this curved line here. And I'm really wanting
to block in this area, Mark in here as well. But it's this area that I
want to be building up. And I also want to draw
in this petal along here. This is also a
little bit darker. I don't want to go too
dark with my shading, but I do want to shade
it in a bit darker than areas like
this, for example. So once the whole of the rose
has been lightly marked in, it should look like this. You'll notice that where
I've put in the pencil, it looks a little bit kind of spotty and gritty,
but that is fine. That is what we expect. And we can build on this in the next chapters with
some darker colors. Now, I am just
going to lightly go over the light patches as well. I want to put down a little
bit of something here. I don't want to leave it.
It's just bare paper. But again, you'll
notice that I'm working extremely lightly. Just very lightly building
up some of this color. And then we'll be able to add to that and blend that
in later chapters. So once I've gone over all
of these red sections, I also want to mark in
the green for the stems. Now in the set of 12, there is only one choice for the green, that is
the emerald green. This is the one
that I'll be using. And we can always adjust
the green by adding other colors over the top
of it a bit later on. But this is very
similar to what we were doing earlier on in the
chapter with the red. I'm just going to
mark around the edge of where I want this leaf to go. And then I'm lightly shading,
using circular motions. I'm once again holding
the pencil further back. I'm not holding it really near the tip to help me
press nice and lightly. I'm also again, making sure that I've got a nice sharp pencil so that I can be as
accurate as possible. And then I'm again,
going to work my way from the left to the right. So I'm going to mark in
this little green section at the bottom of the bud here. And then I'm going
to start shading in some of these
other leaves now. I'm not going to worry
right now about any of the lights and
darks on these leaves. I can start thinking about
that in the next chapter. For now, as I say, I just
want to get something down that I can build
upon for the green. I'm only going to do
this section here, so I'm going to do this kind of bulbous part and go down
a little bit further. And then that's all I'm going
to do now for this chapter. At this point, I'm happy
that I've got something down that I can build upon
with some other colors. Start using those
other colors to create a bit more depth. But by the end of
this first chapter, you should have something
that looks like this. And that is it for
this first chapter.
8. Build up the Contrast: So let's start building up
a few more colors on here and I'm going to move on
now to using the raw umber. This is a kind of light
brown color that I'm going to use a lot of on
the leaves around here. So when we look at
the reference photo, you'll see that
actually a lot of these leaves aren't
really green, they are more of a brown. So I want to start off
on this one again, and I want to be putting
some of this raw number along here as well
as a few lines, you can see along here. And I'm then going
to want to build up similar on this section and
around the bottom on here. Now notice on this one, not only are there these
thorns, I assume they are. Are they on here that I'm
going to want to draw in? But also there are a few
lines on this section. So it goes along here and up here there's this line
that goes down the center. And then there are lines going along here that I'm going to
want to begin to mark in. Now I've picked the
raw Umber to do this because it is the closest color, I would say, to the
reference photo. So I have compared all of my colors to the reference
photo and I think that the most similar
color for now that is missing on these
leaves is this brown. And what we're going to
do is we're going to keep comparing our drawing
to the reference photo, looking at the colors that
we have available to us. And just keep building
up the colors, adjusting what we've got until it matches the
reference photo. That's the easiest way to do this when you have less pencils. So once I've blocked
in these few lines along the top on this section, I also want to block
in this darker patch along the
bottom around here. We will shortly be
going over all of these darker patches with
much darker pencils. It's just helpful to mark them in initially with
a lighter pencil. And again, it gives
you that margin for error in case you need
to change something. Mark in this section
in the middle as well. I want to draw around the
outside and then shade, like we did in the last chapter,
using circular motions, pressing lightly, holding
the pencil further back, because this whole
section needs to be less of a green
and more of a brown. And let's also not
forget to add in this little corner here where this needs to be made a little bit darker,
it's a dark brown. And then I can mark in these little thorns mark in roughly where they're
going to need to be. And then I can start working on the right hand side leaf here, drawing in the main
shapes and lines I can see on this
section as well. I've done this one. I also want to mark in this section
