Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi guys. My name is Alice Ladkin and I've been a professional colored pencil artist for ten years. This is my first Skillshare course. I decided to give this a go and share what I've learned after many requests on social media. Over the years I've learned so much about materials and techniques, and I've picked up many tips and tricks for creating more realistic, beautiful drawings. I believe that anyone can create amazing art. In this class, you will learn about materials including some cool tools and hacks, reference photos, I'll give you three top tips for great compositions, Show you a professional method for getting an accurate outline down, Give my favourite freehand drawing tips, breakdown techniques, Show simple ways to improve your drawing, Give tips for using color effectively and also share how to preserve and protect drawings, whether you want to sell them or just keep them for a long time. And the class product at the end basically incorporates everything that I teach in the class. So that's just a rough overview, If you've got any questions about this class at all, please feel free to get in touch.
2. Choosing Your Pencils: Onto your pencils them, which pencils or should you choose? The best advice I can give you is number one, to get over wound. And then just do your research boat or your collection slowly and find out what you'd like before investing lots of money in large pencil sets. So look for the 12 sets rather than the 60 sets, because you might find that you don't even like those, but it get a pencils and you don't want to spend a lot of money on them. So any decent quality brand pencils will do basically anything other than basic Crayola pencils as the pigment. And these don't allow for easy layering and blending and not really designed for detailed colored pencil work. I personally use Karen desk luminance pencils and Faber Castile polychromy. I highly recommend the polychrome is for getting started for beginners, there really high-quality pencils have a great range of colours and come in at a mid-range price. I started out with a twelv set of these. I loved them and so I slowly started investing in other colors, different friends. If pencils also work really well together, I reckon to use my luminance and polychromy was together in the same drawing. Sometimes a different brand has a unique color I like, or a particular pencil blends better from one brand and the other. You'll notice that you'll just pick up things. The more that you draw discovering these things it does take a little bit of time and practice. So just do your research, experiment lots and have fun with it.
3. Choosing Your Paper: If you're not drawing on the right surface, it doesn't matter if you're using the most expensive pencils and have mastered all the techniques, you'll probably struggled to get the results. You want. An important thing to note when choosing a paper field colored pencil artwork is paper teeth. So what exactly is paper teeth? Standard, cheap printed paper, for example, has no tooth whatsoever. The surface looks at little bit like this. Paper most suitable for color pencils has at least some tooth making it better for layering and blending. The surface looks more like this with hills and valleys in the texture of the paper layering it fills up the hills and valleys when the tooth that flattens out. This is called burnishing and it's very difficult to put down any more layers. The more tooth that paper has, the more layers you can generally do. I love the clef Fontaine at Paestum i, which has lots and lots of tooth. I also sometimes up to you smooth the papers such as breast TTL series 300 of vellum and Strathmore tone tan, which is very, very smooth and doesn't have a huge amount of teeth. Again, just like with the pencils, it's important to experiment, maybe Oscar, the artists what they use. And if you don't like the effects created using a particular paper, try a different one. You also might want to consider whether you won't colored paper or not. I loved working on colored paper. You'll notice that the verbs in the class project, I've drawn it on a black pastor matte paper. I do just loved the colored papers. I do like working on white papers as well. I just spent quite a few years working on the white and it's really nice to work on the colored. So there's loads of things to consider. It really does come down to personal preference.
4. Which Eraser is Best?: So here a potty arrays it is best at, but you can get very similar results with blue tag, both options are super cheap and very easy to buy. Standard erases like the ones you might have used as school, often leave lots of recipe you and sometimes alter the texture of Rafa papers and take really work as well. Scotch tape is really useful for picking up middle marks and erasing smooth areas. I also sometimes use an electric battery powered arrays out for nice knee up the edges. I got mine at this one's a dad went one for about five pounds online.
