Drawing Animals: How to Draw a Realistic Lion with Colored Pencils

1. Introduction: It is possible to create some absolutely stunning drawings of animals with colored pencils, but it can feel like quite a long and daunting process. I want to show you today that actually, if you follow a certain series of steps, particularly when building up fur texture, it's not as tricky as you might expect. 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. But today I want to focus on quite a specific topic. I want to focus on drawing fur with colored pencils. I'll show you all of the materials you'll need and the key basic techniques that I use in all animal drawings. I'll then talk you through my fair technique, and then we can apply it to drawing this lion. Let's get started. 2. Class Project: For the class projects, we will be drawing this lion. I have selected this lion just because of his row. He's got such a wow factor. Now, I will teach you everything that you'll need to know to create this drawing, including how to make this sketch. But if you want to use my sketch that is available in the class resources. So let's start off by talking about the materials that we'll need. 3. The Materials You'll Need: So let's think about the materials that we will need to draw this lion. And the most obvious material we'll need is a set of colored pencils. Now, for this lion, I am using prisma color colored pencils, particularly from the set of 72. These are professional colored pencils. They're really good for building up vibrant color. That said, you don't need a professional set of colored pencils. Something like crayola will work brilliantly. I think you will find it easier if you've got a slightly larger set, though, so something like at least a set of 36, I would recommend. It's probably more important than the colored pencils is the paper. Drawing on the right paper is crucial for using the techniques that we need for this lion. So I like drawing on something called bristle board, specifically a smooth bristle board. This is amazing for building up lots of layers of the pencil. Drawing on something like printer paper or sketch paper, it's not going to be possible to draw this lion and build up all of that pencil. If you only invested in one thing, I would say make it the paper rather than the pencil. Next up, you will need a pencil sharpener, something that's going to create a really lovely sharp point on the pencils. This is, again, absolutely crucial. Now, you don't need a really fancy pencil sharpener. I use 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. Literally, anything that makes a sharp point. Next up is an optional item, a jelly roll pen. This is a white gel pen that's really good for putting light areas over the top of colored pencils in a way that it's not possible to do with the white pencil. It is optional for this drawing. I only use the jelly roll pen to add in the whiskers at the very end. You don't absolutely need to do this. Don't worry if you don't have one. Next up, if you want to create your own sketch, you will need a pencil ruler and an eraser. And from there, you will need a set of color swatches. Now, this isn't actually something you can buy. This is something you'll need to make. I'll talk a bit more about color swatches in the next section. Specifically what they are and how you make them. The final thing 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. Because I am drawing realistic pictures, I find this is the best and easiest way to make drawings look as realistic as possible. And we need a way to look at that reference photo. Now, I like using my iPad. I particularly like that I can zoom in to see all of the details. But you don't need an iPad. You could always print out the reference photo. So those are the materials that you'll need. Let's talk about swatch. 4. Colour Swatches: Colors watches are one of the most important tools that I use in literally every colored pencil drawing that I create. They are so, very important. Now, what these essentially are is a list of all of your colors in your set of pencils that shows you exactly what those colors look like on the paper. Specifically the kind of paper that you're going to draw on. I frequently find that people try and select colors based on the barrel of the pencil or the lead of the pencil, and that's really not accurate to what the pencil actually looks. I do for every set of pencils that I own is draw a grid and then mark every color down, going from as light as I can to as dark as I can, and then label it. Working generally in rainbow order, so all of the same colors are together. I can then use these color swatches to compare to my reference photo and my drawing to think about which color is going to be best in each situation. It is time consuming making these color swatches, but my swatches are at least 5-years-old. They're really not something that needs to be done recently, and it is so important to invest the time in having these watches. I will refer to them a lot throughout this course and generally all of my courses. They're kind of the backbone of my drawings. Now let's think about some of the other core techniques that I use in all drawings. 5. The Key Basic Techniques: I want to go through some of the key basic techniques I use in every single one of my drawings. And the absolute most important technique that you need to understand is something called layering. This is where we build up the pencil gradually in a series of light layers, rather than just pressing really hard with the pencil. You can see how many layers it takes to build up this lion, building up not only all of the colors, but also all of the texture. There's a few things that we need to bear in mind when building up these layers. And the first thing is that the pencil needs to go down really nice and lightly. Now, the best way to do this is to hold the pencil further back than you might expect. Rather than holding the pencil really close to the tip, if I hold the pencil back here, it literally isn't possible for me to press too hard. And for certainly a lot of the beginning base layers, you'll see that that is my main position to be holding the pencil. One of the things to bear in mind when you hold the pencil further back is you're not able to be as accurate with where the pencil goes, which isn't an issue initially, but we will need to hold the pencil closer to the tip when building up some of the texture. Next up, generally, when I'm layering with the pencil, I'm using two main pencil motions. I'm either trying to put down the pencil really nice and smoothly or I'm building up texture, for example, fur texture. So to put down the pencil smoothly, I work in what I call circular or oval rather than just scribbling back and forth with the pencil, I work in these circles, and the pencil goes down in a much smoother and more consistent way. So if I refer to that, this is what I mean. I also will talk a lot about flicking motions. This is for the fur texture. This is where I lightly brush my pencil against the paper to create some nice flick. I can create shorter flicks for shorter fair and longer flicks for longer fair. The final basic technique that you need to remember is to always work with a sharp pencil. The pencil needs sharpening probably more often than you might expect. Now, when building up the pencil smoothly in those circular motions, it goes down much smoother and more consistently when it is sharp. And if you try and make flicking motions with a blunt pencil, you're just going to get really horrible thick lines. So do remember to frequently sharpen your pencil. So those are the main basic key techniques you need to draw with colored pencils. Let's think more specifically about fur texture. 6. The Fur Technique: So whenever I'm drawing fur texture, I always use the same process, the same main three steps. So let's go through those three steps now, and it will make the rest of the drawing make a lot more sense. So you might expect that when building up fur texture, we go straight in with the texture, but that I have found is very long and ends up looking very scratchy. I always want to do is start off by building up what I call the base layers. So these are the underlying colors. If you look past that fair texture, the colors you can see. So, generally speaking, I am looking for the lightest color that I can see in each section, and I want to build up that pencil really nice and lightly, as well as using my circular motion, so it's nice and smooth. Once I built up that fair color, I can then look at adding in the main underlying shapes and colors, generally working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors. Find it's easier to see these colors and shapes. If you kind of squint when you're looking at the reference photo, it stops you from seeing all of the details of the fur. So to build up the base layers for the shorter hair on the face, I'm looking for the overall underlying colors. On the fur on the main, it's slightly different because it's a longer fur. Because it's longer, the fur is kind of sorted into sections. You'll notice that it's sorted into all of these individual clumps. What I want to do with the base layers here is map in those clumps. Map in, again, the lighter and the darker areas, so that I'm left with something that looks pretty odd. But if I draw these clumps, then it will end up looking like a man. It's always important to remember that we're not really going to be drawing the individual strands of the fur. We want to get it all sorted into sections. Once I've got all of the base layers marked in, I can then start building up that texture. So on the face, I want to be making light flicks with the pencils like we did in the last section, just brushing the pencil against the paper. Working generally through a lot of the same colors that are used for the base layers. Now the main things to bear in mind when doing this is the length of the fur. So generally, the fur is pretty short. There's a few areas that are slightly longer that we'll talk about when we're drawing the lion. But I want to be looking at the length of that fur and the direction of the fur. It doesn't all go in one consistent direction. We want to really be copying the direction from the reference photo. Same applies to the man. They're just longer flicks with the pencil, but we still want to be really looking at the direction of the fur in each section. Once all of that fur texture has been built up, I can then smooth that out. So I find the fur texture on top of those base layers tends to look a little bit scratchy. We need to smooth it out with more nice and smooth layers, build up the color a lot more, and it will smooth out that fur texture without losing that texture. This is quite a long process of not only smoothing out the fur, but also generally building up and brightening up the colors. Look at what a huge difference this makes to the drawing. So that's the fur method that I always use for every animal. Let's take a brief moment to talk about the overall process of drawing an animal. 7. The Process: Let's talk about the main process that I use to draw an animal. And it starts off with selecting a reference photo. As I mentioned earlier, for every drawing that I create, I always work from a reference. Now to select a reference photo, there's a few things that I'm looking for. First up, I want to have really good lighting on that reference. And I don't just mean blindingly bright. What I want is a reference photo with particularly good contrast. I want to have a good amount of lights, darks, and midtones that I'm going to be able to build up. A reference photo like this is always going to create a better drawing than a reference photo like this. I also want a reference photo where I can see a good amount of detail. I want to build a lot of detail into the drawing, and if I can't see it, I'm not going to be able to do it. Finally, I find with animals, it looks best when you have a photo taken from their eye level. I always think it looks a bit odd if you try and draw from a photo that's looking down at them or generally any funny angles. So I try and select reference photos at eye level. I've selected a reference photo, what I then want to do is create this sketch. I want to build up some really accurate but light lines so that I know what is going to go where. It's really important so that I get my proportions right on the drawing. Once I've created my sketch, I then want to have a really good look at the reference photo. Before I start drawing, I always like to study the reference get a good idea on the main colors and shapes and what's where and anything that I generally need to be bearing in mind throughout the drawing. Now, this will make a lot more sense when we go through and do this for the lion, you'll start to get an idea of what I'm bearing in mind. From there, I can start building up the color. So as I said, I want to be generally working through my fur technique. Starting off with the base layers, starting at the lighter colors and working towards the darker colors before then building up the fur texture and smoothing it out over the top. And with the lion, I start off with the base layers and the fur texture on the face, then the base layers and fur texture on the main, and then I work on the whole thing, smoothing all of the fur out all at once and building up all of the colors. Right at the very end, I can add in any final details. So, for example, with this lion, it would be adding in the whiskers. So that is the process that we're going to use to draw this lion. Let's start working through that process. 8. Sketching the Outlines: So let's create our sketch outlines. Now, to create my sketch, I always use something called the grid method. This is where you put a grid on your drawing paper and a grid on your reference photo and only draw what's in each individual square. Now, I like to look at where lines cross the edges of squares, and that gives me a good guide on where I need to add in lines. By drawing through the grid one square at a time, it stops me from making assumptions about the drawing and focuses me on drawing what's actually. If it's a really tricky drawing, I can create some very small grid lines and focus on just drawing small squares, and if it's quite a simple drawing, I can make some larger grid lines. Once I've then mapped in all of the sketch lines, I can then erase the grid, and I'm left with my sketch. Now, do note that here, my sketch lines are very, very dark, that specifically so you can see it on camera. When you're doing it, you want to be doing this as lightly as possible so that you've got a really faint sketch and really faint grid lines. Then you'll find it much easier to erase. Now remember, if you don't want to create your own sketch, you can always use my sketch outlines as well. Let's look at the reference photo. 