Transcripts
1. Introduction: Are you curious about shading
with colored pencils, but unsure where to begin? Those realistic color
shadings seem overwhelming. Hi, I'm Elizabeth and welcome to my class colored pencil
color theory shading. I am a professionally trained
artist and art educator, as well as a published
author, Illustrator. In 2020, I began
teaching for Skillshare, developing classes that explore a wide range of
materials, techniques, and art making
approaches As I share my creative journey and artistic process with my students. Regardless of which
art medium I'm using, color is always a
huge focal point in my art and very important
to my artistic process. Colored pencils are one of
my favorite art mediums. In this class, we'll learn
the basics of color theory as a foundation for layering and shading with
colored pencils. We'll explore value through unrealistic color
schemes to learn how to choose color values
that lead to smooth, blended drawings filled
with depth and contrast. This class is intended for creatives new to shading
with colored pencils. By the end of this class, you'll have a strong understanding of color theory that
will inform how you approach shading with
colored pencils. You'll have applied that
knowledge to create several colored pencil
color scheme drawings. As we explore the same
subject in a variety of ways, you'll have color theory
knowledge that you can apply to future artwork, color schemes in any
medium of your choice, As well as colored pencil skills that you can take even farther. As you continue your
artistic journey, I hope to see you in class.
2. Class Project: Thanks for joining me
for our class project. We are going to work through several color theory exercises. And for each different
color scheme, we are going to be creating
a mini thumbnail drawing using the same reference image. Our image will stay the same, but our growth and
understanding of color theory and
colored pencil layering and shading will
gradually increase from exercise to exercise
and lesson to lesson. You may use the reference
image that I've provided on the projects and
resources section of class. Or you may search out
your own reference image from an image resource website, such as Unsplash.com or
your own photographs. So let's run over to the
next lesson and talk about the materials we'll be using
in class. See you there.
3. Materials : Now let's talk
about what supplies you're going to need for class. I'll be creating my exercises in my **** Blick
drawing sketchbook. This is one of my new
favorite sketchbooks to use for colored pencil. This one is eight by ten. It's got 30 sheets
and it's 130 GSM, so 80 weight paper, which works lovely
for colored pencil. It also handles in really well, but it is so lovely for
the colored pencil work that we're going to be
doing. But any drawing paper that you have on hand is great. Just make sure it doesn't have
too much of a tooth to it. We're also going
to want to have on hand a graphite pencil. You can use a number two
wooden pencil if you prefer. A mechanical pencil, we're going to make sure
that it is a lead, that you can keep
rather light so that our pencil marks don't take away from the color pencil work
that we're going to be doing. You're also going to
want to have some kind of larger eraser on hand, just so that after you do your pencil drawing
on your paper, you can go ahead and
lighten that up easily by going over it
with a large eraser. And then you're going
to want to have a sharpener on hand. It can be something as basic as this for my colored pencils. I really love this F mat
colored pencil sharpener works really great
for colored pencils and gives me a really nice tip. And then last but not least, you're going to need
some colored pencils. You can use any brand that
you like or have on hand. I am a huge fan of prisma color, but there's tons of other brands out there that work great. Because we are doing lingering
and shading for our class. We're going to want
softer lead pencils. So if you have a
really hard lead to your pencil, you're
going to want to make sure that maybe you pick
up a couple softer ones. And this is a set of 48. I think at minimum a set of 24 would be good
because we're going to be doing color theory exercises to get at color pencil shading. So you're going to want to
be able to have a variety of colors within a hue,
if that makes sense. So a couple different
kinds of green, a couple different kinds of
blue, that kind of idea. And then you're going to definitely want to
make sure that for your color pencils you
have a white and a black. Take some time to gather up your art supplies and I'll meet you in the next lesson as we start to learn
about layering and shading colored
pencils. See you soon.
4. Shading and Layering Overview: Welcome back. To get started, let's talk about the
basics of shading. Colored pencils, like
most drying mediums, can be used in a
variety of ways. Shading refers to the use of light medium and dark values
of a color as we begin to create depth and roundness
dimension contrast in our artwork with
colored pencils, we can achieve various values
through pencil pressure as well as through layering different pencil
values and colors. So the first thing I want to
explore is pencil pressure. If we take one of our colors, let's take something
nice and bold. We can achieve a
light value by just barely letting the pencil
touch the surface. Just going back and forth. Crossing the pencil strokes over one another to create
an evenness to it. So we can fill in a whole space with same value across
the whole section. Now we can increase our color just using a
single color pencil, or even works the same for graphite pencils by
increasing our pressure. If I push a little harder, I get a darker value of
that same color hue, Same color, different value, just by increasing the
pressure a little bit. Now if we increase the
pressure even more, we get an even darker, brighter boulder version of the color pencil that
we're working with. By going back and forth
with our strokes, we fill in the
tooth of the paper, and then that creates
that nice balance of even wash of color. And we can push even darker to get an even brighter color, bolder version of the color pencil that
we're working with. The more we go over
it and the more we press down with our pressure, the bolder that color
is going to get. We can get even
darker by really, really pushing down on that pencil and going over and over and
over those strokes, all of those values
with just one pencil controlling the pressure that we apply to the pencil
under the paper. These would be different
separate values. If we wanted to shade with one color using different
pencil pressures, we could do more
of a value scale. We would start with
our light and you can fade it all the way
out to nothing. This goes for any drying medium, pencil, charcoal, soft,
steal color pencil. I can get my light value. And then I'm going to
gradually increase the pressure as I work
over to the right. Gradually increase the pressure as I work over to the right. By going back and forth
and back and forth, and changing up my
pencil pressure, I am able to fade those
values into each other instead of having
the separate ones up here where I was creating
separate individual values. Now I'm doing a value scale. The value is changing very
smoothly from one section, from one value to another. As I work my way across