5. Choosing a Sharpener: If you want to achieve beautiful fine details, you need to get your pencil, super sharp. Pencil sharpener. That doesn't work very well or breaks your pencils all the time is a time-consuming and money consuming as well because good, decent pencils do not come cheap. I personally use a combination of a day when pastel pencil sharpener, I got for about three pounds, a one-pound pencil sharpener, and a very old favor Castile, manual pencil sharpener. Different pencils will obviously work differently with different sharpness. Again, it just tells cut the artists using your particular pencils, what they use D or research. And remember that you don't need the fanciest ones to get awesome results. As long as it's sharpens your pencils to a super sharp point and gets you good quality results details. That's literally all you need.
6. Additional Tools + Hacks!: One of my favorite products is a slice cutter. So slice is the name of the brand. There are definitely alternatives into these products that the exact tone i, for example, and no, I'm not sponsored by these guys. I just really love their particular products. So the bottom one there is my slice manual pen clutter at the top one is more of a craft knife. They both basically do the same thing. How it works is they have a surrounding blade and I use them to gently scrape off the pigment to reveal the color of the paper underneath. So for example, if you're working on white paper, you'll get more details basically. So I love to use it for, for, especially in little fine details. I love using this on my pastor mine. It doesn't damage it at all because it's quite a thick paper. One of my favorite hacks is using a watercolor pencil, so I won't use this on original pieces. I'm planning on selling because it's not archival. But I just really loved the effect that the white watercolor pencil gives because pencils don't just aren't bright enough for me basically. So this one is the current US museum acquirable. You can use pretty much any what, watercolor pencil. I also sometimes love to use a white gel pen. So again, this one is an archival either so it will fade. The whiteboard color pencil will also peel off over time. So you've gotta be a little bit careful. But I do definitely use this one sometimes for a little Glisson's and eyes and stuff like that. If you are searching for an archival project that gives you that super bright white detail that I highly recommend it, brush and pencil, touch-up texture and titanium white. So you basically mix these guys together in a little pot and use a paint brush to essentially paint him the white details onto your work. So this one is quite expensive. It cost me about 20 pounds, I think for both of these two. But they are lost me quite a long time and I'm just obsessed with it. So I really wanted an archival product that was really high-quality. And this definitely it does the job. So I always use this on pieces. I'm planning on selling. The highly recommend these guys. So some people love to use color charts. You might find it really useful having a spirit of paper next to you to kind of test out colors and how they blend together and stuff like that. And one product I use all the time is frisked trace down papers. This comes in A3 and A4 size black or white. I love using it to get the initial accurate outline down before I start work. So it just speeds up the process a little bit and it's a really useful thing to have. Another useful thing that you might want to use is a piece of tracing paper. So I tend to put this underneath my hand as I'm working, helps just prevent smudges and me from damaging my work. So sometimes when I'm getting super frustrated that my pencils just blending as nicely as I'd like. I will sometimes use the pencil. So this is the Darwin blender. I'd prefer blending just through layering, but sometimes it's just very frustrating and I will use this occasionally. You definitely have to have your layers built our first though. And I'm putting this one in because I know a lot of people love to use solvent. This is zest IT, pencil blender. So you either apply this using a paintbrush or cotton buds. And it does the same thing as the blending pencil. Basically, it's a little bit easier and your hands. But yeah, you might want to try this out as well. So be careful that the paper you're using can obviously take solvents. But yeah, give it a go. And another thing which I don't actually have yet, but I have ordered and I'm just waiting for it to arrive. It's a pencil extended. So you really want to make the most out of your pencils, especially if you've bought more expensive brand, depends on us to extend their basically attaches to your little pencil nibs. So as short as they are here and extends it so you can keep using it to the very, very end says a really useful thing to have. And I caught my mind to arrive. Say, these are just the materials and tools I personally love to use and I find really useful over the years. So obviously not everything here is compulsory. You can create beautiful with none of these things, just with some paper and pencils. And there's loads of alternatives to the things I've mentioned it again, it's just what I like to use.