9. Studying the Reference Photo: Let's take a minute to have a look at this reference photo, and I'll show you the main things that I'm noticing here that we're going to need to bear in mind. And let's start off by looking at the face and the mouth. So looking at the fur on the face, you'll notice that the fur here is substantially shorter than the man, and it's kind of got quite a clear edge around it so we can kind of draw this in two sections I think will be the easiest. I can draw the face and the mouth as one section and the man and the ear as another. Now, whenever I'm drawing fur, I always am focusing on particularly not only the length, but the direction of the fur, and I'm noticing all of the different directions of this fur on the face. So it's going above the eye and around this way, it's coming down this side. And then as it gets down the cheek, it's traveling kind of downwards and along here, it's also traveling down the face. On this area, either side of the nose is traveling to the side. So all of those areas, I'm going to need to build up fur going in those direct. Now, because I don't know if this lion's roaring or yawning, either way, its eye is shut, so that's going to be nice and simple. I'm just going to need to add some darker around the eye. The main kind of focal point, I would say, of this drawing is the mouth. So let's start off by looking at the tongue. The tongue is kind of in a S shape, I guess. It's coming down from the throat down onto the mouth here. And it's much darker at the back, lighter at the front, but it does have these couple of lines coming down that I'm going to need to draw. Also, I would say, more red in this section, a little bit red in this section, and then much more pink in the lighter areas. All in all, although the tongue is, as I say, quite pink, it's also got quite a lot of bluy purple to it. So I am going to want to add a lot of those cooler tones, particularly around here, I would say, and around here. Looking at the teeth, the main thing I'm noticing about the teeth is the color. They are not white like you might expect teeth to be. They're much more of a mixture of yellow and brown. A lot of the shadowed areas, like all of this left hand side of this tooth is really, very, very dark. And the same around the top of this tooth, for example. The gum is much pinker but not as pink as the tongue. So I'm going to need to build up a lot of shading and color all on these teeth so that they look as dark as in this reference, really, the teeth are almost the same color as the fur. Looking at the man, the man is a very different fur, I would say, on the face. It's not only longer, but it's also kind of frizzier. It looks more kind of straw like, a bit more textured, whereas the fur on the face looks much lighter and softer. So it just means on the fur here, we're going to need to build this up just in an awful lot of flicking motions on that fur to try and build up that more wiry texture. And you'll see a bit later more specifically how I'm planning on. In terms of how the furs laid out, you'll notice that this fur on the main is kind of sorted into sections. We've got clumps of fur, so like here, there's a clump here. There's a clump here. And if I draw those clumps, it'll all come together and look like a main. It's not something that we need to do on this fur. This is much more kind of individual strands, I guess, rather than clumps. So I say, those are the main things that I'm noticing to begin with. Let's start the drawing. 10. Build up the Base Layers on the Face: I'm going to start off this drawing by focusing on adding in the rough colors and shapes, particularly only to begin with, focusing on the face and the mouth. So I want to be looking at this one section at a time and looking for the lightest color that I can see in each area. I always like to begin my drawings by putting something down that we can then build. Let's start off by looking at the kind of orange colored fur here, and the lightest color that I can see is this quite light color. You can see amongst the fur here. Now, I've compared this drawing to my color swatches, and the closest match that I think I have to that color is the 20% French gray. So I'm going to use this color to start blocking in a solid area of this pencil. I am literally wanting to put this color everywhere where that is the underlying colour. I don't need to worry about marking in any texture or really any shapes for this first part. I literally just want to put something down on the area in each section. So, first off, let's talk about how I'm putting the pencil down. The most important thing is that I put it down really nice and lightly. I don't want to be pressing firmly with the pencil because we're going to need to build a lot of colors on top of this. This is literally just something to get us started. Now, to help me press nice and lightly, I'm holding the pencil much further back than you might expect. If I hold the pencil back here, it's literally not possible for me to press too hard. Pencil because it's not a full pencil, I've added a pencil extender onto the end of it just so I can comfortably hold it like this. I also want to get this pencil down as smoothly as I can, so you'll notice I'm working in some kind of oval motions, which does just put down the pencil in a much more consistent way. So nice large oval motions. The final thing that I'm particularly doing here is working with a really nice and sharp pencil. Again, I just find that the pencil goes down much more consistently when I do this. So let's have another look at the reference photo, and I'll show you how far I'm adding this pencil. Now, looking at this white area around the nose, this, to me, looks like a different lightest color. It's still a gray, but it's more of a cool gray. So I only want to add the French gray up to around this kind of line here, and I'll be putting a different color on this section. You can very lightly see my sketch lines, and I'm going up to roughly that point, and then I will be blending a different gray, the lightest cool gray to that point and adding that different base layer in that other area around the nose. So once I've gone over the whole of the top of the face with this French gray, let's now move on to the cool gray, as I'm working in exactly the same way. I've still got a pencil extended here. This is a very, very tiny pencil, and I'm just going to block in around that nose. I'm not going to go over the nose area itself. That will need some different colors, which we'll add in in a short while. But for now, I just want to go over these lightest areas and put something down. Still note that impressing lightly, and I'm still working in circular motions to again, try and make this as smooth as possible. I want to be looking on the face for the next darkest color. So one of the most prominent colors within the fur is a kind of orangy tone, a kind of orange brown. Now, I wouldn't say that I have that exact color. What I have is a brighter, more orange color. So I'm going to use golden rod but press really lightly. I'm literally going to put this color anywhere that has quite a bright orange to it. With this color that I am going to start mapping in the key shapes, work out what needs to go we. And I'm kind of looking at the underlying colors through the fur rather than I'm not building up any of the fur texture whatsoever in this chapter. So I can see it's a little bit darker and kind of orangy around here. There's quite a bright orange patch just above and to the right of the eye here. There's a lighter patch here that I can avoid, but then it's more orange and darker all around here and around here, but it's lighter along the edge of this nose area. There's all of these creases on the nose. I can start mapping in some of the orange parts here avoiding this area, for example. Now, it will make more sense as I add in more of this color, but what you want to be doing is looking at the sketch lines, which I can still see underneath the very light gray that I've added in. I can use those sketch lines to not only map in where the wrinkles on the nose are going to go and where the eye will need to be, but I can look around there on the shading that I need to have, and reasonably quickly, we will end up with something that will look reasonably similar to the reference photo just from adding quite a small amount of orange I'm adding a lot of orange around the eye here and generally adding a covering a very, very light covering of orange over the right hand side. And then I can start marking over the sketch lines that I can see from some of those wrinkles. You can see these sketch lines very lightly on camera. They're more obvious, I would say, in real life, but you can very lightly see them. And you should be able to see yours reasonably clearly. I literally want to put this color anywhere that doesn't need to be very light gray. So you can see me going over the more orange area on the cheeks, as I mentioned around here, drawing in that quite harsh line down the side, and then I can add a little bit of shading kind of up to that line. But really focusing on making this as smooth as possible and as light as possible. We're just beginning to put some color down, beginning very slightly to get our bearings, but it's going to all make a lot more sense in a second when I move on to the slightly darker. Can't stress enough that I know at this point, this doesn't look like a lion. It's not supposed to really look much like a lion yet. I'm literally just putting this orange anywhere where I can see a little hint of orange. So I'm going to leave it here for now. I've got some sort of orange down. Let's try and define the shapes a little bit better. Can once again move on to my next darkest color. And I'm not necessarily going through these colors perfectly. I think there's probably more colors than I've added in, but I'm going through the main colors that are standing out the most. So let's now go to the light umber. This is the lightest brown that I would say I have in my set, particularly if I want kind of a standard brown. And I'm going to use this to start going over all of those main shapes more clearly. So I'm starting off by going over the eye here. And you'll note that there's kind of the main eye shape here. Then there's a line coming up and this way, and there's also a thinner line going along here. I can just begin marking those in and getting something down, just going over those sketch lines. Before those sketch lines end up getting a little bit lost, the more color I build up over the sketch lines, the more that it will be less clear to see where those sketch lines were. So if I can mark in the main shapes now with this pencil, it's just going to make my life a lot easier. So I can go over that area that I mentioned that's that very bright orange, that little bright orange patch then I can start going over the lines from the scrunched up nose. So I'm literally with a sharp pencil going over my sketch lines, marking this line in much more clearly. And then I can shade up from that line so that it doesn't look like a random, harsh line. Now, once again, the most important thing here is to be pressing still really nice and lightly. You'll notice I'm not holding the pencil as far back here because I do now need to be pretty accurate about where this pencils going. I want to go over these sketch lines, nice and clear. Just making sure that I'm using a certain amount of pencil control so that I'm not pressing too hard. I think it helps to draw in all of these lines like they're just random lines. I'm not thinking about drawing a lion. I'm just putting something down, following the lines from my sketch and looking at the shapes of the face. And actually, I don't generally think the shapes on the face are too complicated. So I'm just able to copy these few lines, and it all comes together reasonably quickly. Just add a little bit of light shading to any area around the edge where I think it needs to be darker. This is generally any area where I use that kind of orangy golden rod color. As I mentioned, I will add a lot more colors over the top of this, but right now we're just wanting to get these shapes marked in. I just want to get a good idea of what's going to go where, and it's going to make life so much easier a bit later. Looking at the nose here, there's this light patch in the middle. I don't have anything on the nose at the moment. I'm just in this area between the nostrils here. I'm going to add a tiny little bit of this light umber pencil. Just to put something down there, I probably will need to add some other colors to this area. I think it's got a little hint of purple amongst other things to this section. For now, I would say the main color is the light umber. So let's get this down there. And then I'm going to use this light umber pencil to mark in all of those spots. Again, I did mark out on my sketch around here. I just want to nice and lightly go over those dots that I marked in so that I don't lose these marks from my sketch. So reasonably quickly, I would say the top half of the lion's face, it's not looking finished, but it's looking much better. We've got something here. Let's now put something down on the mouth area as well, and then we can gradually work our way. And then we can keep working our way from the lighter colors towards the darker colour. Let's look for the lightest color that I can see within the lion's mouth. I'm going to start off by looking at the tongue. So the lightest color that I can see in this section is this very bright light pink. No, I don't feel I've got a color that is exactly the same as that, but that's okay. I just want to pick the closest match that I have to that color. So I would say the closest match is this blush pink. It's quite a kind of cartoony pink that I think is matching that reference. Once again, I'm just going to block this color over the whole of the tongue area, get something down, still really nice and lightly, still with a sharp pencil and working in those circular motions so that there's something there. You can see I'm working around the shapes of the teeth down the bottom here, looking at those lines from my sketch, working around there. I'm also going to add a little bit of the pink on some of the gum areas. So again, still working around those teeth. I just want to nice and lightly add this in anywhere where I can see the pink as the main color or the lightest color. Also add a little bit to the gum up the top up here as well. So now let's look for the lightest color I can see in the next section. So I'm looking at the teeth here, and the lightest color I would say is, again, that same gray that I used in the last section. So this is that 20% French gray. I'm just going to put this over all of the teeth. Get something that's not really light marked in here. I'm going to work to the light brown, again, that light umber to map in some of these shapes a bit better. So as I mentioned on the teeth, a lot of them are a lot darker than you might expect. What I'm going to do with this light umber pencil, this light brown is work through these teeth, one tooth at a time to look at where I need to add the shading. So, for example, on this tooth here, see, it's all generally dark, but it's particularly dark at the top. On this tooth, again, it's dark towards the top. There's quite a prominent line here, and it's generally dark down each side. Looking at this tooth, it's dark all around this left hand side with quite a strong line going down here. Although it looks weird at the moment, if I just work through these one tooth at a time, it will come together and it will make sense. As I say, this is literally a case of me wanting to get my bearings and wanting to roughly mark in the lion's face so that I can build on it in the next section. Let's with a really nice and sharp pencil go over the teeth around the top, literally going over those sketch lines. And comparing those sketch lines to the shape on my reference photo so that I can really hopefully get some accurate teeth marked in. What's going to make this far easier is working with a really sharp pencil. Because a lot of these teeth are so small and fiddly, I'm going to be able to have a lot more control over where the pencil is going if it is nice and sharp. Once I'm happy with the teeth, I'm going to start working on the roof of the mouth. Now, the roof of the mouth is a very dark color. It's kind of a reddy browny, dark color. I'm not going to worry too much about getting the color perfectly mapped in at this point. What