with the pencil, as I'm going backwards
toward the left, I'm lightening up my pressure. I can create a value
scale with one pencil, pencil pressure. Pretty great. Now I can take this
even farther by layering up even more
values of the same hue. If we start with the same color, this is a process red
similar to a magenta. We add in a lighter pink to it. I'm going to add in
some blush pink. Then I'm going to add something
darker on top of that. Let's see, let's
go nice and dark. This is going to
be my Tuscan red, Since they're all in
the same color family, they're going to
work well together. Even though my processed
red is a little bit more purple in nature. When you're working with
a soft lead pencil, you're going to end up
sharpening more often because the lead
is going to wear down more because it's softer. But that isn't
necessarily a bad thing. I really like the soft lead pencils the best because I love the creaminess that they have to them and they blend
really nicely together. The harder ones
you're going to find, the pencil strokes are going to be more defined
and you're going to have to work a little harder to get the smoothness to them because
they wear down faster. You sharpen more often. Hence, why invested in an
electric sharpener this time? Let's do the same thing that we did here with
our value scale, But now let's do it through
layering the pencils. I'm going to start with
my lightest pencil. I'm still using pencil pressure. I'm still just dusting the
color on and then increasing my pressure to get a bolder section of
that same light pink. Then I'm going to go in with
my process red, my magenta. And I'm going to start
very light and lighten it even more as I fade it out where that other
light pink already is. But then I'm going to
go back to the right, and I'm going to
increase my pressure so that I get that nice bold
magenta that I love. I'm continuing to
work back and forth, left to right, getting all of those lovely colors to
blade, to blend together. And then I can go back with
my pink over the top of the magenta and continue to
blend those two together, things continuing to
still fade to the left, and then I can go in
with my Tuscan red. This one's pretty
dark, so I'm going to start a little
bit more over here. Whoops. Leads break. Often, it's just the nature
of a super sharp point. I'm going to go ahead and I'm
going to fade that out into my magenta and then head
back to the right now. Ultimately, I wanted to create
a value scale for magenta. Magenta is going
to be present in almost all of the range. There's a pretty
big jump between the magenta and the Tuscan red, or the process red
and the Tuscan red. I'm going to have to go
a little bit more over those two and push down a little bit harder in this instance
to get them to blend. Because I'm putting
more wax down, more colored pencil, it's going to look a little creamier. This one still has
some of the tooth to the paper showing through, but because we're we're going to end up with more colored
pencil on the paper, less of that wax coming through. Now I have a value scale. We have separate values that we created with one pencil
and pencil pressure. We have a value scale that we created with just
pencil pressure, going from light pressure
to heavy pressure. Now we've taken pencil
pressure and we've layered in other color. Now we're layering to create our value, which
is pretty great. We can do that to
create value like this. We can also do that
to make new colors. Let's make a new color when you're painting
in your mixing colors. It's always recommended
that you start with your lightest color first and gradually add in
your darker color. Let's see how that applies
to colored pencil. If I take this yellow, which is still a bold color, let me go ahead and
lay down some yellow, nice swatch of yellow. Actually, I'm going to
do a couple of them. Let's see how many ways in just a little bit
of time we can change this yellow by adding in some of its other
colored pencil friends. Let's do 44 swatches of yellow. Fairly decent pressure so that we have a nice
build up on there. Now if I take a little
bit of light orange and I layer that in to this, we get an even more yellow, orange color than
this one already is. It's a lot of back and forth, back over yellow, some orange, some yellow, some orange. Now let's think about this. We started with yellow, we added in orange, we created this beautiful
yellow orange in the middle. Now let's try that again. We
have our yellow as our base. Let's try doing it with green. Let's do it. Let's stick
with some lighter colors. We have our yellow. Let's put our colors that
we're starting with, above and below yellow, then this light green, lime green down there. Now we're going to put that
lime green over our yellow, making sure that we're filling
it in with our strokes, We have nice even coverage. And then back in
with the yellow, back in with the green, you can play around with how
much pressure you put down. Because the more
pressure you put down, the more of that color
you're putting into the mix, it makes it just glow, so cool. Let's pop in some
of our Tuscan red. Let's see what happens. We have our yellow that
we're starting out with. This is a much darker color. We'll see how that goes. We have our Tuscan
red down below. Now we're going to
start layering it in. You can always go darker, but you can't always go lighter. You want to make sure
that you start off light, that you can always pop those
colors darker in the end. This yellow really warms
up that Tuscan red, make it even darker, brings
a real warmth to it, really pulls the red out
of it, which I like. We have one last
one to play with. Let's do better
yellow on the top. What else should we mix in here? How about we want to think
about color theory, right? We want to think about what is going to mix well together. I could throw something
crazy in here, but it might not
look that great. That's okay. This is all about
playing and experimenting. Actually, let's do that. Let's throw a neutral in here. This is a light, um, just for fun, this is what this looks
like all on its own. Then layer that in. I picked a really bold yellow. It's going to make
everything right. That's the nature of yellow worms that went up really nice. Because umber tends to
be pretty cool color. Yeah, very nice, neutral. That wouldn't be bad
if I was trying to shade something
yellow, like a lime. Let's have some more color fun. Let's see how far
we can push it. Let's start with, let's get
a couple different teals. How about a green? Let's add a fourth
color to the mix. Let's add a dark blue. I'm going to do it value scale and then see how far I can it. I've got my light going darker, my latest teal, and then
I've got my darker teal. I'm going to fade into the. Those fade nicely because
they're so similar. Then let's go wild and
do our green into that, fades into that
teal, really nice. Get some lovely
new colors there. Our dart flu the end. And I can even pull this
screen out even further. Fade it out into
the blue a little bit just to help them
blend together more. It's beautiful, I love it. That is pencil
pressure and layering to create both value
as well as new color. In our next lesson,
we'll begin applying our understanding of
using pencil pressure as well as layering color and value to create a
monochromatic drawing. As we explore the value
ranges we can achieve using a single hue
of color, see there.
