Transcripts
1. Introduction: Layering is one of the absolute
fundamental techniques that I use in all
watercolor pencil drawings. It is very much a
core technique. I want to show you
today that actually, you don't need a huge set of
pencils in order to layer. I'm going to show
you how to layer with just the set of 12. My name is Jemma Chambers, and I've been making online
art tutorials since 2020. I've helped tens of thousands of people improve their arts. But today, I want to focus
on a specific topic. Let's look at layering with
only a small set of pencils. I will show you all of the
materials you'll need, as well as some of the
key and core techniques. We can then use
those techniques to work step by step
drawing these shoes. Let's get started.
2. Class Project - Drawing Some Shoes: Last project, we will be
drawing this pair of shoes. And I've picked this
for a few reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, it has amazing contrast. It has some really
good light areas, some really nice darks and quite a good
variety of mid tones. Also, because we're just
using a set of 12 for this, I particularly like that
there are a lot of colors. All of the different patches on the shoes are all
different colors, and the shoe laces are also
quite nice and vibrant. So I think it's going to
be a really good drawing to practice with just
those 12 colors. Have included the exact pencils I'm using in the
class resources. So if you haven't got
exactly the same set of 12, as I do, you can
check that you've got some reasonably
close matches. I've also included my sketch outlines in
the class resources. I will talk you through
how to create your own, but if you don't want to,
then those are there. Finally, when you
finished your drawing, please do upload it to
the class 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 Watercolor Pencil Drawings: Talk about the
materials you'll need to not only complete
this course, but also generally draw
with watercolor pencils. And the most obvious
thing you'll need is a set of
watercolor pencils. I use the faber casta
watercolor pencils, but you don't need to use
exactly the same set as me. I do recommend using slightly
higher quality pencils. Don't use the cheapest
of the cheap, simply because they
do tend to have a bit more pigment to them. They have nicer brighter colors if you get that slightly
higher quality. As I say, I particularly
like the fabricsa ones. The next thing you'll
need is paper, but you want to get the
right kind of paper. You specifically need
watercolor paper. Watercolor paper generally
comes in two different types. There's hot pressed
and cold pressed. Hot press is a really
nice and smooth paper. Cold pressed is a
bit more textured. I like drawing specifically
on hot pressed paper. I find it much easier
when it comes to putting down all of the details with the pencils at the end. I also recommend getting a
paper that is 100% cotton. Again, I just find that it works much better with
the watercolor pencils. Next thing you'll need is some way of sharpening
the pencils. If you're using exactly
the same pencils as me, the faber castell
pencils are a bit larger than a standard
colored pencil. So I have a pencil sharpener
with a larger hole. You don't need any specific
kind of pencil sharpener, you just want something
that's going to make a really good
and sharp point. Next up, you will
need a paintbrush. You'll need some
way of activating these pencils with the water. Not using anything
fancy for this. This is just a standard
watercolor brush and a reasonably small one. I like to work in
quite small sections. You will also need something
to hold the water. I'm just using a glass
from the kitchen. Next up, if you want to
create your own sketch, you will need a ruler, graphite pencil, and an eraser, and I'll cover a little bit later how you need to use those. Next thing you'll need is actually not something
you'll be able to buy. This is something you're
going to have to make. I'm talking about
color swatches. So I always do for every set of pencils that I own is watch
out all of the colors. I like to work in rainbow order, and for each color, go from as light as I can
go to as dark as I can go, and then I label
it with the color. That shows me what the pencil actually
looks like on the paper. Specifically, the paper
that I'm going to be using so hot pressed
watercolor paper in this case. Once I put the pencil down, I then like to just on
half of this swatch, take some water and activate the bottom half of the swatch. Again, so I can see what
the pencil looks like, dry, and also what the pencil looks like once it's been activated. In actuality, the pencil can look so different
when activated, much maybe brighter
in a lot of cases. The final thing I will need
is some way of looking at a reference ft. Because
I draw realistically, every drawing that I create, I work from a reference. I find this the easiest way to make something look as
realistic as possible. What I need is some way to
look at that reference. Now, I always look on my iPad. I particularly
like it that I can zoom in and see all
of the fine details. You don't need to have an iPad that you could print
out the reference te. So you will need a set
of watercolor pencils, the right kind of paper,
a pencil sharpener, a watercolor brush, some water, a ruler pencil and erasor, a set of swatches, and some way to look at
the reference photo. Next up, let's talk about the core techniques that
you'll need to know.
4. Key Techniques: Let's talk about the core techniques that
you'll need to know. And the most important one, the topic of this whole
course is layering. So layering is
where you gradually build up the pencil
one layer at a time. You want to be building up the color to create
a much richer color. I like to do this in
my watercolor pencils by generally working
in four main layers. I always start off by
putting down all of the lightest colors and I then activate that
with the water. I then wait for it
to completely dry so at least half an hour and then build up all of the
mid tone colors. I can then activate that
and then do the same for the darkest colors and activate with the
water one more time. That's already three
layers built up. They haven't got a huge
amount of detail to them, but they are on their way to creating some nice
and rich colors. Once that has
completely dried again, I can then take
the time to go in, put in all of the details and gradually build up
the color a bit more. But I've already got all of these base layers built up to
create that nice undertone. That's the general
way that I work for all watercolor
pencil drawings, and working with the set
of 12 isn't any different. In terms of how I specifically put the pencil down,
generally speaking, particularly when I'm working in those first three layers, I want to be putting
down the pencil in as smooth a way as possible. I'm not worrying
about building up any sort of texture
or any details. The main way that I build up that nice and smooth color is to work really
nice and lightly. I don't want to be putting down an absolutely huge amount of the pencil and
pressing really, really hard because that's
never going to create a nice and soft finished layer. So my goal is to work
nice and lightly, and what I like to do is hold the pencil further back
than you might expect. Rather than holding it
really close to the tip, if I hold it about
halfway down the barrel, that stops me from being
able to press too hard. I can create some nice
light pencil through this. Other thing I want
to do to help me put down the pencil
nice and smoothly is to work in circular motions rather than scribbling
back and forth. Working in circular
or val motions just puts down the pencil in
a much more consistent way. Finally, I particularly
want to make sure that I'm always working
with a sharp pencil. Again, the pencil
will go down in a much more consistent
way with a sharp point. The next thing that I really
want you to bear in mind is putting down the right
amount of the pencil. As I said, you don't want
to press really hard and just put down
absolutely tons. That's never going to
create a nice smooth layer. Equally, you do have to
put down a decent amount. If you put down
the tiniest bit of pencil and then activate
it with the water, it's just not going to do
a huge amount of anything. You want to put down
a reasonable amount so that when you activate it, you can get a nice
vibrant color. And this is where
the swatches are really helpful
because you can see on each end of the gradient where we put
down a tiny bit of pencil. When we put down a
decent amount of pencil. You can see how it will
activate with the water. And this is actually
a really good time to mention about
activating with the water. You generally speaking, want to activate from light to dark. You can see that I've done
this on the swatches. I've activated from
the light end up. If you activate from the
darker side towards the light, if you've got a
gradient, for example, you're just going to pull all of that pigment into
the light area, and you're going to end up
with a much muddier finish. Final thing to bear in mind, specifically when activating
with the water is that you don't want to
put down too much water. You don't want to have a
soaking paint brush and try and activate with that's not going to create
a very nice effect. Generally speaking, what I do is dip my paint
brush in the water. I then tend to wipe it on
the back of my hand and I find that that is roughly
the right amount of water. But do practice with it, I would say it's
better to try and activate with too little
water than too much. Before we move on to
starting the drawing. The most important thing
that I want you to know about specifically
drawing with 12 pencils is that you don't need to get
perfect color matches. What we're generally doing
is always looking for the closest color rather
than the perfect color. It's much more important to get the contrast right
rather than the color. So those are the
main things you're gonna need to know to
complete this course. Let's start working through the process of
drawing these shoes.