I'm going to do is just block in a lot of this shading with this brown. Get something marked in up the top here. That's going to add a lot more kind of shape to the teeth. And then we'll be able to build darker colors over this as we go and generally build up the richness and color. Marking around the edge first. I find it easiest to mark the edge, and then I can shade up to that point rather than randomly shading, it's easier to follow that line of the sketch and then shade. And then once I'm happy with the whole top of the mouth, I can start marking in the teeth at the bottom here as well, once again, looking for the main shapes and shading and colors I can see down here. So I'm noting how dark the shading is down the bottom. There's this lighter line going through the middle, and then it's still pretty dark. Up the top, it gets much lighter at the end of the tooth. It's also very dark, particularly around the right hand side, around here. It's quite dark all along the front of the teeth. So you can see me really adding a lot of shading to this tooth. And it all looks a little bit kind of too much to start with, but that's okay. We can see that it is this dark, so it will come together. Now, as I mentioned, when we were looking at the reference photo, there's some dark lines running through the center of the tongue. Have marked in where those lines are going to go, Let's use this pencil just to shade them in a little bit. So look at all of this dark shading here. There's a line going along here, and then it's shaded and kind of faded out to the right. There's a line along here, and again, it's shaded and faded out to the right. And there's a line around here, and this is all darker and in here. Can see I'm marking in that line, and then I can shade to the right. To just try and get the contrast on the drawing a little bit closer to the reference so that I can, again, just see what's going to go where. I can't stress enough that these aren't the final colors, but I want to get those main shapes marked in because it's going to make my life so much easier. Mark in all of those darker shapes roughly on the tongue. It doesn't need to be perfect. None of this needs to be perfect. Particularly on areas like the tongue, it's not going to show if the shading is ever so slightly in the wrong place. So you'll see that I am doing all of this reasonably quickly, and what's good is if something's not looking quite right, we can always tweak it later. Now, let's put down the lightest color I can see around the edge of the mouth. I'm noticing around the edge of the mouth, there are these areas of lighter gray in and amongst all of this very dark brown or black. I'm actually going to use for this a very light warm gray. This is a different color to what I used earlier, but I do think based on my swatches, it's the closest match to what I have right now. So let's block in this area, put this color all over where I will be building up that much darker color in a short while. Still brushing lightly, still working in circular motions. And once I work my whole way around the mouth, I'm just going to think out if there's any other colors I want to add in before I move on to that particularly dark color, the very dark brown that's surrounding the mouth and is on the eye and nose. So before I move on, I'm just going to use a dark purple pencil on the tongue. The tongue, as I mentioned, when we were looking at the reference photo, is such a mixture of bright pink and blue. A mixture of pink and blue is purple. So I'm going to add this color, particularly down the right hand side, but generally anywhere where I can see a hint of purple, or I generally want it to be a more vibrant color. So you can see adding a little bit of this pencil over the top of the light umber. Is massively changing the color that we've got here very, very quickly. Don't want to be adding absolutely tons of this pencil, when I certainly don't want to be pressing hard, but I do want to just add enough that it tweaks the color. And more than anything, I want to make sure that I'm creating some really nice gradients. So I don't want any harsh lines with this pencil. Now, I think adding this purple to the tongue kind of makes it look a little bit odd because I don't have any other darker colors around here, I think it looks a bit too bright in comparison to the rest of the lion, but it will come together very quickly. So the last color that I'm going to use on this chapter is the darkest brown that I have in my set. This is a pencil called dark umber. I don't want to go straight into using black. I think that's going to be too much and too harsh. There are probably other colors that I could have added before this color, but as I said, I really just want to be getting my bearings for now, working out what is going to go where. And then we can tweak it, add in fair texture and extra colors in the next chapter and following chapter. Here I'm starting off by going over those same areas exactly the same as I marked in with that light umber, looking at the shape of the eye and the creases around the eye. And as I say, this was mapped in thoroughly both with my sketch and with that light umber. But it's very possible if I need to change the shape of anything that I will be able to do that quite easily. I want to be doing with this pencil is putting this down anywhere that needs to be quite dark. So mostly that is over the creases on the top of the nose here and the nose itself. And you can see me starting off here by mapping in the outlines going over those sketch lines, and then I'll be able to shade from there. So there's this line that's coming up the side of the nose. Let's get that marked in and shaded in. I also have marked in the shape of the nostril. The nostril needs to be a lot darker than the rest of the. Let's just add a reasonable amount of the pencil here. Even in an area that will need to be really dark like this nostril, I'm not pressing hard, though. We can always build up more color a bit later on. So I want to fill in the nostril on the right, as well, and then I need to add some extra shading towards the top of the nose. That's where it's darkest, except for the nostrils. And smooth out the edges of the nostrils a little bit, so it's not looking as harsh. Now, lower down on the nose, there's some reasonably interesting texture. There's these lines that are running through going all the way down here. It's marking where those lines are going to go. Again, it doesn't need to be perfect. I'm just trying to roughly copy what I can see on that reference photo. And then I'm going to add some shading around these lines. So generally speaking, I would say it is pretty dark even around these lines. And then I want to be adding some shading just above each of these lines to kind of fade in a bit with the area. It's kind of all I'm doing for this section. I just want to add that texture in, but I don't want it to be too prominent, certainly not at this point, but I do want to mark in where those lines are going to be. So let's keep going with this dark umber pencil, and I'm going to start marking around the edge of the mouth. This, I think, is where the teeth are going to start making a lot more sense. Obviously, the most prominent dark patches are all around the mouth. It's not as dark here, though, so I am going to need to ease up a lot on this little section. I'm also noticing that the dark comes down, it kind of turns the gums a bit black, going down to these central teeth and then around here. So I'm going to try and copy the shapes of this, and it's a little bit darker underneath these teeth, and that's what's giving them quite a good and sharp outline. So I want to map that in as well. This is all made a lot easier because particularly with the teeth, a lot of these shapes have already been marked in. So you can see me going underneath these teeth. And as I say, this is marked in. I'm literally just going over the top of the light under that I've already marked in. And I marked in those shapes initially because of my sketch. And then once I'm happy with the teeth up the top, I can keep working my way around the outside of the mouth in the same way as I usually would starting off by outlining the edges, particularly around the lips here where there's so harsh on their edges. They've got such crisp edges. I can mark in where those edges will go and then shade up to those lines. Still nice and softly. Note that I'm not pressing hard. We're going to build up a lot of color on top of here. And then I'm going to start adding some shading in onto the roof of the mouth. So, along here, particularly, this is extremely dark. It's very dark. Kind of blends here into the lip color. So this all needs shading in a lot. And there's various marks and shapes on the roof of the mouth that I can mark in with this dark umber pencil. Let's start working through here. You can see I've added a lot of shading onto the tongue. I can work around the shape of the tooth up the top here still lightly, but I'm holding the pencil so much closer to the tip because I need to control where it's going. And I can mark in all of those shapes that I mentioned in the mouth. Now, by getting all of these shapes marked in initially, not only does it make the drawing feel a lot less overwhelming, but it also means that it'll be easier to work out which color I need to add because it's already roughly marked in. So this is all a process of hopefully making the drawing much easier. Just keep working around the edge of the mouth. Now that I'm generally happy with the inside of the mouth, I've once again gone over those lines around the edge, and then I'm shading that in. And as I get towards the bottom, I need to start avoiding those gray areas that I mentioned. So these light gray areas all along here and along here. I want to mark in those shapes and then shade around them. Again, it doesn't need to be perfect, but I do want to leave these patches reasonably light. And then I can keep shading in the same way. By the end of this first chapter, you should find that you have the lion's mouth pretty clearly marked in and some sort of color marked in. It looks too washed out, and it's not looking very refined at this point. But it is going to make life so much easier when we move on to the next chapter and we start adding in some more of the vibrancy and details. Alright, but that is it for this first section. 11. Build up the Texture and the Colours on the Face: This chapter, I want to begin to brighten everything up and also add in some of the texture. So what I'm going to do is start off by just filling in the most obvious color that I think is missing, and then we can start adding in a little bit of texture on the face in a second. So I'm going to start off by just slightly adjusting the fur. Now that I've added in some more of the mouth, I think it is looking so muted that we just need to brighten it up a little bit. So this is the burnt sienna, that reddish brown color. I'm just going to lightly add this anywhere where I think it does need a hint more of the reddish brown. So particularly this area here. And generally on the face on the creases around here. We obviously added some orange in the first chapter. I think I just want to make it a bit more of a reddish color, and we can always add more orange later. The orange that we added does now look a little bit muted in comparison to what we added, how orange it looked before. Let's go over all of the lines on the creases of the nose. Some of them, I think are not quite long enough. I just want to adjust these lines a little bit. So I'm just looking at the shapes that are here and just trying to replicate them. I'm also going to make this little patch on the nose a little bit darker. But I'm still doing this in the same way as we were before working lightly and in circular motions. You'll notice that I'm not adding in any texture yet, but I will be adding this in in a short while. So let's also add some of this reddish brown around here. I literally I want to add it to any of these areas. So there's this zigzag shape here. Areas like this that has that kind of reddish brown to it, so particularly around here, around here, down this side here and here. I'm just nice and lightly building up a little bit of this color. It's hard, in a way, to see the shape, that zigzag shape, because it's got so many whiskers on it. I'm not worrying about the whiskers. At this point, we'll add them in a little bit later once the whole lion is looking much brighter and more vibrant. Also add a little bit of this color around the edge of the mouth. The most important thing, I think, is to notice that I am doing this the same way as before. I'm holding the pencil far back. I've once again got a pencil extender on this pencil just because it's a little bit too short to hold comfortably without it, and it just means that I can happily use the pencil for a lot longer. I think the temptation is to press quite hard, but we don't want to be doing that until much, much later. We've gone through and built everything up much more, then I can add the final details and press harder. So let's also add this same color in the roof of the mouth. You'll see the roof of this mouth is a very dark color, and we have a dark color already, but it really has this kind of reddish tone to it. So this sienna brown is a good way to add some more of that red, but also keep it dark because it is a brown. So you can see me building up the circular motions and just lightly building up some of this color, and what a massive difference it makes. Just adding a light layer of this color over an area like this really, really quickly changes that color. It's also adds a little bit of this color anywhere on the teeth, where I think it needs more of that red tone, so I'm particularly looking around some of the darker areas towards the top. So around the gum line where there's more shadow. It's all looking way too light at the moment, but this is all going to be so much easier because I've already built up a lot of shapes on the face and around the teeth. So it's pretty clear what needs to go where. Go around the gums on here. In some cases, I just want to slightly adjust the shape of the teeth. I think some of them look a little bit more maybe angular than they should. I can add in some of this color on the top of the gum. So it's a darker, reddish brown around here. It's darker up the top and then lighter around this kind of line along here, and then darker this line. I'm literally just really thoroughly studying the reference photo to try and work out where all of this needs building up. And then I'm just going to work down through the mouth. I want to build up some of this color at the top of the tongue. Where we already built up some of that darker color, it just needs to be made more red again, just like on the roof of the and add this to any area of the tongue that I think needs to be a little bit darker. So it's very much similar patches to where I added in the first chapter, just a few here and there and around the bottom of the tooth here. And then I'm generally happy with the red in the mouth. Let's start focusing on the fur texture. So as I mentioned, on the face, not only is it going in a number of different directions, but it's generally very short and soft looking. So what I want to do is use similar colors to what I did for the base layers to just add some small flicks over the whole of the face. I'm using here, again, a French gray. I used a French gray for the original base layer. This is a slightly darker French gray. This is the 50% French gray. And I'm going to go over that face to add in these little flicks. So you can see me just lightly brushing my pencil against the