5. Monochromatic Colored Pencil: In this lesson, we're
going to learn about and create a monochromatic
color pencil drawing. If you haven't done so yet, please be sure to choose your reference
image or feel free to use the one that
I've provided on the projects and resources
section of class. Monochromatic means one color and it's lights,
mediums, and darks. Traditionally means you
have one color or hue and then you add white to lighten it and
black to darken it. The reference image
that I am using for this one is provided for you in the projects and
resources section. It's an image that
I acquired off Unsplash.com which is a
fabulous website when you're looking for
high resolution images of a wide variety of things. And they're all
available royalty free. I'm going to quickly
sketch in my orange. Don't worry about
your drawing skills. The goal for our class is
to focus on color theory. To get at shading
with colored pencils, just go for the gist of whatever piece of fruit or single object
you decide to use. Anything will be great. I drew this too large. We're going to do a little
image modification here. You want to keep your
pencil sketching light. Try to do it dark
enough so that you can see it on the camera. But ultimately, we would go for a nice light image,
nice light sketch. Sometimes it's easier to draw it and then put
the box around it. So I'm going to go
ahead and erase that top bit so
that I can fit in my leaf close enough for our purposes. Okay. So I'm going to
go ahead and lighten this up with my eraser. I don't want to
make it too late, so I want you to be able
to see what's happening. And I chose poorly for this
eraser because it's sponged, it all monochromatic because
my object is orange. I want to avoid
oranges for my colors. So I want to pick something that doesn't make any sense at all. If you choose a color that is similar to the color of your
actual object in real life, your mind is going
to keep trying to recreate the real colors and
that's not what we're doing. We're doing model chromatics so that we can just
break it down and get really solid
layering our colors, getting control of
our pencil pressure, and using color theory to get at color shading with
colored pencils. So I want to make sure
that whatever I choose, I'm not picking greens
because I've got green up here in
the real picture and I've got oranges down here. I'm actually going
to go with lose for all of it because
there's no blue in this, in oranges in real life. So I'm going to
want a dark blue. I've got a light blue. So we're getting a little loose with our interpretation
of monochromatic. But that is totally fine,
light blue, dark blue. I know I'm going
to need my white and I've got a really dark blue. So I'm going to go ahead and
grab that, my indigo blue. And then I need black. For monochromatic, we're
going to want the black. So I have my value, my value layering for
my black and my white. And then I've got three
values in the middle. So what's going
to happen is I'm, I'm going to loosely map out my lights with my lightest blue, my mediums with my
nice bold blue, and my darks with
my indigo blue. And then the blacks are going to pop the darks even darker, and the whites are going to
pop the lights even lighter. So kind of help fill in the
rest of the, the value scale. So at this point we want to keep our pencil pressure light. And I'd like to start
with my lights first. So I'm just going to
go ahead and dust in where the lights
are on, my orange. Knowing that the
colors are going to blend together eventually, I don't have to worry
about filling in too much. I'm using really light
pressure because that gives me control over blending
and layering. Later, I got my lights dusted
in there and then there's some other little pops of light up here where
the little bumps are. I'm not worrying
about being exact, I'm just using the image as
a loose reference guide. Then this whole part of
the orange is super light. That is where the
light is hitting it. I want to make sure that I don't go too heavy
with my light, because even though
it's my lightest color, I know that if I push
hard enough in my pencil, I can make that light
color pretty dark. I'm putting in a little bit
of darkness at the bottom. Feeding that out.
Starting to shade. And then there's a little bit, this is pretty light up here. Then now I'm going to go
to my medium and I'm going to pop some of my
medium in there. As you feel comfortable, you can start putting in playing with the pencil
pressure so that you start to get that push and
pull of your values. It's a little bit of darkness
on this edge of the stem. There's definitely
darkness over here. I'm going to quickly fade that out so that I
don't lose my lights and so I don't have a
harsh line it up here. Okay. I want to define
that leaf a bit. I know there's some darkness there because there's
a little bit of fold and I'm going to fade this out into that
light blue go. And then there's definitely
some darkness under here, but not the darkest of
darks, heaps this way. Okay. And then this
is pretty dark. And it's okay if things
get a little muddled for a little while because we're going to lose
some of our definition as we start popping
these colors in. But then we're going to
put even more colors and pressure and value
to bring them back. All right? That's pretty good for
the blues up there. I did forget about this
part that Go ahead, pop in some of that darkness a little heavier so that I can don't lose my
definition too much. Now I'm going to get some
Jerger sections here. We start to define the
creases in the orange. Definitely, it's
okay to jump around. We're filling in the values. Now I know this whole part
of the orange is very dark, but I don't want to go
too dark, too fast. So I'm being very
careful just to gradually build up those values. Then wherever you
think you need it, it's okay to pop in a few more
intense values as you go. All right, I'm going to
jump around a little bit. I want to put a little
bit of this over here because I can see some redness in
the actual picture. It's definitely darker than the base orange of this piece of orange darkness back there
pushing that edge back. That's the other thing,
darkness will push your edges back and the brightness
will pop them out. If anything is ever looking
flat in your drawings, you probably need to your edges back and the widest
sections out. It's just a little tweak of the value system that
will apply to any, any type of medium
that you're using. All right, I'm going to start
layering over that there's some darkness down there and connect this back
up and go darker. I need to pull this over more, but I need to make sure
it fades out fast. It's all about the
back and forth. And I've got some strokes there, so I'm going to go
ahead and go in. Now, I'm going to start
going back and forth with these two colors and let that light blue help blend
in the darker blue. All right, good. Now this needs to come
up here a little bit. Shrink down our bright spot. Help feed this out
a little more. See how the different value colors are helping each other. All right? It's a
little clunky in there, but I'm not going to
worry about it right now. Okay, now push this back a bit. I want to make sure it
keeps being around. We go great. Okay, now let's go
to our darkest blue. So close to black.