5. Studying the Reference Photo: Whenever I draw any picture, whether it's watercolor
pencils, color pencils, or graphite, I
always like to take a minute to have a look
at the reference photo. I want to have a look at all of the most obvious things that I'm going to need
to bear in mind. I find this a really good way to get your bearings
with the picture. So let's have a look now, and you'll see what I'm
specifically noticing. The first thing that
I'm noticing is how many different colors
are making up the shoe. It's pretty much that each of these panels of the shoes
are a different color. I can see standard light blue, and that's in a few different
places around the shoes. There's also a kind of
pinky orange color, slightly more earthy
orange color. There's more purple blue, as well as yellowy green, and then green laces, green laces, and blue laces. So there's so much that I'm
going to need to mark in. I would say that
they're all reasonably kind of muted colors. They're not really strong
and vibrant colors, which means that we are
going to have to do quite a lot of adjusting of
the colors as we work our way through because the colors in the set of 12 are
all very vibrant. So we're going to
need to tone them down as we build up all
of the different layers. Also noticing how many fine
details are within the shoes. There is a lot of stitching. So all around here, there's
all this lovely stitching. There's this texture on
this part of the shoe. There's all of
these dots on here, and then some much
bigger stitches around the bottom of the shoe. And adding in all
of these details is what's going to really
bring everything together. Finally, I'm really noticing how much shadow there
is within the shoe. I think the main area that you initially focus on is
the front section, and this is actually
quite bright. But as we look towards, particularly between the laces
and this back shoe here, look at all of the
different shadowed areas, and drawing in these is what's going to make
the whole thing pop. All of the shadow along
here, for example, this is what's going to make
the drawing really work.'s going to be easiest
to block in all of the colors and then add in all of the detail
towards the end. I am noticing that we've
got this logo here. We really are going to need to be very precise about this. I want to make sure that I get this as accurate
as I possibly can. Those are the main
things that I'm noticing initially.
Let's get drawing.
6. Sketching the Outlines: Before we can put down
any watercolor pencils, we first need to
draw out our sketch. I want to have a really nice
and light sketch that I can use to map out where all of the
watercolor pencil needs to go. The main method I use for this
is called the grid method. This is where you put a grid on your drawing paper and a grid
on your reference photo, and you just draw what's
in each individual square. This stops you from looking
at the picture as a whole, and you just focus on the
shapes in each square. Now, I do go through this in a lot more detail on my beginners guide to
watercolor pencils, and I will link that in
the class description. I've drawn what's
in every square, I can then take an eraser and raise all of those grid lines. Now, the most important
thing here is that I do want the sketch at the end to
be as light as possible. You can see how light this is at the very start
of the drawing. I have included in
the project details, not only a reference
vote with a grid on it, but I've also included my sketch outlines if you don't
want to create your own. So now that we have our
sketch, let's start drawing.
7. Build up the Lightest Layers: I want to do in this
first section is focus on building up
the lightest colors. I want to be looking for the lightest color in each section, so there are loads of lightest
colors over this drawing. So let's look at this
one color at a time. And I'm going to start off by looking at the blue section. We've got this same
blue here, here, I'd say that this is pretty much the same blue as well
as here and here. What I want to do is
look at this color and find the closest color
to that in my set of 12. I would say the closest color to that is the
light ultramarine, that is the lighter blue, and all I want to do is block this in in all
of those sections. Now, when I'm looking for the
lightest color in an area, particularly when I'm
working with a set of 12, it is so important to remember that it doesn't
need to be perfect. Trying to get an absolutely perfect match isn't
going to happen, but this light blue is certainly the closest
that I can get. I'm going to work through
these one section at a time, just blocking in any
area with this blue. Main thing that I
want to be doing here is pressing really
nice and lightly. I don't want to be putting
loads of the pencil down. You want to remember that
when you add in the water, when we activate
this with the water, it's going to get so
much more vibrant, so we don't need to put
down too much pencil. Now, in terms of how I'm
putting the pencil down, you'll notice that
I'm not holding the pencil really
close to the tip. I'm holding it about
halfway down the barrel. What this does is it stops me from being able to
press too hard. I say, we don't want to put down absolutely
layers of the color, and we want to be able to
build up a lot of layers one on top of each
other as we go here. So pressing nice and lightly by holding it further back is
going to help us do that. I do also want to
try and get down the pencil in as smooth
a way as possible. So I'm working in circular motions rather than just scribbling back and forth. You can see I'm kind
of making ovals here. I am filling in this section you can see me
doing here as well. That is this area here. Now, this isn't the
same blue as here. This is a much more purply blue. But I would say that
the main color in this section is still
this very light blue. We will add another color
to this in a second, though to make it more
of a purply blue. Once again, you can
see me working in these nice circular motions, and you can just see me working through here one
section at a time. Now, something that
is really important that will make your life so much easier is you want to
make sure that you are frequently
sharpening your pencil. Trying to put down the pencil in a really nice and smooth
way is going to be much, much more difficult if
you have a blunt pencil. So I am frequently taking my
pencil away to sharpen it. I'm also finding here it's
easier to draw in the outline and then shade in after I've
completed that outline. J to help me get my bearings
a little bit better. Notice that I'm in no
way worrying about any lighter areas or darker
areas within the shoes. I literally just want to block in these solid blocks
of blue for now. Now, before I move on
to the other shoe, I'm just going to add
a few little patches in between the laces. So you can see a couple of
light blue sections here. And then there's also some
light blue in between here. So let's just mark these in. Obviously, I can
use my sketch to work out where I need
to be adding these in. You can see very faintly the lines I've marked
in of the shoe laces. Move on to the other shoes. So once again, blocking in
these one section at a time. Now, beyond the
patches on the shoes, the other area that
I need to mark in with this blue
is the shoelaces. Now, these shoelaces on this
shoe on the right are blue, obviously, they're
green on this side. What I need to be
doing in the shoelaces is looking for the
lightest color. The blue of the
shoelaces, generally, I would say, is darker than
this patch, for example. But the lightest areas,
and you can see, particularly here are pretty
much the same blue as here. So let's use the
same blue that we've been using already to
fill in these shoelaces. And then in the next
couple of sections, we can then, once
we've activated this, build up maybe some
darker blue to make it look like a kind
of different blue to the rest of the shoes. So you can see I'm drawing
in the edge of the shoelace, where this shoelace
is going and then using circular motions
to fill that in. The same here, it can once
again fill around the edge of where this section of shoelace is going to be and
to fill that in. That's all I'm going to
do working my way down. Now, I am taking my
time as I go here and you'll notice that I once again have sharpened my pencil, so it is able to be
really nice and accurate, and I can just mark these in. Once again, not
worrying about where the lighter or darker areas are. Once I'm happy that I filled
in all of the blue areas, I want to work my way through all of the colors I can
see within the shoe. Once again, we're looking
for the closest match. It's not necessarily
going to be a perfect Also not going to worry
that the colors are likely to be much more
vibrant than I actually need. So Thinking about this more
purple patch I mentioned, where the blue is a
slightly different color, I slightly want to adjust
that color by putting a very, very small amount
of the magenta. This is kind of a pinky purple, and I'm going to put the
tiniest lightest bit on these blue sections. You can see how