paper to build up all of these little flicks of the face. Now, I am focusing on a couple of things here. First off, I want to make sure that I'm keeping a sharp pencil. Now, I do find that I need to reasonably frequently sharpen my pencil so it stays nice and sharp. So that's something I'm very aware of. I don't want to make very fat marks. I want them to be really soft and wispy, and I need a sharp pencil to do. Also particularly taking note of the length of the fur and I only want to make small flicks. Generally speaking, I would say the fur is reasonably consistent in length. It's maybe a little bit shorter around here, for example, and generally the top of the face, maybe a little bit longer on the cheek and it looks a little bit longer around here as well, and much shorter here. So I do want to be focusing on the length, and if I'm drawing shorter fur, I need to be making shorter flicks. If I'm drawing longer fur, I'll make longer flicks. Obviously, when we get onto the main, we're going to be doing much longer flicks with the pencil. I'm also really taking note of the direction of the fair. So I talked about this earlier. It is so important to be looking at that reference photo and really focusing on where these flicks are needing to go. Because they're not all just going in the same direction. They're not all going straight down or straight to the side. Some over on the left hand side are going around and kind of curving round, for example. Want to be trying to build up all of those textures. I don't need to build up absolutely loads of this color because we will be adding other colors over the top of this, so do remember that. You can see I've kind of put down a reasonable amount of fur, but not hunts. So it makes some very small flicks around here. As I said, these are much shorter little pieces of fur. And I want to be going above the nose, as well, going in all sorts of different random directions here, but I'm just following it as best I can. And then we're going to work through, as I said, a series of colors the similar colors to what I use when building up the base layers to build up this fur. Let's move on to that orangy color. This is the golden rod. And once again, I want to be making flicks anywhere where I want to build up a reasonable amount of the orange. So that's generally on the cheek area around here. I can make flicks going into some of the more gray areas, and it's going to kind of soften that edge. It will end up looking a lot more natural. You will find when building up the fur texture like this, I do find towards the end it starts to look a little bit wiry, but that's okay. We'll be tweaking that and adjusting that much later on. Let's add little flakes all up here above the nose, and then I can move on to the next color. So I'm going to go back to that Sienna brown and just add in some of this reddish color anywhere where I can see a hint of red. So this is a lot of the same places that I built up this color earlier. And I think the more fair texture I build up, the easier it becomes because I can already see which direction the fur here needs to go in because it's going in the same direction as the fur I've already built up. Do think that all of this fair probably needs to be a lot darker than what I've got at the moment, but that's okay. We're going to build that up gradually and we can even adjust and tweak the colors as we get further on with the drawing. The important thing to remember at this point is we're just adding in some texture, and I don't expect at the end of this chapter for it to all look perfect and finished. That's not the goal. We're just trying to add something in that we can continue to build. Go over all of these orange areas. This is that zig zag that we built up a short while ago where I said it needs to be more red. Let's use this pencil to add flicks on the edge of this area. So it kind of softens those lines. Again, a lot of this part will be covered by white whiskers a bit later. But I do want to try and get it looking as natural as possible now. Can go over. The cheek here as well, build up a little bit of texture. And as I say, we're going to keep working through a lot of the colors that I added in in the base letters. So let's move on to that light umber, that light brown pencil, once again, add more flicking motions. Now, I can't stress enough that I know that this looks quite messy at the moment, and that is okay. It looks a little bit all over the place, I think. But once we smooth it out, it will look much, much better. Go all over the eyes. I'm going through this reasonably quickly because it's very much the same with every color. Building up all of these flicking motions with a few colors is always going to look better than if I just did it with one. And all of the colors that I'm adding in are colors that I've already talked about. I've already added in these colors as the base layer. Adding those base layers first just means that we've got a much softer looking face than we would have if we hadn't have added in those base layer. Now I'm generally happy with the fur for now. Let's start thinking about adjusting the mouth a little bit more. It's not looking quite right. I'm just going to use this pencil to smooth out some of those dots for the whisker, add some flicking motions over those dots so they look a little bit less like just solid dots. And then I'm going to go back to the sienna brown, and I want to be building up some more colour on the teeth. So as I mentioned before, there's a lot of shadow on the teeth, particularly around the edge of the actual tooth. It has a lot of darker red colour. Let's build up a bit more of this color. I have built up this color before, but now that I've built other colors around it, it all looks a little bit washed out. So let's add more of this color. And before we carry on, let's just take a minute to look at the teeth and look at other colors I can see within here. So, as I mentioned, there's kind of this reddy brown, particularly around the top and on this left hand side here. I have mentioned before, I would say I can see quite bright yellow, particularly at the end of the teeth. But this area here is a completely different color. This is more like a kind of pinky color. And you can particularly see it on this tooth here as well. So let's start off by building up the cream pencil. This is the lightest yellow that I've got in my set. And I'm just going to add this on the tips of the teeth. It's just adding a subtle little hint of yellow. We might add more yellow later. We'll see. But for now, I think this is enough to just give it a slightly more off L. And let's do the same on the teeth at the bottom, really focusing on building up the color on the end of the teeth here. And then I'm going to use the peach pencil to add that pink. I feel like the pink color I can see here is quite earthy pink, and the peach is the closest match that I can see in my colors watches. So let's build some of this up. It's a very different pink, I would say, to the pink that I can see in the gums and on the tongue, that's a much more vibrant. As I said before, kind of cartoony. Let's also move on to that more cartoony pink, the blush pink. And I'm just going to add some of this color both over the gums at the top and over the tongue. A lot of the tongue is just looking too light. We do have some of this color built up on the tongue already, but I think where we built other colors around here as well, it just looks a little bit too muted. It looks a little bit lost. Just put a light covering of this color over the whole of the tongue. And let's add some of this color in on the gum at the bottom, as well. Now, I'm actually going to use the black pencil at this point. I've already built up some of the brown, that very dark umber pencil on a lot of the lion. But I think the dark umber it is a very dark brown. It's probably not dark enough to do what I want, particularly around the edge of the mouth. So what I'm going to do is go over the darkest areas with this black pencil, and then we can add the brown over the top of it to tone it down. This is a great tool that I use a lot where I don't necessarily want to have the harshness of the black, but I do want it to look as dark as the black does. So I can add that black in and then put the dark brown over the top, and it turns it into a very dark brown rather than looking like a let's go over every area that will need to be very dark. So I'm starting off having already put color down on the eye going over the nose here. You'll notice I've gone over the nostrils to begin with, and I'm going over all of these lines along here as well. So go along these lines, and then I'm just going to fade upwards from those lines. I can start adding this black over a lot of the gum and around the mouth. So as I mentioned, just above the teeth, there is a very dark area where this dark sort of lip is joining onto the gum. So let's build up some of this color. This is very similar to what I did already with the dark brown. We're just doing a little bit more. And then I'm going to use the black to go over the whole of the edge of the lip. Now, it's important to note that I'm not pressing really hard here. I am still pressing lightly. I want to build up some of this color to make it darker, but as I said, I don't want it to be really harsh. Let's build this up in the same way that I did before, pressing nice and lightly, and generally mapping in the edge of a shape first, you can see I'm doing here before shading in the middle. I find that is the most accurate way of doing this. I can go around all of the shapes that I've already marked in. This is so much easier this time with this black because it is already marked in with the brown. So I'm happy that I've gone over all of those really darkest parts with this black pencil, and it's looking so much darker and richer. Let's now switch over to that dark umber to tone down the black and also add in any fur texture that I need with this color. So you can see me going over all of these darker areas that I've already built up all around here, adding flicks down this left hand side of the face, as well, 'cause I can see a lot of dark hairs in this area. It's not necessarily a patch, but there are dark little flicks of fur. So let's build those up with this pencil, just adding those lovely light soft flicks. And then it can start working my way down. So I'm going over the nose here, going over that black to smooth out the edges of the black where it's looking a little bit harsh and I want some more mid tone areas. So I'm going mostly reasonably lightly, actually. But I can also use it over the top of that black to just, as I said, tone the color down. Once again, I think it's important here to remember that I'm not trying to make the mouth perfect at this point. We're still going to be building up a lot more color, a lot more of the shapes over the top of here as we move further on with the drawing. I just want the mouth and the teeth to look a little bit closer to the reference photo before I move on to marking in the key shapes on the main. Can go all around the shapes that I've already marked in making a lot of them darker. Like around the edge of particularly this front tooth here, it's just looking too light at the moment. So I can once again go around that gum line. I've done this a few times already, but I think it needs to be darker. And around this tooth here. And generally the top of the mouth, and that's helping the teeth stand out a lot more. We are losing a lot of that reddish tone that I feel I added before, but we can add more of that in as we move on later in the chapters. The main thing at this point is trying to get the contrast and the main shapes marked in reasonably accurately. So let's go over this shadow on the tongue here as well. And then I'm just going to go around and work over the black on the edge of the by the end of this second chapter, I have a pretty clear and clean and tidy, I would say, lion's face and mouth. In the next chapter, we can start thinking about marking in the key shapes on the main. All I want to do at the beginning of this drawing is get everything marked out, mapped out, work out what's going where, and then we can build on it as we go further through the drawing. But that is it for this second section. 12. Build up the Base Layers on the Mane: Now in this chapter, I want to focus on just putting down the base layers on the fur on the main. So I'm not going to be adding in any texture at this point. I just want to map out the shapes and start to get my bearings. So let's start off by looking for the lightest color that I can see in this section. And actually, I do think it's quite a different lightest color to the lightest color on the on the face. The lightest color on the fur on the face was, I think, French gray. This is much more orange. So this is the kind of lightest colour, this kind of color around here, which is a kind of orangy cream. Now, comparing the reference photo to the color swatches, the closest match I think I've got to that color is the beige pencil. It's a very light. It's more orange than the peach I used earlier on the teeth. And I'm going to go about this in exactly the same way as I usually would. I want to put down a nice and smooth layer of the color. So once again, you'll see I'm working with a pencil extender because I want to be holding the pencil really nice and far back. I'm working in circular motion. Working with a really nice and sharp pencil, and I'm literally just going to block in this color everywhere where there is for the main. So I'm going all the way around the outside. The only area I'm not doing is around the chin because this is more of a gray that we'll add in a bit later. But I want to be going all the way around here. I do want to be cautious around the edge because I don't want to have a really firm line. So I'm just going to stop the base there a little bit further in from the kind of outer line of the main. You can see me just working in some really lovely, big circular motions to just put something down on the fur. And I want to go around not only this left hand side, but I don't want to forget to go around the top of the head and around the right, as well. Now, you will notice that I frequently take my pencil away to sharpen it. It is so important, even where we're not building up texture. I want the pencil to go down really nice and consistently, so I still need to take it away and sharpen it nice and frequently. So let's go around this right hand slide, as well. Again, I'm just blocking in this color a little bit further in than the most straggly head, I guess. And quite quickly, I have something down on the paper, although obviously, we've got none of the shapes marked in that we will need. So what I'm going to do is work through this in a similar way to what I did on the shapes on the face. I want to start from this lightest color, and we're going to gradually work towards the darker colors. So I want to be looking for the next most obvious darkest color in the main. Let's move on now to the golden rod pencil. This is, again, that orange that I used on the face. And what I'm going to do with this pencil is start to mark in all of the shapes within the fur that I can see. And this is massively helped because a lot of these shapes I have started to mark in with the sketch outlines, which I can still see. As I mentioned, when we were looking at the reference photo, the fur is sorted into clumps. I want to be drawing in those shapes. So, for example, I'm starting off by drawing this dark section here, this kind of triangle with zig zags at the bottom. There's a dark wedge here surrounding this lighter clump, and then there's a darker