Colored Pencils for Beginners: Easy Process You Need to Know

1. Introduction: Cold pencils can make some beautiful, detailed and vibrant drawings, but it can feel a bit overwhelming if you're not sure where to start. I want to show you today that actually I follow the exact same process for every colored pencil drawing that I create. And in this class, I want to talk you through that process. My name's Gemma Chambers, and I've been making online art tutorials since 2020. I've helped tens of thousands of people improve their art on my YouTube channel. But today I want to cover something very specific. I want to show you the full process I use for every single one of my colored pencil drawings. Now, I will cover the materials that I always use, as well as the general basic techniques. We can then go through the process and I can show you how I build up these colored pencil drawings. And then we can work through that same process to put it into practice. Let's get started. 2. Class Project - Drawing the Strawberries and Cream: For the class project, we will be drawing these strawberries and cream. And there's a few reasons that I've picked this drawing. First up, I think it's a really nice balance between simple, not too time consuming, but also has a good amount of detail. I also think it's just a really fun drawing. Now, I will show you everything that you need to know to create this drawing, including how to make the sketch. If you don't want to create your own sketch, if you want to use mine, you can find that in the class resources. Along with all of the specific colors that I'm using for my drawing. You finish your drawing, please do upload it into the class projects. I would love to see what you've done. Now, let's talk about the materials that I use in every single one of my drawings. 3. The Materials You'll Need for Coloured Pencil Drawing: Now let's talk about the materials that I use in every single colored pencil drawing that I create. And the most obvious material that you'll need is a set of colored pencils. Now, for most of my drawings, I use either polychroms colored pencils or prisma color colored pencils. These are both professional colored pencils. They generally have a good amount of really vibrant colors and go down onto the paper in a really nice and smooth way. That said, you don't need really expensive colored pencils. You can create some absolutely beautiful drawings with something cheaper like Creola. Do think will be a bit easier is if you have a slightly larger set of pencils. So for the strawberries and cream that we'll be drawing here, I'm using pencils from the set of 72 prisma color. I think it's generally easiest if you use at least a set of 36. It just gives you more colors to choose from. Now, as I always say, what is more important than the pencils is the paper. You can create a much better drawing with cheap pencils and the right kind of paper than the other way around. Now, in order to create a colored pencil drawing, we need to build up all of the colors gradually. Building up a lot of layers of color. In order to do this, we need a paper that's able to take all of those layers of colored pencil. I like working on something called Bristol Board. This is a really smooth paper. It's almost thick like a card. You won't be able to build up the pencil correctly on something like printer paper or sketch paper. Now, the next thing you'll need is some way of sharpening your pencils. I have a hand crank pencil sharpener. I particularly like that I can change the blade when it gets blunt. But you don't need a pencil sharpener as fancy as this. As long as it creates a really sharp pin, that's what's important. Next up, you will need a set of color swatches, and this isn't actually something you can buy. It's something you need to make. We'll talk more about color swatches in the next section because it is one of the main backbones of my drawing process. The final thing that you'll need is some way of looking at a reference photo. So for every drawing that I create, I always work from a reference. Find this is the best way to create really realistic looking drawings. Generally speaking, we're drawing nature when creating realistic drawings, and nature's just quite random. If you want to create something that is really realistic, working from a reference photo is the best way to see all of those random shapes and colors that you wouldn't necessarily otherwise imagine are there. I like working from my iPad. I particularly like that I can zoom in to see all of the details. But you don't need an iPad. You can always print out the reference photo. So those are the materials that I use in every single one of my drawings. Let's talk a little bit more about color swatches. 4. Creating Colour Swatches: Talk about color swatches because they are so important. They are one of the main tools that I use for every single one of my drawings. Now, color swatches show me what each color actually looks like on the paper, specifically the kind of paper that I'm going to draw on. Now, what I do is I go from as light as I can to as dark as I can for each color, and then I label it. I tend to do this in kind of a rainbow order so that I have all of my reds, for example, together. This shows me what the colors look like on the paper, specifically the actual paper that I'm going to draw on. I frequently see people trying to select colors based on the barrel of the pencil or the lead, generally speaking, this just isn't very accurate. I can compare my drawing to my reference photo and my color swatches to easily see which color is missing at various points of the drawing. We'll talk a bit more about how this works in practice. But essentially, it enables me to mix the colors together to build up the correct colors that I can see in the creating color watches is a little bit time consuming, but to give you a bit of an idea, the color swatches that I have are at least 5-years-old, so it's not something that needs doing very frequently. Let's talk about the basic core techniques that I use for every drawing. 5. The Core Basic Techniques: Let's talk about the core techniques that I use in every single one of my drawings. And the most important core technique is something called layering. This is where I gradually build the pencil up in a series of light layers, rather than just pressing really hard with the pencil. By working lightly like this, this enables me to mix the colors together. And generally, it's a much more forgiving way of drawing the pencil looks much softer and lighter as it goes down. Now, layering will become a lot clearer as we start building up through the drawing. Most important thing to remember is that we do need to work lightly. Now, in order to help me press lightly with the pencil, there are a few things that I do. First up, I hold the pencil further back than you might expect. Rather than holding the pencil really close to the tip, if I hold it about halfway down the barrel, it literally stops me from being able to press too hard. Now I can still build up light pencil whilst holding the pencil closer to the tip. I just need to have a lot more control over the pencil to do this. Generally speaking, if I am blocking in a large area, it's easier to hold the pencil further back. The next thing that I'm doing is, generally speaking, working in circular motions. I want to not only put down the pencil lightly, but also try and put down the pencil as smoothly as possible. I don't want to just create a whole load of scribbles. So if I work in circular or oval motions, the pencil goes down in a much smoother and more consistent way, and it's going to be easier to build up all of these layers of pencil. We're going to end up with a better effect. Finally, I always want to be working with a sharp pencil. Again, the pencil goes down in a much more consistent way if it is sharp, and I also find that I don't need to press as hard to get down a good amount of pencil if it's sharp. So I do frequently sharpen my pencils. Now, those are the main techniques that I always use. Let's cover the full process, and then we can start working through that process. 6. The Full Process: Go through the full process that I use for every one of my drawings. If you can learn this process, creating drawings is very much a case of just repeatedly following this process. And for every drawing, I always start off by choosing a reference photo. Now, as I mentioned when we were looking at the materials, I always work from a reference. I find that it is the best way to create realistic drawings. But I need to make sure that I choose the right reference photo. It's not going to create the same really beautiful detailed drawing if I choose the wrong kind of reference photo. And we can talk about that in the next section. Once I've selected a reference photo, what I then want to do is take a minute to really look at that reference photo. Now, as I mentioned, if we're drawing something from nature, sometimes the colors and shapes can feel a little bit random. If I can take a minute to have a look at the reference photo, really notice these areas that I need to be paying particular attention to it's going to make the drawing process easier. And again, this will make a lot more sense when we go through the reference photo together. I have chosen that reference photo, what I can then do is create my sketch. I need to know that all of the proportions are going to be correct and where everything needs to be. Now, I again, will go through my sketching method in a short while. But the most important thing to know about creating a sketch is that you want to end up with really nice and light pencil. If we have a really thick, heavy lined sketch, the colored pencil isn't going to cover that up, and it's going to end up showing through at the end. For every sketch that I create, before I start drawing, I want it to look so light that I can barely see it. I've selected my reference photo and I've got my sketch. What I can now do is start adding some of the colored pencil. And generally speaking, what I want to do is start from the lighter colors and work towards the darker colors. So I want to begin by looking for the lightest color that I can see in each area. So I can compare the lightest area on the strawberries themselves. So I would say that that is the very light shine patch. I can compare that shine to my color swatches and see what the closest color is that matches. I want to add in a really light layer of light pink. That is the closest match, and I want to block that in over the whole of the strawberry. I then want to do exactly the same for the green leaves at the top. Look for the lightest color that I can see in this section by once again comparing my reference photo to my color swatches. And I can then block in that green on the whole of the leaves. Here, I want to work from these lightest starting colors towards the darker colors, focusing on building in all of the shapes. I don't expect the strawberry to look like a beautiful, vibrant strawberry by the end of this, but I do want to have a really good idea of what's going where and generally get those main colors marked in. So I want to focus on marking in the seeds, making sure that they're all in the right place. I do have those marked in already from my generally building up the vibrancy on the skin of the strawberry and marking in the main shapes on the leaves. Once I've worked from those lighter colors towards the darker colors, I can then start once again comparing my drawing to my reference photo and my color swatches. And I want to always be thinking about the next color that's I might notice that the strawberry isn't looking bright red enough, so then I can add in some more red, or maybe the seeds aren't looking clear enough, so I can define those a little bit better. I just constantly want to be looking for the most obvious difference between my drawing and my reference photo. Once I'm generally happy with the strawberries, I can then do exactly the same process with the cream. So once again, marking in the lightest color that I can see within the cream and then gradually working towards the darker colors, the cream is obviously not as dark as the strawberry. Can then start comparing the cream to the reference photo and the color swatches, thinking about the main color that is missing and adding in some more of that color. So just lightly building up some of the color. Once I've done this for every section of the drawing, I can then look at the drawing as a whole and once again, refine any final details. Look at if anything needs to be made brighter, if the details need refining, generally, adding in all of these final details. I find it easier to work one section at a time. So in this strawberry picture, it's easiest to work on the strawberries and then the cream and then the whole drawing altogether. Be the same with something like this sushi, for example. It's easiest to focus on the detailed vibrant area in the middle of the sushi and then the rice and then start looking at drawing as a whole. So that is the full process that I always use for every one of my drawings. Let's work through that process. 