Drawing Animals: How to Draw Realistic Fur with Watercolour Pencils

1. Introduction: What I love about watercolor pencils is how bright and enrich they are. But they're not generally thought of as a material that it's possible to create a lot of detail with. I want to show you today that actually, if you follow a certain process, it is surprisingly easy to draw high detail with watercolor pencils like drawing animals. My name is Jemma Chambers, and I've been making online art tutorials since 2020. I've helped tens of thousands of people on my YouTube channel. But today, I want to be a bit more specific. I want to show you in depth how to draw a fair with watercolor pencils. I'll show you all of the materials you'll need, as well as some of the key techniques. I'll then talk you through the step by step process from creating the sketch outlines all through adding the color, building up the layers, and building up that texture. Let's get started. 2. Class Project - Drawing a Squirrel: I have selected to draw this squirrel. And I've picked this for a few different reasons. First up, the fur is made up of a number of different colors. It's not just one set of colors. There's some grays on the back of the squirrel, as well as quite a lot of reds and browns generally in the fur. So it'd be good to show how to build up a few different colors. It's also got quite a few different kind of types of fur. It's got some longer fur, particularly on the tail, as well as above the ears. It's got some midlength fur around the body and some much shorter fur on the face. So I can show you how to build up all of these different lengths of fur. I will show you everything that you need to know here, including how to create the sketch. If you want to use my sketch, I have included my own in the class resources. Now, once you finish your drawing, please do upload it. I would love to see what you've done. Let's talk about some of the materials that you'll need. 3. Materials for Watercolor Pencil Drawings: Now, let's talk about the materials that you'll need. And the first material is the most obvious watercolor pencils. Now, I like to draw with the faber Castor watercolor pencils. You don't need to use these specific ones. But I do find them to be particularly good quality. Generally speaking, as long as you have a decent sized set, I think it's much easier if you have a set of at least about 36. Then it'll be simpler to select the colors. I'll be completing this drawing with the set of 60. The next material you'll need is some paper, and you want specific watercolor paper. If you tried to draw and activate the watercolor pencils on just printer paper, it's not going to work. Now, watercolor paper generally comes in two different types. Hot pressed and cold pressed. This is a difference in how the paper is made. Generally speaking, though, hot pressed paper is much smoother. Cold pressed has a more textured finish. We'll be drawing on the hot pressed paper because it's smoother, at the end of the drawing, we'll need to add in a lot of details, and that's going to be much easier with the smoother paper. Now, another thing to note is that I always draw on 100% cotton paper. Again, find that it just responds much better to the watercolor pencils. It is a little bit more expensive, but I do think it makes all the difference. Next up, you'll need a paint brush, some way of activating the watercolor pencil. I just have a standard watercolor brush. It's a nice round brush. It's not too big. And you'll also need a cup of water. I'm just using a cup from the kitchen. Next up, you will need a pencil sharpener. Now, as I said, I'm using the faber castell watercolor pencils. These are a little bit wider than a standard colored pencil, for example. So I find that I can't use a standard pencil sharpener. I've got a pencil sharpener that has a smaller hole or a standard hole, and then a slightly larger hole and I sharpen in this one. But it might be if you've got a different type of watercolor pencil, you can just use a standard pencil sharpener. Now the next material that you'll need is something that you're not going to be able to buy, you're going to need to make it. This is a set of color swatches. Now, in order to draw with the watercolor pencils, we need to know what the colors actually look like. I don't want to rely on the color of the barrel or of the lead. I want to see how it looks on the paper. And this is even more important with watercolor pencils than with color pencils, for example, because they become such a different color when you activate them with the water. So what I do is I draw out a grid, and then for every color, I put the pencil down as light as I can go to as dark as I can go. I then make sure that I label it. And then with just the bottom half of this little gradient, I activate it with the water. And you can see how different the color looks when activated versus not. Now, do you make sure that you go from the lighter end to the darker end or you'll end up with just a big smudgy mess. I'll show you a bit later exactly how I use these swatches, but these are honestly so important to see what the pencils actually look like. Now, the final thing that you'll need is some way of looking at the reference photo. Because I focus on drawing realistic items, I always work from a reference. Now, I like to look at the reference photo with my iPad. I particularly like it because I can zoom in to see the finer detail. But you don't need an iPad. You just want some way of looking at the reference. So you will need a set of watercolor pencils, the right kind of paper, a watercolor paint brush, a cup of water, pencil sharpener. If you're creating your own sketch, you will need a ruler, a pencil, and an eraser. Color swatches and some way