around the bottom, I'm wanting to work my way around that lighter
patch so I can mark in where the
edge of this needs to be and then shade
out from that point. And shade in this whole section, whole bumpy section here. And then from this
point I want to put down some base layers, lower down on the stem. So right now I don't have
anything towards the bottom. I want to use this raw umber to add a light layer
of this pencil. Now the main thing to think about on the stem, lower down, is that it is shadowed towards the right hand side and
it's light on the left. So I'm going to start off by drawing a line down the center. And I'm going to add a bit more shading on the
right hand side. I will be building
upon this a lot, but for now I just want to put a slightly darker line or strip on the right hand side
where that shadowed area is, and then I can lightly shade
in the left hand side. Again, I want to get
some sort of pencil down on the paper on
this left hand side, but I don't want it to
be as dark as the right, because it is going to be a nice and light color
towards the end. From here, let's start
thinking about adding a bit more color into
the rose itself. Actually, here I'm going
to use the magenta pencil. This is more of a kind of purply red rather than just a plain
red, I'm going to call it. And I'm going to use this pencil partly to slightly
adjust the color, make it a little bit
more on the purple side. There are a few areas that
are less of a bright red, I would say, and more
of this kind of color. But I can also use
this to really start defining some
of the shapes. So earlier on in
the last chapter, all I was doing to
start with was trying to get it all roughly marked in. But I now want to start thinking about slightly
adjusting these shapes, making them look a little bit closer to the reference photo, trying to make them
a bit more accurate. So I'm going to use
this to go over a lot of the darker areas, the areas that need to
be more purply toned. So for example, on the
fold of the petal, I am wanting to shade in towards the bottom
of that petal. I'm also wanting to shade in on this shadow down the bottom. But you'll notice
I'm still doing this in the same way as I was before. Still working in circular
motions, holding the pencil, not as far back as I was before because I am
wanting to start being a little bit more accurate about where this
pencil is going. By no means holding
it near the tip. And just gradually
building up this color. I'm going over the lines, those prominent lines
down the left hand side and going over all of
this shadowed area here. I can start to be a bit more confident at this
point that I'm putting the pencil in the right place because it's all been
marked out already. I can get a bit of an idea
for what needs to be wear or maybe seeing that
I need to slightly adjust something so
I want to shade in. And add to this, I'm really just working over all of
the brighter parts, All of the brighter
and darker parts of the rose I think need to be more of a kind of purply color. And I'm just continually
building up. I'll go over an area and then I will maybe move
on to the next area. But go back to that
previous area. I just want to
gradually build it up. I don't need to build
it up all in one go. So I'm going to go over these petals on the right hand side. These need to be a fair bit darker than what
they are at the moment. And particularly
these petals here. I did mention that they look like they've got more
of a bluetone to them. We will add some blue in a
little while, but for now, let's add a bit
more of a purplely red just to begin building
up those bluetones. And then let's also go over
these areas towards the top. So really just going over those darker areas and
really defining the shapes. It's not a huge amount to
what I'm doing at the moment. And then once I'm happy
with how it's looking, once I'm happy that I've got a lot of these darker
areas marked in, and that I've got
the shapes sort of perfected and gone
over a little bit more. I want to start thinking
about kind of what is the most obvious thing
that I should add. What is the most obvious color that I should be
building up from here? And I think at this
point we want to start getting a bit
more contrast in. It's all looking a
little bit too light, it's looking a little
bit washed out. But I'm not wanting
to go straight into using something like black. I'm going to want to use as little of the black as possible. What I can use instead of the
black is the walnut brown. It is still a very dark color, but it's not going to overwhelm. It's not going to be as
over the top as the black. And as I say, I'm only putting these in the darkest places. So for example,
it's very dark in that left hand corner
down the bottom. It's also very dark
towards the bottom where the petal
sort of folds over. I will say though there's
not a huge amount of very dark areas on the flower. On the most part, the flower is made up of very
light and mid tones. But you can see the odd area where I am just
building this up. So we can look at these areas
on the reference photo, just to give you a bit more of an idea that I'm
particularly noticing, the darker areas along