7. Selecting a Reference Photo: Let's start off by talking about reference photos. As I mentioned, it is so important to select the right reference. It is not going to be possible to create a stunning drawing from the wrong reference photo. So the number one thing that I'm looking for in a reference is that it has a really good amount of contrast. I want a reference photo that has a good amount of light colors, dark colors and mid tone. Reference photo like this is never going to create as good of a drawing as a reference photo like this. Now, I also particularly want to make sure that I can see any details I need to. If I want to create a really beautiful detailed drawing, I need to be able to see those details in order to draw them. Trying to draw from a blurry picture is never going to come out as well as a nice, clear crisp picture. The final thing that I'm particularly looking for is the angle of whatever I'm drawing. So generally speaking, I find that something that looks okay in a photo often doesn't translate very well into a drawing. If you're trying to draw something from a funny angle, be it an object or an animal or a person, it doesn't tend to translate as well. I like selecting reference photos generally that has the subject matter head on. So with these drawberries, we're looking directly forward at them. I don't think it would look as good if we were looking down at an angle. Whereas for this egg on toast, I think it works really well looking directly down at it rather than looking at it to the side from an angle. Ally, if things look a little bit funny in their proportions, I don't think it's going to translate well. So you want to have a reference photo with really good contrast, detail, and from a sensible angle. Let's take a look at the reference photo that I've selected. 8. Studying the Reference Photo: As I mentioned when we were talking through the process, I like to take a minute to have a good look at the reference photo before I start my drawing or even create my sketch. So let's do this now, and hopefully we'll see a bit better what I mean. So let's start off by looking at the strawberries. And the strawberries themselves are obviously covered in all of these seeds. Now, I am noticing the patches of prominent light around these seeds, particularly around here, there's a few little light patches, but mostly it's around here and around here on this strawberry. There is also some light down either side of the strawberry, too. So this is kind of light to mid pink, I guess, with some darker dots in and amongst it of all of those seeds. For the most part, I would say the strawberry is a mixture of pink in the light areas, a kind of orangy, pinky red, I guess, in the mid tones. And here, it's a very dark red. It's darkest in this kind of triangle here and this triangle here on this strawberry. And then the seeds themselves are an almost orange kind of color, like an earthy orange. So I want to take the time to draw all of these seeds. This strawberry is cut in half, so we're looking at the middle of the strawberry, and I can see the pattern going down the middle. But in terms of the actual colors here, I would say they're pretty similar to some of the lighter and more mid tone colors on the outside of the strawberries. There's an orangy color mixed with little bits of red, as well, and a bit of pink towards the middle. Terms of the greenery, it looks reasonably simple. On the most part, I think there's two main colors. There's this kind of light, yellowy green. And then there is a much darker green, as well. And it will really on the most part, I think, be a case of looking at where all of the contrast is, where the lights and darks are, and just mapping in the shapes that I can see. So that's the main thing on the strawberries, looking at the splash down the bottom. Now, this is thought of as white. This splash, I guess, it's supposed to be cream. When we actually look at it, it's important to note that it's not white. First up, most of this is kind of very light yellow, very, very light yellow, mixed with a bit of gray. There are some lighter areas like there's a very light shine here, but look at how dark this shadow around here is, for example, and all of the dark shadows surrounding the splash that's giving its shape all around here. We need to draw in these darker shadows that I would say are kind of like a mid gray. And if we draw in these mid gray shadows, the whole thing will end up coming together. And it will give the cream the shape. Those are the main things that I'm noticing to begin with. Let's create our sketch. 9. Creating the Sketch Outlines: Let's create our sketch for these strawberries. And to create my sketches, I like using something called the grid method. This is where I draw a grid on my drawing paper and a grid on my reference photo, and I only draw what's in each individual square. This stops me from looking at these strawberries like they are strawberries and allows me to start seeing them more as just a series of shapes. If I were to try and create my sketch drawing strawberries, I'm likely to make various assumptions about the shapes that I expect to be. I work through one square at a time, really looking at the key shapes and outlines that I need to be adding. So I can look at where a line is passing through the edge of the box, mark that mark where the other end of the line is, and fill the two lines together, and generally work one square at a time. Now, if I'm creating a reasonably simple sketch, I can create quite large grid lines. But if I'm drawing something extremely complicated, I can create a much smaller grid. Once I've drawn in every single grid square, what I can then do is erase the lines, and I will be left with just my sketch outlines. What is so important, as I mentioned earlier, is pressing really lightly. I'm actually pressing reasonably hard simply so you can see all of these sketch lines on the camera. But in actuality, I create such light lines so that they are much easier to erase and don't show through at the end. I do recommend really taking your time creating this sketch because it does make a huge difference to the finished drawing. So now that we have our sketch lines marked in, let's start adding some colored pencil. 10. Building up the Base Layers on the Strawberries: I want to start this drawing off in the way I usually would, starting from the lighter colors, and I want to gradually work my way towards the darker colors, mapping in all of the key shapes. So I'm going to start off by only focusing on the strawberries. We'll do the cream splash a bit later. I want to be looking for the lightest color I can see on the red area of the strawberries. As I mentioned when we were looking at the reference photo, I would say the lightest color on the strawberries is this kind of pink color around here. And I think it's a similar color on the lighter area on the inside of the strawberry, as well. And there's the same light pink around here. So what I want to do is compare my drawing to my swatches and look for the closest pink to that pink. Now, I think the closest match is the blush pink. And what I want to do is use this pencil to just lightly block in the color on the whole of the strawberry. Going to go over each of these strawberries, regardless of whether it's the outside skin or the inner middle section. I'm going to block it in as lightly as I can just put something down on the paper. Now, I do also want to make this as smooth as possible. So what I'm doing is working in circular or oval motions to try and get this down as smoothly as I can. Now, to help me press as lightly as possible with the pencil, you'll see that I'm not holding the pencil really close to the tip. Now, this is actually a reasonably short pencil, so I'm also not holding it too far back, but I do want to hold it a little bit further back because that stops me from being able to press too hard. Finally, I want to make sure that I'm working with a really nice and sharp pencil. It's just going to go down much easier and more consistently if it is sharp. So I'm literally just going to work through here one strawberry at a time blocking in the color. So you can see that I'm using my sketch outlines to see where I'm going so that I can go carefully around the edge of the strawberry. And then I can use these circular motions to block it in. And as I mentioned, we will work from these lighter colors gradually towards the darker colors so that I can bit by bit get my bearings on what's going to go where. Let's also block in this last strawberry and using the pink color to go over the whole of the red section, including the middle of the strawberry here. There's quite a lot of light areas on the middle of the strawberry, but I do think that they have much more of a pink tone to them. They're not really white, so I do want to make sure that I'm blocking this pink in over the whole of the area. Now, I do generally recommend if you're using a pencil of this sort of length to use a pencil extlender, it is going to be a lot easier. And it will mean you're able to hold the pencil a lot more comfortably than what I'm doing here. Would have made sure to use a pencil extender if it was a longer period that I was using this pencil for. So if I was drawing in a larger area. So once I'm happy that I've got something down over all of the red sections, I'm not drawing on white paper. What I now want to do is gradually work from these lighter colors towards the darker colors. So I want to be looking for the next darkest color I can see within the strawberries. I actually think that it is the orange dots that I mentioned for the I think these kind of earthy orange dots along here are the next darkest. After this, I think we get a lot darker with the kind of bright orangey red. So I want to use the color that I think is closest to that orange. I'm using the golden rod pencil, and I'm going to use this to mark in where all of the dots go. Now, I did mark in all of those seeds on my sketch, and because I've only put a very small amount of pencil down on the paper, I can see just about those dots. So I'm going to go over where I marked this from the sketch. Mark all of these dots. This is all part of helping me get my bearings and working out what goes where. Now, you'll see here that I am using a pencil extender. My golden rod pencil here is absolutely tiny. It is about to get to the end of its life. But if I use a pencil extender on the end like I'm doing here, it just means that I can use the pencil for a little bit longer, I get a bit more life out of it. I always highly recommend getting pencil extenders. They make the whole process so much easier and does save you money because you can use these tiny pencils a lot more comfortably. See that I'm just really nice and lightly drawing in all of these dots. There's not any more to what I'm doing here. I'm just working in little circular motions to mark the dots in, literally just going over those sketch lines. And then it's going to make life so much easier as I work towards the darker colors. So let's do the same on this other strawberry. Nice and lightly marking where all of these dots need to go. There aren't as many orange seeds on this strawberry on the left. It turns into just darker spots as we get towards the right, so it's really only these view towards the middle that need doing. So once I've added in all of these orange dots, what I then want to do is once again think about the next lightest color in the next area. So I'm going to focus on the greenery on the top of the strawberries, and I want to be looking for the lightest green I can see in these areas. So this is the lime peel pencil. It's a nice kind of yellowy green, I would say. It looks like a good light green to be filling in the tops of these strawberries. And you'll see that all I'm doing here is blocking in the green on the whole top section. So I find it easiest to mark in the outline of the shape. So you can see me doing that here, marking in the outline, looking at the sketch lines. And then I can shade once I know where I'm shading up, too. So again, marking in the outline here, and then I can shade in up to that line. As I say, I am literally just blocking in that green section with this pencil. So carefully going over where the strawberry meets the green leaves so that I'm left with the right shape at the top of the strawberry, even if we haven't got all of the contrasts that I can see within those leaves. So let's do the same on the other two strawberries, going around the edge of the shape from my sketch and then shading in. Now, the most important thing here is that you are pressing nice and lightly. We're going to need to