7. Reference Photos: Drawing realistically usually involves using a reference photo. If you want to share your work online, use it for advertising or sell it, you must have permission to draw from the original photo. It's okay to use copyrighted photos for practice. So I draw animals and I buy most of my reference images from wildlife reference photos.com. You can use copyright free images at no cost from sites like Pixabay. Just be a little bit wary and try and find out who the original photography is so you can be assured that hasn't been picked on that by someone else. You don't want to spend ages creating an Olson piece of art to sell, only to find out you've drawn from a copyrighted photo. Oh, and always remember to credit the photographer if you put your work online.
8. 3 Tips for a Great Composition: Here are my top tips for having a great composition. And they'll every amazing piece of art sticks to these, but they're a good place to start. You may recognize some of them. They can also be applied to photography. So the first tip is the rule of thirds. This means dividing the drawing into thirds. It produces a more natural and intriguing piece than if you were to place a horizon or subject right in the middle or too close to an edge. So divide your drawing into nine equal sections and consider placing your focus or subject and one of the intersections. For example, if you're drawing a tiger's face, consider placing his eyes on the line of the top. And in the intersections on that line for maximum impact and to draw the viewer's gaze to his eyes. The second tip is harmony, repetition and contrast. Say, how many repetition and contrast create interest and a powerful composition. So what's this mean? As a basic example of putting a red dot here, looks out of place and draws a bit too much attention. But when I do several smaller adults, I've created repetition. When I add in pink dots, this is repetition and harmony. Adding in several Green Stars creates contrast. And in a drawing, you could apply this to the colors. The marks are the shapes you use. And the third tip is considered your back ground. Does your background compliment your subject or was it too distracting? Your background should enhance your main focus and look like it belongs. I personally like to have playing back ground semi subject stands out and occasionally I use a blurred or very simple background for my drawings. I'll only include about ground if it adds to the overall piece, doesn't overpower my main focus and suits the overall style of my drawing.
9. Your Set-Up: You'll set up is very dependent on where and how you'd like to work and what you have available. Lots of artists work straight from a paper pad or use a drawing table or an easel. I personally like to secure my paper to a canvas board using Artist's tape. So not masking tape is this can damage the paper when you take it off. And I personally like to work on a flat surface. Just remember if you use artist tape, make sure to remove it at a 90-degree or right-angle. Whatever you're set up, make sure it's comfortable, it works for you that you take regular breaks and maintain good posture, especially if drawing for long periods of time.
10. Using Frisk Tracedown for an Accurate Outline: A lot of artists use drawing aids to help them get an accurate outline down. You'll still need to train your eye to see if things look in proportion and match the reference photo. It just speeds up the initial process. So the most common methods include grid method using an art project. Obviously you need a big budget for that one. And it tracing using something like first trace down paper. So I'm using a frisked trace down paper. It's one of my favorite methods. The paper comes in loads of different colors. The most common colors are white and black. Obviously, it depends on whether you're working on white paper or a colored paper. And I'm just showing you, hey, quickly how I go about doing it. So I put the paper over the, the tracing paper, over the paper, but the reference very drawn top, draw around it and then the outline comes out underneath.
11. Freehand Drawing Tips: Freehand drawing is a vital skill to learn and honestly this just comes down to practicing. So it will also give you my top tips. I'm just going to be drawing a very simple apple with a pencil. I like to practice drawing freehand pretty much every day and it really massively helps me. So my top tips are ten, everything around a flip your paper and reference image upside down at different angle and perspective always helps me to see things I've missed or got wrong. It transforms a familiar image into shapes and lines and enables you to draw what you actually see, what you expect to see. So use a ruler if drawing from a physical copy of your reference photo, this can help mock out the main points and then join the marks to create a realistic in proportion outline. And look at the curves, lines and shapes and the negative space around your subject and focus on getting them right. You'll probably find this gives a more accurate outline of your actual subjects. And lastly, try not to press too hard video pencil and various things a little bit if the lines are too harsh as you didn't want your lines to show through your drawing.