here, around here, up here, and around here,
maybe a bit round here. And we'll still build up a lot more of these colors later. But for now, it's
really, as I say, just a case of we're still
trying to get our bearings, We're still trying to build up a bit more color on
these base layers. So let's go over the darker
areas on the leaves, because this is really where the majority of the
contrast is on the rose. So you'll notice that there's a very dark green along here. It's also very dark along here and this whole section here. There's also some very
dark patches around here, as I mentioned a second ago, all along here and
a line up here, and then this end is very dark as well as this
right hand side here. I'm also going to want
to build up a lot of the brown down the
side along here. And as I say, it's
best to do this with the walnut brown rather
than going in straight, really dark with
something like the black. But you'll notice that I'm still not pressing really hard. I am still pressing
nice and lightly. Because although
we are wanting to build up some
darker colors here, we are still getting
our bearings. We don't want to go in really hard with these pencils yet. We want to still allow ourselves to build
this up gradually. I'm working my way carefully
around that patch of light. I want to make sure that I'm leaving that patch of
light, nice in light, but I don't want to have a
really abrupt edge between the darker area here
and that light patch. So I'm just lightly
going around the edge. And then I can also
really clearly go around the edge
of this section. Really define that and
shade out from that point, still using those
circular motions. So I'm going over this
section up the top here. Going over these spikes again. We've already marked those
in earlier in this chapter, but now I'm a bit more confident that this is where
I want them to be. I can go over them with
the darker pencil. And then I'm going to go over this section towards
the right hand side. Then the last thing
I'm doing with this pencil for now is just going over the right hand side
of the stem down here. So I find it easier
again to mark in either edge of the stem. And then I can shade in with the circular motions in
between those lines. So at this point, it is
looking like a realistic rose. It's not looking very vibrant, it's not got a lot
of contrast to it, but a lot of the main
shapes are marked in. Before I move on, I do want to increase the contrast a
little bit more though. So at this point I am
going to use the black, but I can't stress this enough. I'm not going to press
really hard with it because I don't want to
put too much black down. Because as I said, I do think
it gets a little bit much, particularly on a more
natural object like this. And I want to make sure that I'm not pressing
super hard so that I can still go over it
with other colors just to tone down the
harshness of the black. So I'm particularly using this on the absolute darkest places, so I'm not really
going to need to use any of it on the rose itself. I'm particularly
focusing on the stems. So at the bottom of the leaf, on the left hand side, as well as particularly
the top of this section that is
darker than the rest. I'm also going to go over
the edge of the stem, down the right hand side here, going back over what we
did with the walnut brown. And I'm going to go over some of the darker patches on this leaf, towards the middle,
particularly towards the top. This section is very dark. And then I want to focus on the darker right hand side of
this leaf here. As I said. Do you think it's
looking pretty harsh at the moment, but
don't worry about that. As long as you're not
pressing too hard, we will be able to
build other colors up over the top of the black. And it will tone
this down a lot. But by the end of this chapter, you should have a rose that
looks something like this.
9. Brighten up the Colours: So now we've got our
basic outline of a rose. From here, we need to begin building up
some of the colors. So really adding some
of the brighter colors, brightening it up, and making
it look much more vibrant. So what I want to do is look
at the reference photo, compare it to the drawing, and think about what the most obvious color is that's missing. So I would say to start with, the most obvious
color that I don't have in the drawing at
the moment is a blue. As I mentioned earlier on, particularly on these petals
on the right hand side, they do have a lot of blue
or kind of purple to them. They're much cooler than
the rest of the rays and I want to build that up, so I'm using the
light ultramarine. This is a lighter
blue to just go over these areas and you can see it's just adjusting and
changing that color. It's not making it look blue, it's just adding a little bit of blue to what I've
already got here. Now, as far as how I'm
putting this down, I'm very much going about it in the same way as I did before. I'm working in circulations. I'm pressing maybe a little
bit firmer than I was before, But I wouldn't say I'm
pressing hard by any stretch. And I'm just gradually
allowing this to build up. Now, you will notice that
I'm not holding the pencil as far back as I have
been previously. Judge, just because