lightly I'm pressing. I really don't need to do a lot, and when I activate
it with the water, it is going to be a completely different color to the blue. Once again, notice
that I'm holding the pencil much
much further back than you might expect to really help me press
nice and lightly. So I realized on one of
those bluey purple patches, I haven't filled in
this light blue first. So let's just go over this
section with the light blue. And then on I'm happy that
I've marked in that patch, I can carry on with that magenta pencil to just
add that slight purple tinge. And you will see when we
activated this with water, how different that looks. Let's look for the next color that I want
to be filling in, and actually, I'm going to
focus on this area here. This is a kind of
orange pinky color. You'll also notice
that this color down here is very different
to this color up here. I would say that this
is the only area that I have this color. Once again, I want to be
looking for the closest match, not necessarily
the perfect match. I think the closest that I've got is actually more of a red a very, very small amount because I want it
to look more pink. So here is the red in my set. This is the deep scarlet red. And I'm going to start off by filling in the edges of
all of the sections. So filling in around
the edge of the logo, also around the
bottom of the shoe. And then I'm going
to press so so lightly to just
block in this area. Now, because I'm
working so lightly, and I'm not able to build up some of the pencil by
going over a few times, it is going to look a
little bit scratchy. But that's okay. When we
activate this with the water, it will look much, much better. Once again, working
in circular motions, and as I say, I really only need to put the red on this section. I don't need to
worry about any of the other areas that I think are a slightly
different color. I'm particularly looking
at this area here. This is the same color as here. There's also that
similar kind of color around here around here, as well as here and
the sole of the shoe. I think all of it is all a pretty similar underlying color. Think the closest
color that I have to that is the burn ochre. So I'm going to work my
way around the shoe. Once again, filling in all
of the patches that are that kind of orange
earthy color. Some areas are lighter like
the leather patches here, I would say, are a much
lighter burn ochre. Whereas the sole of the shoe is a much darker boulder color. I'm going to fill
them in all the same, but I will in the next
few sections be able to increase the kind of
intensity of color on the sole of the shoe
and build up more. Again, I'm doing this in
exactly the same way as I did before working
in circular motions. And as I say, it's not about getting the perfect
match of color. We want to just try and get
the close as much we can, and we will be able to
adjust all of this later. Let's fill in the same
color on the other shoe. I do think it's starting to resemble shoes
reasonably quickly. Let's work all down
the side here as well. This area is actually going to be in a reasonably deep shadow. You can see, look at all
of the shadow along here, but there is a little
bit of that kind of burn ocher color poking
through at the top. So I am needing to
put this color here, but then I will be building
darker colors over the top. Now, fill in the base of the
shoe, the sole of the shoe. So working one shoe at a time. I can fill in this area. Here, I want to get a nice
crisp edge so I can see clearly where one shoe
ends and another begins. And then I can fill in the
base of this whole other shoe. Once again, trying to get
it as smooth as possible. But if it's a little
bit scratchy, if it's a little bit
kind of patchy, is okay. It will all come out when
we blend it with the water. I carry on working my
way through the patches, and I'm now looking at more
of the yellowy patches. Now, these colors here, they are a tricky color that I think are
mostly going to come together when we add in
all of the final details. In terms of the color
I can see here, there is a little bit of yellow, a little bit of green, and maybe even a little bit of the same color
that we've got here. I'm going to do,
I'm going to start off with the yellow, really, really lightly putting
down the tiniest amount. You can see how lightly
I'm working here. Actually, I'm also going
to put a little bit of the yellow on this area here. It's not quite the
burn ochre on its own. I'm just going to build
up a small amount, and we can adjust that as we go. Let's also put
down the yellow on the other yellowy patches
I can see on the shoe. Then let's use the
burn ochre pencil to go over the top of
that color again, really, really lightly, just so that it will slightly tone down that
yellow and adjust the color. In actuality, I think
it's going to be very bright yellow when we
activate this with the water. But as I say, we can
tone that down as we go. Let's move on now to the
shoelaces on the left hand shoe, and these are quite
bright green shoelace. Again, we've only got two
greens in our set of 12. The closest green is the
lighter green, I would say. A lot of the shoelaces are
really quite shadowed, so we just want to be looking
at these lightest areas and the lightest areas are this color here,
this color here. I think they will look a
lot more toned down when we add in the darker
shadowed areas. So this is getting
a lot easier now. As I'm building
up the colors and really starting to get
my bearings it's much easier to see where
these shoelaces are because we filled in a lot
of the areas around it. We need to go over
the shoelaces. I also want to go over
this area at the top here. I'm also going to very lightly put the smallest amount
of this green over the yellow section just to
slightly adjust that color. This point, I have
something down on every area of the
shoe, pretty much. Certainly all of
the lighter areas. What I now want to do is
activate this with the water, and I'm going to
go about this in exactly the same way as I did when putting
down the pencil. I want to be working one color
and one section at a time. I'm starting off on
this blue section here, and I just want to go
over this one area. Remember, you don't
need absolutely tons of water just a little bit
enough to activate it. I'm going generally around the edge of each section
nice and carefully. And then working in circular
motions just like I do when putting down the pencil to try and get it as
smooth as possible. In actuality is never going
to be perfectly smooth. It's always going to be a little bit patchy, but that's okay. As we build up all
of the color here, it will start to smooth out
as we build up the layers. So let's focus on
this patch here, and you can see how much more of a nice solid block
this makes the color. And then let's work on this
section down the bottom. As I say, I'm just
going to work through here one section at a time. Now, I am making
sure, particularly when I'm switching from blending one color to another
that I'm giving my paintbrush a
really nice wash. I don't want to risk
muddying the colors. Let's go through one shoelace or one section of
shoelace at a time here. There's really not a huge amount to activating with the water. I do think it's
my favorite part. It's just really satisfying. Really nice to see it become
a solid block of color. So once I'm happy that
I filled in all of the light blue areas where we just put down that light
ultra marine color. Let's also activate the
more purply blue sections where I also put the magenta. So you can see here that
just putting down that tiny, tiny bit of magenta, what huge difference
it's made to the color, it is so much more purple than the just ultra
marine sections. Let's work through here. Once again, you can
see me working in those circular motions
with the paint brush. Then I can move onto
the burn ochre area work around here. Just
be really careful. I don't want to risk smudging the burn ochre onto
the shoelace section. I think the burn Ochre
is a color that actually changes quite a lot when you
activate it with the water. I think that it is a much
more orange color when activated versus a more
brownish color when it's not. Let's go over the
ready pink area here. Just nice and lightly, I'm
starting from the top and working my way around
that tick to the bottom, and I want to have a
really crisp line between this section and the
purple section next to it. Then let's just think about
activating this yellow area. So look at how
much brighter this becomes when adding in the
water. Just the yellow. Even though we added
some of the light green and also a little bit
of the burn ochre. It still just looks so vibrant, so we will need to be
turning that down a little bit later on in
the drawing, but that's The final thing I can do is work on these shoelaces
working through here. So, by the end of
this first chapter, you should have
something down on all of the lightest areas. It does look a bit too vibrant. It looks too bright,
but that's okay. We can tone that down
a little bit later. It'll tone down
naturally when we start adding in the mid tones
and the darker tones. But that is the end of
this first section.