I want to make sure I don't accidentally
grab the black. And then I'm going
to go ahead and re my darks in with this, still using pencil pressure
so I can still fade a really dark color out fast. So we have that beautiful
play of values, definitely changed
this leaf quite a bit. That's okay. All right,
we're getting there. I still have my white
in my black to add, so I can still pop the
whites even brighter. And I can also push the
darks even darker with that. So let's quickly some nice
dark on the edge of the stem, make sure I feed it out. I got a little distracted
when I was doing the indense. I'm going to have
to jump backwards and get some of
those back in there. With my medium color, I need that to bridge
between my latest color and my darkest blue. My lightest blue.
My darkest blue. Now let's go back to this one and push the stark in the back. Now the reference image I chose
is on a black background. That changes the way we
see this a little bit. But because we're not looking at creating realistic color, it shouldn't be a problem
if you're ever having trouble recreating something
that you're looking at, and it has a different
valued background than what you're drawing it on. Your perception of,
it's going to change. I understand that you covered up the background,
it would look different. All right? Yes, Yes, monochromatic. Okay. Now let's were to be
very subtle with the black. Because black can go
intense very fast. I just want to use
it to pop this just a little bit darker just to give
a little more drama. Because oranges need
especially blue ones. I also want to darken this
up with my light blue. Okay, have a little
bit black in there. It's getting a little
bit more dramatic. Just great, put a
little bit dark there. Just a hint of it.
Just the subtlest bit. And we don't always
want to put black for our darkest value, but in a monochromatic
picture, it makes sense. Everything is one
color, more or less. Then once you get to this point, you can take as
many liberties as you want to with your shading. If you want to make it bolder, if you want to do
it more intense, however you want to
do it. All right. I want to come back in here and intensify this a little bit. Clips, throw my color
pencils around, crisping up this edge
without outlining. That's why we drew it
in pencil first because we don't want a harsh outline. I can leave it like this.
I can let the white of the paper do its thing
and be the brightness, and that is totally great. Or I can pop in some white. Now the white is going to not be super white because
it's going to pick up and blend with whatever
other color is down. I'm just going to do it a little bit here and there to
smooth out some of the grittiness but also
bring in brightness. But I like the tooth
in this one tooth on this particular
paper. I really enjoy. I could burnish
it like crazy and just really break down
that tooth and blend all those waxy
colors together or I can just do it a
little bit there. Monochromatic orange. We have our light color, our medium color,
and our dark color, but all from the
same color family. As far as hues go, all blues. You can do any color
family you want to. You could do pinks and reds. You could do different oranges, You could do yellows, You could do greens,
You could do violets. You could do browns
if you wanted to, if you have a couple
of different browns. But avoid any colors that are in your actual
reference image. So that you can truly focus
on a monochromatic value. Focused layering drawing
and then white and black. So that is our
monochromatic exercise for this portion of flass. In our next lesson,
we're going to expand our understanding of
color theory, knowledge, and application by taking a
look at what colors can be used together to create a warm color scheme
drawing. See you there.
6. Warm Color Scheme: Now let's apply some
basic shading principles using a warm color scheme. Half of the color wheel is warm and half of the
color wheel is cool. That makes it fairly easy for
us to look at our options. But color pencils
are a little bit more involved than a
standard color wheel. We have warms and cools
within the same color. You really want
to take a look at your color pencil options and whatever set or collection
of pencils you're using. And determine what are your warm colors and what
are your cool colors. And then experiment and play with how those
are going to work together to create a layered shaded colored
pencil drawing. Now we're going to
go a little bit more intricate and we
are going to really start looking at the
colors in relation to each other to see what
are our light warms, our medium warms
and our dark worms. If you're having
trouble seeing this, something that's very helpful is to lay out your colored pencils, Take a picture of those and then turn that image
black and white. And that will strip
away the color but leave the value you'll
be able to really determine are the colors that
I think are my lights truly my lights or does
it get a little mixed up between my
lights and my mediums? Darks tend to be
pretty obviously dark. But sometimes we need
to train our eye to really start to distinguish
value between colors. That's a quick tip that you
can try if you are having trouble seeing the value
with all the color. I did do a blue
monochromatic drying. In essence, this
would be cool ish, but because it's only
blue, it's monochromatic. And not a cool color scheme
when we break things down. So let's look at
this warm and cool. So I'm going to quickly
sketch this again. And if you are someone who is feeling less comfortable with the drawing aspect
of this class, remember you can
always check out my lesson about image
transfer so that you can shortcut
the drawing aspect of this and get right
to the colored pencil. Not going to worry too
much about the drawing, I'm just going to get
the gist of it again. Two oranges, oranges. For a warm color scheme, we can use anything on the
warm half of the color wheel. Yellows, oranges, reds,
warm pinks, warm violets. If we want to, I'm
going to go ahead and grab the lightest yellow. You can use as many
colors as you want to, so I'm going to go ahead
and do a light yellow. And this marigold dish is
this one yellow ochre. I'm going to grab my orange, which I know we're
doing an orange. No, it'll be fine. I'll warm it. I'll warm it up a different way. So I'm going to go ahead
and actually pop in some non orange colors that are still going to
be on the warm side. I'm going to put my
black down because I don't want to shade
my warm one with black. Because black is a cool color and that's an absence of color. But it's cooler, so I'm going to grab a brown and I'm
going to grab a red. And I definitely
want my Tuscan red. What I'm going to do is
I'm going to aim for more of a red orange in the end. I'm going to use the
orange sparingly and maybe not at all.