at this point, I do want to start being a bit more accurate with
where it's going. So I'm holding it still, not really close to the tip
but closer to the tip so that I can control where exactly
I'm putting this pencil. Let's take a minute to have
a look at the reference and really see where all of
these blue areas are. So as I mentioned,
you can see a lot of the blue around here
and around here. I'd also say you can see quite a lot all
around here and here. And the other area where I would say that there is a lot of blue is around this section,
particularly around here. You can see this is all
a bit kind of purple. I'd also say they're much
more lightly, much fainter. I can see some blue along here and maybe a little bit
along this area here. But it is definitely
at its boldest and most obvious around
here, here and here. So as we're adding in all
of these extra colors, it's not making a
huge difference necessarily to the main color, certainly not to start with. We're really just using
what we've already got and slightly adjusting
those colors. So adding in a
little bit of blue. Once we've added in the blue, we'll be able to once again, compare the drawing to
the reference photo, work out what color
is missing next. And just gradually, bit by bit, build up the color of the rose. So I'm going to add
a light layer of this blue over the whole
of the white section. It does look quite
cold at the moment, but we're going to make a
lot more of the colors, much more vibrant, Add more
colors over the top of this, so it's not going to
stay looking this cool. And once I'm happy with
all of the blue from here, we want to once again, think about the next
color that is missing, the next most obvious
color that's missing. So I would say from here
it's the bright red again. Now, we have already built up this red lightly at
the very beginning, but that was extremely
light coverage because we were only using it to
mark out the key shapes. We now want to be
using it to brighten everything up and really start giving this rose some vibrancy. It does mean that I'm very much going through in the same areas. I'm going over it exactly
the same as I did before, but I can be more confident about where I'm
putting this color. And still not pressing hard, but maybe pressing
a little bit firmer just to start building
up more vibrancy. But the general rule is if you want something to be
a brighter color, go over it more times rather
than pressing firmer. I find that that
works a lot better. So you can see how much
this is brightening it up. But I really am just going over it in the same way
as we did before. Going over the same areas with the red as we did at
the very beginning. So particularly making sure
that I'm going over the fold, for example, on this petal here and filling in a lot of
these areas at the top where it's not so
much a darker color. It's just, it's a bright red in the shadowed areas rather than the very light
kind of pinks. Now don't worry about the fact that the rose in the photo, the reference photo, is more of a pink rose and we're putting
a lot of red on this. Once we've added the white in, it will lighten up a lot and end up looking
more like a pink rose. So once I've gone
back over all of the really obvious darker areas, say all of the
shadowed areas and really brightened up
the red from here, I want to be just
generally adding a thin covering of the red over a lot of the lighter areas. Now you can see me
doing this with circular motions
as we did before. I do want to,
generally speaking, keep these areas close to white. But because we're going
to be adding white to blend this a
little bit later on, I want to give something to be able to blend
and smooth out. And I think at the moment
it looks a bit too light, the white areas look too white. So I can go over
them and just keep going over these same areas until I am happy that it's generally matching
the reference. And by that I mean more like contrast wise rather than color. It's actually much more important than we get the
contrast right on this road rather than getting
the colors right if we want this to end
up looking realistic. So after going over
all of the red, it's now looking like
a much brighter rose. But the contrast is still
not quite looking bright. So I'm going to go back to
the walnut brown and just once again go over a lot of
the areas that I did before. But now going over it
a little bit firmer, it's still using the
circular motions, but you can see that I am
pressing a bit harder. It's coming through
much brighter, particularly going over this
fold in the rose petal, and going over a lot of the
more shadowed areas up here. I don't necessarily want
these areas to look brown, I just want them to look like a darker version of the red. So I can go over it very lightly and that just
adjusts what's here, it doesn't end up
making it look brown. You'll notice. Let's
add this anywhere else that I think needs a little
bit of extra darkening. So particularly around
the edge around here, it's much more shadowed than
what I've got at the moment. And around the top around here, let's also add a
little bit more of this brown to some of
the leaves down here. So going back over some
of these spikes and building up more of the