8. Build up the Midtones: We've got all of the
lightest colors filled in. I want to start adding
in the mid tones. And actually, for the most part, these mid tones are
going to be added in using mostly one color. We're mostly going to need
to use the walnut brown. So when we look at
the reference photo, the mid tones are generally
around this middle section. So all around here, there's mid tones around here. It obviously gets much
darker as it gets to the shoe underneath. Here. But around
this sort of line, there's a lot of mid tones here. There's a lot of mid
tones around some of the more shadowed areas
in between the laces, around the edges
here, for example. Again, it obviously goes very dark as well
around the edge, but the mid tones are
kind of more around here. And all of these
areas or a lot of these areas are very
much a dark brown. So what's going to be easiest is if I use the worn out brown to fill in all areas that are either a mid tone or darker. As I say, the mid tones turn
into the darker values. We'll end up with much
richer darker values if we're putting them over the top of this brown, for example. So what I want to do is
work around the whole shoe, filling in all of
these darker areas. Now, this isn't a
process where we need to be adding in all of the
absolute finest details. That's something that we're
going to be doing once we've finished activating
this with the water. But what I do want to do is get a really good block in of
all of the main shapes. This is kind of all part
of me getting my bearings, so that everything
is much easier as I work my way through to
both the darker colors and those fine details. Think it's easiest to just work through in quite
a methodical way. I'm going to start at
the top and work my way down focusing on the left shoe first and then the right shoe. So I'm working my way
down these shoelaces. I want to be thinking
about not only the very dark shadows around, particularly the edges
of the shoelaces, but I also want to
look at the shadows on shoelace. So, for example, on this little part here, this little bit of shoelace there is quite a deep and brown, I would say, shadow here. There's also quite a dark
line along this edge, and this edge, it's much
much lighter here, though. So I don't want
to be putting any of the brown in this section, but I do want to be building
up a light layer here, and then I want to be
building up more of the brown around this area. Here. The same on this shoelace. You can see it's very
light along here, much darker along the
bottom half here. But then there's a
much darker shadow underneath around here. So you can see me building up that pencil just
really, really lightly. It really isn't
going to take a lot, particularly because
when we activate this, it's going to get
so much darker. I do want this section of the shoelace to be a
little bit more shadowed. This is going to be a reasonably
time consuming process, but it's not too complicated because everything's already split into sections. So we have the
different sections of the shoelaces, for example. I just need to look at
each of those sections one part at a time and fill in what I can
actually see here. So as I said, there's a bit of a dark shadow on the bottom
section of that shoelace. Looking at this shoelace, here, it has a line going
up the middle. So you can see this
line going along And then I can see a
curve shape around here, a curve shape around here and a kind of triangle shape here. I just want to try and
replicate those shapes, some of which I can still see
from my sketch underneath. So as I mentioned, there are some lighter areas I want to put a little
bit of the brown, but not too much, and then there are some much darker areas. The much darker areas we
will be going back over in the next section when we move on to building up
those darkest values. I do want to build up
a reasonable amount of the brown right now, though. Am pressing a little bit firmer than I did in
the first section, particularly when I'm building
up those darker areas. But I'm by no means
pressing full force. I want to build up a little bit more of the
color. You can see here. But I don't want to go in
really hard with that pencil. I only need to add a little bit more pressure to really build up a
lot of the color. As I say, I think it's really
worth taking your time over this area because if
we can get this right now, it's going to make life
so much easier from here. So let's have a quick look
at the reference photo. I'll again, I'll show
you what I'm seeing, particularly on these laces. So all of the laces when you
really look at them actually have maybe darker values
than you'd expect. So on this lace
here, for example, there's a tiny light section, a tiny light
triangle up the top. But all around here, this needs a reasonable amount of
the brown building up, particularly on the line against this section of
lace, so along here. On this lace going along here, we need to build up a reasonable amount in
this section here, but I don't want to put any as it works its
way along the top. And again, on this section here, you can see a really crisp
line along here and along here that then fades up into
a much lighter section here. So I want to do that and really
be looking at each lace. And this is where
because I spent my time building up the sketch, it's really, really going
to make my life a lot easier that I can work
through these one at a time. As I've made my way
down to the bottom. I'm just going to
have a quick look, see if there's anything else, particularly on the
top half of the shoe on the left here that I
need to be adding in. It's really just this
seam along here. This is quite a dark
seam along here. Let's just lightly draw
that in and I can use where these colors are separated
where I drew them in earlier. I just want to put
a line along here. Then from here, I can start
working on this shadow, which separates the two shoes. I want to work my way from
the top down from here. You'll notice along
where these shoes are separated a really crisp line separating that left shoe
from the right shoe. I have already put quite
a crisp line around the edges just so I could see where the shoelaces
were going to end, and this is where I can
gently fade that out. What I want to do is look at where the shadow basically ends. So the shadow it's not a very abrupt end.
It's a nice, soft edge to the shadow. But it
essentially stops along here, then it goes down here
up and you can see where this kind of
wiggly shadow is ending. There's a very thin
shadow along here, and then it extends
all the way down. So I'm really thinking about that line where
that shadow ends. I want to be trying to
shade up until that point, but then obviously, I don't
want that really abrupt end. So I am just doing a
really nice and soft edge. You can see me marking in where I think that
line needs to end, and then I can shade to
the shoe on the left. Now, just like in
the first chapter, all of this is
going to be so much easier if you do frequently
sharpen your pencil. Working through,
particularly because we're adding in so much detail. Doing that with a
nice and sharp pencil is going to make the pencil
much easier to control. I think it just puts down a much smoother and
more consistent color. So work along here, and you can see I can really get to where the edges of
those shoelaces are. I'm just going to work down this whole section down
the center here. Not going to worry
too much that I am to a degree
covering up some of the colors that I've
already marked in because this is just a really
shadowed area. And if part of the shoe, I can't really see the color that I think I
should at the end, I can always add
that color back in. So I want to carefully
go along the line here. I can still see my
sketch line when one shoe is ending and
the other one begins. So let's carefully
go along here. I want to be extending
this shadow out, as I said, into a point. And then the shadow
also from that point, pretty much goes
straight down to the shadow goes along
here and then down, although it is a little bit deeper all around and
underneath here, and then back So let's add that
in in a second. For now, I just want to
be shading this in over the top of the sole of the shoe that I've
got here already. And then let's, as I say,
shade around underneath, I want to leave that
central section, which needs to be a
little bit lighter. I can go around the
bottom of the shoe. Now, I'm generally happy
with that central line. I need to work down the shoelaces on this
right hand shoe as well. And this is very, very similar
to the left hand shoe, although maybe a
little bit simpler. So this time, looking
at the browns here, we don't have a lot of brown
on the shoelaces themselves. The shoe laters are obviously a different color to these ones. So for the shadowed
areas on here, Certainly on the mid tones, I want to be using more like a dark blue rather than a brown. But I do need to use
the brown along here, for example, along here up here, all around some of the
shadows here that I will use a darker color in the next section when we
do the darkest values. I want to get all of this mapped in with the brown
pencil for now. So all of these shapes are here. And as I said,
I can use my sketch and the lines that I've
already got marked in here, just to give me a little bit of a guide and make
this a bit easier. So as I say, this is much simpler than the left hand side. Once I get to the bottom, I'm generally for now happy with what I've added in
with the walnut brown. What I want to do
from here is thinking about any other mid tones
that I need to add. So I'm particularly
thinking about how I mentioned on the
shoelaces that we need a darker blue to
fill in a lot of the shadows on these
blue shoelaces. So let's move on to
a darker blue now. In my set of 12, I only have two blues. I've got the light ultramarine that we used in
the last section, and I've also got the thalo
blue that I'm using now. This is a bit more
of a brighter. I think of it as a
more standard blue. I want to be putting
this anywhere where I want to make things
a little bit brighter. A little bit on the label, I'm going to add a bit on the blue section along
the shadow here. Just a tiny bit to
brighten this up. I'm going to start focusing
on putting this on the shadowed areas
on those shoelaces. As I mentioned, just like we
were doing a second ago with the walnut brown on the more shadowed areas
of the green shoelace, let's do the same on the blue. So, for example, I want to be adding a reasonable amount here, but I don't want to add it
in this light patch here. It's all very dark
along here as well, and there's this very
dark blue line here, and it's also a darker color
along here and lighter here, so I want to be building up
the blue in this section. Just generally
where one shoelace is going behind
another like here, you can see that we need a
more crisp line here and then a darker area of
shading along here. I would say that the blue
that I'm adding here, particularly when
I've activated it is maybe a little bit too
bright, but that's okay. Again, we can tone it down
when we get towards the end. But we haven't got
a huge amount of choice with the colors
with the set of 12. So what we need to do is just pick the closest
match that we have to each color rather than trying to get it
absolutely perfect. I'm generally happy
with those shoelaces on the right hand side. Let's think about any other mid tones that we need to add. From here, I'm noticing
that the sole of the shoe is not looking as
rich as I would like it. I'm actually going to use
the same color that I used in the last chapter
with the lightest colors, this burn ochre, to
just go over some of the shoe again to make the
colors a little bit richer. Particularly wanting to
build some up towards the left hand side
and also along here. I'm noticing that there's
a very light strip here. I want to avoid this area, but build up more of the burn ochre at the top and
also at the bottom, and we also need to add some darker colors towards
the front of the shoe here. There's this kind of
triangular shadow. Let's go along the top here
and then underneath as well, leaving that lighter
line in the middle. Just adding a light coating.