12. Improving Your Drawing: Tip #1: This sounds really simple, but honestly it makes a huge difference. Say for the first few layers, your pencil, it doesn't need to be that sharp. Generally the marks I make at this stage aren't precise that Lisa and therefore don't require a super sharp point is my pencil usually looks something a little bit like this. During it, the middle layers and my pencil is a little bit sharper, similar to how the pencil was before any use. So how it came originally in the tin or as you bolt the pencil. So it looks a little bit like this. And for the fine details such as tiny Glisson's and for my pencil is super, super sharp, so a lot sharper than I originally came. And this is why a decent pencil sharpener is so essential. You call achieves a super fine details unless your pencil is super shop, I don't tend to keep my pencils constantly shop until this stage. The last stage is lost layers, so it doesn't weigh down my pencils excessively.
13. Improving Your Drawing: Tip #2: How you hold your pencil and the pressure you use are both really important for creating a different effects for the base layer and usually the first few layers of drawing in each b using light pressure to prevent smoothing out the 2s, the paper too soon. It helps to hold the pencil really far up away from the tip. If you hold the pencil too close to the tip, it's really, really hard to achieve that light pressure. For the middle layers, generally I use medium pressure and hold the pencil about halfway down the pencil. When I want to do the finer details on, I'm on to the final layers. I will hold my pencil super close to the tip and use really hard pressure. Holding really close to the tip allows me to make precise and controlled mocks.
14. Improving Your Drawing: Tip #3: After you've done your base layer, I highly recommend experimenting using different marks to get different effects in different details. So here I'm just giving you a few examples of some little details and marks you can use. So you could use lines, crosses longer lines. I like to use the lines for further, especially little circles, scribbles. Just really have fun with the experiment and see what different marks have kind of different effects that they have on your drawing. So these are just six examples there, literally so many that you can try out.
15. Tips for Using Colour: My number one tip is tone over color. It doesn't matter how many beautiful colors you use. If you haven't created tone at contrast in depth, you're drawing will not look realistic if that's what you're going for. Obviously, I am a massive fan of bright colors and absolutely love using a range of vibrant colors in every drawing ID. I'm not one for exact color matches, and I love to throw in a crazy bright color or two in every piece. Some people find it useful to create a culture of all their pencils. Or sometimes it's hard to know how colors look on the actual paper, especially if you're using colored paper. Some also led to create color charts before each piece it picking out all the colors they can see first, like I said, I like to use random colors throughout drawing. This is just how I prefer to work. There's no right or wrong hair. I highly encourage you to be bold and experiment. Use reds, blues, purples and browns for dark tones and light purples, pinks, light blues and yellows for light tones, complementary colors can work well for creating depth and dark tones and shadows. So I draw a lot of animals and color pencils and I often get asked a lot about what colors are used for, for our US. Who many colors? Greens, blues, browns, pinks, oranges, whatever I can see in the reference photo. Really study or reference photo closely for awhile and don't be afraid to put in some bright colors. Layering and light pressure allows you to experiment a bit and make mistakes. You can always turn down or trigger color on the next layer. I like to use college papers. So you can see that I've used black paper for the class project for the various drawing. And if you're working on Docker papers, I encourage you to use even brighter colors. Just say things stand out a little bit more. But I'll get into a little bit more detail about why I'm using the colors that I'm using. In the last video.
