Transcripts
1. Welcome: What's up, guys,
it's moving here. In this video, we're going to be exploring the principles of color theory and how can
apply them to colored pencil. This is a lot of fun to make. And over the next few videos, I'll be providing you with
the theoretical basis for the mechanics of color, some practical tips
and techniques for layering your
use effectively. And the ways in which you
can introduce variety to your picture.
We call schemas. This is just the
tip of the iceberg. We're going to be exploring
color swatches, color wheels, different methods to accurately match the colors
we see in nature, not to mention some photo
editing hacks to make our lives a lot easier
in the drawing process. Before I leave you, I know the feeling we're getting
color for the first time. It's pretty daunting. I'm here to tell you
as someone who was terrible at the starts,
you can improve. And I believe that the
video lessons you're about to dive into will
provide you with a basis of understanding
to demystify color and give you the
confidence to push forward. That's all for this one. Let's get drawing.
2. Materials you need: Alright, so we're gonna
be exploring color and this class through the
medium of colored pencils. So first on the list of their favorite Castillo
polychromatic pencils, I'm going to be using
the sets of 36 pencils, but you certainly
don't need that many to get through this class. As a matter of
fact, mummy working primarily with a
limited palette, so less, in this case is more. Some other great
brands out there are Karen dash, and Darwin's. So if you don't
like the polychrome most you can try those out.
Maybe they'll work for you. Moving right along as
far as paper goes. I think anything with the
vellum surface work well, that is to say a paper with a
reasonable amount of tooth. For this class, I'll be using a Bristol vellum paper
from Master's Touch next, my trusty ileostomy really
sell with the race of choice. That along with the
robberies, of course, It's worth pointing out that
colored pencils and race as well as graphite
or say charcoal. So just a word to the wise
might begin as out there. I'd be a little bit more
careful in your application. Natural, you're going to
need to sharpen our pencils. So for that I have
my sharpening block and my exacto knife. If you've got a good sharpener
that also work well, the next couple of materials
are completely optional. So if you don't want to get
them, that's perfectly fine. You still be able to
complete the drawings. But sometimes I like to blend the color pencil pigments with some mineral spirits
and a brush. It gives a more painterly look to the drawings if
done correctly. But it can also be
disastrous. Precaution. Well, that's about it
for the materials, That's all you need. So if you're ready,
let's get to it.
3. Color Wheel: Color temperatures, Color mixing.: Over the course of this video, we're gonna be breaking
down some key concepts in color theory and addressing how they can be applied
to the drawings and paintings you're going
to make in the future. So I bother, we call it theory. At first glance, it seems esoteric or unessential at best, one of those things you keep
telling yourself you're gonna get around
to but never do. The benefits of
understanding color theory are multifarious as
you come to see, and a knowledge of
the fundamental properties of color will assist you in infusing
your work with more variety and beauty, the greatest assets as
an artist or your eyes, your ability to perceive the subtle variations in
a picture or in nature and drop on those
differences the elements that could be the
most visually compelling. We train our eyes to
meticulous practice and increase our knowledge
through diligence study. So eventually we arrive at a
place where we're creating pictures that contain
within them what we see, what we know and
what we wish we saw. Color theory has been around for hundreds of years with artists
and scientists applying its principles and
contributing to its evolution as
new mediums have emerged and more information has been uncovered at its best, color theory provides us
with the tools to determine what colors harmonize well together in a
particular context, invented by Isaac
Newton in 16 66, the color wheel serves
as the foundation of color theory and maps out how college relate to one
another in a circle. Broadly speaking,
color theory can be divided into two categories, additive and subtractive
color theory. Additive color
concerns itself with the mixing of light
to reproduce color. In industries such as graphic
design or videography, where light is mixed
to reproduce colors, the primary colors constitutes
red, green, and blue. From these, one can
derive the secondaries in the form of cyan,
magenta, and yellow. Ultimately, by mixing
all the colors in the visible light spectrum, we arrive at white lines. I don't know about you,
but it was a bit of Revelation. Discovering
this for me. It's fascinating how
differently lights manifests itself in color versus piglets. Moving on, as visual artists, we have far more concerned with subtractive color
than additive color. In subtractive color,
we either use cyan, magenta and yellow, or red, yellow and blue as
the primary colors. The former has its
application in color printing and the latter, those were dealing
with pigments. Just us as artists, painters, draftsman,
and a woman, because pains or colored
pencil is not emitting lights, we cannot achieve
the same amount of luminosity defined in
nature and see the Sun. Conversely, we need light to
hit the surface of our work. So the depth of
darkness we see in a shadow see at night is
equally on attainable. Nonetheless, by creative
control of our hues and values, we can create something very close to what
we see in nature. Standard red, yellow,
blue color wheel. You have 12 colors, each one pulling on it
the buckets of a primary, secondary, or tertiary color. All of these primary
cause of the most important because you can mix any other
colors to get them. Consequently, some
form of red, yellow, or blue will be the
starting point for most, any painting or drawing
you make in the future. In addition, mixing equal
amounts of these colours, that is red, yellow, and blue will get you
a kind of black color. Equal amounts, by the way, not mean equal proportions
because of the difference in tinting strength of each
of the different hues. More on this later, secondary
colors, on the other hand, are the colors you get by mixing two primary colors together in the red, yellow,