build up so many layers of color on top of this. This is just the underlying color. Just an opportunity to start to get our bearings on what's going where. You'll see that I am pressing nice and lightly, and I'm working with a sharp pencil to just put a light and smooth covering of the pencil. So once I put down this color, I would now say that I have something down on each area of the strawberries. And we can start gradually working from these lightest colors towards the darker colors, with my main focus being to get all of those shapes further marked in rather than trying to get them looking as vibrant as possible. Want to be thinking about my next darkest color. And actually, what I'm going to do from here is use the pale vermilion color. This is a kind of orangy red. It's more on the orange side, but I think it matches the lighter and mid tone colors of the red of the strawberry much better than a red wood. We obviously will use a red a bit later. Want to use this pencil to mark in all of the main red shapes on the strawberry. So looking at this strawberry at the top, as I mentioned, it is pretty light in between these darker spots. What I want to do is mark in the darker spots, and then the bulk of the rest of the strawberry will just need shading in with this red because it is more of this kind of color. But I do want to work around these light patches around these seeds, and I want to work around the seeds themselves. You can see I'm starting off by blocking in where those patches are going on the right hand side. I'm just trying to get them marked in as close as I can to the reference photo. I don't think it needs to be perfect. I am trying to use the placement of the seeds as a bit of a guide on where they need to go. So marking in these circles, it is so important to remember to work with a sharp pencil because you can see how fine some of the details are that I'm needing to work with. I can't be doing that with a blunt pencil. I won't be able to be accurate enough about where the pencil needs to go. So once I've marked in the bulk of the shapes on the right hand side, I can then start shading as I get towards the left. Now, I do want to make sure that I am working around all of those light spots. There's actually more than just the light patch on the left hand side that I mentioned. There's some smaller light patches all around here that I also want to make sure that I'm working around. So you can see that I have just drawn in circles on where those patches need to be and then I'm shading up to the outlines of those shapes. Also trying to work around those seeds so that we can keep that orange. It doesn't matter too much, but it would be better to keep the orange a bit more prominent. So you can see that I've marked around that light patch, and then I'm shading up to the edge of that line. I just want to take my time as I'm working round and doing this. Now, I'm also going to work around this light patch around here, just trying to follow the shape. So I can very much use where the seeds are as a guide here. And then I also want to draw where the darker circles around these seeds will be. And then it will be much easier for me to see where I'm shading, too. And then I can shade up to those lines and generally shade around all of these shapes. It's really all I need to do at this point. It's obviously not looking amazing, but it is just a case of gradually building up the color so that we end up with the shapes in the right place and the rough colors looking correct so that we can build on it as we go. So once I've blocked in this color on the whole of this strawberry at the top, I can then start working on the other strawberries. This strawberry here is very, very similar. There are much fewer light patches, though, I would say on this strawberry. There's only a few along here, and then there's these couple of light patches along here as well. So let's mark in the outlines of these shapes and around the shapes on the light patches at the top, and then I can start shading around those shapes. Now, I do expect it to look a little bit peculiar at this point. I'm not expecting it to look perfect. That's okay. It's something that, as I say, is gradually going to build up. Think it gets easier once all of those light patches are marked in, I can now just block in the rest of the strawberry. I think this was much simpler than that first strawberry simply because we haven't got as many of those seeds prominently showing. So once I finish this second strawberry, I can then move on to adding some sort of shapes into the third strawberry. And here I want to start off by marking in the central shape on this strawberry along here, which I have already got marked in from my sketch. So you'll see that I have marked in the outline of the shape, and then I'm working in circular motions to put something down on the middle. I want to be quite light here. It's not a really vibrant section. Do want to get those shapes marked in with this pencil. And then from here, I can start marking in those rectangles, I guess, around the outside of this strawberry here. So all of these rectangle shapes around the edge, I want to mark all of these in making sure to avoid these lighter lines in between. So on my sketch, I only have the main outline shape marked. Trying my best to work out how big each of these rectangles need to be as I'm working around here to try and get ideally the same number of these shapes marked on my drawing as is on the reference photo. That said, if I don't get it exactly the same, that is okay. But I do want to try and get it the same where possible. So once again, you'll see that I'm marking in the outline of the shape. And then once I've got that outline, I can fill in the secular motions once again to block in this area. And I can do the same the whole way down the side of the strawberry. Not too tricky at this point. It is literally just a case of trying to get all of these shapes marked in, work out what's going we, and then we can start building all of the more vibrant colors on top of this. But to start with, I really want to be working from the light to the dark, gradually building up all of the main shapes. So once all of those shapes around the outside of the section, I then want to just put down a solid block of color on you can kind of see the edge of the strawberry here. You can see the edge of the strawberry here, so I'm going carefully around where the cream is. I want to have a nice crisp line around the edge of the strawberry. So I can mark in that edge once again, and then I'll shade up to that edge. And the strawberries are looking quite a bit like strawberries already. So the last thing I want to do in this first section is just put one other color on the greenery at the tops of the strawberries. I want to be looking for the closest green to the slightly darker green. I can see at the top here. And I think my closest match is the olive green. It's quite a earthy kind of green. So I'm going to work through these shapes one at a time. I'm really looking at where the lighter and darker areas are on the leaves. And I'm just going to look at the shapes of the outlines I've already got here and try and draw these shapes in to close the match with those outlines. So, for example, on this little leaf here, you can see that we pretty much need to block in the whole leaf shape except for a light line going up the middle. Here there's a slightly folded leaf, so I need to draw this shape here, leave a light gap, and then draw the kind of zig zag and then shade in the leaf at the top. Here I need to draw in this curve coming around here for this leaf and then also add a little bit of shading in this area and draw some darker leaves around here as well. So it doesn't need to be perfect. I can't stress that enough. I am literally just using the shapes that I already have marked in as a bit of a guide to try and work out where everything else needs to go. Let's do the same for the next strawberry, as well. And there's not as much dark green, I would say, on this strawberry. The main green area is this leaf here, and then it's got this lighter patch on it in the middle. I think this might actually be maybe the stem. There's a little bit of darker green around the edge of this leaf and a little bit here. And then you can see the underside of this leaf, which is a bit darker and around some strips on the edge here. But on the most part, these leaves are more of a light green. And I just need to add in the odd dark green area. I actually think some of the leaves here are going to need to be much darker than this, and we're going to need much more vibrant colors. But as I say, it's not about trying to get the colors perfect at this point in a drawing. It's literally about trying to put something down on the paper. I'm obviously trying to make it as close as possible to the reference, but I don't expect it to be perfect or look super vibrant. Draw in the last green section at the bottom, and there's a lot more of the dark green on this final one. You can see dark green all along here, and then it's lighter in the middle in this section. So I'm pretty much adding this over the top of most of the strawberry here. So few little tweaks to this leaf on the bottom here, and then that is it for this first section. By the end of here, we have something marked in on all the strawberries. They are looking quite a lot like strawberries at this point, but most importantly, I feel like I have started off getting my bearings on where everything needs to go. And it's going to be easier as we move into the next sections to tweak all of these shapes and generally refine everything because I have a bit of a better idea on where everything needs to be. So that is the end of this first section. 11. Work from Light to Dark on the Strawberries: In this next section, I want to carry on working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors. Right now, we've put something down in each area, but I want to gradually continue building those colors up a bit further. So I'm still only focusing on the strawberries at the moment, and I want to generally go in order that said before we get started on the next darkest color. I'm actually going to take a minute with this very dark brown. This is the dark umber, the darkest brown in my set to just go around all of the seeds on the strawberry. Reason I want to add these in at this point is, I think if I continue building up from those lighter colors to the darker colors without doing this, it would be very easy for me to lose where these seeds are, and I generally think it will be a lot harder work. So I'll mark them in at this point, and I think it will make life easier as we go. So let's take a quick moment to have a look at the seeds. You can see that pretty much all of them have quite a dark shadow on the right hand side. It's generally not got much on the left, but it is pretty dark around the right. See, I am just going around that right hand side mostly, very, very lightly with a sharp pencil to mark all of these in. So at this point, I can still see where these are, but I think, as I say, it'll get a lot more difficult if I don't add them in at this point. I can see where I put all of that RNG color before. Now, the most important thing when adding in all of these seeds is to press lightly. This is quite a dark color anyway, so adding it in is going to look pretty dark from pressing lightly. We really don't need to put a lot of pressure. But I don't want it to be a really dark color on these seeds. It's not a super dark color on the reference photo. So I don't want it to be really dark now. Want to make sure that you're pressing lightly. Also, you'll see working with a really sharp pencil here. Because these are some very small and fine details, I need to have a sharp pencil so that I'm able to build this up as neatly as possible and really have a good control over where the pencils going. So once I'm happy with this strawberry at the top, I want to do exactly the same thing for this other strawberry. Now, this is quite a bit easier. There's not as many dots on this strawberry that need building up too much. I'd really only say it's these view towards the middle here. Let's add these in, and then I can carry on working from the lighter color to the darker colors, carrying on from where I left off at the end of the last chapter. So let's think about the next darkest color that I want to be adding in at this point. And now looking at the strawberries, I want to be adding in a richer red. So up until this point, I've only used the pale vermilion, which is kind of an orange red. But I would say the bulk of the red on the strawberries is a much darker, richer, more vibrant red. So I've compared my drawing to my reference photo, and I think the closest match to this is the crimson. What I'm going to do is start from the left hand side and work to the right, and I'm literally just looking