16. Technique #1: Layering: Layering is a fundamental technique for colored pencil drawing, especially realism. It's what gives drawings depth and turn and helps me to achieve a blended look. If I were to go straight in and start drawing the details, or only do one layer, things might look a bit flat and less blended. There's no set amount of layers that you should do. It just comes down to the materials you use, the pressure use, and personal preference. For example, I use Postel matter a lot and I need at least three layers to cover the tooth, so no paper shows through. This includes a layer down with light pressure and at least another layer using medium to heavy pressure and then the details on top. So other papers have less tooth and therefore don't allow for many layers to the process needs to be adjusted accordingly. I know some artists that use up to 20 layers on Postel Matt when they use really light pressure, it just comes down to personal preference and how you'd like your final piece to look. So a layer for me means using all the colors I can see in a reference photo wants. The next layer would be using all of the same colors. Again, layering colors on top of each other, especially when using light pressure, allows the pigment to blend gently together, helping to achieve that blended smooth luck. So my process usually involves a base layer where I roughly mark out the tones and values using broad strokes with very light pressure than a few middle layers. And finally, one or two detailing layers where I'll use a harder pressure and keep my pencil super sharp for fine precise details. So here I'm just going to show you one of my drawings that I did. You can see all the various layers that go into this. So I am using the same colors again and again. I may add in a different color in one of the layers that mostly I will just be using the same colors again and again. I think I used about four to five layers to do this. Without all these layers, I wouldn't have been able to create the depth that I wanted.
17. Technique #2: Blending: I personally love to blend it just through layering as I'm building up my layers using light pressure at the pigment naturally starts to blend together slowly. And I don't really need to think about it. Because the paper I use usually allows for a lot of layers. It's very forgiving and I can adjust mocks and colors as I go. Once I'm happy with how things are blending, I usually increase the pressure a little and burnish for smooth luck. Some colors just blend better than others. Generally, the lighter colors blend in a little bit easier, but finding out which ones blend better comes down to practice, trial and error and experimenting and just one of those frustrating things. You can also use a blending aid to help if you're struggling a little bit. I only recommend using these after you've already built up lots of layers. I occasionally use a blending pencil when I'm getting super frustrated with this section. You might also want to try a solvent like zest IT pencil blender or paper stumps. Pencils will blend quicker on papers with less TO THE Strathmore tan, tan for example. That layering is still an important part in my opinion for achieving a realistic, smooth and blended effect. Whatever surface you're working on.
18. Technique #3: Burnishing: Burnishing, it means smoothing out the tooth of the paper so no paper shows through. It's what gives it drawings that shiny and finished look. So if you remember what I was saying about paper tooth, it basically means burnishing is when you've filled out, we've done lots of layers filled in the valleys, got onto the hills and you've covered the surface of the tooth of the paper. When he burnished, you can't put down any more layers. You can either naturally burnish just the layering when you get to a point, we can't live there anymore or by banishing with hard pressure. When using hard pressure to burnish, I usually only do this when I have all of my layers already built up and I'm happy and confident to finish off a section. Burnishing too soon sometime for prevents things from looking blended and smooth. So I hope my pencil place to the tip and uses small circular marks usually to force the pigment into the paper to cover the teeth. I often use a color that's similar to the main color of this section. I'm burnishing as it does tend to it. Sometimes I do burnish straight away. If for example, if a section is obviously bright whites such as the glistening and i, or pure black like a pupil. Although often the people has some kind of small reflection showing in it. I will only burnish quickly on a very small section of a piece. It can make things, can make things look a little bit flat if lots of sections or burnished straight away. You can also use a blender pencil to burnish if you didn't want to use a colored pencil.
19. Preserving Your Art + Aftercare: If you're planning to sell your artwork or just what you're drawing to last a long time, you need to know how to best preserve it. My top tip would be to use archival products like the brush and pencil, titanium white and touch-up texture, rather than using a white gel pen or a white watercolor pencil to get your fine white details. It's all about using the highest quality materials that will last the longest time. So going along with that theme, with your pencils, look for pencils that have a high, high light fastness rating. So all this means is that your drawing is more resistant to fading over time, so the colors weren't fade as quickly. So the Karen desk luminance here, for example, I have a really high light fastness rating. That's odd to say very quickly, and they're really high-quality pencils. I get asked this question a lot. No, you don't need to use a fixative on your colored pencil drawings. Unlike with pastels, I don't tend to. My drawings have lasted a really long time and still it really lovely and vibrant. But if you are going to use a fixative, This one is really decent. And in terms of your aftercare, This is what I give my clients when I give them their drawings. So just some aftercare tips like recommending keeping the artwork flat is the paper I tend to use does curl up a little bit, and this may affect the quality of the drawing. I usually advise that if you're storing it, try and keep the drawing flat and protected in a place that's not too warm or damp. And if you can try to frame the drawing as soon as possible as this helps to prevent any damage and improves its longevity. And in because the framing, I recommend framing behind UV protective glass if possible. And a very important point, avoid hanging the drawing in direct sunlight as Although the pencils are resistant to fading over time, that this may cause the colors to fade quicker. So those are just the top tips that I have, the aftercare, you're more than welcome to use these tips yourself to give to clients if you sell your artwork, as it's really useful stuff for the client to know as well.