blue color wheel. Those colors are orange,
purple, and green. Once again, we
strive here to mix equal amounts in terms
of u and not volume. Moving on to tertiary colors, there are six tertiary
colors on our color wheel, we have Amber, vermilion, magenta, violet,
teal, and shutters, or however you pronounce that. So I wouldn't pay too much
attention to the names, but how those colors relate to the primary and
secondary colors. So when a painting, I know
that violet is a cooler color because it's closer to blue on the color wheel as the magenta, which is closer to red. Shifting gears a
bit, no numbers. Now that we have a better understanding
of the color wheel, we can begin to think about. Generally speaking,
calls can either be classified as warm or cool. So we have some colors
and the core segment of the color wheel and other
colors and the warm segments. Now in reality, these are
not absolute terms and it colors temperature is
relative to the environments. It's in the context that
he called it lives in, affects how it
appears to our eyes. And by contexts, I just
mean what's surrounding it. I'm sure a lot of you are seeing those color perception
exercises on social media or on
television on the screen. Currently, I have a very
clean instantiation of the concept of college
relative and not absolute. Boathouse a and B are the
exact same color value. But because tau b is in shadow, appears much lighter than tau e, which is fully, in fact the
exact same color value. The same thing occurs
in this next example. The small rectangle is contained within the exact same color, but having a darker
background on the right-hand side causes
the smaller rectangle to appear lighter and cooler as compared to the smaller
rectangle on the left, you can find tons of
these examples online, but the key takeaway
is color is relative. So there are no absolutes, ones are absolute cools. These are just guidelines. Kind of a stair you in
the right direction. One of colors, more
unique qualities that he has the power to evoke. Emotion. Viewer. A choice of color has a kind of feeling associated with it. Cool colors are concomitant
with calmness, relaxation, serenity, and warm colors,
joy, exuberance, playfulness. Translating this into
finished works of art is a challenge
to say the least. But when it's done well, it's truly a sight to behold. I know I just said that there
are no absolutely warms, absolutely cools, but this
is just a rule of thumb. So warm colors on
the color wheel, you can consider it
to be colored red, violet, yellow, and cool
colors from yellow, green, all the way to violence. Most drawings or paintings
you make wounds contain the highly saturated use
you see in the color wheel. In reality, we exist in a world of grace and the D
saturated versions of colors relates much
better we want another than the high chroma
versions of the same color. If representation is your goal, saturated colors at best
uses accents to isolate a focal point or to direct the viewers attention to
a particular area. Making every color the same in terms of chroma is
not a good idea. You don't want
everything to be Trini saturated and you
definitely don't want everything to be low
chroma along those lines, having too little contrast can leave your drawings
looking flats, having too much
contrast can leave your drawings looking garish. As artists, we have to find
the balance of contrasting warm and cool hues as well
as light and dark values. To wrap up, we learned
a bit about the history of color theory and
how Isaac Newton, through the discovery
of the color wheel, ushered in a new age
of understanding, we gained some insight
into how color behaves and lights and then pigments and what that means
for us as artists. Next, we analyze the top cars and our color wheel and how to effectively combine
them to create our secondary and
tertiary colors. Finally, we highlighted the importance of
color temperature, and the role that warm
and cool colors play and staring our emotions and
elevating a piece Pankaj. Because the next video we're
gonna be discussing shades, tints and tones and the color schemes
that will improve your work for the better. Thanks for watching.
See you soon.
4. Shades and Tints: Hue, Saturation, Luminance.: Alright, so in this
video we're gonna be discussing shades,
tints and tones, and a very ceiling qualities of hue, chroma and luminance, put simply a shade is
the version of Ecole you get when you add black
to its base hue. Hue meaning the specific color, i e, purple, yellow, blue, etc. In addition to adding
black in practice, one can also use more
chromatic dark hues, like a deep purple
to create a shade. This is great when
you want to lower the value without using
any color intensity. Conversely, a tint is
the version of a color you get when you add
white to e Bs here, the more white you add
to a particular color, the lighter will become. And also the less chromatic. Adding white to a
color much like black mix that color less vivid and is great for
desaturating parts of a picture, shades and tints on
important concepts and realism because they
determine the value of a color and values are what make form appear
three-dimensional tones, on the other hand, is a bit
of an all-encompassing word. It primarily refers to
the value of a color, that is to say how
light or dark it is. And the more colloquial sense, tone can also refer to the more general
qualities of a color, like how warm or cool it is, or the amount of
gray in its use in, in black and white image
is much easier to judge the tones because of
the absence of color. But in nature and in life, you must train our
eyes to see the tones that being distracted
by the specific use, every color has a
particular value. And as you change the value, you also change the color if your tones and
values look great, chances are you have
a great picture. Working with a limited palette is one way to get
better at seeing value in color by
minimizing the variables, it's easier to get a feeling
for the movement of lights. I'm sure at this
point you're all familiar with the term hue, but for the sake of clarity, and he's basically any color on the color wheel
absent tint or shade. It's the word we generally
associate with color, a college true hue is also typically the most intense
form of that particular color. Next, we have
saturation or chroma. This refers to the
intensity of a given color. You can think of it as
how far a given color is from gray or its
most intense here, moving on luminance we can describe as the brightness