at the shapes within the strawberry. So I think it's all going to look a little bit odd and feel a bit odd as this is being built up, but it will all come together. So I can use a lot of the seeds that I've already added in to fill this up, to use those as a bit of a guide. And what I want to be doing is filling in any area that is this bright red or darker. Let's take a minute to have a look at the reference photo. On this area over the left hand side, you'll see that there's all of this kind of patchiness down here from all of the dips of the seeds in the strawberry. There's a patch here, there's a patch here around the top around here. There's also all of these dark patches down the left hand side that we don't currently have marked in. I'm also noticing it's very much that dark red along the top along here and in these darker circles around the seeds on this light I want to be lightly building up this pencil over all of these areas, marking in these patches, and generally building up the red. Now, I think what's helpful when doing this is to just draw in the strawberry as a series of shapes. As I said, I think it can look a bit peculiar trying to mark in all of these patches. But I use the seeds that I've already marked in from my sketch as a bit of a guide, and I use them to help work out where the other patches that I haven't marked out need to go. I can get a good amount of these quite accurately marked in. Now, something that I find helpful if, for example, down this left hand side, where it is a series of patches, but in some places, I think those patches look quite similar to the main kind of background color. I think it helps when looking at the reference photo to sort of squint, and that allows you to not be trying to look at all of the detail. You look at the main overall shapes, and those are what we're wanting to mark in at this. You see here I'm generally going to start on the left and work my way towards the right. I'm doing that solely because I think it helps to work in quite a methodical way. Now notice that I am working around the seeds. We built up that orange color on the seeds in the first chapter. I don't want to lose all of that orange that I've built up. It probably does need to be darker, but we can think about adding that as we go. For now, I just want to get the red marked in as accurately as I can. Going to work all the way along the top here as well. I want to make sure that I'm avoiding those light patches that we added in and I talked about before. So I'm just drawing around those light patches and around this large light patch on the left hand side. And then for most of the strawberry, I am just going to be solidly blocking in the area. It's really only down the left hand side and down the right hand side that I need to be a bit more cautious and I need to be marking in all of those patches. Now, do you make sure that you're taking your time when building up all of this? I think it's probably one of the most time consuming parts of the drawing. Once again, it is so much easier if you're working with a sharp pencil just because once again, you can be really accurate with where this pencils going. I am re sharpening my pencil very frequently. I do find that it will get blunt quite fast, so we'll need to continually sharpen it. So now, keep working towards the right, and hopefully you can see, as I'm building this up that it's not looking amazing. It looks a bit odd and patchy, but honestly, that is what it's supposed to look like at this point. The whole key to these first two sections is to just mark in the shapes and get a good idea on what is going where. Literally all we want to be doing. And then we can tweak and build up the colors once we have a good idea on where all the shapes need to be in the next few sections. So let's just solidly block in a lot of the rest of the strawberry, but working around both those light patches and the seeds. You'll see that I am still working in little circular motions to try and make the pencil go down as smoothly as possible. And then what I want to do on this right hand side is go over a lot of those patches that I marked in with the previous color. I just want to go over them, maybe slightly tweak their shape in some areas, but on the most part, I want to make them a richer, darker red. Once again work around the seeds that I've already marked in here. And then I am going to add a little bit of extra light shading on this strip around here. It just looks too light at the moment. So you can see I'm pressing really, really lightly. And then I'm not going to do the same at the very edge of the strawberry because I think that needs to be more of a pin. So this is what I want to be adding for all of the strawberries this kind of amount of shading. So now I'm happy with this strawberry at the top. Let's move on to the next strawberry. And I want to do exactly the same thing here. So I want to build up the patchiness, I guess, that is on the right hand side of this strawberry and I'll work around the seeds and add in any extra shading towards the middle. So you can see all of these darker patches along here that are surrounded by a much lighter red or maybe a pink. There's all of these darker patches all down here and all down this left hand side, as well. So mark these patches in nice and lightly, as well as adding that darker shading that's towards the middle of the strawberry. And then that will give us a really good basis to work from as we go. So this is the vast majority of what we need to be doing in this section. I think it's worth looking at the top strawberry and seeing, again, how odd and patchy it looks. But that is what we need to achieve by the end of this is this kind of patchiness that means all of those shapes are marked in. All of those shapes are within the strawberry. We can see them on the reference photo, so I do need to draw them. Going over all of these patches on this strawberry here, making sure that I'm carefully going around the greenery at the top of the strawberry. And then I'm going to start working my way down this left hand side and carefully working around these seeds. So I do have these seeds marked in, so they give me a bit of a guide on where the darker areas need to go around them. And also, I can see where I need to add any light patches. And then once I've added in all of those patches around the edge of the strawberry, on the most part towards the middle, I'm going to need to just block it. See I've gone around a couple of the seed shapes, but now I am just going to block in this section because the middle is so much darker. And then any extra detail we need to add, we can do that with a darker pencil in a short while. So again, you do expect that this strawberry is going to look a little bit odd, as well, because of how many patches there are that need to be added. And it will be the next section that this will really start coming together. At this point, I want to start thinking about that bottom strawberry, and this strawberry is a bit different because there's not actually any of the dips that we can see on the first two strawberries. So the darkest areas that I can see on this strawberry is around the edge. You can see there's a thin, dark line around the edge that generally is shaded a little bit onto the strawberry in just these darker sections, not in the lighter sections. And there's a lot of shading that's needed to be added where we can see a bit of the skin of the strawberry, but you can't really see any seeds. And again, that needs fading onto the main area of the strawberry. Start off by going around the edge and filling in that nice and crisp dark line. And then I can start shading very lightly onto the darker areas around the edge here. So you can see I've gone from that edge line onto the strawberry itself. So let's do the same for this next section. And I know I keep saying it, but again, it is so important to have a sharp pencil for this. Look at the thin line I'm needing to make along the edge here. I wouldn't be able to make that thin line without a sharp pencil. Add some light little shading coming onto the strawberry itself. Again, see how I'm working in circular motions and pressing lightly. Now, I am holding the pencil closer to the tip as I'm pressing lightly. That just means I need to have a bit more control over my pressure. But I do need to hold it closer to the tip because I'm needing to be so accurate at this point about where the pencils going. I can hold the pencil further back if I am just generally blocking in an area and I don't need to be as perfect about the edges, basically. But I do really want to control where this pencils going at this point, and that's why I'm holding it closer to the tip. As I say, I am still pressing light. Keep going around the edge here and shading onto each of these patches. And then I'm just going to add a little bit of something towards the middle. As I mentioned before, the center of this strawberry is a bit darker than the rest. So I've added a little dark spot here, and then I'm going to keep working around the edge, filling in that darker line, being careful to go over any area where the cream is and then shading up. Let's add a slightly softer line around the right hand side of the strawberry. Although we need a really nice and crisp line on the left hand side, it does need to fade nicely into the rest of the strawberry on this side. And then I want to block in this whole area around here, and then I'll be able to fade these patches into the edge of the strawberry, like I did on the other side. So do you think this is the easiest strawberry, to be honest, out of the three, 'cause we don't have all of these little dips and grooves that need to be added? Just fill in this last section, fading the red into the edges of the strawberry all along here. And then once I'm happy with the red on this section, let's once again think about the next darkest color that I need to add. And I'm thinking at this point, more about the greenery. So I'm going to move on now to a brown pencil. This isn't as dark as the dark umber I used at the beginning of this section. This is the dark brown pencil. It is obviously a dark brown. It's not as dark as the dark umber. Want to use this to add in some extra dark areas, anywhere that needs to be darker or extremely dark on the leaves, and we're going to work our way down all of the strawberries. So on this greenery at the top here, for example, I'm seeing how dark it is around here and around here and all around here. I would say it's very dark here and on this leaf here and here. So basically I want to be putting this anywhere that needs to be darker than it is at the moment. Can do this in the same way that I was before pressing lightly working in circular motions. I don't need to be making absolutely loads of pencil marks. I don't need to be building up tons of the pencil. Because although I want it to be darker, I don't want a lot of these areas to be jet black, and I do want to be able to build more colors over the top of this. Now, what's good about putting brown over the top of the greens I've already added is we end up with something that looks like a dark green, I would say, rather than a brown, and that is what I'm wanting to do here. Also add some of this brown onto the strawberry itself. So when you look at the strawberry, particularly this kind of area here, look how dark of a red between some of these seeds are. I would say it's particularly from around this edge here, all the way around here and a little bit along here as well. Generally, anywhere there isn't a really vibrant red. Lightly adding some of this brown over these areas that I want to be more of a dark red. When I put the crimson red back over the top of this, it is going to create a much darker, richer red in a way that I don't think I have a darker red in my set. So this is kind of my only option to make this darker. Now, I think it looks a little bit odd. It looks a bit muddy at the moment, but that's okay. And it's really only this central kind of section that I need to be adding I'm happy with that first strawberry. Let's do the same on this next one. And I'm starting on the greenery at the top, looking for any areas that need to be made a bit darker, particularly along here, along here, all over this leaf here, here, along here, along here. And then it's generally darker where the leaves are meeting the strawberry. And you can see how just building up a reasonably small amount of these areas is making such a massive difference to the contrast on the top of the leaves. So I'm happy with the greenery. At the top, I can then start filling in the darker patches and the darker areas that I need to on the strawberry itself. So let's have a look at this strawberry, too. And here, the darker patches are generally around this area. It all looks quite patchy to me. So there's a dark patch here, here, here. You can kind of see a bit of