I don't need to add lads. I just want to make
it a little bit more of a solid color. I'm also going to
use the walnut brown to fill in a bit more shading, as I mentioned on the front of the shoe here, there's
this triangular Now, whilst I've got the
walnut brown back out, I think another area
that I'm going to add this to is the tick here. It's actually more
of a black color, but if I put a brown underneath first, in
the next section, we can add black
over the top of it, and I think it's just
going to give it a little bit more pop and
make it stand out a lot more. So I'm just going to go around the edge like I usually would go a nice crisp line
around the outside, and then I can shade it in, and although it looks a little bit scratchy at the moment, when we activate this with
the water in a second, it will look like a
much more solid mark. This point, I think I am generally happy
with the midtones. What I want to do is activate
this with the water, and then we'll be
able to think about adding in the darkest values. So let's start off by activating this area
down the bottom. On the most part, I
just want to work from the left hand side to the right hand side whilst
activating the pencil here. It's different to what we did in the last section because I was very much focusing on
working one color at a time. But now, because
we're only really working with a couple of colors. It's not as complicated as it was with the
lightest values. I'm literally going to work
from the left to the right, particularly so that I'm
not smudging anything. So I can just carefully
go along this line here. You see how much bolder, particularly the brown looks. Let's go over this logo here, just blocking this all in. As I say, I think
this is going to make a great base to go
over with the black. It's going to make
it look much richer. All around here, and
then I can start focusing on the laces, which is going to be the most complicated part to activate. Most important thing that I do here is really take my time, but also be very careful not to be blending the darker areas
into the lighter areas. So I am still generally
working from the top down. But you'll see that I'm
working, for example, now on the lighter brown
area on the shoelace. Now activate the much darker
area directly underneath it. But before I go back to a lighter area on
another shoelace, I need to make
sure that I really thoroughly wash my
paint brush so that I'm not just putting all
of that darker pigment all over the shoelace. So I can go along the edges here before washing it and then
doing the middle section. So again, on this area, you can see how much pigment must be getting on
my paint brush. So I can go over these
darker areas first. I want to be using a really
nice and clean brush when going over
the lighter areas, so I can clean my brush and then just blend the
edges out here, and it just creates
a much nicer effect. I don't expect to be making
everything perfectly blended. There is a certain amount of tidying up that we're
going to need to do as we work towards adding all of the
details at the very end. Certainly want to make this
as good as I can for now. Sometimes I'm happy with all of the laces on the left hand side, and you can see it's going to be much much easier to add all of the details here because it's
such a clear template now. I'm going to start
working my way along this shadowed area here. I generally want to start on the lighter areas again and work my way towards the darker areas, so I can get a really
crisp line at the edge. Then I can wash my paint brush
and then once again work from the lighter areas here going towards
the darker areas. And you can see
that that gets me a much nicer gradient than
I otherwise would have. Again, I don't expect to get
this absolutely perfect, but I do want to try my best to get it as smooth as I can. And then let's work along
the brown areas first along this issue here in exactly the same
way as I did before. And then once I'm happy
with all these brown areas, I can focus on the blue laces. Now, probably the most
important thing that you must remember
before moving on to the next chapter after this
is really waiting for all of this water to dry completely before
adding more pencil. So I'm leaving this for
at least half an hour. Just to make sure
it's completely dry, and then I can move on
to the next section. Go over all of the darker areas of the shoelaces with the blue. Then actually, by the end
of this next chapter, we have something that
is maybe a little bit messy and it hasn't got
any really dark values, but it is looking
like a pair of shoes. It's certainly something
that's going to be possible to build
upon from here. Once again, don't forget to let your pencils completely dry before moving on to
the next section. But that is it for this section.
9. Build up the Darkest Values: But the pencil has all dried, let's think about adding
in the darkest values. The only pencil I'm
going to use in this whole section
is the black pencil. Actually, there are only really a pretty small amount of
areas that I need to put it. First up, I want to make
this logo, much darker. I'm going to block in the whole thing with
the black pencil. I am going about this in a similar way to what
I have done before. I want to be once again using probably a light to
medium pressure, and just building up the
pencil as smoothly as I can. But obviously, we will be activating this
again in a minute. Go to go all the way
around the edge, just blocking in anywhere
where I put that brown. Once I'm happy with the tick, I now want to work my
way over the laces, just filling in the black pencil in the absolute darkest areas. This is so much
easier because we did such a thorough job
in the last section. For example, I need to put
some of the black along here a little bit
around here and here, but at the top, this
is more of a brown. I need to put some of
the black along here. All of these dark
spots along here. I need to build up a little
bit of the black right along the edge of this shoe where the shadow is meeting the shoe. Few areas along here as well, particularly between
these blue laces. And that's really all that I need to do in this
whole chapter. There's really not a huge amount of very, very dark areas. So I'm just going to work along, building up the pencil in again, as smooth way as I possibly can, working going over
those sections that I've already marked in. And once I'm happy that
I filled in all of the areas between
the laces here, as I said, I can go
along this shadow, just building up a
little bit of the black. I want to kind of fade it out. I don't want to
go all the way to the edge of that brown section. Quite hard in many ways to
see what I'm doing here. The color gets much more
intense when I activate it. But I'm really just going
along this line along here. Adding in a reasonably
small amount of the black, I don't need to be filling
in absolutely tons of it. And then I can go
along the darker areas on this shoe on the right. G between all of these darker
areas between the laces. S again, you want to have a nice and sharp
pencil for this. It's going to make
your life so much easier and make the pencil go down in a much smoother way. And that will become
even more important in the next section when we're
adding in all of the details. Let's just add a bit more of a shadow down the bottom here. I think this is actually
looking a little bit too light, and I just want to make it a bit more of a prominent shadow. And I'm happy now
with the amount of black that I've built up. That's really all I
want to do for now. So let's once again activate
this with the water, and I'm starting from the left
hand side working towards the right so that I don't
risk smudging anything. So starting off on
this logo here. And because we put down a more solid base with the
brown in the last section, this is looking a
really good solid color that will be much easier to finish off in
the next section. I'm happy with this area, I can go over all of the areas, all of those darker
shadows between the laces. That's really all there
is to this whole section. We're just filling in
those darkest values of which there aren't many and
activating it with the water. Now at the end of this chapter, you once again want
to let the pencil dry for at least half an hour. Then we can start working on
this one section at a time and filling in all of
those finer details. Let's go along the side here, just carefully activating
that little bit of black I put down here. You can see that that's made a little bit
of a difference. Not a huge difference.