of a given color. You can think of
it also as values. The two are
interchangeable, say e.g. you have a teal colored pencil and an indigo blue
colored pencil. The pencil is going
to naturally produce a lighter value and a brighter color than
the indigo pencil, which is going to produce
a less luminous color and a darker value
in colored pencil, we can always modify the
luminance of the values. Layering other used to
make it lighter or darker. With all this knowledge,
what we're really after is making pictures that are
pleasing to the eye. In order to do this, we
have to find a way to integrate our colors
harmoniously. Once again, our color wheel
comes in handy as through it, we can identify colors
that go well with each other and produce
a pleasing aesthetic. I'll be going over six
common color schemes and show you some examples
of those colors in action. First one, unless there's a
complementary color scheme, this one involves
T-cells that are on opposite sides
of the color wheel. The dynamic produce
these high impact by combining
complimentary colors, we can create an enhanced
sense of contrast, intensity and
brightness variation of the complimentary
color scheme, split complementary
color utilizes a base color and two secondary colors
in this color scheme, one of the complements
is split into two, and so we have three main
use organizing the picture. This is ever so slightly more complex than the
previous color scheme, but as equally capable of producing fantastic results
on the screen currently is an example of a split
complementary color scheme by artist Daria MacDowell. In this plaintiffs utilizes
colors green, red, and blue to deliver a punchy
at harmonious painting. A monochromatic color scheme. We are dealing with one base
color and drawing from that, it's used shades,
tints, and tone. This is a simpler color
scheme and a gateway to work in in color as a
beginner, nonetheless, from that one base color or
an almost endless amounts of variations in the subtleties
of chroma and value. Next, we have an
analogous color scheme. Here we are creating pictures. We call us the lay
next to each other on the color wheel because
of the proximity of these colors in terms of hue, value and chroma, they tend to harmonize well together
without much effort. More often than not
picking one of the used to be the dominant
color and making the others accents to produce more elegant looking
works of art, triadic. This is my favorite
color scheme, and it involves picking
three colors that are evenly spaced
around the color wheel. In this example, orange, purple, and teal, it's a very versatile and eye-catching
color scheme, although it does
require some grease in its implementation to avoid making pictures
that are lowered. The same advice from
earlier applies here, it's best to have one
or two dominant colors and make the other subordinates. Lastly, and it's a
triadic color scheme. We build our picture
of 0.4 evenly spaced colors on the color wheel measure V tools and a
good understanding of color harmony is required to make this color
scheme work towards Phillis theorem with different accents and key up and down different colors to find out
what works best for you, given that this is a course
intended for beginners, I believe in the
subsequent lessons, utilizing a limited
palette will be of tremendous advantage to go
ahead and pick one red, one yellow, one blue pencil to guide you through
the exercises to come. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you guys
in the next one.
5. Color Swatches: Layering colors, Creating harmonies.: Okay, this is where
the magic begins, so we can finally move past the theory and
into the practice. First things first,
sharpen your pencils, get out a piece of
paper. Let's do this. To begin with, I'm
going to be working in a limited palettes
for most of this. So one red, one yellow,
and one blue pencil. If you're using the
favorite herself polychrome most I want
to use the same pencils. The names are cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and blue radish, as you can see on
screen currently, after trying the
middle cadmium red, I realized it wasn't
sufficiently reddish, so I sought that out
for a PO geranium lake. Sometimes the hue on the
pencil cases or deceptive. So your pisa test
things out beforehand. Our first step consists
of sketching out the three primary
colors of red, blue, and yellow as though serve as the foundation for
everything to come. When sketching these use, I'm attempting to build
them as evenly as I can and to its full saturation. To do this, I need to
keep a light hand and lay down about three to
five layers of pigments. This is not something
you can rush by pushing down harder with your pencil before and
faster. Whatever that means. I try to view these exercises as he kind of active meditation. Take your time to
reflect on what you've seen and visualize what
you want this project B. The same procedure applies here. Meticulous application or
a few layers of pigments, consistent strokes of
value and even pressure. Blue is only primary
here you can consider a cool
color in isolation, and it's also very
versatile color in general. You notice also, as I'm
applying the pigments in the paper is some
whitespace showing through. This is the tooth of the paper. Paper, although it
looks perfectly smooth, is actually more like
a mountain scape with many peaks and troughs. When we apply colored
pencil to the paper and all the pigment
gets down through all the nooks and
crannies of the tooth. So what we end up having are some whitespace
showing through it. It's for this
reason that we need so many layers to
achieve even color. With all our primaries on paper, we can begin to build
our secondary colors. If you remember, secondary
colors or color, you get by mixing two
primary colors together, whether that'd be red and blue, blue and yellow or
red and yellow. My process for layering
the primaries, you get a secondary
color is very basic. I usually apply to even layers, the two using question in
this moment, red and blue. And from there assessed
without the color needs to be warmer or cooler, different colors have
different tinting strength. So you may need more
layers of red than blue to get it through
purple or vice versa. Hello. I think I'm pretty happy with the purple color that I have. So we can move on to
the next secondary, which is gonna be green. As we move through
this exercise, I will occasionally
revert back to your previous color swatch