a zigzag shape here. It's darker here and here and here. So I just want to be drawing in that kind of patchiness, lightly building this pencil up a little bit with these nice small circular motions. It's kind of giving that patchiness to this darker area in the same way the rest of the strawberry. So once I'm happy with this strawberry here, I want to once again move on to the last strawberry. And here you can see some kind of subtle patchiness down this side. There's not a huge amount of it. It's a bit darker here. There's a bit of a patch here, here, here. So I'm going to add in that subtle patchiness on this strawberry, but you'll see that I really haven't added a huge amount at all. And again, in comparison to the other two strawberries, this area is reasonably simple, I would. Just think about anywhere else where I want to add a small amount of this pencil. So just maybe around the outside edge here, where I just want it to be little bit darker, not fading onto the strawberry, though, only around that very outside edge. And then I'm going to start adding some of this pencil onto the green leaves on the top of the strawberry, as well. Start adding it onto the leaf here, all around this top section up the top here, and generally building up the pencil a little bit on the leaves around here. So let's have a look on these leaves. You can see that I need to build up a good amount of the dark brown on this leaf. It's generally darker around this right hand side, up the middle and around here. It's a bit darker on this leaf here, around here and around here. I need to build up a good amount of the pencil on these few leaves. Actually, a lot of these leaves are darker than on the other strawberries, I would say. I think that's looking much better already, just adding a small amount of the pencil onto these leaves. Being very careful, again, to be working with a sharp pencil so that I can be going right around the edges and really making sure that I am refining the shape of the leaves so they look nice and the last pencil I'm going to be using in this section is that dark umber pencil. This is the very, very dark brown, and I want to be using this only in a very few places where I really want to build up that very dark color. So, generally speaking, I would say that this is only used where the leaves are meeting the strawberry. Or write down the bottom of the leaves. So along here, for example, there's a very dark line separating the leaves from the strawberry. I have marked it in with the dark brown pencil, but I just want to make it little bit darker because that's what I'm seeing on the reference photo. That's what's going to help this pop a bit better. Let's go all around the edge of this leaf here and look how much more three D that's making that leaf look just from adding a small amount of this very dark brown. Now, this dark brown is actually the darkest color I'm going to use in this strawberry. I don't want to use the black, which is the only color that's darker than this in my set because I think it would be too much. I think it would be a bit too harsh. I do try where possible to avoid using black on natural objects like this because I think it can overpower it quite a bit. By the end of this section, what you should have is all of the strawberries drawn out pretty clearly. All of the shapes are marked out, so I think that is the hardest part. And we can now in the next section, focus on brightening up and tweaking the colors. But that is it for this section. 12. Brighten up the Strawberries: That we've taken the time to mark out all of the shapes on the strawberries, what I now want to do in this section is focus on brightening everything up. So I want to be comparing my drawing to my reference photo and thinking about the main color that's missing at this point. So right now, the first color that I think is missing is kind of orange red. It's looking way too light down all of the left hand side of this strawberry. And the main color underlying here is orange quite bright red. I'm going to go back to the pale vermillion that I used right at the very beginning to build up some more of this color over all of the areas except for the seeds. So you can see that I'm working once again in circular motions to go over the top of all of that dark red and all of the patches that I built up in the last section. Can see that I'm working in circular motions here, adding a little bit of the color over the top, and it's making a massive difference to the whole strawberry. Now, I do want to be very careful not to go over any patches that I want to keep that quite bright white that I added in. As well as not going over the seed, so I'm being careful where I put this color, but I am just gradually building up some more. I'm also tidying up the line down the side because it looks a little bit not quite right. So I'm just adjusting that and then adding more circular motions on the left hand side of this first strawberry. It's made a huge difference to this strawberry. Just adding 2 minutes of color has made a massive difference. It makes the red areas blend a bit better into this orange area, and all of the shapes don't look as odd. Now, let's also build up some of this color over the middle section. So adding this color over the top of all of that crimson red that we added in the last section, it's just going to make the colors blend together a bit better. It's going to add a slight orangy red to that crimson red to make it almost like a darker version of this color. Also add some of this color down this strip here. So on the very right hand side of this strawberry, I would say it's a pink color. But this strip here is more of this orangy red. So let's add some of this in before continuing to build up some of this color over that middle section, still avoiding those patches of light. And then I can move on to the next strawberry. So it's not a huge amount of this color that needs to be added. But I do want to add some to make it a bit brighter, a bit more orange. Keep working in circular motions and building up the color on this strawberry. And let's think about where we need to add this here. So on this strawberry, you can see a lot of this kind of orangy red all down this left hand side, all around here, but a little bit around here as well, although I think this area is on the most part, a bit more pink. We're going to do in this chapter is work one color at a time. So for every color that I add, it will make the next color that we need to add a bit more obvious. I think it's important to bear in mind that I'm really only thinking one color at a time, because until I've added this color in, I don't truly know how it's going to change the colors that are already here. So I want to add each color in one at a time and then think about how that's changed the drawing and what I need to add next. Keep going with this same pale vermilion color, and I'm just adding some more of this color to each of these rectangular shapes around the edge of this strawberry here. So I'm just working up these one at a time, going over what I've already got here, building up a little bit more of the color generally closer to the edge of the strawberry. I am looking at each of these sections one at a time to see where the brighter color is generally built up. So let's go all along here. And you can see how again, just adding a small amount of this color is making a massive difference to how bright the strawberry looks. Now I've gone over all of the strawberries. I've built up this color. As I mentioned, I want to think about the next most obvious color that's missing. So I talked before about how on some of particularly the right hand sides of the strawberries look more like a pink. Let's add in the pink now. This is the blush pink that I used, again, right at the very beginning. I'm going to add some more of this color, particularly down that right hand side. To just tone down how bright this side of the strawberry feel like now the strawberry, this strawberry at the top, looks more like it's one consistent color on the whole strawberry, except obviously it is lighter on the right hand side. I'm also going to look at this light patch and add some of this pink into this light patch because I think the white patch here looks too light at the moment. And there are some areas on here, particularly around here, around here. You can see these areas are generally darker. It's lighter in this area, for example, and around here. So by toning down those areas that do need to be a bit darker, it makes the lighter areas look even lighter. Add a little bit of pink down this left hand side as well. Just a hint to kind of blend together a little bit what I've got here. And then let's start adding some of the pink on this next strawberry. So down this right hand side, once again, I can tidy up the line of the edge and generally build up some more of this color where it's looking quite bright on this right hand side at this point. Also going to go over the light patches here as well, tone them down in some areas like I did on the other one. I think, although it's not actually bright white because we did build up some of this same pencil right at the very beginning, in comparison to the rest of the drawing, it looks white or too light right now. This also adds a little bit down the left hand side, generally tidy up this line. And then I'm also going to add some of this color onto the strawberry. So again, even though we've added some of this pink onto the lighter areas of the middle of the strawberry here, it all looks a bit too light at the moment. And actually, these lines between these shapes at the side of the strawberry need to be a bit darker. It needs to blend a bit better into those shapes. So I'm just using this pencil to go over all of these lines. You can see I'm going up to where that thicker line is and just blending down to the edge of the strawberry. And it's making it look so much better. It looks so much more realistic. Do be careful as you go around the bottom because you don't want to go over where the cream will be. We will add the cream in in the next section, but it needs to be so light. I don't want to add any of the red or pink over that area. Let's go all along the sides here. Still using those circular motions. And then I want to think about any other area where I want to put this pencil. Actually, I am going to add a little bit generally around the edge hip. I don't want to go all the way up to the top. I think it is much lighter at the top near the greenery, and it's generally a bit of a darker pink, not a dark pink, but a darker pink lower down down here. And I think that's looking much better. Let's once again move on to the next. Now I've added in the pink and the orange red. I think that a lot of the darker red on the strawberry looks a little bit washed out. It's not looking dark enough. So let's go back to that crimson red and do pretty much the same as I did in the last section. I want to be going over all of these darker areas one more time to make them this brighter red. This is exactly the same as I did before, but the more color that I build up, one on top of another, the richer that color starts to look. I do want to be particularly focusing with this pencil down the center of the strawberry, as well as going over these patches, but it is so much faster now because I've already built this up, so I can see where I need to be adding this. I'm just going over what I've already done. But I think the patches kind of look a little bit lost at this point, so I want to make them a bit of a brighter red. Now, you also remember at the end of the last chapter, I added in some of the dark brown pencil to make the shadows on the strawberry itself a bit stronger. As I mentioned at the time, if I add this color over the top of those dark patches, it makes those dark patches look more like a dark red rather than at the moment, I think they kind of look like a brown. So you can see where I'm adding this color over the top of that dark brown, it is making it more of this nice vibrant red. Now, once again, I'm being careful going around the seeds and going around the light patches. It's amazing how much lighter the seeds now look now that we've built up these darker reds around them. Even though we added the golden rod, the kind of orange pencil over the dots at the beginning. You wouldn't necessarily know it by this point. So we will need to build that up in a short while. But for now, I just want to be focusing on making the strawberry a brighter red. And what I do to one strawberry, I want to do exactly the same to the other. So let's build up more of this red color on this strawberry on the left hand side. Really help to make that red pop a bit more? I can't stress enough. This is exactly the same as we did before. I'm just adding I would say that I'm probably using more like a medium pressure here rather than a super light pressure. As