shading around this area, and then once again thinking about the main colors
that are missing, I want to build up some more of that lighter brown
on these leaves. So going back to the raw umber and again we're just
doing the same thing, just like we did before, but we're beginning
to press a bit harder and letting
this color build up. So I'm going back over some of these lines that
are on this leaf. Going back over this triangle here and building up
some more of the brown, and then adding some,
actually now quite firm shading over this leaf. Now, I'm still not pressing
full force by any stretch, but I am pressing
firmer to really get this color looking as vibrant as possible. Now
whist, I've got this color. I'm also gonna add
a little bit of shading onto the rose itself. You can see some of
this brown color, particularly around
here and around here where I guess it's just
reflecting off of the leaf. So I can add some
light shading on here, and then I'm going to carry on working my way round the leaves. I want to add a little
bit around here as well. I can see a little hint of the
brown around this section. And then I'm going to start
focusing on the stem. Now, we have already put some
of this color on the stem, but it's all got a little bit, it looks a lot lighter
than it did now that we're building up some
of the darker colors. With the walnut brown and with the black where we
built that up before, it's kind of lost a lot of the
vibrancy of the raw umber. So we can go over that, adding a little bit more again on the right hand
side and lighter on the left because
we do want to keep that lighter shading. And then from here I'm moving on again to the most obvious
color that's missing. So I'm thinking about how these areas have now lost
a lot of their green. And although I don't
necessarily think that this is the perfect green
for these parts, if we add the green
to these leaves, we can adjust it and maybe add some yellow to make
it more of a yellowy green, which I think is a closer green to what I can see
in the reference photo. So let's do that now. Let's add a very light covering of the yellow over the
top of these parts. And you can see that that just changes that green to be more of a yellowy green rather
than that other green. It just looks a very
artificial green before, but this makes it look to me
more like a earthy green. And then I find with
every color that I add, it makes it more obvious the
colors that are missing. So now I've added
in that yellow, it becomes more obvious that the stem is missing
a lot of red. So I'm going to add
some of that red, particularly down the
center of the stem. So you can see a lot
of red down the center between the more
broad umber color and the walnut brown color. It's sort of red
down the middle. So I can add that using
these circular motions. And you can see that
with every color we add, it's getting closer. I would say to the
reference photo. Also use this red to add to some of the brown
sections up the top. I would say that there's
very much some bright reds on these leaves that we
don't have at the moment. I can also use the red
to very lightly go over the green and just
tone it down a little bit. It's gonna turn that green
into more like a brown. So let's use the raw amber. Go along the stem here. Just really brightening
it up a little bit more. And again, go over a lot of these other areas,
brightening them up. As I say, once I've
added some other colors, it makes it more apparent
which colors are missing. So I can see that now that I've added in some of
those darker browns, I need to add more
of this raw amber, particularly around here. And maybe again, going over some of the green sections
to tone it down. And then from here, the
most obvious thing that's missing is again
the darker areas. So I'm going to go back to the walnut brown and start
pressing quite firmly. Really going over
those darker areas, it's the same areas that
we've gone over before. So going back over those darker areas and really building up
some of the depth. Now at this point, I'm
actually not going to go back to the black. So this will be the darker color or the darkest color
that we will be adding. So I want to be maybe
lightly going over some of the lines on the leaves here, and then I'm going to reasonably firmly go over this section. So I really want this to now
look like a block color. I don't want to see any of those white spots of paper
showing through anymore. I just want to be building this up and making
it nice and dark. It's going to be the contrast, as I've said a number of times, that's going to be the key to
making this look realistic. And I can go over this
whole section here. And then I also, with a
nice and sharp pencil, wants to be going down the side. Nice and sharp is very
important here so that we can really control where
this pencil is going. So at this point, the rose
is looking pretty good. It still needs brightening
up a bit more, but particularly the stem, I think is looking very
good contrast wise. So in the next chapter, we can add the
finishing touches and really brighten up
the rose itself. But by the end of this chapter, you should have a rose that
looks something like this.