We're going to see. It'd be a little hard
to see at first just because this yellow is so light. I can go ahead and push
a little bit darker. But even with the light,
yellow is so light, it's not really going to do
much other than put wax down. Okay. Lights in done now, because I want to go
more towards red, orange, red, orange, the fruit. I'm going to go
ahead and go in with some peach as my next color. Now I have a couple lights, a couple mediums,
a couple darks, building up more variety
in my color application. I don't want to
lose those yellows, but I'm really
liking this speech. All right, that all tensor, hopefully you can see
it a little bit better. And I'm going to start putting
in my darker light values, which will also be the
foundation for my medium values. You can always turn your
paper, your sketchbook, whatever angle or direction is the most comfortable
for you to draw. I try to keep it fairly
upright when I'm filming videos because I want to make sure that you can
see what I'm doing. But sometimes it's hard
to draw a certain angles. All right? I'm just going
to dust and peach across here and then fade that
out into my light yellow, knowing that it's going
to look a little flat and a little funky
for a little while. Now I'm going to go
with my darker yellow. This is, I have to be careful, because a lot of these colors are actually in my
reference image, and I want to create
a truly warm picture, even though that
leaf is pretty warm. As far as greens go, I still want it to be an
unrealistic shading thing. It seems weird, but when we take realistic
color out of the equation, it just makes it all so much
easier. Just focus on color. Color as value. And it's a game changer, we're getting at shooting
something like color pencil. You can also do this with
water color acrylic. Doing color studies of something in those mediums
is a really good idea, especially if you're a
beginner or you just want to push yourself to grow in
new ways with those mediums. Now we're adding more color and we're getting a lot of wax down. It might get a little
gross, looking less pretty. We're doing exercises to better understand
color and value. It doesn't have to be a
beautiful picture in the end. But as you're layering colors, sometimes there can
be some awkward moments along the way. You just have to be like, okay, that looks strange knowing that it's all going to change
the more we layer in here. Okay. So I haven't and
I'm making sure that I don't lose my bright spot
now. I want to go in. I'm really tempted to just completely skip
orange altogether. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm
going to take orange out, but I am going to grab a, this is cardimandrrmine red. It's a nice warm,
it's a pinky red. It's really beautiful.
Quickly becoming one of my favorite
colors this week. That will help us have a
little bit of the orangeness. But without the oranges. You know what I mean? All right, let's jump up here and define
the stem a little bit. The more we draw the
same picture there, we're getting to know it. We're going to understand its details. That's
the other thing. The reason I want you to be
drawing the same picture for each of our exercises is because I want you to
really start to see it. Really start to see the values and understand what's
happening in there. Because that will help you
grow so much as an artist. All right, let's see. Yet again, change the shape of
the leaf. It's okay. Take it in there
until it makes sense, and if it doesn't, it's okay. I'm still having fun
playing with color as value start to
define this section. I have ignored it until now, but I'm knowing
that I'm going to put a bunch of more
color in this, so I don't want to go crazy heavy with color yet with value, I should say, your
paper can max out wax. And depending on the color
pencils you're using, they can max out
and how many layers can go on top of each other. Prisma color can go pretty far, especially if I don't push hard. It too has a point, the paper and the wax
that's already on there. I'll just say as I get
to know this image, I can go faster into heavier pressure because
I have a better handle, I have a better handle
on how to fade it out. I still want to be
careful though. I don't want to go too far. You can always look up at your
other picture too or look at wherever you have
it, your other drawing. A check to see. We don't want to recreate
that drawing per se, but we had a really nice handle on some areas of the value. Might not be a bad idea to reference it and
compare the two. All right, that's looking good. All right, I'm going
to go ahead and go with my crimson rod. Pop that in and then mates
circle back to those yellows. Kind of bring those
back a little bit, start building up
that dark side. Okay. Now I have to
make some decisions about how red this
is going to become. I think I want to pull
my yellows back in. So let's see what happens
when I layer this back in. Now they have all
those other colors. I don't want to
lose my brightness. I've got to be careful. This is doing a really nice job
of warming up even more. The reds, the yellow ocher. All right, I'm going to
do the same thing with the pink is a middle point between the yellows
and the reds. No, I'm going to pop
in white a little bit. It's a combination of
whatever makes sense and where it says where it
shows in the picture. Now, your white and
your colorless bonder will pick up the other
colors you put on it. So I had to should have
made sure that after I did this one that I wiped off the tip because otherwise
it would transfer the blue. I want to pop the darks darker. So I'm going to do
that with the red. But I'm also going
to do it with, oh, I forgot about
the Tuscan red. Let's get the Tuscan
red in there. That is actually going to be, instead of black, I'm not
going to use the brown. I like the brightness
that I have. But I do want a little
bit more chromatic pop in some darker sections. I'm going to, just like
I did with the black, in the monochromatic one, I want to carefully put
in a touch darkness. The wax is getting pretty thick, so I'm almost to the
point where it's, it's going to start
getting streaky. So I'm going to have to
let it be done soon. Some more chart down here. I put in a lot of color,
but I needed more value. That's why it's good to
step back now and then. And it's in perspective on what's happening
in your drawings. What does it need?
What's missing? I like how this curves up there. I'm going to pop that in
with the carmine red. That's one of my medium colors. Oh, you could just
keep reworking it over and over
again at some point. You got to tell
yourself it's good. Moving on, now, I just have
to fade this out more. Great. In our next lesson, we will apply these
same shading principles but using a cool color scheme. So let's turn it over
to our next lesson and get started. See you soon.