wedge. I'm going to work over the whole of the lion's mane, blocking in these shapes. Now, it's going to look a bit odd and it's going to not look anything like a man. That's okay. I literally just want to start getting these areas marked in, and it's going to make my life so much easier when I come to building in all of that texture. I will say that firstly, it's much easier to see all of these sections if you kind of squint when looking at the main. If you're struggling to see where these lighter and darker patches are, squinting so that you can see less of the detail helps you see those underlying shapes, and it's the underlying shapes that I'm particularly wanting to draw in. I'll also say that with this color, because it's one of the lighter colors, I'm not going to draw in absolutely every darker patch. As we get towards the bottom and the back around here, this is all much darker. We're going to need to build in a lot of darker colors around here. So I don't want to spend ages marking in all of these marks here when we're just going to go over it with that darker color. So I do want to go around this light patch here, for example. I think I can just generally shade below that point. I don't need to spend ages adding in every single section because I'll be doing more of that in a second with the darker pencil. I only want to go around the lighter shapes really to begin with, with this lighter pencil, and then we can build up some of the darker colors with a darker pencil. You'll see in a short while a bit more what I mean by this. Now, do note that in the bottom left hand corner, it's very, very dark down there. We're going to put something in that area but build on it more as we go through building up the texture. See that on the most part, I've built up some of the shapes, mostly on kind of the middle next to the face on the main. Let's build up a little bit around this right hand side, but I don't need anywhere near as much around here. I do want to nice and clearly go around the shape of the face, though, and begin to mark in some of the more prominent shapes on the right hand side. So like this dark patch here and how it's darker all down here. See a lot of the shapes here, I would say are marked in pretty rough and ready. Let's refine them a little bit more with this slightly darker pencil. This is the light umber. We've used this a lot on the face. I'm once again going to draw in the clumps. So the goal here is to draw in any patch that is this color or darker. So I'm once again going over this first kind of triangular shape with the zig zags at the bottom, marking the edge so that I have a good idea of the shape I'm shading in, and then I can shade in between those lines with circular motions to gradually build this up. Once I filled in that fair shape, I can start looking at the other shapes around it. So for example, it's a little bit darker along here, a little strip along here. It's darker in all of the strips coming down here, and we've already roughly marked some of these in. So it's a particularly dark patch here and here and going up here, up here, and all around this kind of a zig zag here. I can't begin to stress enough. I know that this looks weird. That's okay. I find it easiest to just work through this one section at a time, looking at the shapes of an area, blocking in the edges of where I need it to be a little bit darker, and then shading up to that point. And the goal here is to have something that we can build upon with the fur texture and just generally an opportunity for me to get my bearings, where we then are going to start building up all of this fur texture, it will be much easier to work through this one section at a time because all of the sections will already be marked. Is the method I always use for all of my fair techniques. So if you're already familiar with that, this won't be a surprise to you. I want to map in the shapes and then we'll build the texture. So once again, I want to go really lightly as I get towards the edge of the main because I will want to make some really lovely, soft flicks around here. I'm not going to want it to be having a harsh line to the edge. Going to go all along the ear. I haven't actually done anything to the ear yet, so let's just block this in, and we can build up some of the fair texture that's around the ear in a short while. And then I'm working quite kind of methodically. I've started on the left, I'm going to work my way round to the right. And we're getting to the point where if you squint at this as well, it is starting to look a little bit like a man. It obviously doesn't have any details or contrast, but that will come together a bit later. So I'm happy with the shapes with this light umber pencil. Let's keep working through those colors working from light to dark. So this is the sienna brown, that reddish brown. Let's go over any area that needs to be more red color. So again, you can see I'm going over a lot of the areas that I've already be over, leaving some of the areas that will need to have a lighter base, that lighter color. I'm also going to go all around the edge of whether darker fur meets the lighter fur, it does have a red tinge, particularly around the edge of the fur, I would say. So I'm just creating this zigzag that I've already marked in along the edge here, and then I'm fading it out. I'm looking at this kind of zig zag along here. I'm just drawing in the overall shapes, but giving it a kind of red tinge at the end here, and we will add a very dark brown to this area down in the bottom going to block in this color on the whole of this back section. I actually don't feel like there's too much detail or texture in this area. So let's just block in a bit of solid color and we can build that up when we start building up the texture. And then let's keep working round and filling in this red. Now, hopefully, you'll see that this is actually reasonably simple. We're not doing anything that's trying to look too perfect first. All I want to do is block in those main rough shapes, and that's it. So I'm going over the ear here. You can see all of these kind of overall zig zag shapes of the fur here. So let's map this in. And there's a reddish brown area around here as well. And then I can keep working around and over a lot of these shapes that I've already marked in. And quite quickly, we have something that is kind of looking like a main. It's obviously not looking quite right, but at least we have some color over all of the main areas of the lion, the more color that I build up and the more of these shapes and textures that are marked in the easier that it's going to become as the drawing moves on. So let's move on now to the dark umber pencil. This is the darkest pencil I'm going to use for these base layers. And I'm going to use this to add in any final very dark patches that I particularly want to get mapped in. So I'm looking to begin with around the edge of the ear here. So I want to mark in the shape of this dark patch along here and go over this sort of zig zag that I've already marked in a little bit because of the Sienna. I need to mark in the odd patch like here, here, here, and here to try and get those patches in the right place, and it's going to make life so much easier as I'm working towards moving onto that texture. So I'm working over here. I think the more color that I build up, the easier it becomes, it becomes much easier to see where this color needs adding because so much of the shapes, so many of the shapes have already been marked. Not forget to block in this whole area down in the bottom left really nice and lightly. You'll see I'm going over the Sienna brown patch here as well to kind of blend these two areas together. I'm not going to build up tons of color here, but I do want to add in something so I don't just have bare paper. So those are the main darkest areas that I can see. There's not a huge amount around the right hand side. So let's just take a minute to focus on the chin. I've got nothing over this area at the moment, so I want to build up some color here. This to me, looks mostly like a French gray again, similar to what we used on the face. So let's go back to that 20% French gray, and I'm just going to block in this color all around the bottom of the chin. Just nice and lightly to put something down here that then we can build up that texture on maybe in the next chapter. And then, actually, I'm just going to add a little bit of color down the bottom. I've just got a big old blank space down here. I'm going to add in some of the light umber here as well. Just tweak some of the shapes around the right hand side. Before going back to that dark umber, just add in there's a few kind of dark triangles on this right hand side, not a huge amount, but I just want to map those. At the end of this chapter, what you should have is your full lion drawn out. But obviously, it's not anywhere near dark enough. It's got no texture. But we do have something that we can work with in the next chapter. 13. Add in the Fur Texture: This chapter, I want to now start building up the texture on particularly the main. So we're going to work through adding in flicking motions in a similar way to what I did on the face of the lion. Now, this is all made a lot easier because a lot of the main shapes have already been mapped out now because of building up those base. We'll go about this in a slightly different way too on the face, simply because this time I'm going to work from the dark colors towards the lighter colors. I think if I can get the fur texture marked in really nice and softly on some of the more prominent places like behind the ear here, it's going to make life a lot easier as I get towards those lighter pencils. So let's start off here with the dark umber pencil. This is the darkest brown that I have in my set. I'm going to begin by basically going over any area where I filled this color in before, but making little flicks and building in that texture. You can see I'm going over the few areas on the ear. Now, once again, similar to what I did on the face, there's a few things that I'm thinking about here. First up, I'm particularly taking note of the direction of the fur. I want to be building flicks following that direction. Starting off by looking at the ear, for example, because that's where we're beginning see that the fur is generally going in this kind of direction here and it's going in this direction around here. There's also these lighter tufts, and I want to make flicks into those tufts so they have more of a feathered edge. And again, I'm looking at the direction that I would need to flick in here, so going in this way for this section and around for this section. Pay attention to the direction of the fur, I also want to be paying attention to the length of the fur. Now, generally speaking, the fur on the face was very short, so I had to make very short flicks. The fur on the main is much longer, so I need to make longer flicks with my pencil. And you can see how I am just lightly brushing my pencil against the paper to create these flicks. I say, it's very much the same as what I did for the face. The key, I would say, is to be making soft flicks rather than pressing hard with the pencil. I don't want to create a lot of really wiry strands. Now the other really important thing here is that I am working with a sharp pencil. If I let my pencil get very blunt, it's going to end up making thick lines, which is not what I want to be doing. So I am frequently sharpening my pencil so that I am keeping on working with that nice and sharp. I'm just going around the edge of the ear, adding a little bit of the darker brown. And then I'm going to start working generally through the rest of the main. So as I said, on the most part, I'm putting this anywhere where I have already built up these darker patches of underlying fur. So that does make it a lot easier. I again want to make some little light flicks going into that lighter section that you can see to the right of where I'm building up now. And on this section here, for example, you'll see that the fur slightly curves around. So you can see the furs kind of going round and then round. So I want to build up flicks going in this kind of curve direction. Do think starting off with the darker pencil, I think it's going to be easier in this instance because the man is generally so dark, but it does look quite harsh to begin with, just because we haven't really got any mid tones around all of these dark areas. But once we add those in, it will make a lot more sense. So as you can see, there's not a huge amount really of patches that I need to be building this color up on the main itself. The main area that I am going to need to build this color in is around the bottom of the main. There's this very dark brown patch here. I'm going to need to make flicks going into this lighter section above. Making flicks going up to kind of create that feathered edge. So you can see me doing this here, just making those flicks up into the main. And I think it all looks a little bit odd at this point, but it will make a lot more sense as we build up all of the other colors and generally build up the color on that section at the bottom. Just finish building up some of this color on the left hand side of the drawing. And then I will also need to build up a little bit of this color around the top and on the right hand side. But obviously, the bulk of the man that we're drawing is this area on the left. Now there's a few small patches along here. There's actually not a huge amount of dark areas directly around the lion's face. I add a little bit around the top, but you can see how lightly I'm pressing with this pencil. I just want to create a very small darker area. I'll go over a lot of the areas, again, that I've already marked in, but I'll just make it a little bit darker around here. I would say that building up this texture on this chapter is a very time consuming process, but I don't think it's too tricky. I think because we built in all of the kind of clumps of the fur, it's actually reasonably simple to see what needs to go where. It just takes a little while to build up that texture. It is very much a case of just persevering. I think this is the longest part, in my opinion of the whole drawing. But obviously, the man is what's going to make the lion really look great. So, as I've got this pencil let's also just adding a little bit of texture around the mouth here. So right now, we've only really got a base layer built up around this area. But look at all of the dark brown that you can see around the jaw here. I want to be adding flicks going in the direction of these dark areas, so adding kind of curved flicks all around here to build up the shape and texture of this area. I've built up all of the dark umber. I can then move on to the slightly lighter or the next lightest pencil. This is the Sienna brown. And actually, I'm going to use this color in a lot more places. So once again, you can see here that I am just brushing the pencil against the paper going in the direction of that fair. You'll also notice that I frequently twist my pencil round. I find if I don't keep turning the pencil, it will wear down the pencil in just one specific way, and then I'll have to sharpen it even more. You'll also notice that I'm using a pencil extender here. That's just so I can hold the pencil a little bit further back in a more comfortable way, and that helps create this really soft flick in a similar way to building up those base layers, holding the pencil further back there also helps create those nice soft layers. Now, as I'm working around near the edge of the main, I do want to make sure that I'm making nice and soft flicks. I don't want to