20. Rose Speed Drawing (Class Project): I've included this video of a speed drawing of me doing the class project, just so you can see how I personally went about doing it. So the reference photo actually got from Pixabay. And I chose it just because it's, I say fairly simple but also fairly complicated. It is a little bit of a challenge, but it's not super, super hard, so there's not too much going on here. I've decided to leave the composition pretty simple. I haven't included a background or anything like that. I quite like the contrasted the blue background, which is welcome for the black paper. I am just drawing straight from my paper pad here. And I've used a white first trace down paper to get the initial outline down. So the reason I went black paper is because of the background. I quite like the contrast and I really enjoy working on Docker papers. Say I'm working on the past or mat. The Pastor Mike is really thick paper that allows me to do lots of layers. And that's why I decided to go for this one just so you can see how I can build up layers really nicely. The pencils I'm using all Faber Castile polychromy knows. I'm not gonna use any additional tools or anything just to show you what I can do with lifted just paper, pencils eraser and erase that and a pencil sharpener. So you might notice how I'm holding the pencil and i'm doing different things. So when I'm doing the base layer, I am holding the pencil really far back so I don't press too hard. And then when I'm doing the finer details and I'm on the last layer, I'm holding the pencil really close to the tip so I can get really precise marks. I'm mostly using little circles or little lines from my marks. In terms of the pressure. I'm doing. Light pressure for the first layer and then kind of medium pressure for, I'll do three layers in this particular drawing. So I do medium pressure in the second layer and hard pressure for the third layer. Might also notice as well the sharpness of the pencils. Whilst I'm doing different things, it's only super, super sharp when I'm doing the fine details. But it does get pretty sharp. So I can make these precise marks intense if the colors that I've gone for, I've chosen strong contrasts. I've basically just picked out all the colors I can see in the reference photo. So this is quite individual. You might see different colors than me. Because I'm drawing on the black paper. I have gone for really bright colors just so things stand out on. I loved bright colors anyway. And you might notice I'm using the red lost. So I'm using all the other colors first for the various before I actually add the red. This is so because I didn't really want to rely on the red because otherwise it would look a little bit flat if I just went in straight away with the red. Some of these colors do just blend better than others. So they basically determined the order that I used them in. So you kinda peachy color that I'm using there does blend a little bit nicer than a couple of the other colors. So I will use that towards the end. Kind of blend things together. The white or say blends quite nicely. Generally, the lighter colors do blend a little bit better than the darker colors, so I tend to use those. Towards the end. Swift thing still looks nice and blended. So like I said, I have used three layers hair. I've done the light pressure layer, the base layer to start with. And I've used a second layer for kind of medium pressure GitHub get details tones in a little bit more. And then I've gone in with really heavy pressure for the final kinda detailing there. On this particular paper, you can do with many layers as you want if you're doing using light pressure on other papers, you might be able to do. Like less layers. Depends what materials you're working with. I'm blending here just using my layering and I'm burnishing once I've finished all my layering, layering. So it's kind of happening naturally as I'm laying all the colors that blending together. And then I do get to a point where I just can't layer anymore. And that's what gives that shiny effect. So obviously you don't need to use the exact colors I've used or use the same process or even the same materials. This is just to show you how I personally went about it. I would love to see yours. And Yeah, please. If you've got any questions, feel free to e-mail me or contact me on social media.
Alice Ladkin, Art Tutorials | Art Business Tips