7. Cool Color Scheme: Now let's increase
our color theory understanding even further by focusing on cool colors and
creating a cool color scheme. Most of the cool
colors are going to naturally blend
well together. But just like with
our warm colors, you might find that
a little bit of experimentation might be
helpful off to the side in your sketchbook before you dive right into
your sketch image. Again, you're going
to want to choose colors to represent your lights, your mediums, and your darks, but this time only focusing on your cool colors plus white
and potentially black. Now we're going
to do a cool one, but we're going to
do it different. Let's use greens, but we're only going to use the cool greens
and we're going to mix in. We'll use some blues too. I'm going to go ahead and grab true green and brass green. I'm going to grab my
indigo blue, violet blue. And my light blue violet might
take it to a weird place. I'm going to avoid violet Carol. Just throw some teal in for fun. Starting with the same blue, we're going to map
in our lights. Again, it's really fun
to see how things look different when you're looking at them through
different color schemes. That's another fun
reason to do something like this in any
medium you choose just to see what other fun ways you can depict
something when you take realistic color out
of the equation, but you still focus
on realistic value. All right, go ahead and darken this edge and feed that out. I'll go to my next light
color, pop that in. It's looking a little crazy. It's going to be just fine. We just need to bore colors to bridge between the
blues and the greens. Let's do, we can pop in some
darks with that fading out. This is one of our
medium colors. All right, now I'm going
to go in with the green. And this is, although
it's a very dark green, it's not a very dark color. So I'm going to use
it kind of spring so that I can really in dark blues. All right? I'm going to
go ahead and go back in with my light blue. I still need some drama. So I'm going to pop
in that blue violet because I'm using cooler colors. This one I can use
black and have it work. I could use be, sometimes
it looks weird, It doesn't blend in as nicely as you might want it
to. With warm colors, it's a little muddled as
far as value and color go. So I need to help define things a little bit
more with some darker values. I have a darker green, I think I might grab that too. And I have a darker teal I want to pull to unify
these cool colors a bit. It says peacock blue. Yeah, that's what it needed. So that's providing my bridge between my blues and my greens. And you can see how
my highlight moved. That's not a big deal
because I'm not, like I said, the reference
image is a loose guide. I want to pop in some white jack to make sure all of my
worms are off of there. Just to soften it, it's pretty much at the point
where it's not going to let me lay down anymore. A pencil. We have our warm
and our cool so you can see how it
changes it, right? Like if we're looking
at the warm one, this gives a very different
feeling than the cool one. That's why it's
important to play with your color schemes and see
what your options are. And you don't have to
always go for realism. In our next lesson, we're
going to explore one of my favorite color schemes,
analogous color scheme. See soon.
8. Analogus Colored Pencil: Let's expand our color theory
knowledge even farther by beginning to understand
an analogous color scheme. This is truly one of my favorite color
schemes to work in. And there's so much variety within an analogous
color scheme. And it weaves back
and forth between the worm and the cools,
which is extra fun. And takes us one step closer to realistic
color pencil shading. Analogous means
three to five colors next to each other
on the color wheel, when we're talking about
colors next to each other, it's not just the
primaries red, yellow, and blue, and the secondaries, orange, green, and violet. There are colors
between those colors. Red and orange, for
example, makes red orange. And then we know with
colored pencils there's even more options
between those two. It's never just cut or dry with so many color options to play with and experiment
with and choose from. So let's dive in.
So I'm going to go ahead and quickly sketch
out my orange again. And then I've already picked out some analogous colors
that I want to play with. They're some of my favorites. Analogous colors are colors that are right next
to each other. On the color wheel, it's usually a mix of
three to five colors. That includes the
primaries to secondaries, as well as the tertiary or intermediate colors
that are in between. A primary to secondary, we're using the same
reference image so that we can see how it changes as we continue to
learn about its values. As well as expand our
understanding of color theory and grow in our abilities to shade and to
layer color pencils. Then the great thing
about color pencils as far as color goes, we've already talked
about a little bit, is how many color
options there are. Even when we're
talking about one hue, we have different
kinds of a color. So we have a lot of
different kinds of blues. We might find some of
your color pencils or a warmer version
of that color, or a cooler version
of that color, so you can really get
as loose as you want to with the colors that you pick and how
you work with them. For my tertiary colors, I've got my white
in my black so that I can push my
lights in my darks. If I want to, Then I wanted
to go with the example that I said I've got red and purple were my starting
point red and violet. And let's lay those out. I've added a light
red and a dark red, and then I could
add a light purple. But I'm going to go ahead and just use the white
to brighten up my purple because it's going
to be my darker color. Then in between that, between the red and the purple,
the red and the violet, I have a pinkier red and
I've got a purplier pink. If that makes any sense, then I've also got a blue
violet that I've got something that's a little beyond
the purple or the violet. So I could add more to this
and I might as I go along, I'm going to see what it needs. But for right now, this is
going to be my starting point. You don't have to have
as many colors as this. Because remember, we can layer our colors and build new colors. But this is going to be
what I'm starting with, and then we'll see what
I actually end up using. I'm going to go ahead
and do the same thing we did with
the other ones. I'm going to start
with a lighter color, maybe my lightest, with
the exception of white. And I'm going to map
in those light values. I'm going to go ahead and map
in my light values keeping my pressure light as I get
things started on the page. Then come up here and
I'm probably going to speed this video up a bit
because we've already talked a lot about how we're
approaching color, the layering of colors. It's the same as we've done
in our previous videos. But we really want to think
about and stay mindful to the colors that we're using to do
those same techniques. But the same principles
of how we're approaching value through
color hold true for this one. Remember, you can
always go darker. You can't always go lighter. Really take your time
and map this stuff in. All right, that's pretty
much it for that one. Now let's see, I'm
going to go ahead and go with my pink, pink. I'm going to start popping in some darker contrast
against that light. Still keeping things
really loose, fading out a little bit because
I don't want to overtake the lightness of
my lightest color. As we're working
through this, as you're thinking about what
colors to pick, you could go with
yellows and oranges. You could do yellow,
yellow, orange, orange, red or red, orange, Sorry, it's always the primary. And then the secondary,
red, orange. You could even go all
the way up to red. Or you could do orange,
yellow, orange, yellow, yellow, green, green. Just because we're doing
an analogous color scheme, doesn't mean that everything has to get treated
with all the colors. Because we're using a
broader range of colors, this is where you
can really play. Start to treat just some areas
with some of the colors. Just like you would
if you were doing realistic shaded
colored pencils. I could treat the stem
and the leaf in some of my colors and then I can treat the orange and some
of the other colors. Start to move towards defining different
parts of an object. Just like in the
last one, you can decide how much of one
color are you going to use. Maybe you want to have
some dominant colors from within your color palette
and color scheme. And then maybe other ones are just a little hint