have a really harsh line to the edge of the main. So do think about that. Also find that this is, again, reasonably simple to see which direction all of the fur needs to go because we've mapped in all of the shapes already with those underlying base layers and now the flicking motions from the darkest pencil. So you can see, for example, I've got these three dark patches already marked in, and I can quite clearly see where the fur is going, which direction the fair is going between these darker lines. So under here it's going around in this direction. And here, for example, it's coming around in this direction, underneath this dark patch. I say, I do feel like it is a very time consuming process. The whole of this chapter took me about an hour and 15 minutes to film. But it is worth taking your time to build up all of these little bits of texture because they are going to make all the difference at the end. So let's add all of these flicking motions over the ear, going over the darker brown that I added in, and adding this brown over the top of that darker brown is part of what's going to start softening all of these colors and making this look a bit more natural, although that will all come together even further in the next chapter. Let's make flicks going right up to the dark area down the bottom. And then start working on this area here going through all of these patches, kind of one clump of fur at a time. And that'll help make it a little bit less overwhelming. Now, it's always worth remembering when doing something like building up fur like this to it helps to not think of this as drawing a man. Drawing a man for a lion, I think is very difficult, or it seems very difficult. If we just draw a series of individual patches, it is going to end up looking like a lion and we'll focus a bit more on drawing what can actually be seen rather than what we think we can see. Which is the whole key to all of this. So it's add some small little flicks around the edge. Note how much shorter the fur is here, for example, in comparison to here. So we want to be making shorter flicks in this area. And that's what kind of starts to blend the man into the whereas here, for example, the fa is so much longer. So we're going to need to make longer flicks in this area. Shorter flicks. Again, up here, look how much shorter the fur is in this section. And for this section up here, it's also kind of sorted into a few little clumps of fur. So let's draw those clumps and make the fur go in that correct direction. So you can see already on this left hand side how much better it looks for literally just building up flicking motions with two different colors. We've had the dark umber and now we're building up this Sienna brown. One thing to note is I do think that the fur looks a little bit scratchy whilst I'm doing this. But that's okay. We will smooth that out in the next chapter, building up other color over the top of this so it doesn't look as scratchy. So don't worry about that at this point. Now, let's also build up some of this brown up the top. Here, I just want to be making flicks coming out from the darker patches that I marked in with those base layers, so we have a nice and soft edge to this section. I'm going to start making flicks and building up a lot of the texture down on this right hand side here. And you'll see a lot of the fur in this section is kind of quite curved, I would say. So you can see in this section, the fur is curving around and then down like an S shape. And here, curving around and then down. And here it's going a little bit more just kind of around rather than that S shape. Here it's going down and then around like this. So those are the kind of flicks that I'm building up in this section. That is generally looking much better. We've got so much of this texture built in at this point. Let's move on to the next lightest pencil. And this is the light umber. This is a color that I've used a lot throughout this drawing. I can particularly use this color to start building up some nice and light texture on these lightest areas. So this section here, for example, we don't have any texture built up on this very light patch right now. Let's use this light umber to start building this up. And then we can get to a point where we have some sort of texture on every area of the I'm also going to use this pencil to go around the edge here. You can see a lot of this area also needs to be very light, but it just has nothing really there at the moment. I'm going to make a few flicks going into the face a little bit to blend that in. But how much easier this is now because so much of the fur texture has been built up, it's so easy to see the direction that these pencil strokes need to go in. Even on light areas like this, it's pretty obvious the direction I need to be following. And that's because of not only the base as we built up in the last chapter, but all of the flicking motions that have already been built up in this chapter. Actually not needing to build up a huge amount of this pencil on most of the lion. I don't need to build up tons of it on, particularly the areas where I mapped in that Sienna brown because it's not hugely going to show through, but I do want to build up quite a decent amount of this pencil along the top, along here. And on the wispy edges, I'm going to call them along here. I really want this to look nice and soft, and I don't want to have really harsh edges around. Build up flicks on any area that I don't really have anything at the moment, which is on actually quite a lot of this area on this right hand side. You can see just making really lovely soft flicks to add that kind of feathered edge on here. And then before I move on from this chapter, I'm actually going to go back down towards some darker pencils. This isn't the darkest pencil. This is more like a dark mid tone. So now that I've built up something on the lighter areas, you can still see it's looking very scratchy, it's not looking finish. I'm going to just slightly smooth out between the sienna brown and the dark umber. So this is the dark brown pencil. This is actually, despite it being called dark brown, a much lighter pencil than the dark umber. And it's really great for smoothing out between those two colors. So you can see I'm going to add flicking motions going pretty much over anywhere where I put that dark umber. Also go over the edges to just begin to smooth that all out and just generally make it a little bit less harsh. So you can see me going along the edge of this dark patch, adding flicking motions, and look at what a huge difference it makes to just smoothing that out. I'm going to work around in exactly the same way as I did before, building up this color and generally making the whole thing look a little bit less harsh and a little bit less kind of clumpy. In terms of how I'm doing this, I'm still focusing on going over the fur in the direction of the fur, making nice and light flicking motions so that we can still build up that nice texture. Now, I can't stress enough that it does still look very scratchy. We're not expecting at the end of this chapter to have a really beautifully smooth and full looking man. All I really want to do is have some texture built up so that we can build upon it and smooth it all out in the next section, start brightening things up. Just going over this one section at a time, adding flicking motions in. I am adding this pencil in even on some of the lighter areas like here, just a few little flicks gives the lighter areas just that little bit of extra texture. But this is why it's so important to practice these flicking motions drawing something like this, it's the main thing that we're doing to build up all of that nice fur texture. Just go around some of these smaller, lighter edges here, and I'll go around some of the areas, particularly going over where I put that burnt sienna around here just to make it a little bit darker. And then by the end of this chapter, you should have a full man marked in. But as I say, it just needs smoothing out and brightening up. But that is it for this chapter. 14. Brighten up the Colours and Smooth out the Fur: Now that we've got all of the fur texture marked out, let's start brightening this up and smoothing out some of this fur. As I mentioned in the last chapter, I do think that it's looking very scratchy at the moment. So what I'm going to do is work through this one color at a time. I'm going to want to be thinking about the most obvious thing that is missing from the drawing. I'm not necessarily trying to finish the drawing at this point. All I want to do is get it a bit closer to the reference photo and generally brighten it up. Starting off by looking at the main, and the most obvious difference between the reference photo and the drawing here, I would say is that the reddish brown areas are not looking rich enough. We don't have enough of that sienna brown at this point. So I'm going to use that sienna brown to go over all of the areas that are this reddish brown to generally brighten this now, you'll notice that I am using circular motions, again, like we did at the very beginning, rather than using flicking motions. By putting circular motions over the top of all of these hair strands that we've built up, it doesn't take away all of those hair strands, but it does smooth it out and make it look a bit more solid, a little bit less scratchy. Going to work through this in exactly the same way as I were before. I'm starting from the left and working my way gradually towards the right. Now, I'll stress that I am not pressing hard here as I'm doing this. Although I think the main color that's missing in this area is this reddish brown. I am, I imagine, going to be building up a lot more colors along here as well. So I don't want to press hard and then not be able to build up more pencil. You'll notice there are a few areas where I am adding some flicking motions if there's an area where I obviously don't have enough texture. I will add that in. But on the most part, I'm just focusing on going over this with the circular motions to smooth it out and adjust the color. And look at what a massive difference it makes, building up a little bit of pencil over the top of the main. It's completely changed already on that left hand side, what's here. So you see I'm adding a few flicking motions on this area just to smooth out the edge a little bit and build up a bit more texture. I'm going to gradually start building up the pencil gradually working towards the right hand side. Now, I feel like for every color that I add in, it makes the next color that's missing more obvious. So once I've built up the most obvious color, which is right now this brown, it will make it easier to see what I need to be adding in in the next. I think it's worth noting that I don't tend to think about the next step until I've completed the current step I'm on because I don't know how exactly adding this color in is going to change what we've got. And I don't know from there, which color will be the most obvious color that's missing, because I'm only working on adding the most obvious color that I think I need to build up. Adding a little bit of light shading under here where there's this shadow, and I want to blend that a bit better into the lighter area below. But as I say, in some areas, there are still some patches where I do need to add a bit of flicking motions like on this area here, where it is just quite light, and I feel like it hasn't got quite enough texture. So it's also go over the ears. The ears are really quite dark, I would say. So I want to build up quite a bit more color here, and you can see here how obvious it is that I'm using those circular motions to just blend some of this out. Also notice that I'm still using a pencil extender so that I can hold the pencil a little bit further back. I'm not holding it as far back as I have been in the past. I do want to have reasonable accuracy over where the pencils going. I am still focusing on pressing lightly. So let's go all around this area on the right hand side, as well, smoothing out and generally making this side a little bit darker. Once I'm happy with where I've built up this color on the main, just going to add a little bit on the face, particularly around here. I don't think this little patch here is looking quite dark enough. I am working on the whole picture as a whole now rather than just working on either the face or the main. I can see a little bit of this red color that I think is missing on the face, so I am going to build that up. Then from here, I can once again compare my drawing to my reference photo and think about the next most obvious color that I think is missing from here. So I'm actually going to move on to a French gray now. This is the sort of medium French. Going to use this to just make the face a little bit darker. I think the face is all looking way too pale at the moment, and this is one of the main colors in the face, as I talked about when we built this up earlier. So I want to be going over anywhere that I think needs to be made a bit darker. That's generally a lot of the areas I've already built color. And once again, you'll see that putting this color over the top of all of those flicking motions isn't stopping them from showing. It's just smoothing out what we've got here and making it a little bit less scratch. I want to go all the way over the top of the head here. There's a few lighter strips that I'm going to leave for now. And then I once again want to compare my drawing to my reference photo and my color swatches and once again, think about the most obvious color that's missing from here. So I'm now feeling like the man, particularly, needs to be brighter and more vibrant. A lot of it kind of lacks in color. We've got quite a lot of the darker and dark mid tone colors, but some of the lighter colors aren't really there enough. So I'm actually going to use quite a vibrant, kind of earthy orange. This is the golden rod pencil. Going to use circular motions again to just brighten up a lot of the man, particularly around the top up here. And that is just brightening up all of the sections here. Look at how much it brightens this area around the ear. It generally nicely smooths out those darker areas. Let's go all the way down the side of the face down here. I'm going to put some of this color, particularly where the darker mid tones are meeting the lighter colors. So I'm just going to work through this one patch at a time to brighten up some of the orange sections along just giving the whole thing so much more depth, I feel. It looks so much nicer and brighter. Now, I want to build up a lot of this color all along the bottom, going where I built up a lot of the sienna browns just giving it again, more depth. It looks like a more interesting color, and it looks closer to the reference. The man on the drawing is really, I would say, very orange. And in some patches at the moment, it's just looking too like, kind of a little bit washed out. Go along the top up here as well, brightening this area up and generally smoothing out where that man is meeting the face. And then I'm also going to use some of this same golden rod color on the face because I am working now more as a whole picture rather than working in sections. I do want the picture to look a little bit more cohesive. It's tricky because the fur on the face, I feel is a slightly different color to the fur on the main. I think the fur on the main is orange, but I can see some of this orange on the face, and if I don't add that in, I think they're just going to look like two weirdly separate section. Look at all of these big circular motions. It's amazing to me how little of the pencil you can put