There's not a huge amount of the black that we needed to add, as I say. Going to activate
this area down here, which is looking a
little bit patchy, but we can again smooth
that out in a second. So by the end of this chapter, we have now finished activating
any areas with the water. We're from now
just going to work with the dry watercolor pencils. You should have a
pretty clear pair of shoes that are just missing a lot of
the finer details. But in the next section, we can think about adding those in.
10. Add Detail onto the Laces: This chapter, let's think about adding in a lot of the details. Specifically the logo at the top and also a lot of the
detail on the shoelaces. I'm going to start
off by focusing on this logo at the top, and I'm doing this
with the black pencil. Now, I'm actually
not going to show every single bit of
me mapping this out. I'm very much carefully
going over my sketch. And just trying to get
this as accurate as I can. I don't expect to get
it absolutely perfect because it's obviously it needs to look printed and
I can't do that. Do want to try and get
it as accurate as I can. In terms of the color I'm using. This is the black pencil. The logo is pretty much
just solidly black. The most important thing
that I'm doing here is making sure that my pencil
is really nice and sharp. This area is actually
pretty small, and I really want to be controlling where
the pencils going. So I'm frequently sharpening the pencil so that
hopefully that'll help me create a crisper logo and be more accurate as I say
with where this is going. For these logos, I'm only
drawing this text here, the tick, and this, I'm
not even going to try and draw this part
down the bottom. That is going to be so so small that it's not worth
trying on that. So I'm going through this
part reasonably quickly. I literally just
really want to take my time drawing out this
as accurately as I can, but as I say, I don't
expect to get it perfect. In terms of how long drawing
these two logos have taken. It took about 10-15 minutes. So that give you a
bit of an idea on the very slow pace that I
need to use to draw these in. I'm happy with these
logos at the top, I want to start focusing on adding the
details lower down, and I do think that
that is much easier. These logos are the
trickiest parts, I think of the whole drawing. Once I've drawn in the logos, I want to start focusing on
other areas of the drawing. I want to start smoothing out some of the patches
of leather and also really going over the
details of the shoelaces. I will say that this part of
the drawing with the logos, I would say is the hardest
part of the whole thing. Let's think about smoothing out some of the patches of leather. I'm going to start
off by focusing on the blue areas similar to what I did at the
very beginning. I'm going to go back to the light blue that I used before, and I just want to
smooth and evenly apply this color in a solid
patch on this area here. Now you can see that this area is just one solid
block of color. It has got some, I'm going
to call it leathery texture, but it hasn't really
got any contrast, so I literally just need to
solidly block in this area. Actually, because of the very subtle
texture of the paper, although it's smooth paper, it's got an ever so
slight texture to it. It's kind of creating
the leathery texture, I would say, just by smoothly
putting down the pencil. So let's go round the
corner around here. And then I also
want to be blocking in this blue on the
purple section. Again, just to try
and smooth it out. Now, in terms of how
I'm going about this, the most important thing
like when we were doing the base layers
is that I want to be pressing really
nice and lightly. I don't want to be pressing really firmly with the pencil. I just want to be putting
down a light and even amount. I'm happy with the
blue areas at the top. I'm going to start
thinking about focusing on some of
the other areas. So this area around
here, for example, trying to make the kind of orangy brown patches look
a bit more accurate. Now, here I want to focus
on adding in the stitches. Now, there's a very slight darker area around this corner. And then the stitches, we can't really necessarily see the lighter areas as much, but I want to be drawing
in these darker stitches. Notice that they are
going in two lines. There's one line, two
lines all around here. And then there's only one line here. So I'm going to use a
really nice and sharp pencil to just very gently
mark in these stitches. I'm trying to get the
spacing reasonably accurate, but I don't expect
to get it perfect. And then let's add a little bit of shading onto this area, and I can just generally add some details in and brighten
up with this color. So I want to draw in this
subtle line along here, and then there's a
bit more of that burn ocher color at the top
as well as around here. I basically want to start
at the top and work my way down the
laces on this side. So I'm moving on now
to the walnut brown, and I want to smooth out
this darker patch here. It's looking a little
bit patchy, this shadow. I'm also going to tidy up
around the edge of this label. There's a line that's coming
around the edge here, which I don't currently
have marked in. And I'm going to work my
way from the top down, working on one layer at time. And this is very similar to what we were doing
when we filled in the midtone areas on the layer
back a few sections ago. Add a little bit of shading
on the label up the top. Notice that it's
a little bit more shadowed in this corner
round here round here, but it's much,
much lighter here. Then let's start to fill in a lot of the details
on these laces. As I mentioned before,
there's generally a border either side
of the shoelaces. There's a line along here and then there's a
line along here. Same here, there's a
line on either side. Want to at this point draw in those lines and then also
add the shading like we did before on the bottom
right half of this shoelace. And a little bit
here up to about this line is quite a lot darker. But I don't really need to
add anything up here except for this little curve where it's coming out of
the hole in the shoe. I'm not going to
worry about all of these curvy lines
on here because I don't think you're actually
going to be able to see them at a normal
viewing distance. I'm also not going to
worry about all of these brick patterns on here because I don't think you'll
really be able to see it at a normal viewing distance
again when it's a finished I am going to do on this
area rather than putting in the brick pattern is just fill in a bit more
general shading. So generally speaking on
this section is lighter towards the middle and
darker around the edge. And that's what I need to be
creating with this pencil. Now, in exactly the same
way as before we want to make sure that the pencil
stays nice and sharp, not only will it go down
in a more consistent way around all of the areas
we're adding here, particularly like here where I do want it to be so smooth, but also it's going to
be much easier to add all of the detail
of the shoelace, where we need to be
adding all these details around the edge, for example. Here I want to be once again, adding those lines either side. Just like I can see on
the reference photo, using circular motions to try and make it as
smooth as possible. And then I can tidy up a lot of the lines that I put
on the shoelace. So a lot of this, I would say, has
already been marked in. I'm just going over it, making it a lot, Crisper, and generally having
a lot more control over where this shading is. So I'm not going to go over every section on
these shoelaces. I am literally following
them, working my way down, looking at each shoelace and
where the darker areas are, and adding that in with
this brown pencil. Generally notice that there is more shading towards the
right hand side and less to do on the left That's because the light is coming from
the left hand side, the right is a little
bit more in shadow. You can see how
quickly it tidies up. Just going over all
of these lines, making them a lot
crisper, a lot sharper. You can see me doing that here, going over all of these
lines around here, and it just makes such
a huge difference. Particularly when you compare the green shoelaces to
the blue shoelaces. Still thinking about this shoe
on the left hand side now, and I want to tidy up this orange area towards
the top here now. Looking at this patch, I'm noticing that this is an all one consistent color
like this blue patch was. It's darker around
here, for example, I'd say it's a little bit
darker here and here and here, and then it's a bit
lighter around here. Would still say my
closest color to this section is the burn ochre. I just want to
make it a bit more of a sort of deliberate color. And I want to generally tidy everything up and make it
a little bit less patchy. Let's once again, nice
and lightly go over this area with circular
motion, smooth it all out. I want to give myself a
really good base before I start thinking about
adding in the stitches. So I can just shade in on
particularly those patches, and it's making
the shoelaces look tidier in these more
highlighted areas as well, just because it's giving
a more crisp outline, I guess to those shoelaces. Say, looking at
the stitches here, and I would say
that they're a lot lighter than in other areas. So I think the best
thing to do is once again draw in the
darker patches, but use this same color to
draw in these stitches. I'm noticing that there's
a single stitch all around here and then a
double stitch along here. And that is exactly what I want to be doing
with this pencil. Now, once again, note that I have it really nice and sharp. It just makes such