here or there, like we did in the
previous study. Go ahead and turn
it if you need to so that it's more
comfortable to get in. You're shading and always
trying to be mindful of nice even color lay down
so that we don't have any streaks or marks that might take away
from the blending of it. In the end, criss crossing in different
directions is always good contouring going
with the roundness. Let's do pop a little
bit of pink up here just to start to define the left side of my stem. Now I'm going to jump
right to my red. Because I don't want to get to to lost in the land of pinks. I really want this to be a
true analogous color scheme. I want to make sure that I
have a primary in there. I just really like the play
of red and violet together. I want to get that red down. Maybe this is where
I'm going to start to treat the orange from the orange stem and
leaf differently. Then in a future class, we'll probably create one that
focuses on taking this to the next level
and starting to apply these principles to how we work with
realistic color. It's really fun to build
on the skills that you're doing and take it
even farther as you grow. All right, that's looking good. Now we're going to jump up and deal with
the stem somewhere. So I'm going to go ahead
and grab my violet. And I'm going to start mapping in some of those dark values. Now I do want to create a
unified object In the end, I want to make sure that
there's some balance and play. If I only use purple up here
and I didn't bring it down, that could create
some weirdness. Because this is a
very different look, what's happening down here. Keep stepping back and assessing where your colors need to go. We want to keep thinking about good composition and balance, and harmony as
we're also thinking about how we're going to add
in the fun colored play. Seeing is this is the
fourth time that we have drawn the same object. We should be getting pretty comfortable with those values, but at the same time we should
also be starting to have some artistic freedom
and deviation from it. The reference image
is just a reference. It's not meant to be something
that you have to stick to. I'm going to go backwards a
little bit and I'm going to grab some more of
that bright pink, a lot of back and forth
in colored pencil. And that it's part of the fun. I want to pop some
of this darker now. It's going to have a really
nice play with the red wing. You start to notice how nicely
some colors go together. All right, let's
go back to my red. I'm actually gonna pull some red up into this just a little bit. All right, we're going to
go back to that light pink. Let's take this purpoleer
pink, Have that in. That's going to add a nice
little nod to some darkness. We're going to need to
go even more intense. We do need some of that
purple down below. We need a darker red. Got to be careful
because I went a little farther than I'd planned on. Then let's try some of
my violet, blue, violet. It's just going to take
it. The last step. I'm not going to probably
use black on this one. I don't think it
needs it. I have enough with the violet and the blue violet
and that dark red. This blue violet
is one I want to use sparingly just because it's so much darker than
most of the other colors. Great. So let's do a little
bit of pop of white to help clean up some of the muddledness that
I feel like is happening, at least in my drying
up in the leaf. I'm going to go ahead and
just in white radiating out from down here
along the stem. Anywhere else it feels
like it needs it. Now, the white will
pick up color. We'll be careful because you go out to those
darker colors. Or if you go from
the darker colors rather back into the light, you might want to wipe off the tip of your colored pencil. All the colors will
do that. They'll pick up the color around it. But with white and with
colorless splendors, that seems to be a bigger issue, just filling in
some of the gaps so that everything comes together. That's our analogous one. Like I said, you can
use reds to violets. You can use blues to greens. You can use yellows to oranges. You can do reds and oranges. You can do blues, violets. As long as you've got a
primary and secondary, and then you've also got
the tertiary in the middle. And then you can go
as far out from that, on either side of your primary and
secondary as you want to. Here are some of the examples of different analogous
color schemes that I find are
really successful. You can see there's
a different play. They're a little similar
to warms and cools, but you can pull in warms
and cools together so that it's a bigger range of colors and color
temperatures, but you also don't have to. You could keep
everything very cool, you could keep everything very warm and weave in the warm, cool analogous color
schemes together. The main thing to think
about though is having a color represent your
different major values. Have a color that's your light, a color that's
your medium value, and a color that's your dark. And then as you layer and play with blending
and layering those, you're going to get
those gorgeous, rich, beautifully shaded pictures in a variety of fun color schemes. Now that we've explored
shading through color theory and talked a
lot about color choice, let's turn it over to
our next lesson to wrap up the class.
See you there.
9. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking
this class and exploring shading with colored pencils through color
theory application. I hope you are feeling excited about applying
this knowledge across all the different
art mediums that you work with and continuing your
colored pencil journey. I would love to see the
drawings that you created. Please head over to the projects
and resources section of class and upload images of your project to
the student gallery. You can add text sharing about what colors
you worked with, any challenges that you faced, and worked through,
any questions that you might have that you're
still trying to tackle. As we continue to grow in our understanding
of color theory and color application
in our art. You can also update your
project anytime you'd like to. So if you continue to
explore new colors, new color combinations,
and you want to share that with myself and
the other classmates, that would be amazing. Feel free to go in and
edit your project anytime. Just be sure to update
your cover image. That will send a
notification to me that you have added something
new to your class project. And then I'll be able to pop
on over and check it out. And continue to engage with you about your
drawings and color, which is one of my
favorite subjects. I would greatly appreciate it if you took the time
to leave a review. Student feedback is
the best way for me to continue to grow
as an online teacher, but it's also a really wonderful chance for
self reflection. I know myself as a
student on skill share. I really appreciate
the opportunity to use that review as a chance to think
back about the class, the thoughts that I
had going through it, the ways I can see applying
what I was learning to my artistic process and creative practice
and future artworks. And consider what I
made in the class, It's a really helpful
experience as a reflective, creative and also to give
feedback back to that teacher. The other great thing
about a review is that it helps surface the
class for other people, it gives them an idea of what they're getting into
if they decide to take the class and who's better to hear from than students that
have already experienced it. So thanks in advance if
you are able to take the time to pop on over and share your
thoughts with others. I love sharing my
art adventures and my students work over
on my Instagram. If you feel comfortable, I would love to share your work as well. If you post your artwork
to your class project, I'll be sure to ask you if it's okay to share it on Instagram, and if so, I would
love to take you. So feel free to let me know your Instagram handle
as well so that we can celebrate all
the amazing things that you're doing in
class and beyond. And I would love it if you
post it that you could tag me so that I can see you sharing your
work with the world. It's a really exciting
thing to connect, both in class and also beyond. On a social media channel
such as Instagram. You can also follow
my art journey and get additional
demonstrations and sneak peeks about future classes by checking
out my Youtube channel. It's under Elizabeth Welfare. If you pop on over there, be sure to click the
subscribe button so we can stay connected beyond
my Skillshare classes. If you want to
stay up to date on my newest Skillshare classes, be sure to click the
Follow button below. I'll see you next time.