down on the paper and what a massive difference it makes to the color just from a tiny amount. So do bear that in mind that you don't need to be applying loads or definitely not pressing hard to actually really adjust the color by quite a bit, I would say. Now I've built up those orange colors. I now feel like some of the darker colors aren't looking dark enough. Like a lot of those darker values have kind of got a little bit lost. So let's use the dark brown pencil, not the dark umber pencil to just begin making some areas darker. I don't want to use the dark umber pencil because it is so much darker. I just want to begin to make things a little bit darker, but I don't want to be too drastic at this point. And on the most part, I am going over the area with circular motions to make the whole area look darker. Although in some areas I am using flicking motions, particularly if it's an area next to a lighter patch of fur. I want to have really nice and soft edges to that section, I don't want it to be harsh. So that's where flicking motions comes in handy. So let's build up a decent amount of this pencil over this area at the back here. And then I'm going to focus on building up a lot of this color down in that bottom left. So right now, we do have a base layer built up with a darker color down here, but I need to make it darker. It's not looking dark enough. It looks very washed out. So let's just block in this area down here. There is in the area down the bottom here some lighter gray hairs. I'm not going to worry about that at this point. I think if I block this in, it's going to make the man at the top make a lot more sense. So I'm just going to focus on that. And you'll see, I haven't pressed hard in that bottom left hand corner, but it does look much better already. It's making particularly fur around it, I would say, look better. Let's also add some flicking motions in this bottom area down here. Just it all looks a little bit. It doesn't look very natural, I would say, at the moment, and I want to make the edges of this area particularly look much softer. So let's add those flicks in to just soften that. It's very much adding to what I did in the last chapter. And there are a few areas on the face that I just want to build on a little bit more. This area here, I do think needs to be quite dark. So I just need to keep building that up. I already think that the lion is looking better. Let's make this area on the face a bit darker. It's not looking dark enough at the moment in relation to the rest of the drawing. But this is all so much easier than it was at the beginning, because so much of this has been marked out. I have a very good idea on what needs to go where, and I'm really only thinking about colors, I would say, at this point. I've got all of those shapes marked in quite nice and neatly. So I already know what needs to go where. Keep working over the face, looking at any area that needs to be made darker. So I'm looking at the nose around here, for example. And I want to go over these spots from the whiskers. They look like they've got a little bit lost. They're not looking as prominent as they once were. Then let's also build up some of the fur around this section, just going over any of the darker patches that I have already marked. I'm generally happy with the face and with the man. Let's take a minute to focus on the mouth. The mouth is very nicely marked in, and all the colors are all mapped in, but it's not looking dark or rich enough. I can see way too many white spots of the paper, and it's generally looking too light. So let's start off here by going around the edge of the mouth, the area that is very dark or should be very dark, but isn't at the moment that I know needs to be made darker. This is the dark umber pencil. I'm going to use this pencil to actually at this point, press a little bit firmer. I'm not pressing full force, but I am really beginning to build up some of the pencil around the edge of the mouth here, and it's going to start making that whole mouth area more vibrant. So you can see I'm once again going around the edges in exactly the same way as I did before. And then I'm still using circular motions, but just applying a firmer pressure so that I can block in all of this area. I'm only really wanting to do this because I know that this area does need to be so dark and I know that I've already mapped this in so thoroughly. So I am pretty confident on where this pencil needs to go. So it's also build up a lot of shading like around here, for example, I'm not pressing as hard when I'm going over areas under the mouth here. I don't need to build up as much pencil because I will need to build up a lot of red color on the roof of the mouth here as well. That said, I do want to make the area a little bit darker. It's not looking dark enough at the moment. Go all down this right hand side as well along here. And we'll build this up in a second, but it always amazes me how building up more of a color like this makes the next color more obvious that's missing. So, for example, at this point, building in the edges of the mouth here is making the tongue look so much paler than it did a second ago, because in comparison to these very dark outlines to the mouth, it now looks very washed out. Also go over the nose. I want this to be blocked in very dark. I want it to be looking a lot darker than what I've got at the moment. Again, this is a good example of an area where I know where I need the pencil to go. It's already been mapped in all of the shape so clearly. I just need to build it up a bit more. I'm also just going to add a little bit to some of the texture around the bottom whilst I've got this pencil and maybe tweak around the bottom of the mouth here as well. You can see I'm working in those circular flicking motions, those kind of curved flicking motions that we talked about before, trying to follow the shape of the fur that I can see on the reference photo. Just going to work around just thinking about if there's anywhere else that I think needs to be made darker. Although to be fair, not to the same degree as around the face, but generally some of these darker areas in the fair of the main just look a little bit too washed out at this moment. So I'm just going to build them up a bit more. But as I always say, it's very clear where I need to add this because it's all the same areas where I've added this before. We're just gradually building up the color let's go around the bottom of the fur here. Again, this area needs to be very, very dark, but it isn't at the moment. So let's add to this a bit more, making those flicking motions going up into the fur above and making circular motions on any area where I want to block the color in a bit more readily. And then once I've marked in along that line where the fur is meeting the main, let's block in all of the area down in this bottom left hand corner. It's not easy to see. But I am literally applying, I would say a reasonably firm pressure now just to this corner because I do want it to end up looking so dark. Let's just build up a bit more of the fur around the face here. You'll see I keep coming back to this same section. Just don't think that I've got enough here at the moment. Then let's use this same pencil to add some very fine texture around the top lip. Look all these teeny, tiny little hairs around here. This edge along here is looking really very dark. It's also very dark around. Here all of these little flicks of fur. So I'm to start adding this texture in with this pencil. You can see what tiny flicks I'm making, and then I'm shading over the top to smooth them out a little bit. I'll also add a few tiny little flicks around the face here just because there is so much darkness built up in this area. Now, as I say, for every color that I add, I think it makes the next color that's missing more obvious, it's generally the red areas or the pink areas that are jumping out at me, particularly in the mouth that I think aren't looking dark enough or rich enough at the moment. So let's use this pencil. This is crimson red to just lightly go over the roof of the mouth and make this brighter. I think at the moment, we don't have anywhere near enough red in this section. Look at how dark and rich red the roof of the mouth really is. It's maybe not as bright red as this color, but we can always tone that down. We need to get a decent amount of red in this area for now, though. I'm also going to add a little bit of the red over some patches of the gums, as well. I don't want to add it all over the gums, but basically anywhere where I added some of the brown, some of the extra shading, that should be more of a reddish brown than what I have here. I did try using some of the sienna brown onto the gums to add that reddish tone in, but there isn't enough red in that brown, I don't that red is looking so much better. The mouth looks much more accurate, I would say. Let's still use that sienna brown to just tone down that red. It's giving it more of a kind of red undercolor, but this is just toning it down so that it looks a little bit less, I'd say, cartoony. Can start using a firmer pressure here because I am wanting to begin blending these colors together. And that helps remove some of these white spots that you can see, particularly on the roof of the mouth. It's more obvious on an area that is darker like this. And it's also just build up with this same color, any area that I feel hasn't got enough of a reddish brown. There's a lot of areas where we added this color already, particularly around the top of teeth, like around here. But the more colors that we build up, the more kind of areas like this get toned down. So it's exactly the same as what I did in earlier chapters. I'm just building up more of this darker color on a lot of the T. Because as always, that's what I can see in the reference photo. It's very much a case of comparing the drawing to the reference photo, even if I've already built up a lot of the color. If it's not looking like there's enough, I will still add more, even if it seems like I've done a lot already. Let's use the peach pencil now to really build up some of the pink on the teeth. Again, we did do this before, but I think it's looking a little bit too light at this point. So I can go over a lot of particularly the top of the teeth. The bottom of the teeth are more like a yellow color to just build up some of this pink and make the teeth look a bit less bright white. This is a lion we don't want him to have really bright. Let's now focus on the tongue, and I'm very much going to do the same as what I did in earlier chapters. As I mentioned, I can see a decent amount of purple in the tongue. Let's go back to that dark purple. And in the same way that I did earlier on, I want to add Morin. As I mentioned, I think the tongue is looking too pale. I just want to go over those same areas. An area that I think needs to be darker but also does have this purple tone, and that's looking better already. It's looking a little bit less washed out. It is just a case of gradually building up this color with those circular motions. We are back to using nice and light pencil to just gradually increase the vibrancy of an area. I don't want to just be putting down a solid block of purple on the tongue. Really hard. The purple probably looks a bit too purple, so I can now use the pink. Again, the same pink I used before to go over the top of that purple and it turns it more into a purply pink rather than just a purple. You can see how much that changes the color of the tongue, just adding a little bit of the pink. Then let's use the same color, the same red that I used on the roof of the mouth to just brighten up a few areas on the tongue. I do like where possible to try and use similar colors in similar sections. I think it creates a just more cohesive look to the drawing. So I need to add a red into the tongue. I'm going to try if I think it's a good fit to use the same red I used on the roof of the mouth because it's just going to help it all grow together a bit better. So let's now begin to smooth out the tongue. It's looking very, very scratchy, but I'm generally happy with the color on the tongue, on the most part. So I'm going to use the lighter French gray to just reasonably firmly go over the tongue, and you can see that that is smoothing this section. I've picked this French gray as the main color because I think it's the main color I can see on the lighter areas of the tongue. And when I put it over the darker, the more pinky purply areas as well, it's just making them more of a solid kind of block color rather than the slightly scratchiness that we had before. You can see I'm applying a firm pressure but still working in those circular motions. It's the same as I did around the edge of the. Going to use this to go over even some of the very dark areas on the tongue just to smooth that out. So now that the tongue is a little bit darker and the whole mouth area is a bit richer, I think it's making the rest of the face look washed out in a similar way to what I felt about the tongue when I added the darker area around that. So let's go back to the golden rod pencil and just build up some more of this color in exactly the same places as I did before. I still feel like the whole drawing needs more orange. Going to work over the whole of the face, pretty much going over any area that isn't very, very light. So once again going over the main over here with those same circular motions, we literally did the same thing at the beginning of the chapter, but I feel like it's now looking again, too light. We need to add more of this color. As I mentioned, for every color that I add, I think it helps see the next color that needs adding. So actually, on a lot of areas on the face and the man, I can see this pink. This is the peach pencil. It's a kind of earthy pink. And although I think the lion is primarily kind of an orangey brown, I can see a lot of areas of this kind of color. So you can see a hint of it all around here, this kind of undertone of that pink. The same pink that's on this tooth. Well, you can see a little bit in the fur around here and generally in the fur all in these kind of midtone areas, I would say. Just build up some of this pink, again, in circular motions, just anywhere where I think it will add a little bit of extra color. It's adding that little extra interest and richness. If you can ever see something like this, even if it seems a bit weird, it doesn't seem like a lion should have pink on it. The rule is always if you can see it, you should draw it. That's my rule. So by the end of this chapter, we have gone from having a very washed out lion to a richer looking lion. It doesn't look finish, but it is getting closer to where we need this to be. It's starting to match the reference photo a little bit better. The next chapter, we can think about brightening things up and adding even more details in. So kind of doing the same as we did in this chapter, but more. Alright, but that is the end of this section. 