and modified to you. I do this because as
we mix more colors, I get a better sense for what everything else
should look like. This attitude of
continuous improvement is a big part of what working
in college all about, whether that be in
an exercise such as this or any more
elaborate drawing, we must always
analyze our decisions in the past and in the present. Mixing my green, I'm applying a few layers
of blue and yellow, each referencing my
color charts and do my best to find a happy medium
between the two views. The mechanics of
creating color are very different in color pencils
than saying paints. Here we layer one, you
on top of the other, and as light reflects
back to our eyes, the image optically and appear as a mix between
the various colors, in this case yellow and
blue to create green. As forming a bit,
actually forgot to sketch out the orange secondary
to later in the lesson. So here we go. I heard is a combination
of red and yellow. Our goal here is to
get the color right smack dab in between the
red and yellow hues. Once again, trying to keep a
light hand so you can keep the surface of the paper
flexible and modify your layer. Alright, so back to wherever
you were at now that we have our secondary
fellows in the form of purple, green, and orange. Next task will be to develop
our tertiary colors. Each Tasha is a mix
of one primary, one secondary color, six tertiary colors
on our color wheel. And they are amber, vermilion, violet, magenta, and shampoos. We're going to
begin with magenta, which has a reddish purple. We get this by combining purple and red first things
first, you lay your red, blue and you go back and
forth between the hues to get what looks like a purple with a bit more red in it. You can use your
pre-existing purple as a gauge for how warm or
cold I call it needs to be. I'm going to stop at
this point because I feel that I have as close to an approximation of
the true magenta as I'll go with these pencils. Now we're going to be
making a bluish purple, which can think of as a violet. It's combination of purple
and blue skewed more to the cooler end of the
spectrum, the magenta. Take your time to
layer these colors and flick your eyes
back and forth between your purple and blue
violet to make sure the relationship
between the hues sound. Far next Tertiary shot,
those are yellow, green is a mix between
yellow and green. Yellow primary and
our green secondary. All it takes is a few layers of green and a bit more yellow. And we have our desired here. The same principles apply for our blue-green
tertiary color, teal. We'll build up our
layers gradually, keep our pressure
even in reference, both are green and blue
hues and adjust as we go. Ultimately we're
looking to arrive at a green hue that's closer to
outdo primary thing yellow. A few moments later. We are now arriving at
the last few tertiaries, which are both a combination
of red and yellow. First, we have Amber, which is the yellowish red. For this, I'm going to apply
roughly four layers of yellow pigments and
two layers of red, putting more emphasis
on the yellow sheet to derive amber with vermilion, the reverse is going
to be the case. I'll start by laying
down my reddish hues to establish a base and apply
yellow on top of that hill, I reach a point where have you? Reddish orange,
that's closer to red, the yellow column you as
usual, I'm taking my time. Don't be fooled by the speed of the video stepping
out in real time. In general, I'm a
means you've finished this entire demo and abandon our ranging between an hour to an hour-and-a-half is a
reasonable amount of time. At this point,
we're done with the first part of the video lesson. We have our primary, secondary and tertiary
fellows laid out and the foundation of our
color wheel established. Our efforts and mapping
out causing this way, we get a better appreciation for the specific differences between the colors vis-a-vis
their temperature, hue, and eventually saturation. Moving on, we're
going to be making some shades, tints and tones, and using the primary colors as our base shade is just
a hue plus black. So that's what I'm
sketching are currently. It's going to have
the effect of dark in the hue and reducing its chroma. Black is a pretty
powerful color. She wants to be measured in how many layers you applied
to achieve the shade. The process is the same for
blue and yellow as well. You notice as you
add black to yellow, it becomes greenish looking. Black is basically
a low chroma blue. So in the presence of yellow, you're getting
desaturated green. In practice, I really
darken a color with black because of its tendency to
strip a color with Cromer, I prefer to use dark purple
or blue to create my shades. I preserve some of
that color intensity. Next, if you're going
to make sure heads, you got to make tensor as
well. So you get out tens. We're going to mix our
primaries with whites. The white pencil
from the polychrome was set is relatively weak. So you're going to really
have to put down those layers and burnish quite a bit
to life than that value. The tents were some
colors bring out the true hue of the pigments, particularly with colors that
have a darker local value. Conversely, adding too much
white to a virgin tints can lead to a chalky look to your work due to a
loss of vibrance. If you want to lighten a color without dropping the vibrance, consider adding a yellow
or a virgin tins with the lighter local value
on the one-year trying to lighten white also
shifted colored cooler. So maybe a mixture
of yellow, orange, and white can preserve
some of that war. Since we're on the topic,
I'm going to highlight the colored pencil technique
known as burnishing. But simply burnishing
is a method of blending colored
pencil pigments. It's pretty smooth, opaque. Look by applying heavy
pressure with a white pencil or a lighter colored pencil to blend the layers
beneath together. You want to do this when you already have a few layers down. Generally you don't
want to burnish dark areas with a white pencil. You also don't want
to burn it through. You're happy with the color
values you have on paper. And you want to use
the minimum pressure necessary to achieve
your desired effects. Hello. Moving on to tone, our tones
are going to be great. I'll versions of our primaries, depending on the value of the
gray pants we were using. Either going to darken the Hue, lights in it or
you're definitely going to do is
reduce the corona. Have you learned the gray
color over the primaries until they appear
sufficiently desaturated.