I build up more of the pencil, you do find in order to build up the color vibrantly, you have to start pressing a little bit harder, but I'm definitely not pressing full force. So it's also the same as we did before go around the edges of this section here, just making these parts a little bit darker around these dark rectangle shapes here. Let's go back to that golden rod pencil that I mentioned that we added at the beginning that orangy tone to go over all of these seeds again. As I said, they're all looking so, very, very light at this point, and I want to make them a little bit darker. So let's use this pencil, go over all of these dots, and it's going to help make the light areas stand out a bit more. We'll be able to see more where the patches of light actually are and where are the seeds. We want these seeds to match the rest of the strawberry a bit more. So I'm literally going over these one or two time to tone that down. What I do to one strawberry, again, I need to do the same to the other. So let's go over the seeds on this strawberry, too, and again, it makes the light patches stand out a bit better on this strawberry. So now that I've added that color in, it shows me that a lot of the strawberry looks too much like a mid tone. We're left with something that doesn't have a huge amount of contrast, not as much as I would like it to. So you'll remember that in the last section, we added some of the dark brown pencil to a lot of the shadowed areas on this kind of part of the strawberry. Want to do exactly the same again, but we're going to build up more of the color. So I'm doing exactly the same as I did before, looking at where those more shadowed areas are within the strawberry and building up that shadow. And it's sort of reducing the red, but that's okay. The most obvious thing that's missing right now, I would say, is that the strawberry isn't looking dark enough. So I really want to add to the darkness of the strawberry before I go tweaking any of the red again. Also going to build up some of this color down this right hand side. A lot of these darker patches here have only been added in with the red pencil and they're not looking dark enough, so let's add to them. And it's going to make the pink that surrounds them stand out a lot better. And the same on this left hand side, as well. Not as much, but I do just want to make a few of these patches a little bit darker. You'll see I'm really not adding a lot of this color, though. It's not stopping it from looking red, I wouldn't say. It's just making it darker. Do the same on this other strawberry here, build up the pencil on this one. I generally want to build up some of this color on this area around here, which is the part of the strawberry that I think is generally more in shadow. But hopefully you see that we're doing the same thing over and over again, building up more of the color until eventually it matches the strawberry. We just particularly more than anything need to get the contrast. Also add some of this color around the outside of this strawberry once again, just like I have done before. And then let's go back to the dark umber pencil. This is the darkest brown to go back over the outlines of the seeds. Now, just like before, I think the more color that we've added, the more lost the outlines to these seeds have become to the point that it's hard to see where the seeds are in relation to the rest of the strawberry. So let's add this back in again, particularly focusing on adding the dark curve around the right hand side. And that looks so much better. Do you want to take my time? I want to make sure that I get this pencil over all of the right areas on the strawberry. And then let's do the same here as well. So these strawberries are looking so much better than they did at the beginning of this section. Let's once again compare them to the reference photo and think about the most obvious thing that's now missing. So I'm now thinking that they're not looking bright red enough. So I'm going to use a different red to what I've used so far. This is the poppy. I always think of poppy red as a kind of generic red. Maybe it's a little bit on the orange side, but not to the same degree as pale vermilion. And I'm going to use this to go over pretty much all of the strawberries, except for where it is that more pink color. Now, you can see I'm starting to use a medium to firm pressure, I would say, here, to try and blend all of these colors together. And I'm still being careful to go around those light patches, although maybe slightly changing the shape of the light patches. And this is beginning to smooth out the strawberry, as well. Going over pretty much the whole of the strawberry, except for all of the really light areas down this right hand side, but I can, as you can see, go over the darker areas, those darker spots. I also want to go around these darker patches here, and I think it's just changing the whole strawberry to be more kind of what you would imagine a strawberry color to be. Let's also adds a bit of shading onto this area on the left hand side. And I think it's helping to blend this lighter area onto the left into the rest of the strawberry. Once I'm happy with how this strawberry on the top is looking, just go to add a few more tweaks around these lighter patches to just ti that up a bit more. A lot of them I do want to be pretty small light patches. I'm going to add a small amount of this color over the top of all of the seeds because I think the orange is looking a bit too light. And then I'm going to start building some of this color up over this strawberry. Gay wants to be putting this color over any area that is, I would say kind of mid red or darker. So I don't want to be going over any areas that will need to be quite a light pink at the end, but I do want to be generally blending and just adjusting the color of the darker areas. Again, you can see putting this color over the top of all of the darker patches that I've already got is not taking away from those darker patches. It is just blending it and adjusting the color to be this brighter. Again, want to be careful going around those light patches. I'm just really focusing on looking at the reference photo, really looking at the colors and shapes that are here. Although it just is really a series of random shapes, if I draw the shapes in and blend the colors as I can see them on the reference photo, I will end up with something that looks like a strawberry. Let's just create a nice gradient on this left hand side of the strawberry so the darker middle blends a bit better with the light edge here. Still going over some of these darker patches to make them more like a dark bright red rather than what they are at the moment. And then let's just add a little bit of this red onto the strawberry here. So I feel like this middle section has got a little bit lost now that I increase the pink. So I'm just going to add to it with this poppy red. I'm also going to go over all of these shapes around the outside here as well to make them a little bit more defined and also make them a bit darker. The last color that I want to focus on on the red sections of the strawberry is the pink areas. I've talked a lot about the pink. Let's go back to that pink and start blending these areas on the right hand side, really smoothing it out as well as this lighter patch here. Pretty much any area that isn't really bright white that I haven't added some of the poppy red to, I want to be going over the top of that with this pink. Let's do the same down this right hand side of this strawberry, as well. And you can see it's quite subtle, but I think it really changes the look of the strawberry, interesting. Makes it look like a light area, rather than an unfinished area. Let's add a little bit down this left hand side, as well. And now I'm generally happy with the red areas on the strawberries. I now want to think about the leaves at the top. So let's do exactly what I've already done, but I want to be adding more. So I'm going back to the olive green. This is the darker green out of the two greens I used, and I'm going to go over every single leaf really looking at that leaf in the reference photo and thinking about how I need to make that leaf darker. Making this leaf darker, this middle leaf is probably the most prominent on this strawberry. And it is literally just a case of looking at the lights and darks and building up the green where I feel it's needed. I'm looking at the shapes, looking at what I've already got marked in because that's a really good guide now at this point. To just really add more, I think all of the greenery at the top of all of the strawberries just looks too light, and it just needs increasing in vibrancy. There's really not any more that I'm doing here beyond just adding to what I've got. Again, I'm drawing it as just a series of shapes, trying to match those series of shapes to my reference photo rather than trying to draw some leaves because, as I normally say, I think that would be really hard. And once I've gone over all of the leaves on this first strawberry, I can then start looking at the next strawberry. Let's build up more of the color on. Again, this middle, leave here, which I would say is the darkest. Once again, I can't stress enough how important it is to have a sharp pencil, particularly at times like this where we're really needing to build up more of the color and have a darker color is going to go down much better when it's a sharp pencil. I can start building up on the other leaves. So I'm going over this reasonably quickly in my voice over because it is exactly the same as we've already done. I do want it to be what I've already got here, but darker and sharper. I can tidy up some of the shapes as I go here as well if I feel it needs it. If I think the leaf is a slightly wrong shape or it's not maybe pointy enough. This is a good time to be making those sorts of changes. Move on to the last leaves at the top here now. And once again, I'm just building up more of this color. I'm starting off on what I think is the darkest leaf, so this leaf here. And then I'll start working over some of the other leaves. It is so much easier at this point because all of these shapes are so thoroughly marked in. I just need to see where I want to add more of the color. So I'm happy that I've got all of those darkest areas marked in the leaves are looking pretty accurate. What now wants to do is work over the whole of the leaves with the lighter green. This is the lime peel I use right at the very beginning. So you can see I'm using medium to firm pressure, I would say, to just blend things together and generally make those lighter areas a little bit less light. On the most part, there aren't areas that need to be really, really light green. They mostly need to be a mid or dark green. So I need to be building up this color in a lot of areas so that it matches. By the end of this chapter, what you should have is the strawberries all marked out reasonably clearly. Now, I do think that we will need to add them a bit more later. But I think at this point, it makes sense to draw in the cream splash, and then it'll be a bit easier to work out what else needs adding when we're looking at the drawing as a whole rather than individual sections. But that is it for this section. 