15. Add in the Final Colours and Details: Let's keep brightening up this lion and gradually work towards adding the final details. And I still want to be working through in the same way as I did in the last chapter, thinking about the most obvious color that's missing when I compare my drawing to my colors watches and my reference photo. And now I think it looks like it just still needs more reddish brown, particularly the fair on the main is looking way too kind of blonde and I really want to brighten it up. Up until now, I've only been using the sienna brown, which is that reddish kind of brown to try and brighten up the man. I'm actually now going to use this pencil. This is burn ochre. This is a much redder version of that sienna brown. I'm just going to add this working one section at a time to any area that I think needs to be a bit redder, which is pretty much all of the midtones. And you'll note that I'm not just using circular motions this time and shading over the top of what I've got here. I'm actually using more flicking motions to build up the texture of the fur instead. Can see just working along this first section, what a huge difference actually it's making to the color, adding a little bit of this over the top. Now, I want to also add some of this red to this patch here. There is this kind of reddish brown patch here that isn't hugely clearly marked in at the moment. So let's get that mapped in. We will add a lot darker colors to this later, and then I'm going to carry on working on the main building up those flicking motions. So you'll see on the most part, I'm working over the top of each of these sections, adding these flick. I'll also fill in underneath these sections. I'm on the most part, avoiding the lighter area in the middle. I'm adding a few little flicks into that area, but I mostly want to keep the center of these light patches nice and bright. I don't want to add a lot of this color over there. Let's just lightly add a little bit of this pencil down the bottom. Just make this area, this midtone area here a bit red. I'm going to work all the way along the bottom. Now, as I am working along where this lighter hair is meeting the much darker hair at the bottom, actually going to use a little bit of a firmer pressure here just to try and smooth these areas together. This whole area all along the bottom, all of these strands of hair are just really quite red, and I do want to get them kind of blended into that area underneath. So this is a really good opportunity to not only adjust that color, but also add in some extra flicking motions to just slightly build up the texture a little bit more, add to what we've already got. I get towards the back of the head, I am going to start building up quite a lot more of this color. This whole area along the back here, I would say, needs to be a lot more red. It's kind of the area that is the reddest. But I'm still looking at where the lighter areas are and the darker and gradually building this up. Then let's add a little bit around these lighter to here. I need a little bit more detail added into these areas. Again, there's quite a lot of darker red here. I think when I'm first adding this red in, it is looking quite harsh and bright in comparison to the rest of the fur, but we will smooth and blend that out in a short while. So let's keep working up. You'll see that I'm working in the same way as I usually would generally working from the bottom, and then we're going round in a clockwise direction. Now, I don't want to forget to go over the ear. The ear is also another area that I think just has a lot more red to it than what we've got at the moment. Notice that for the large part of this chapter, we are adding just a lot of red. And it is very much the same as what we did in the last chapter where we look for the most obvious color that's missing. And once we've added that in, it becomes much easier to see the next most obvious color that we need to go to from the top of the head, I am going to add a little bit more red where the man at the top here is meeting the forehead of the lion. I think there's a bit too much of a harsh line between these areas, and I just want to blend it out a little bit better. And also, I'm going to use this color to just add some extra flicks along here, get this looking a little bit more wispy, I guess. It's not looking quite soft enough to me at the moment. Let's do the same on this area down here. It's maybe not got as much red as on the left hand side of the man, but it does still need to have some extra red added. It's looking too bright at the moment. And what a massive difference that's made to the main. Just adding one color adjusts the whole thing. So I want to build up this color the whole way down the man on this right hand side. I'm also going to use this color to add a little bit of red onto the tongue around the edges, you'll notice that it has quite a dark red. I don't want to use a huge amount, though. I don't want it to be really obvious. I just want to subtle little red area here. I'm also going to use this color on the mouth, on the roof of the mouth here. We built up a lot of color here in the last chapter, but I can just see a few white spots working through and showing through the pencil. So I can just use a firm pressure to smooth that out. I also adds a little bit of red onto the teeth around here. Just brighten up this a bit further. But I don't need to add a huge amount. It's reasonably subtle, I would. I'm also going to add some of this color lightly onto the face, too, simply because I think the face looks too different color at the moment in comparison to that much red and man. So any area on the face, I can see with a more red tone. I am going to add this onto there, just to brighten up that whole face. You'll see here because it's short of fur and working back in circular motions. Just add a light touch of the color rather than wanting to build up all of the texture. I just want to add a hint. So I'll add a little bit over some of these darker patches. They have a hint of red to. From here, I can think about the next most obvious color that's missing. So the color I think I next need to build up. Now that I've added in that red, I feel like the lighter areas on the main are looking too light. These patches just look too bright and need toning down. So I'm going to use the light umber pencil to add flicking motions over these light patches. And you can see, again, adding a small amount of this color is not only toning down the brightness so it doesn't look as kind of looks harsh that it's so light. But also, it's just adding in that little bit of extra texture because I'm using these flicking motions. I can add in a small amount of satle texture, and it's just giving all of the light areas an extra bit of depth. Still going through this in the same way as we did in previous chapters, just adding a very light flicking motion over these areas. I don't want to be pressing hard. I want it to look nice and soft. The main area that I want to add this color is, I would say, over this light patch here. Again, I think it's just looking too bright. It looks a bit harsh. Also use this pencil to add some extra flicking motions behind the ear, try and get the edge of the man looking a little bit more wispy. And I can go over these patches here that are leading in, I guess, to the ear, just to help them look a little bit more choppy. Then I'm going to work around in the same way I'm going to go up and over the head, blending the top of the man a bit better into the face like we did with the last pencil. But this is a bit more subtle because it's more neutral color. I'm also going to add quite a bit of extra shading onto the face. So a lot of the face, I think, looks too pale, particularly around the top. I can very lightly use this pencil to gradually make some of these areas darker. So this isn't so much about adding in color. This is more about adding in contrast, I would say, trying to get those lights and darks a bit closer to the reference photo. So this strip along here needs to be made a lot darker. And I can generally make these creases over the nose a little bit darker. You can see a little bit of the pencil does go a long. I'm generally going to make all of these darker patches along here a bit darker. So the spots from the whiskers, we will be adding the whiskers towards the end of this chapter. And I built up those same markings on the face as I did with the burn ochre. Now, let's add some more flicks, try and make the man along here look a little bit more wispy. And the same to the man down here, building up some more of these flicking motions. We're just always at this point, adding to what we've got and going through, generally speaking, the same motions and the same colors. We just need more. I'm going to build up a bit more of this color on the teeth. I still think the teeth need to be made a little bit darker. And then, actually, I'm going to use the cream pencil. This is a very light yellow, just to add a little bit of brightness to this patch of fur up here. I do feel like particularly the fur here is just much more yellow than the rest of the main. But I don't want to make it a really bright yellow. I just want to add a subtle little hint of yellow up here. So I just use circular motion, smooth out some of this area and just brighten it up, as well. Just a little tweak that's gonna give the whole lion some extra vibrancy. Let's add a little bit around this right hand side, as well, anywhere where I can see some more of this yellow. I can also use this color to slightly smooth out the fur so that it again, doesn't look as scratchy. We just want this to look as nice and smooth as possible. Let's once again, think about the most obvious color that's missing, and actually now I'm going to use the peach pencil. We did use this before. There's so many areas on the main and on the face where I do feel like I can see pink. It's almost like the red areas, the fur that needs to be more of a red. The areas that are a little bit lighter than that are the pink. And again, I'm using this color to just smooth out the fa some of the main. You can see that some of it looks quite patchy and that just takes away the patchiness. Am I would say, using a medium to firm pressure. Now I'm not pressing full force, but I do want to begin to blend all of these colors together because, as I say, I don't want it to be looking as patchy anymore. You can see how putting this color over the top of what we've got here is just going so well with that particularly burn ochre pencil. Let's just add a little bit around the top and side of the main around here, and then I'm also going to build up some of this color on the face. So particularly in this patch along here, this is the main area that I keep building up because it does generally need to be a bit darker. I'm also going to be going over a few of the areas where I built up that light umber. I I generally want to add a little bit more vibrance to a mid tone area. Let's now add a tiny bit of an orange tone. I want to tone down where I put that yellow, make it more of an orange. And this is that same orange that we used right towards the beginning. Now that I've built up all of those colors, I now feel like the darker mid tones are looking less kind of prominent. So I don't want to use right now the dark umber pencil, that very dark brown. I'm going to use the dark brown, instead, which is kind of the lighter version of that dark umber. I'm just going to go over all of those darker mid tones. Go around a lot of these clumps of fur, still using those flicking motions, in many ways, going over where I put that burn ochre to slightly tone down the red now. So it's all a balance, and we're just repeatedly going over the same areas to just tweak the colors at this. Think that the lion looks really good as it is, and I could definitely say that it's finished here, but I think just taking it little bit further is going to make all the difference. Tug over all of the darker mid tones around here just to find some of these clumps a bit better. As I've said throughout the drawing, do make sure that you have a nice and sharp pencil. It is going to make all of the difference to the finished drawing. Add flicking motions around here as well, generally make a lot of these patches look a bit darker as well. Let's also add a few little flicks around the bottom of the jaw here. Because particularly down this bottom, it does look like it needs to be quite a lot darker. And then I'm going to take a minute to focus on the face with this same color. Just add some few flicks along here. A lot of the texture that I built up in this section just looks a little bit lost, so I'm going to add this back in in the same way that we did at the very beginning. Then let's think about moving on to the next color. I now want to go back to the French gray, the kind of mid or French gray. Smooth out a lot of areas. So, for example, this little patch on the cheek here is very gray. So let's build this up a little bit more generally tone down the lightness here and use this pencil to add more flicks down the bottom. It's still just not looking enough to me. I can use the lighter French gray to just finally tone down some of the lightest areas at the very top. You can see it is very, very light at this point, and I think it is too bright. Now, at this point, I'm generally happy with the lion. Let's just add a few final tweaks on this area here, and then we can start thinking about adding in the whiskers. So I'm just going to use this very light cold gray to tone down the lightest areas on this patch. It's generally a little bit of a darker gray where the nose is meeting the light sort of muzzle along here. Just going to switch back to that dark brown to make some of these patches a little bit darker. And then it's at this point that I want to start using the jelly roll pen. So I'm going to use this to mark in every whisker on the face. You can see how nicely this jelly roll pen goes over the top of the colored pencils. In a way, if I tried to put the white pencil over the top of this, it was never going to show up this bright. This is an optional step. You don't have to do this. If you don't have a jelly roll pen. I think it looks great without the whiskers. If you're drawing in the whiskers, literally all I'm doing here is looking at the shapes and angles of each of those whiskers. So these whiskers are pointing down. For example, these ones are pointing up, and they're pointing down again here. I'm just doing my best to copy the shapes. Now, once I filled this pen in, what I want to do is wait for it to completely dry. Because what we're then going to do is put some colored pencil over the top. So starting off by using the white pencil to go over the top of the white pen, I feel like this just makes it look a little bit less harsh. It smooths it out, and I'm using a reasonably firm pressure for this. I feel if I leave the pen as it is, it just looks a bit too harsh. Finally, I'm going to use this brown pencil to just add a slight shadow around the edges of these whiskers. And also to fade out the top, make it kind of look less again, less harsh. I want the whiskers to look a little bit tapered. So if you're like around the edges of these whiskers, it's generally got slight shadows. I want to add that shadow. In this whisker here, for example, does look quite dark, so I can add a lot of shading, particularly around the top. I generally want to just help define these whiskers a little bit better by adding this brown around the edges. It helps it stand out. But once I've gone round all of these whiskers, that is the end of the drawing. 16. Summary: That is it. That is the full process that I use to draw this really cool roaring line. I want to start off by selecting a reference photo with really good contrast and from the right angle. I can then build up my sketch lines, get everything mapped out before looking at the reference photo. Can then start off by building up the base layers in each section and then building that fur texture on top of it for both the face and then the man. Then once I've got the whole lion marked out, I can start brightening everything up and adding in the final details. Now, I do hope that you have enjoyed this lion drawing. Please do leave a review if you have. And I look forward to seeing you in the next. Happy drawing, guys.