6. Color Swatches Pt. 2: Awesome. Now that we've got our shades and tints and
toned under our belts, who was now explore
the extremes of the color spectrum. For whites. We've got the white
of the paper, which is probably as
bright as you can get moisture than the white colored
pens we even I put black, we can either utilize our
black colored pencil, should have the pencil sets and build up the layers like
I'm doing currently. But even better, we
can mix our red, blue, and yellow pencils to
getting more chromatic or more vivid black fur
dark enough pencils, it's best not to shoot
first for black, black has a tendency to deaden a color and strip
it of its chroma. Ideally, you want to find a
color that's similar in hue but darken value than the
color we are trying to darken. If you are using a primaries
to create a black, some trial and error is required to determine the correct
proportions of red, blue, and yellow to
produce the most solid. Looking back, I like to start with my rhythm do primarily before
adding yellow and then alternating them based on whether or not the colonies
to get cooler or warmer. Also, if I find that one color is overpowering the others, I had its compliments. Once you arrive at a place
where the clothes that I see is nonspecific naturally, there's gonna be some variance
between the black point black pencil and when
you mix yourself, it's up to you to decide
which black your life better. In realism, we're almost always operating in
a world of Greece. Consequently, the ability to essentially the high
chroma pigments that we get from the Virgin
tints is essential. Then adding grids where we can desaturate the color effectively
using its compliments, because compliments
is the column the opposite side of the
color wheel. So e.g. purpose compliments yellow, red is green, and
blue is orange. As you mix the
complements together, you will get d saturated
version of the two colors. It's more neutral
and closer to gray. So sketch out your
primary colors and gradually add one
layer after another. The men's, once you feel like you have a sufficiently
low chroma, red, yellow, and blue. A big part of creating
compelling works of arts is having aspects of it that are eye-catching and draw you in. Your work consists only
of super vivid colors. Nothing stands out
through the noise and it becomes hard
to look at a problem. Intense colors sprinkled
into a lot of grays has much greater impact and
it's easier to look at. Before we end this
lesson, I thought it appropriate to
demonstrate how we can transition from one view to another nice smooth
and unified way. For the first gradient bar,
I've been making a transition from yellow to orange
using the pencils, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange
and pale geranium lake. To do so, that one, I'm going to create a base
with the yellow pencil gearing up a few layers of pigments and getting it to full saturation and do
my best to be present, sharpen my pencil tool
and I need to take you through each decision
before I make a mark on the page canvas using my less than my eraser
to remove some dark spots. This is something I
do periodically if I find a near as
good thing too dark, there is a buildup
of excess pigment. So now I'm introducing my
orange and red pencils are starting from the
right-hand side of the bar, gradually building
up my color values and Safi transitioning is VL. Be careful not to push too
hard to pencil and let up on the pressure as
you get closer to the left-hand side
of the gradient bar, I'm utilizing vertical
and horizontal strokes, trying to build up these
values as evenly as I can. You definitely don't
want to be zigzagging across the page
with your pencil. Fair warning. As you lay down the pigments, e.g. the red hue. Make sure to go
over that area with the orange pencil to
integrate the two together. The same applies for the yellow, go over the yellow hues with your orange pencil and the orange used with
your yellow pencil. Now's a good time to
take a step back, squint your eyes,
and see what caused your intention as in
need of improvement. Typically, the problem
you will find is that each transition is too
abrupt and you are in need of an intermediate value to merge two disparate values. In this next gradient bar will be following the same procedure. The only difference being with transitioning from
occlusion you to read you due to differences in the
properties of the pigments. This gradient bars is slightly
more challenging exercise. If you look closely,
you will see the points where blue and red
intersects to be a purple, has a darker local value
than both the blue and red. This throws off the
balance of the values. So we have to layer more
red over the blue section from all blue over the
red section to equalize the values within these grid and bar exercise a great way in a controlled manner to
develop your understanding of how to Lee and transition
between different color values. Each color has its own set of unique attributes and
becoming more familiar with them will make your life
a lot easier when you attempt to draw something more
elaborate. Why ambitious? Yeah. Wrap-up. We've got a feel
for how we can create our secondary and
tertiary colors bi-layer in our primary Hughes, we delve into the mechanics are creating shades,
tints, and tone. Next, we figured
out how to modify the saturation of IOUs through
use of the compliments. And lastly, the gradient bars, which afforded us the practice
of layering and blending a color pencil pigments
to achieve even tone. With this new-found knowledge, we are now ready to do
some color matching and train our eyes to see
things as they really are. Thanks for watching. I'll
see you in the next one.
7. Make your reference work for you: Alright, so in this video I'm
going to be demonstrating some editing tricks if
you can call it that, or techniques that can
make your life a bit easier when you're in the process of trying
to make a picture. Some of these I'm
sure you're already familiar with others,
you might not be. The idea is technology is our friend and the
degree that it can feel our creativity and streamline the
art-making process. I think we should use it. I'll be using Adobe
Photoshop for this video. But there are a lot
of great apps out there like Snapseed and light room that can create these effects with
equal efficacy. With that said, let's begin. So the first thing we're
going to do is turn this image to monochrome
or black and white. This is an especially
useful feature when you're working in graphite, charcoal or in monochrome and
paints or colored pencil. In addition to turning the
image to black and white, we can also increase
the saturation. If you find that the
image we're working from looks too desaturated. On top of that, we can
also alter the colors with the hue slider right above
the saturation slider, depending on where
we pull it too, is going to shift the
color red, green, yellow, blue, or purple. And of course, the lightness
slider below allows us to shift the brightness
value of the image. Next, I'm going to be applying a Gaussian blur to the image. Oftentimes, while you're
drawing squinting eyes, allows us to better see
the relationship of the color values therein lies
the power of this effect. Radius slider allows us to control how much of
your blur we want. The closer it is to the right, blurring the image will be. And the closer to the
left, less Barry. Usually eating pixels is sort of where I want