10. Optional: Image Transfer: Drawing skills shouldn't be a roadblock to keep
you from getting at an art technique or an art medium that you
really want to explore. Especially when we're talking
about colored pencil, which is such a fun art
medium to get into. Here's a quick way that
you can quickly get a pencil line drawing of
a reference image onto your paper so that you
can spend your time focusing on art techniques and art mediums that
you want to explore. So I'm going to show
you a way you can easily transfer your images, a line drawing of them, to your paper, and then get to the colored
pencil quickly. I've printed off
the reference image that I'm using for this class. It's an orange image
that I found on unsplash.com on the back side
of it using a bold pencil. This is actually
an ebony pencil, but any number two pencil that you have on hand will work. You just want a soft, dark lead. What I'm going to
do is I'm going to heavily color over around the outside edges of
the orange shape. The nice thing about
this reference image is it has a dark background. It's fairly easy to figure
out where the image is, but you only need
to heavily go over the areas where you're going
to be tracing it in the end. Now I can't really see where
the stem and the leaf are. I'm just going to scribble
across the whole top section, layering it up on a nice
dark layering of graphite. So that when I go to
do the image transfer, I know that everything
is going to register on the other side. I've got it like that, I'm
going to flip it over. Don't do it on top of your
paper because actually it puts some of the ink through
on the other side. Let's flip that over. And then we're going
to go ahead and put it down where we want it. Then you can use
that same pencil. You can use a mechanical pencil. You can use a pen
tip. You can use the end of a paint
brush if you want to. We are just going to
press firmly down and trace over the outlines
of our reference image. We're just going over
those outer edges. Any line details
that we want to have on our drawing
paper to help us as we approach shading this image I've traced around the leaf. I'm going to go ahead and get the details around where the stem comes out
of the orange. And then I'm going
to go ahead and go around the outside edge. I'm going to go around the
outside edge of my orange. Then when I lift it up, anywhere that there was
graphite, it transferred over. So I can see right here,
it didn't quite get that part of the stem because
I carefully lifted it. Without moving the paper, I can put my paper back
down and I can go ahead and I can go back over that
section of the drawing. You really do want to push hard. We don't want to make an indent in that paper on the bottom, but we do need to push
the graphite down so that it goes over
for some reason. You know what? I bet I didn't, I didn't put graphite there. Let's quickly get some graphite, then replace our drawing, our reference image rather. And then go ahead and trace
back over that section there. Then I can keep doing that. I can do as many
of these as I want to because we put so
much graphite down, we shouldn't really
have to worry too much about having to reapply
the graphite to the back. But you can, if you want to,
between different tracings. But because we're only
doing four of these, I shouldn't need to
do that for each one. I can go on and
trace around again. There's a second
one then I can keep going until I have a whole page of whatever image
I want to do it. Now, if you wanted to
find another image from a magazine, you could. I've got this fish here. I'm going to look through
the paper to figure out where that fish is on the back side of
the magazine image. I'm going to do the same
thing with my graphite. This works for any image you
want to do where you want to just get through the
drawing part of it so you can get to whatever you want
to do with that drawing. You can use this with any
of your water colors. You can do this onto
canvas if you want. Pretty much any
surface will do it. If you want to image transfer onto a black piece of paper, you would just need
to make sure that you used a white charcoal pencil would be a good option so
that you can get it on there. Or a toned paper. If it's
a dark or toned paper, you can also do it
with chalk too. All right. Let's see if
we can make this work. With magazine image. Yeah, absolutely. Whether you print out the reference
image or any other reference you like or you
find a picture in a magazine or your
own photographs, you can easily, you
flip it over, Scribble, rely really heavily with a graphite pencil and then lay that down where
you want it on the paper. Hard as you trace around
the outside edges, anywhere that you push down is where the graphite is
going to transfer. You really do want to be a little careful as
you're going around. And then when you
lift it up, you have quickly
transferred your image. And then if this transfer
darker than I want it to be, I can go ahead and just grab my eraser and just dust
over that to lighten up the lines so that I don't get a super thick line underneath
my colored pencil. When you transfer like this, you are going to end up
with a darker pencil line. A little bit of lightning
is going to be necessary, but it won't take long to just quickly go over
it and lighten up your lines a bit and then get all of those eraser
shavings out of the way. Before you move
on to the colored pencil portion of your drawing. I think it's going to be
a really great way for anyone who is in the
newer stages of drawing and drawing from references to quickly move past that and
get to the colored pencil. Fun, If you have
any questions about image transfer or anything else, please be sure to post those to the discussion section of class and I will be in touch soon. I love hearing from my students. Thanks again for
checking out my class. I can't wait to see
what you create.
Elisabeth Wellfare, Artist, Art Educator