a big difference being able to control exactly
where the pencil goes. I can't do this level of detail if I let the
pencil get blunt. I'm trying to keep my lines of the stitching
nice and consistent. I'm not necessarily going to make this absolutely perfect. I'm not going to
be able to make it perfect. But that's okay. I just want to try and
get it reasonably even. Then let's think about adding in stitches onto the
purple section. Actually, for this, I'm going
to use the black pencil. You look at the stitches
in this purple section, I would say that
they're mid gray. Because we've only got the set of 12, I don't have a mid gray, so I'm just going to lightly use the black to once again
put these little dots. I'm trying to get them
reasonably evenly spaced so that it hopefully
looks pretty consistent. Now, as I work my
way down the shoe, you'll notice that the stitches because it's going
around the corner, the stitch distance between them starts getting
closer together, and the stitches also get closer together to show that they're
going around the corner. And I'm hoping to create a similar kind of feeling
with my pencil down here, so you can see I'm just putting
little dots along here. Do the same on this side. I mean, I'm generally happy
with this shoe on the left, particularly the detail
towards the top. Let's start focusing on
the shoe on the right, and I'm starting off
with the walnut brown. I want to tidy up all of these shadows
along the side here. So I'm doing exactly the
same as we did before, just tidying up
around the edges, still going over it lightly
with circular motions. I'm just trying to get it
to look a bit less patchy. So I can work my way down just
as I say, tidying that up. I can add a little
bit more color to areas that are
looking too light, and then I don't want to
add a huge amount where the water has activated
it to be very Once I'm happy around
the shadow there, I'm just going to
tidy up by the label. It's very much looking
at what's already here and just making it
a little bit neater. Also add a little bit of extra shading on the label,
similar to the blue one. It's not all one
consistent green color, so I can use the walnut brown to tone it down a little bit. Work my way around
the shoe area here. There are some areas
which I do need to fill in with
the walnut brown. This patch here matches
very nicely the patch on the other side with those
brick pattern textures. I want to smooth this
out and tidy up, just make it a little bit
more a little bit crisper and also go over this
shoe lace part here, where it's got the
two borders on it and add in that
little bit of detail. Before I can then move
on to the black pencil, let's start off by putting
some stitching on this area. This is a purple patch. Like the purple patch we
drew on the left shoe. So I'm using the
black pencil very lightly to add in some kind of gray looking stitching here. Actually, I do the same
on the light blue area. This seems like the
closest match to what I see on the reference photo
on those darker areas. And then I'm going to
start working my way down the shoelaces in
exactly the same way as I did on the left hand side, but this time we're
doing it with the black pencil rather
than the brown pencil. Don't necessarily need to use
exactly the same color on both shoelaces because
they are different colors. And the shadows, I would say, on the blue shoelaces need
to be a pretty dark blue. I don't have a blue that dark. But what I do have is that I've already
filled in a lot of the shadows when we
did the mid tones with the darker
blue, the thy blue. And now when I lightly add
the black over the top, it's just kind of
ending up looking like a dark blue rather
than black or gray. Again, generally,
these shoelaces have, I'm going to call it a
border on each side, and then they're
generally darker when one shoelace is up
against another. But once again, the
most important thing here is that you have a really nice and sharp pencil is so important for adding
in all of this detail. So I'm happy with the shoelace on this right shoe as well. I'm just going to tidy up
this shadow under here. You can see where I've
already marked it in, but it's just looking
a little bit patchy. I want it to be a bit softer. And I'm also with my
nice and sharp pencil, we're going to carry on
with some of the stitching further down the shoe
and along the edge here. So I think the stitching is
a really important part of the drawing where it does
really all come together. It's one of those details, where if you didn't have it, I think it would look
really peculiar. That said, I'm not
going to spend absolutely ages
trying to get all of the light stitches
in because I don't think you will be able to
really see it at the end. Let's just tidy up the
shadow along the edge here, but with the black
pencil now as well. I want to try and make it a
bit deeper, a bit richer. I would say that that
is the vast majority of the really intricate
details marked in. There's details
that still need to be added on the bottom
half of the shoe, but that is nowhere near as complicated as the
top half of the shoe. By the end of this section,
you should have a pair of shoes where the laces are looking really quite
realistic now. But as I say, the rest
of the shoe looks a bit basic and maybe
even a bit patchy. But we can sort that out
in the next section.
11. Add in the Final Details: Now draw on most of these shoes, let's finish off
the last few bits. To start with, I really want to focus on the bottom
half of the shoe. Obviously, in the last chapter, we did a lot of tidying
up of the top half. There isn't as much to
do down the bottom, but it is looking a
little bit patchy. I just want to take the time to sort this out at the
start of this chapter. Starting off doing very similar to what we were doing
in the last chapter. I'm starting off here with
the walnut brown pencil. I want to be just
smoothing out the rest of this shadow going
down the bottom here. So exactly the same as we were doing on the top
half of the shoe. Working in circular motions, and I just want to be going over this section and
smoothing it out. As usual, I don't want to be pressing hard
when I'm doing this. I want to be pressing
really nice and lightly and just gradually building
up some of this color. You can see quite
quick actually, this is starting to
look much much better. Ist I'm working on this
area down the bottom, I also want to be
making the shadow generally along the bottom
here much, much darker. It looks too light to me. We did add some of these darker values in
a little bit earlier, but it's not looking anywhere
near as dark as it should. You can see how dark this
section of the shoe is. So we've built up some more
color in this area here. We also want to be putting
some shading around the bottom and on the end here as
well as this area here. As I say, these are all areas that we have
previously built up. I just want everything
to be much darker. So I want to be really taking my time around the
end of the shoe. I want to make sure
that I'm making a really crisp edge here. And also a nice crisp
edge along the top where this color is
meeting the yellow. Now, as always, it
is so important to have a really nice
and sharp pencil. Not only will you be able to put down the color in a much
more consistent way, but it'll be much easier getting a really firm line around
the edges of these sections. Let's fill in this
top area here. As I mentioned again
in a previous section, this is a kind of triangular
section that needs shading. Let's use circular motions to build up a bit more
color around here. I'm also going to
add a little bit of shading onto the blue
section at the top. Both slightly smoothing out this darker shadow
all around here. Also adding a little bit of extra shading along the
edge of the blue section. This is looking
much much better. Now, thinking about
adding in some details, there's a few details on this section of the shoe that
I'm particularly noticing. There's these dots all along here and this
stitches along here. So let's use a really, really sharp pencil to start
filling in these dots. Now, again, I haven't got these marked out on
any sort of sketch. What I want to do is
just try and follow them as closely as I
can to the reference, but I don't think I need to
get them absolutely perfect. I will try and get it
as close as I can, uh can just lightly
fill in these dots. And then I'm also going to use the same pencil to
put in the stitches. Again, pressing
nice and lightly. I don't want to make
it a really firm line. I want to lightly use the brown, but I'm thinking this is the best color that I have in my set to fill in
these stitches. You'll see that I
use the same color when putting stitches on the yellow section on the same
shoe in the last section. Not forget to add
in the stitching along the sole of the shoe here. You can see there's all of
these stitches along here. I want to be mostly just
putting a dark line along here. You can't see a huge amount
of detail on these stitches, so I'm just going to
mark it in like this, trying to get the right distance down from the top of this color. Now I'm generally happy
with the shoe on the right. Let's start focusing
on the left hand shoe. Once again, I want
to fill in all of the darker areas on
this part of the shoe. There's this curved area here, and then all along this section, it needs to be made
a little bit darker. So there's a lighter
line left here, and then it gets darker
around this area in again, a kind of triangular shape, but avoiding that lighter area. It's also much darker on the end of the shoe on the
right hand side of the shoe. And you can see this