my image to be. Not too blurry,
but barely enough. I'm sure most of you
are familiar with altering the brightness
and the contrast of an image to make it look
more vivid or less vivid. I think this is a
great way to increase the impact of your image. And consequently the
drawing you make out of it. For brightness sliders
there as well, in case you want to alter the overall lightness of the image. Moving on, I'm gonna be
showing you how you can shift the temperature of the image using the Color Balance tool. Here by dragging
the science red, magenta to green and
yellow to blue sliders, we can shift the
temperature of the image in a woman direction
or Nikola direction. Perhaps if you're
out and about taking reference photographs
for yourself and maybe the lighting
on a particular day was too warm or too cool. You can come in here after
the fact and play around with the temperature to get to a place where you have a
look that you're happy with. The next visual effects
we're gonna be looking at. This is one I only started
using my drawing practice, but I found it to be
extremely valuable. Essentially, you
can think about it as a grouping of your values. So the number you see on
the slider is indicative of how many color values the
image will be grouped into. So if the number is for, they're going to be
four main color values composing the entire picture. It's the number is two,
only two color values. The number is 1010 color values. So the lower the number, the simpler the color value composition of the
image will be. And the higher the number, the closer you are getting to the complexity of
the actual image, I'm going to change
this image to black and whites because this effect is more pronounced when the
image is a monochrome. In monochrome, it becomes
even more apparent. The effects, of course,
the reservation, the image almost resembles a
paint-by-numbers painting. Here, as you can see with
two on the level scale, we have three main color values in black and white and gray. When we change it to
five, we have a bit more. And if you keep going up, it will get progressively
closer to the original image. Last but not least,
I'm going to be demonstrating a color picker. How often have you looked
at a color and you can figure out exactly
what I call a was. And I had been in that
position many times. In those situations, I get
out the color picker tool, take a sample of a pixel in
the area and then paint it out with a paintbrush to better visualize
what I'm seeing. It's important to realize that the color picker tool picks out individual pixels and all the average value or average
value of a region. So you still have
to be able to make some value judgments in the particular color
you're trying to get. Here. I'm just
experimenting with different brushes
to see which one gives me a more accurate
representation of the color. In Photoshop and in many video editing apps we have out there, we have the levels and curves. And these are essentially
advance lights manipulation tools. So if you don't like how
the values in your image are being expressed and
go into curves, e.g. and play around with the values to get to a place
where things are looking a bit more balanced
or maybe on balance, depending on what
look you're after. Wartime experimentation with the curves will give
you a better sense for the effects of each movements
on your actual image. With levels we're doing
the exact same thing, manipulating the light effects, I find levels to be a
bit less intuitive, so I don't use it very often. But like with everything
else, with practice, you can get used to it
and figured out how to alter your image
to your liking. Alright, that's gonna
be it for this video. Ultimately, this is all about making a reference work for you, utilizing the tools at our disposal to aid us
in developing our craft. Hopefully, this is
just a starting point. There's so many different
things you can do in Photoshop or an image
editing in general, I can give that additional
spark of creativity or just more control over the
images that we work from. That's gonna be it for
this one. Bye-bye.
8. Color Matching: Color matching is the
topic of this lesson. I'm going to be doing just that. I went ahead and pick
some random items around the house that will serve as
the basis for this exercise. Personally, I don't believe you need to match the colors you see in your reference
or in life perfectly. But the ability to do
so is a valuable skill. Hence, why I think this
exercise is gonna be a great benefit to you in
your drawing practice, ultimately success
in this endeavor, It's going to require that
we ask the right kind of questions to pinpoint
the changes we need to make our colors to bring them to exactly what we
see in our reference. Let's exercise
contains in isolation what you would do in every color pencil drawing that you make. Always gonna be looking
at your reference, looking at your drawing, and trying to figure
out what combination of use, value and chroma, it's going to get
you to a place that produces an elegant work of art. While going through
this exercise, you're free to use a color
wheel or color charts to guide your
decision-making process. Eventually you want to
get to a place where you're matching the colors
without any external aid, just trusting your own
instinct together. Of course, you're gonna
have to practice a lot and train your mind and
I to work in unison. I'm going to be using the
fabric Estelle polychromy sets of 36 pencils. For this exercise, I have to say in color matching
for colored pencil, the more pencils you
have, the better. But that said it's
still possible to achieve a similar sacrum. The hues you see in nature a bit more flexibility
in the result. You're after. Further
ado. Let's get drawing. Okay, so the first
item we're going to be trying to call a mattress
this brown youth. I'm going to begin
with my brown pencil in this case for umber, you can think about
this brown as a kind of low chroma orange. So if you don't have
any brand pencils, you can get an orange pencil and D saturated with the blue. Using my wrong but pencil, I'm going to try to create
a few layers of pigment to bring up that color,
twist full saturation. I'm going to bring out my
cadmium orange pencil, warm up the temperature, color a little bit more,
as well as lights in it. At this point now I
realize the value is too light and
the color too warm. So I'm gonna get out my
walnut brown pencil, darken the value of bits and shift the
temperature cooler. Now I'm bringing back my cadmium orange pencil trying to get the color to be a little bit warmer for going back
in with my water, brown and darken the value. That much more, as you can see, all it took was three pencils, cadmium orange for
Amber, I want a brown. Next, let me try to match this deodorant cover
based on what I see, I would consider this a fairly
high chroma, light orange. First of all, I'm going to get our color pencil that's most similar in value and
in hue to what I see. In this case it's going
to be a burnt ocher. And this moment I'm building up some layers of the pigments, cross-referencing what I see, my color swatch, what I
see on the item itself. Some of the time you will
have a colored pencil that's really close to the color
you're trying to match. And usually in those cases, you don't have to
do a lot of work to get to your desired here. Other times you're going