13. Draw in the Cream: Now focus on drawing in the splash at the bottom. This is something that I think looks very tricky because it's so light, but we just want to focus on drawing in the colors that we can see. So let's start off by adding in the lightest color, and I want to work generally from the lightest to the darkest. So the lightest color that I can see within the splash, I would say, is a very, very light yellow. I do think there's a little bit of gray in there as well, but I think the more obvious color out of the two is a really light yellow. So I'm going to use this cream pencil. It's really the only light yellow that I have in my set, and I'm going to use this to go over every single part of the splash. So as normal, I want to start off by just putting something down on the paper. Now, you'll see that I'm going about this in the same way that I did right at the very beginning when I started the drawing. I'm working in circular motions. I'm pressing lightly, and I'm holding the pencil quite far back to help me with that light pressure. Now, you can very lightly see my sketch lines. I'm literally just blocking in this color within those sketch lines. That's all I'm doing. You do expect this to look extremely light on the paper. The lighter areas of this splash are very, very light. So it looks light on camera. I actually think it probably looks even lighter in person. I want to make sure that I go over the bulk of the main area of the splash, but I also want to go over any odd little droplets. There are some drops around the outside of the splash that I just want to make sure that I put a little dot of yellow. It's not the end of the world if I miss a couple, but I do want to strive to get that mapped. Once I've got some yellow down on every area of the splash, what I then want to do is start looking at the more shadowed parts. So when we look at the splash, I would say the main areas that actually make it look like a splash are the more shadowed areas around here around here in here as well. And generally the shadows that run up the side of each of these blobs, this sort of color here, I want to think about what the closest match is to this color in my set, comparing this reference photo to my color swatches. Now, I actually think it's quite a tricky color. I don't think I have anywhere close to an exact match to this kind of shadowed color. So I just want to be thinking about what the closest color is to this shadow. And I think the closest color is the 50% French gray. Is kind of mid gray. It's not particularly warm, it's not particularly cold. It's just a standard gray. I think if I start off by marking in all of the shadows with this pencil, then we can adjust the color by adding other colors over the top. But for now with this pencil, I just want to focus on getting the lights and darks in the right place. I think that's the best way to approach. I'm using the sketch lines here that I can still see as a little bit of a guide. And then I'm drawing a crisp line over those sketch lines, and then I can look at adding the shading around that. I'm just trying to get my bearings, just like we did when drawing the strawberries. I want to get my bearings, get the main shapes marked in, and then we can adjust the colors and add to it from there. Now, once again, the most important thing is to be pressing lightly. You can see how pressing lightly and going over the area just a few times. With this pencil is actually building up a reasonably dark color. So I'm being careful to go around this light blob that's in here. I also want to think about the shapes and looking at each of these parts one section at a time. So just like I said, when we were drawing the strawberry, you want to be looking at this like a series of random shapes rather than trying to draw a splash of cream. I think if you try and draw a splash of cream, it's going to be difficult. It's a random shape, so it's going to be much easier to just focus on trying to draw a series of random shapes that you can see, and it will all come together. So let's look at this shape here, for example. Is this part of the splash here. So I've got the outline marked in. I can see that I need a darker shadow coming all the way up here and along the top edge of this shape, it ends about here. And then it's a midtne kind of color in this triangle here, midtne around here as well. And then a very light shadow on the underside just to kind of outline a little bit this shape. So you can see that I've drawn up the side of this shape, and then I'm adding a small amount of shading coming down until it joins into the darker shadow that I've added down the bottom. So I'm happy with this area, I can then move on to the next shape. So let's have a look at this shape up the top and generally this area in between. So looking at this area all along here, you can see quite a dark line going up this top edge, and then there's some lines coming down here. It's also a little bit darker coming lower here. There's a dark line going along here. And it's generally again, dark along the top edge. There's a darker patch here, a darker patch here, a darker patch here and here and around here. Good thing about drawing and particularly the cream is that it doesn't need to be absolutely perfect. We obviously want to try and get it as close as possible to the reference photo. But if it doesn't look exact, because it's cream, because it's a splash, it's less important than the strawberries, I would say, because it's a bit of a random shape, anyway. As long as it's pretty close, it will probably look good. Once again, let's remember that if you want to build up a darker area on something like this splash, you want to go over the area more times rather than pressing harder. And that's going to create a much nicer, softer color than just pressing really hard with the pencil. Let's focus on this splash. Here I'm going along the edge following my sketch line for this splash here. And then once I've got that line marked in, I can start adding shading to any area where that line needs to be a bit wider. I'll add some subtle shading down the bottom as well just to give this a little bit of shape, a little bit of a more obvious outline, I guess. I'm generally happy with this part of the splash. I don't want to forget to go over some of the droplets. Generally speaking, the droplets are shadowed on the right and light on the left, so I just want to be building up the pencil on that right hand side. I can do that over all of these droplets, and that's part of what's going to make this look nicer and more splashy. So let's start focusing on the splash shape on the right hand side now, and let's have a look at some of the shapes that are here. In some ways, this right hand side is a little bit easier because it's so much lighter here. So you can see that a decent amount of the shading needs to be in this section and along here. And then there's some dark shading all around the bottom edge of all of these shapes. But there isn't too much on the main section here. It's obviously darker here, for example, than these really light patches. But I wouldn't say it's a dark color. So I want to be going all around the right hand sides and the bottom of these splashes, as well. Focusing on following both my sketch lines and the shapes I can see here. To just try and get a bit of an idea for how this splash needs to go. I would say that the droplets are probably the easiest part of this, because we're literally only shading on the right hand side. You can see I've added in a few of the sort of mid tone shapes on this section, but I haven't added too much because we can do that with a lighter pencil. Then let's start working on this area down the bottom. So look how dark this whole triangle shape here is. We need to build up quite a lot of this pencil in this section. We need to add shading all around here and build up a darker area, particularly down the bottom of this triangle. I'm also going to take a minute to have a look at the shading around the very bottom. So particularly note how dark this shadow is along here, then it gets much lighter over to the left hand side. And there's some darker, again, triangular shapes around here that I'm also going to want to add in and around here as well. I can mark in where that triangular section needs to be, which is good because I do already have this shape marked in from my sketch. So I'm marking out the outline, and then I can shade this in. And I once again want to be gradually building up the color here. I don't want to go from nothing to a really dark color. I want to go over the area multiple times with this pencil to gradually make it darker. And then I also want to just blend it out a little bit at the bottom, create a slightly smoother edge because it looks quite harsh from where I drew that straight line along. Just carefully go around the very bottom where I said that that darker shadow around here is. Let's add a nice crisp line around the bottom, and then I'll be able to shade up from that point. So you can see me adding a little bit of shading, particularly on the right hand side. And then I'm generally happy with the overall lights and darks in this section at this point. Let's think about the next color that needs to be added. So what I actually want to be thinking about at this point is the next color that I could add to this gray. That's going to make it a bit closer to the reference photo. I almost think that the color of the splash, although I think the gray was the closest color for the shadows, it needs to be a little bit more almost gold, I guess. It just has a slight hint to a yellowy brown that I don't have at the moment. So I'm going to use the light umber pencil. This is the closest color to gold that I have in my set. Going to use this to go over all of the shadows a little bit darker. So you can see, it's not a drastic difference really to the French gray, but it is making it have a little bit of a warmer tone, I guess, to it. And it only wants to be using this color nice and lightly on the darker shadows for now. I think it's really making the splash look a lot richer, and it is a closer color to the reference photo. You can see how adding, as I say, just a little bit of this color is making a huge difference to the richness of this splash. So I'm going over exactly the same shapes that I did before. I'm doing exactly the same. Now that all of the shapes are marked in, it makes it so much easier to work out what's going where. And then let's start adding to the darker areas on the right hand side, as well. So going up the darker side of the splash, everywhere where I've put that 50% French gray, I just want to be making it that little bit richer. I can also start adding this onto the darker shadowed patch down the bottom here as well. I feel like adding this splash in is making the strawberries look more realistic, as well. And that's why I don't want to finish the drawing and finish the strawberries until everything's mapped in. Once the splash is in, I think you can suddenly see things about the strawberries that need to be added that maybe aren't at the moment, or they just end up looking better when more of the drawing is added. I always think for every color that I add, it makes the next color that's missing more obvious. And I want to be thinking about any other colors that I want to be adding into this splash. It's obviously got some pretty subtle colors because on the most part, it is a cream splash. And actually, on the most part, I feel like it matches the reference photo quite well. What I'm particularly noticing is some of the less obvious colors, particularly in the shadows. Now, if you look really around this area, it has a slight kind of yellow tone to it, quite a bright, I would say, yellow, particularly in this shadow. Let's use a bright yellow to add that little hint of color in. This is the lemon yellow. I would say it's the next darkest color after the cream pencil, and I'm going to add this onto a lot of the areas where I added the light umber because it's just adding that little extra bit of yellow that I think is particularly missing in the shadow. See, I only added a very tiny bit, and now we can move on to any of the darker shadowed areas where I think we need to add more shading. So let's move on to the dark brown pencil. This isn't the darkest brown. This is the slightly lighter dark brown. And I'm going to use this in only a few areas, only any areas on the splash that is particularly in shadow. And that is generally speaking, I would say, very close to the strawberry. Most of the splash is pretty light and I think matches what I've got quite well. So I just want to add a little bit down the bottom down here and on this section here as well. Let's keep thinking about the next color that's missing, and I'm going to move on now to a lighter color. So this is the 20% French gray. It's the lighter version of that gray that I use to add in all of the shadows. And I want to be using this to really add to those lighter areas. So I mentioned before a lot of the lighter areas. There's some light patches around this left side. And generally along the bottom here, any of the lighter folds need to be added in with this pencil. But there's also quite a lot of this pencil I'm going to need to add on the right hand side. So it's working circular motions all along here. Then I want to build up a decent amount of the pencil on this area that I think at the moment looks a bit too light. It doesn't look like it has enough shading. There's obviously the odd area that is very bright white along here. I want to not go over that patch, but a lot of the other patches need adding too. So the last thing I'm going to do on this section for now is add in more of the 50% French gray. So for every color that I add, as I say, I think it makes the next color that's missing a bit more obvious. And now that you've built up all of these lighter colors, I think this dark shadow here isn't looking quite dark enough. So I'm going to go back to the same pencil I used earlier on in the chapter and just build up color. You can see I'm still pressing lightly. It's creating a really nice soft color, but it is just building up more of this so that it looks a little bit richer and matches that reference photo a bit better. Now, at this point of the drawing, there's a really good template for all aspects of the drawing now. Everything is drawn in and just really, I would say, needs final tweaks. You probably could leave the drawing here. I do think it looks good as it is. I just think that we can take it little bit further. But that is it for drawing in this splash. 