dark patch kind of comes down here
and along here. So let's mark in
this curve section on the end of the shoe, and then it can start filling
in this triangular section. Really very similar to what I was doing on the
right hand shoe. Just gradually building
up this walnut brown until I'm happy that
I've got the contrast, particularly right
around the bottom here. So I can put a nice crisp edge around the bottom of the shoe, and then with my sharp pencils start shading in this area. Before I move on too
far from this section, I do also want to be adding a
shadow around the end here. Because of where the light is, the lights coming from
over to the left, there is a very prominent shadow all around the end
of the shoes here. Whereas, it's really pretty
light around this area. So I'm going to gradually just mark in where the
shadow is going to be using circular motions pressing really
nice and lightly. And then I can build
this shadow up bit by b I've got something here. We can come back to this in a second. I want to before building
this up further, focus on getting the stitches drawn in on this left hand shoe. Well then with the
stitches on here look like pretty
much a solid line. The stitches here are, I guess, more
obviously stitches. There's a pretty solid
dark line along here, but then you can see there's
a dark section here, it's lighter here, darker
here, lighter here. There's a dark section,
dark section, dark section. All along all of the stitches. Also notice that the stitches
are further apart here, and they're much closer together here because
of the perspective. So I'm going to mark in where
these stitches need to be, particularly marking in
the darker areas between the stitches and then very lightly shading on
the lighter areas. Then you can see as I
get round to the left, I'm starting to put these
stitches closer together. I'm happy with the
stitches. I'm going to add a small amount of
shading around, particularly the end
here. Not a huge amount. Generally, you'll see it
is a little bit darker up this end in comparison
to the middle section. I can also add and mark in all
of these lines along here. You can see it's a little
bit darker around here. It's particularly a darker
strip coming down here. And then there's
all of these lines coming up, which end here. Notice that they're actually not all consistent distance apart. It gets much further apart here. So, again, I don't expect to
get these looking absolutely perfect and exactly the same distance apart as on
the reference photo. But I will once again try and
get it as close as I can. I'm generally happy with
the bottoms of the shoes. Let's focus on a little bit
of extra shading along here, so just blending out this
shadow a bit better, and we're still working
with the walnut brown here. I'm also going to use
the walnut brown to add stitches along
this blue section, just really nice
and small stitches. Actually, there's
quite a lot to add on this section
because we need to be going up here along here and all the way
around this section. Notice that the stitches along here get a little
bit closer together around this curve
and then go back to kind of standard
distance apart. I've added in all
these stitches, Let's start thinking about
the most obvious difference between these shoes and
my reference photo. Now that I've got everything
marked in lightly. So once again, going to go back to building up a bit
more of this shadow, really just going over exactly
what we've already done. This is just not looking anywhere near dark
enough at the moment. I'm going to use the
lighter blue pencil to just go over
this blue section. I haven't added anything
extra to this blue section, and it's looking a
little bit patchy. So I can tidy up
around the edge, and then I want to be once again using circular motions to put a very light layer and build up the color
a little bit more. Say a little bit goes
a long way here. We really don't need to be
adding in a huge amount. And whilst I've got this pencil, I'm also going to
add a little bit of extra shading on the
other shoe as well. Particularly close
to the shadow, I just want a slightly
brighter blue here. Not that I need to use the darker blue that
I have in this set. I just need to build
up more color with this lighter blue so that
it looks a tiny bit darker. Also go over some of the blue sections
along here as well. They're also just
looking a little bit patchy and maybe a
little bit too light. And then before I
carry on, actually, I'm going to fill in the
dots on this left hand shoe. Exactly the same as we did
with the right hand shoe with a really nice and sharp pencil once again with the
walnu brown pencil. This is just an area I realized I haven't put in these details. Also going to use
this brown to just shade around the
edge of this area. Again, I don't think
it's quite enough. So now, once again, I
want to think about the most obvious thing that's missing between the shoe
and the reference photo. And I would say that
this pink area, again, isn't looking quite right, is a little bit too patchy
and maybe a bit too vibrant. So I'm going to use
the burn ochre pencil to tone down the pink and
also smooth the area out. Now, I'm particularly
wanting to use this color, partly because the kind
of orangey section above here is this
burn ochre pencil. So I think it's going to help these colors look a little
bit more kind of cohesive. Also use the same pencil to brighten up the bottom
of the shoe along here, just going over those
walnut brown areas, and generally going along
the bottom of the shoe, just to again make it a
little bit more vibrant. Let's add a little bit onto the yellow section
to tone this down. And then I'm going
to switch back to the walnut brown to add an ever so slight line along
the bottom of the shoe. So because I'm doing
the final details, I am kind of flitting a little
bit between the colors. If I can see something
that I think needs adding or improving on, then I want to be adding it in as I see it. So let's make the end of the shoe
a little bit darker. This shoe on the left, particularly at the end it isn't looking quite dark enough. And then let's think
about other areas that I want to be tidying up, so the tick looks a
little bit patchy. And I think very
much benefits from having the black pencil once
again put over the top. I don't need to put
a huge amount down, and I don't need to be pressing really hard because
we've already got such a good base layer
of the pencil built up. I just want to make it a
bit more of a solid color. Whilst I've got this black, I'm also going to go
over the shadow at the bottom here and just generally build this
up a little bit more. Both on the shadow itself, but also on some of the darker areas on
this part of the shoe. So I want to smooth out
this area a little bit. It still looks a
little bit patchy. And I also build up some of the stitches along the
end of this shoe as well. Really getting to the very
end of the drawing now, the final few details. I want to go over some of the
shoelaces and make some of the more shadowed areas a
little bit more prominent as well as the same on
the right hand shoe here, just tidying up around some of the shadowed area
along this edge. Let's get into the last
couple of colors now. Once again, I want to be
thinking about the main thing that's missing between my drawing and the
reference photo. Still think some
of these areas are just looking a little
bit too rough. So I can actually
use the white pencil to slightly smooth this out. It's not going to make
it absolutely perfect, but it is going to
make it a little bit lighter and a
little bit smoother. So I don't need to be adding absolutely tons of this color, just a little bit, particularly
on this pink area. You can see that
I'm now starting to press a little bit firmer, and I'm also still using circular motions
because I do want this to try and look
as smooth as possible. Let's move on to that
more vibrant blue. And just tweak some
of this label here, making particularly around
the edges like we did before, just a little bit darker, a little bit more vibrant. And just tidying up some of the edges of the shoe laces and also the edge of this blue
section down the bottom, both around here and around
this edge here as well. So, a last couple of tweaks now, adding a bit of extra blue
onto the end of the shoe here. And one last time
with the walnut brown onto the shadow
along the edge here, just tidy this up
one final time. And then that is it. I hope
you've enjoyed this tutorial, and I look forward to
seeing you in the next one.
12. Summary: Alright, and that is
the end of this class. I hope you've enjoyed it,
and you found it helpful. So what I always do is start off by building up
the lightest colors. Particularly when drawing
with a set of 12, I want to start off by picking the closest color
in each section. It doesn't need to be perfect. Once I put the lightest colors
down all over the drawing, I can then activate the water before moving on
to the mid tones activating and then
the darkest color and activating one final time. Once I've got a really good
and in depth template, I can then start thinking
about adding in the details. And this is where the whole
drawing will come together. Can start off without worrying too much about the
actual colors, just trying to get the contrast. Then once I've built up
all of these details, I can then adjust the
colors as I need to. Trying to adjust
those colors to get as close a match to the
reference as I can. If you've enjoyed this class, please do leave a review
and don't forget to upload your drawings
into the class projects. Happy drawing, guys, and I'll
see you in the next course.
Gemma Chambers, Pencil Artist