to have to do a bunch of color mixing and utilize a whole host of
different pencils. In this case, we find
ourselves in the situation. Now that we have the
bones ocher down, I feel like the
colonies to get a little bit lighter on warmer. So I'm going to introduce my cadmium yellow to
help me do just that. Keeping a light hand and
applying successive layers, I'm gradually able to shift
its own under hue and the direction that I want a few more layers
without white pencil. And I'm happy with the
color swatch that we have. Next, we're going to try to
match this pair of scissors. For that I'm going to start
my dark red color pencil because I feel like it's
fairly close in terms of u, saturation and chroma
to the handle of the scissors usually want
to try to match colors. In this form, I tend to go
off of feel or instinct. But upon some reflection, I find that usually
I'm trying to get in the ballpark
of the hue first. Then I tried to match the value, and only then do I try
to nail the saturation. You might find that this auto works for you, but
if it doesn't, I'd also suggest trying
to Neil the aspect of hue value and chroma that
comes to you the easiest. Next to this mixture,
I'm going to add a pale geranium lake to lighten the value of bits
and increase its chroma. All right, so at this point
I feel like I've gotten the color that's close to
accurate as I'll get it. So I'm going to call
it a day for this red. Now we have a green leaf. I would describe this color as the low chroma, bluish green. To build up a base though, I think using an earth green yellowish is going to
do the best job for me. So I'll begin by putting a few layers of that
down before adding more colors on top of goods to bring it closer to what
I see in my reference. On top of that base, I'm
going to add my warm brown. We're just going to have
the dual effects of darken the value and
dropping his corona. Next, I'm going to go
over that layer with the cream colored pencil to lighten the value
of bits and shift the color slightly warmer
before returning to my yellowish green
colored pencil to put some finishing touches
on the color swatch. As I go through these
color swatches, my choice of pencil
is dictated by the feedback and
receiving from my eyes. So I look at my color
swatch and I look at the reference and I asked
myself, what is the difference? The difference is either going
to be a difference of hue, that is the specific color, a difference of value. How light or dark things are very different
for saturation, how intense am i colors relative to what I
see on the leaf? Once you understand
that principle, it's easy to know what
colored pencil to pick to apply on
your color swatch. Last but not least, we're
going to be color swatching this blue water bottle cover. I'm going to start with my hair. You'll be reddish because
I feel that this color is closest to what I
see Item already. I can tell that I'm
not going to need more than two or three colors to achieve the hue that
I see in front of me, simply because the color of the cover is one that's
very close already. The colors we have
in our virgin tins, usually the more
nonspecific color is, the more involved the process of layering to arrive at a
place where the colon, your swatch matches the color
that you see on the item. After applying a few layers
of Helio blue, reddish, I grabbed my magenta pencil
with the intention of darken the value and a warming
up the hue quite a bit. If you remember, magenta
is the reddish purple. So naturally it's
going to be close on the color wheel to read them blue and thus shift our
color and a woman direction. That's it for this exercise
and color matching, as you can see, it's a
fairly simple process. Almost all the colors we mixed, we did with two to three colors. The entire process boils down to asking the right
questions and putting the knowledge of
length of color theory into practice and
deliberate manner. With all this prep
work behind us, I think we're finally
ready to do a demo.
9. Demo of a Pear + Class Project: We are now finally at a point where our knowledge
of color theory can come to the 4.8 us and completing
this drawing of a pair, we have been through many
exercises to this point. It's all with the goal
of making us better problem-solvers as we attempt to create something beautiful. Or choosing a pair
as our subject, mainly because he has a
diverse range of use. It fairly simple form a single dominant
light source and a good light and
shadow dichotomy. By the way, I got this
photograph from unsplash.com, which is one of my favorite
websites for finding high-quality royalty-free
reference photos. This demo is going to be
condensed to roughly 20 min. And in it, I've described my thought process
and my technique for layering and
blending colored pencils to create beautiful drawings. Enjoy First things first, before we can
introduce our colors, we need an outline of
our subjects on paper. For this, I'm using it
to each graphite pencil. To begin, I'm Mark
what will be for me an approximation of
the height of the pair. I'm working with
comparative measurements. So this distance is up to me and not to scale
with my reference. If you're new to drawing, you might find working to scale a good idea and maybe
having a picture of the pair right next to your drawing surface starting
at the top of the stock, I can see it's a
kind of upside down L shape that tapers in
width from top to bottom. And make the best
guess is that I can utilize in straight
lines and taking into account the length of
the stock relative to the total length
of the fruit. As I progress through
the body of the fruits, I outlined the top half, which resembles a slant or trapezius, enforce
straight lines. We must consider
how this portion of the fruits lines up with the stock vertically
and horizontally. The plumb lines, the
top half of the body of the fruit is shortened
length than the stock, and the left side of the
body lines up almost perfectly with the leftmost
portion of the stock. The lower half of the
body of the pairs and oblong shape with a gesture of its wanna be tilted oval with many bumps
and ankle breaks. You can approximate this height and this part of the foods by using the top half
as a measuring stick, that can how many
of the top half you can fit it into
the bottom half. I also tend to use
the relationship between the medial
ankle breaks as an additional layer
of verification as to the accuracy
my proportions. At this point, it's time to move past the outside contours and define the shadow shapes
on the inside of the pair. Aside from just trying
to copy what I see, I'm also making sure that I keep my shapes as dynamic as I can. Next, I rubbed down the outline
with my kneaded eraser, so avoid excess graphite contaminating the layers
of colored pencil to come. I'd like to begin my shadows because the other
darkest elements in the picture and
established for me the lower limit of my
color value scale, with the upper limits in this setting being the
whites of the paper. I can see that the core
shadow this pier is a dark, relatively warm,
low chroma green. I don't have any
pencils particularly close to that color value. So begin the lane process
with this dark green pencil. On top of the dark green, I
will lay a dark brown pencil, which will simultaneously lower the value and reduce the
chroma of the existing layer. Whenever you introduce
a new color to an existing layer in order
to realize its full impact. More than one, more