10. Add in the Final Details: In this chapter. Let's brighten this up and finish
this rose off. And what I want to do
to start with here is carry on with
the walnut brown. So at the end of
the last chapter, we were building up some of the contrast on the
stem of the rose. I want to build up a
little bit more contrast on the rose itself now. Now this is very
much a case of going over a lot of the same
areas we have before. So going back over
this area around here, which does need to be a
little bit darker as well as this area on the
right hand side. Now remember that although we're making these areas darker, if we need them to be
more like a bright red, that is okay, we can go back
over them with the red. I think right now the important
thing is to try and get the contrast right on this
more than anything else. And I'm just going
back and forth, going back over this area. Now as they say, I
like to kind of come away from an area for a little
bit, work on another area. And then it shows
me I need to add a bit more to that first area. I find that the
easiest way to work. I'm also going to add a little bit more shading around here, and then I think I'm happy
with the contrast on the rose. I'm now going to once
again go back to that bright red and
brighten things up again. So I'm noticing
that around here, this needs to be
more like a pink, but right now it's
looking a bit too white. So I'm going to lightly go over these areas and just
add some of the red. Now remember, we will be adding white to this in a little while, so it will end up looking a bit more pink than it
does at the moment. For now, we just want to be
lightly working with the red. And I'm also going
to generally go over a lot of the
areas towards the top. So I'm really going back
over those areas where I used the brown and generally any areas that
needs to be brighter, red and just building
it up a bit further. So particularly
this shadowed area as well as some of the lines
down this left hand side. And then I'm going to
keep working through in a similar way to
what I did before. So from here I'm adding a
bit more of the magenta. This is the more purply red. And going over those
same areas again, just slightly
adjusting the color. So moving slightly away from bright red and into
a more purple color. So I can mix these two colors by layering them on
top of each other. And I'm again, just going
over all of these red areas and really building up this
more purply red color. So particularly this area
around here, as well as, again, that shadow from
the folded over petal. And then once I'm
happy with that, I can go back to the blue like we did before and again make these areas more like
a bluish purple. Brighten these up
and then go over a lot of the other areas where
I added the blue before. Now you'll notice
that I am really just going through the same
process again and again. I just like to look
at the reference, compare it to the drawing, work out what I
think is missing, and keep building up
those colors until eventually I feel like it's a reasonably close
match to the reference. I think it's important to
remember that you don't need it to be exactly the
same as the reference, we just want it to
look reasonably close. So building up the
blue on some of these areas towards the top
as well, Nice and lightly. And then I can also build up
some blue down the bottom. So from here I'm generally
happy with the colors. What I want to do now is add in that white to start
blending things out and making the
lighter red areas look more like a pink. Now what I'm doing here
is pressing quite firmly, so you can see that I'm
applying more pressure. I'm holding the pencil
closer to the tip so that I am able to
apply more pressure. I do still want to try and make this as
smooth as possible, so I'm still working in circular motions
to build this up. And you can see that it is
just smoothing everything out. And what I want to
be doing is working over all of the lighter areas. Any areas that are bright red, I don't want to be
putting this color over the top of if I want
them to stay bright red, because it will end up turning
them a little bit pink. But some of the
areas that I would like to look more like a pink, it is a good idea to put this over at the top of those areas. Not only will it smooth it out, but it will change that
color a little bit. So I'm going over all of the lighter areas with
this firm pressure and you can see that quite
quickly it is making a big difference to
the color of the rose. It's beginning to look more like a pink rose rather
than a red rose. Once I've done the rose itself, I'm also going to blend this area down on the left
hand side on the stem. And then after blending that, some of the areas
are looking like they want to be a bit of
a brighter red again. So I am going to go back to the bright red and go
over some of these. Just brighten it
up one more time. So going back over this
line, down the side, which is quite a bright
red on the photo. And going back over the stem and brightening this up as well. So now I'm generally
happy with the rose. I'm going to add some
final few tweaks with the walnut brown just to once again really
make these areas look more. Just to once again really
add to the contrast in these areas and just
blend out a few parts. But then that is it.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I look forward to seeing
you in the next one.
11. Summary: All right, and that is
the end of this course. I hope you've enjoyed it
and you found it helpful. So to layer, you want
to be working very lightly and gradually
building up the color. I like to start off
by putting down some base layers and
really beginning to map out where
everything needs to go and those really
basic key colors. I can then start comparing my drawing to the
reference photo, really thinking about
which color is missing, and gradually building up
the colors of the rose. As I get to the end, I
can start pressing a little bit firmer to blend
all of the colors together. Now please do upload your
roses into the projects. I would love to see what you've drawn and if you've
enjoyed this course, please do leave a review. Happy drawing guys and I'll
see you in the next course.
Gemma Chambers, Pencil Artist