14. Adjust the Colours and Add Final Details: Now that everything's mapped out, I've got a really good idea on where everything needs to go. In this section, let's take a minute to really try and brighten everything up and finish it off. And my main goal here is to try and make everything as smooth as possible, specifically focusing on the strawberries. So I'm going to start here from the lightest color and work generally towards the darker colors. So I'm actually starting here with the white pencil. Want to use this on all of the areas where I added that pink. So because I'm generally happy with the color of the pink down both sides of the strawberry, what I want to do is try and remove that grainy look without changing the color. So by using the white here, putting white over the top of any color really doesn't make that color white. It maybe lightens it a tiny bit, but on the most part, it's good for just blending it. Now, it wouldn't use white to blend a very dark color that would end up washing out the dark color and kind of turning a bit gray. But for something like this pink, applying the white pencil works really well. Because at this point I want to blend the pencil, you'll see that I am pressing much firmer than I have been up until now. And we'll see that more in a second. I'm just going over all of the white parts, all of those little light areas that we left, just to smooth these out a little bit and around the edge of this light patch here. Before then, you can see me applying this firmer pressure down the side of this strawberry. It's important to note that I am still working in circular motions as well, which helps me make this as smooth as possible, and I'm going to do exactly the same thing on the left hand side of this strawberry. So the goal of this final section is to brighten everything up, smooth it out, and add in any final details. That's really all I need to do at this point of the drawing, because the drawing right now looks pretty good. You could leave it before going through these last steps, and it's fine. This is just going to give it that little extra wow factor, I guess. I'm going all the way up the left hand side of this strawberry here. And then I'm also going to add a little bit of white just near the top of the inside of this strawberry as well before also using the white to go over the lightest areas on the leaves. So on the most part, the leaves need to be either that lime peel, that kind of quite light green or the much darker olive green. What I want to do is use this white for any color that I want to remain pretty light. So that would be on this little line here, along here, along here. All of those light areas. And it's just going to help smooth out those light parts. Now, let's do the same on these leaves on the left and on this bottom strawberry, as well. So I'm just trying to remove the look of any of that kind of graininess. So I'm kind of generally working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors again. And I now want to think about the next color that I want to add to really brighten up these strawberries. So I'm going to use the pale vermilion. Again, that's that kind of orangy red. And I'm going to use this pretty much on all of the mid tone areas. Now, once again, you can see me using a firm pressure here, and it is really nicely smoothing out the strawberry. Using a firm pressure over some of these midton areas. It's not removing all of that texture that I've built up. What it's doing is just smoothing it out. You can still see it all showing through. I want to be adding this red down the bottom and in between there's a few dark patches here in this little gap along here. And generally, anywhere else, I think would benefit from a little bit of brighten up, which is mostly down the sides, I would. Go a little bit along the top, as well, and just tidy up a bit around the edge and around here. And again, you can see all of those patterns that we added in showing through still. Let's do the same on the other strawberry around here. So once again with a nice and firm pressure, I particularly want to be going near where that very light area is down the sides. And you can see that it's really nicely smoothing everything out. It just looks a little bit patchy before we do this. So some nice and firm pressure but also circular motions. I'm not pressing full force. I am definitely pressing harder than I have been up until this point. Go all the way down this left hand side as well, building up all of the color along here and kind of smoothing out between this area and the darker area of the strawberry towards the middle. And then let's go around adding some of this color around the outside on all of these rectangle shapes once again. I've built up this color quite a few times around here already, but I still think it needs more. So we're just bit by bit increasing all of the vibrancy, all of the color until it looks like that reference photo. Go down here using circular motions once again and generally building up this color. And that's looking much better already. Once I'm happy, I've gone the whole way around the strawberry. I just want to brighten up around the edge here. I'm also going to add a bit more of this quite bright color towards the middle of the strawberry here. This area is just looking a little bit too muted right now. So let's think about the next color we need to be adding. And now I want to go back to that kind of orange color I use towards the very beginning to just make the seeds a bit darker. They're too light at the moment. I think they're the right color. They're just too light. So I'm back to the golden broad pencil to go over every single one of these seeds and make them a little bit darker, a little bit more orange. I think it shows maybe more on these ones, these seeds look even lighter and look how much darker they look from just adding a little bit of that. Let's keep going through some of the red that we've already used. So this is the crimson red, and I'm going to use this to really brighten up that darker area at the center of the strawberry to both make it a little bit darker but also smooth out all of the shading we have here. So I once again want to be working in between these seeds. As I've mentioned before, it's a little bit lighter around the seeds, and then I want to be adding this darker shading after that light patch directly around the and you can see me working in this firma pressure. It's exactly the same as we've done a few times now. I'm just going over these same areas over and over again until it looks like a nice and solid color, and all of the colors look nicely mixed together. Let's just tidy up around some of these light spots as well. 'Cause some of them just look a little bit too sort of wonky. Once I'm happy with all of these areas, and it's looking a little bit tidier. I then want to do the same thing on the other strawberry. So, particularly on the middle of this strawberry, it really shows how patchy and kind of light it looks. I want to build up a lot of extra of this pencil onto this strawberry here to help to smooth out particularly this middle section. So you can see me using that firm pressure and working in circular motions. And what a massive difference that's making quite quickly. I still want to be working around those seeds and generally looking at where these darker patches need to be. As I say, it's very much the same as I've already been. Just add a little bit of this dark red just on the skin of this strawberry here. So, again, a nice and firm pressure with circular motions to smooth down and remove the patchiness down this side here. And it's only really on the strawberries themselves, on the skin, I would say, and on the leaves that I want it to not look particularly grainy. I actually think I don't need to add anything more onto the splash. Although it probably looks almost as grainy, I think if I try and smooth it out, it's such a light color, it will end up blending together in a way that doesn't look as good as it currently does. I also don't think the graininess is really a problem on the splash. You always expect a very small amount of that kind of effect with colored pencils. And I almost think with the center of the strawberry here, it kind of adds to it, as well. So I'm particularly focusing on smoothing out and adding firm brussure onto the strawberry skins, but not so much the rest. I say, I'm not going to do anything more to the splash. I'm happy with how the splash looks. It is worth saying that I think the splash doesn't look exactly the same color as the reference photo, but that's okay because no one's going to be looking at the reference photo when they're looking at your drawing. And I think it looks good as it is. I think we probably could mix that color together. It would take an awful lot of colors, and I think it already looks great as it is. Now, let's just add a little bit of this yellow down the particularly left hand side of both the strawberries. I can see a hint of yellow here, so I want to add it in. And I want to add in this quite bright yellow. This is the lemon yellow onto all of these patches on the strawberry along just making the orange color that we have a little bit more on the yellow side, which I think is more accurate to what I can see in the reference photo. So I'm going around each of these little rectangles, just filling in this yellow. And I'm going to add a tiny bit in the middle here as well, but not a huge amount. I'm going back here to light pencil motion. Actually, I'm going to use a little bit of the yellow on the seeds as well to just make them slightly more on that yellow side of things. Let's now go to the pink pencil, the pink that we've used a lot in the first few chapters. And I want to once again, tone down the light areas in between all of these rectangles. We have done this before, but I think I need to add more pink. It's not looking like quite enough. So let's just add a little bit of pink along here. Once I've gone all along this side, I once again want to add just a tiny bit onto the middle of the strawberry. Just particularly around this edge here and maybe a little bit down the very white line along here as well. And again, that's looking much, much better. And then let's move on to the dark brown pencil. So this is the lighter of the two dark browns. And I'm going to use this pencil to just tweak some of the greenery. So it's looking in some areas lighter than I think it should. And I'm just going to add to some of the darker areas on the green once again. Still the same steps that we've already gone through. I just need more. That's the good thing about building up the pencil in light layers is that you can always add more in if you think it's not looking like white enough. Now let's also use some of this brown to fill in some of the shadows on the strawberry itself, as well, particularly around the top around here. I also want to use this pencil to just increase the contrast on this area of the strawberry, as well, particularly that darker triangle that I mentioned before. We've again, added this pencil in this place before. I just want to add and once I'm happy, I've built up more of this brown and it's looking much better. I can then do exactly the same to this other strawberry. So I'm looking at increasing the shading underneath these leaves and maybe in some areas, slightly tweaking the shape if I think it needs it. And then adding extra shading onto the strawberry itself here. So just working in circular motions. I would say that I'm back to using a medium pressure. I wouldn't say I'm pressing really lightly, but I'm also not pressing hard. I'm just going to add to some of the shadows down the bottom here. I don't think I've got quite enough. And as part of this, I can also tweak the shape of the splash here as well. Just going to increase the shading down the side of the strawberry. So the final few tweaks, I'm just going to add to the greenery on the top of this strawberry, and that is the last tweaks that I need to be adding. Alright, that is it for this last section. 15. Summary: That is the end of the drawing. So I always start off by selecting the right reference photo before then pausing to take a look at that reference photo. I then create my sketch outlines to create really lovely and accurate proportions. I can then start from the lightest colors and work my way up to the darker colors before brightening up and thinking about what's missing in each of those areas. From there, I can further refine everything and look at the drawing as a whole to tweak all of these final shapes and colors. I do hope that you've enjoyed this class. Please do leave a review if you have. And don't forget to upload your drawings into the class projects. Happy drawing, guys, and I'll see you in the next class.