than two layers if required to see its full effect. Once again, I'm going
back over the core shadow with the dark green
pencil just to give it that green issue that I see
in the reference right beside the core shadow is the
part of the shadow receiving the most
ambient light. Besides it being lighter, It's also considerably
warmer than the core shadow. I'll begin by defining this area with my darker pencil and going over that layer
with the green and gray pencil too low the chroma, we must also integrate the two color value
sections with soft edges. And we do so by using
the Hughes from one section and lightly layering it into
the other section. E.g. I. Use my dark green
and brown pencil and try to merge the core shadow
into the reflected light. For this portion of
the reflected light, we have our most intense
you a lightest values. We still exist in a
world of shadows, so we must be careful
not to get carried away and expressing our color
values in this region, the foundation for
this area will be established with the
high chroma orange, followed by light yellow
to mute the saturation and a dark brown pencil to darken the value significantly
dropped the chroma. I'll be using this
dark brown pencil a lot to soften the edges and the shadow shape and unify the hues and
the different areas. At this point, you
might be thinking the shadows lacking in contrast and the colors too
muted. You might be right? But as the video progresses, you will realize that in describing the form
and the lights, the true appearance
of the shadow will begin to take shape. Only then will I be able to truly judge what I've done here. In this moment. I'm
syncing my eyes a lot, looking for misplace hard
edges and softening them, as well as reassessing the
relationship of my values. In this next shadow shape,
I can see that there is less contrast than the
one we just finished, albeit with very similar use. The core shadow here
is lighter than in the previous shadow shape and the reflected light is darker. I'll be using similar
pencils but in slightly different proportions
to achieve this effect. The shadow shape right
beside the stock has been more greenish hue than the
one we just completed, as well as the
darker local value. Using a combination
of dark brown, dark green, and
light green pencil, I build up that color
value till I reach a place where it relates well with all the color
values surrounding it. At this juncture, I make
my way to live sheep, beginning with the
dark is half-tones. They have a yellowish
green hue to them. I wouldn't necessarily
be lighter than all the values in the shadow
shape previously described. Don't worry about getting
things perfect at this point. Just build up those layers, prioritize the values and the color will come
forth naturally. Feeling like the
green hue of my dark is half-tones with
too saturated, I applied a few layers of a muted color to bring
down that chroma. Fairly happy with the
look at this point, I find the hard edges
on the borders of the shadow shapes,
calling my attention. So I soften them using my
dark brown, dark green, and red pencils to bring you closer to what I see
in the reference. This plane compared
to what's around. It is upward facing and hence is catching
a bit more light. The difference is very subtle, but one that we should endeavor to indicates I started using my yellow pencil
because that area appears to me to be warmer than the half-tones
surrounding it. So having that base ensures that the green hues
that I apply over it, a color shifted in
the right direction. Without dark is
half-tones laid down. What remains is the center light shape and its highlights. There was minimal variation in value in this part of the pair. So most of my energy is
being devoted to getting even tone green color and creating a soft bit
specific light shape. Once I have a base
with Allied ship establish the next step
consists of bridging the gap in value between the
dog has halftone under centralized shape with
intermediate values, these intermediate values will increase the sense
of roundness and draws nearer to the 3D feel
we're after in this picture. The lightest part of our peers, the highlights, despite
being very eye-catching, It's really not a part of
the form for that reason, I prefer to leave it for last. In this case, I'll highlight
as a yellowish tint. Thus the white of the
paper will be far too cool to me as the
entire highlights. It's a tricky thing, softening the edges surrounding
the highlights. And because of the
constraints and hard dark, you can go Given
the lightness of the area I find using my elasto, my eraser in tandem
with a white pencil, particularly handy
enlightening my colors in his section such as this. As we go along, we want
to make sure that we're continuing to refine
those halftone shapes, improve our edges, and
treat every section of this picture as a
masterpiece and of itself. All right. The top half of the pair is
very similar to the bottom. The biggest difference being the local value of the
half-tones being a bit lighter. And this section, my
goal is to first work, we transition from
shadow to light on the right-hand side using my light green pencil
predominantly, before returning to
the lighter tones and delineating those color value shapes with my light yellow, white, and light green pencil. I am after a distinct sense of roundness with the
values lightest and the center and gradually getting darker as we move towards
the edges of this, of course, needs to be executed in a subtle manner because of the contrast in
the light shape of the entire pier is pretty low. The stock of this
pair appears to me to be a low chroma
magenta color. So I will start
my magenta pencil building up those
layers before adding gray and whites to cool things down, enlightened some sections. I also had a peach color and the darker tones of the stock, half-tones, by the way,
which are darker than all the half-tones in
the body of the pair. To add variety to the color. The light shape of the
stock is darker than the center lights of
the body of the pair. Lighter than the
dark is halftones. As we grow up the stock, the hue gets progressively
cooler and lighter. We are now at a stage where most of the heavy
lifting is done. I'd like to take a step back, glance back and forth between my reference and my drawing, I select small areas of the form that I think
I could improve. Now is an especially good
time to play around with your colors and really fine tune those hues and temperatures. You'd like to see your
finished drawing. Here I'm adding some dark
contours to accentuate the silhouettes of the pair and separate it more
from the background. This is purely
fantastic chores as something you can experiment
with to see if you like. Alright, congratulations
for making it this far. I hope you've been
able to extract a few nuggets of wisdom from these lessons that will
hopefully help you in your journey as you progress
to becoming a better artist. Before I leave you, we can't
forget our class projects. And for this one, your
task will be to complete the color swatch
exercises from earlier, beginning with the
permanent colors and ending with
the gradient bars. I believe understanding
of colors which you seek deliberate practice
in color mixing with, demystify the process and lead you on the path to mastery. Thanks for watching
till the next one. Take care.
Ebube Zulu Okafor, Fine Artist & Teacher