of looking at the reference photo. In the next section, we'll talk about the very basic techniques that you need to know. 4. The Key Basic Techniques: Let's talk about some of the key techniques that you need to know to draw with watercolor pencils. And the first up, most important technique is layering. In order to create realistic looking drawings, we need to gradually build the pencil up in a series of layers. If we just put all of the pencil down in one go and then activated it, it's never going to look as rich as if we build up the lightest colors and then activate it, and then the mid tones, and then the darker. Building those colors on top of each other. And that is exactly what we're going to do. So I'll talk you through this process in a bit more detail in a little while. But essentially, everything that we're doing is focusing on building up this color gradually in these light layers. Now, the most important part to this is that we need to put down the pencil nice and lightly. If we press really hard with the pencil, we're just not going to be able to build up a lot of this pencil on top of each other. Now, there's a few different ways that I put this pencil down lightly. First up, I hold the pencil further back, generally speaking than you might think. Most of the time, when putting down, particularly my first few layers of the pencil, I hold the pencil roughly here. What this does is it stops me from being able to press too hard. I can still hold the pencil closer to the tip in some situations, but I do have to have a lot more pencil control. I also want to have nice and sharp pencils at all times. I find that if I have a sharp pencil, it kind of removes the temptation to press too hard because the pencil just goes down in a much easier and cleaner way. So you do want to be frequently sharpening your pencils. Now, in terms of how I put the pencil down on the paper, generally speaking, I focus on working in two different motions, I'll call them. Circular motions and flicking motions. So circular motions, I focus on using if I want to put down the pencil in a really smooth and consistent way. I will use this a lot, even though we're drawing So what I want to be doing is working in small circles rather than scribbling back and forth. Working in the circular or oval motions, puts it down. You can see how much Nita is going down onto the paper. The other method that I use is flicking motions. So this is what I use to build up the fair texture. All I want to be doing is very lightly brushing my pencil against the paper. Very, very lightly. I don't want to be doing this hard because I'll end up making some really thick, scratchy lines. I can make some smaller flicks that I will use for shorter fair and I can create some longer flicks that I'll use the longer So it's well worth practicing both of these, they are so important, and you'll hear me referring to them a lot. Next up, it's important to note that you do need to put down a reasonable amount of the pencil. If we put down a really light layer, but also barely any pencil. You can see that when we activate it with the water, it just doesn't do a great deal of anything. If we put down still with light layers, but more of the pencil, build up a reasonable amount. When we activate this with the water, you can see how much more vibrant it is. So do bear in mind that you want to get down a reasonable amount of the pencil, particularly if you want to have a nice vibrant color when you activate it. Now, in terms of activating the pencil, obviously, we want to activate it with the water, and you do want to make sure here that you don't have too much or too little water on your paint brush. So, I always do the same thing. What I always do is dip my paint brush in the water, and then I just lightly brush it against my hand a couple of times. And I find that, generally speaking, that is the right amount of wet on the paint brush. You certainly don't want it so wet that it creates a puddle on the page, but you don't want it so dry that it's not consistently activating the water color. The last thing to particularly be thinking about, and I'm always thinking about this whenever I activate watercolor is you want to be working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors. So if I activate here the water color from darker to lighter. You can see it's just pulling all of that pigment into the lighter area, and I've lost my lighter value. Whereas, if I activate the pencil from the lighter colors towards the darker colors, I get a much better gradient. I really keep those nice and light values. So do bear that in mind with any water color drawing, but particularly when drawing fair. Next up, we'll look at the general process that I always use, and then we can start working our way through it. 5. The Process: Let's talk about the general process that I always use when drawing fair with watercolor pencils. And the first thing I want to do is select a reference photo. So, as I've mentioned a few times, because I focus on drawing realistically, I always draw from a reference. But I do want to make sure that I get the right reference. So there's a few things to think about. First up, you want to have a really nice and clear photo. Because we're going to be drawing in all of this fair texture, it's so important that we can clearly see what we're doing. You don't want to be trying to draw from a blurry photo. You also want to select a reference photo that has really good contrast. We want really nice lights and really nice dark So you want to use a reference photo like this rather than like this. If you're wanting to take a photo of your own animal at home, I highly recommend taking a photo by a window because that generally just gives really good contrast. The final thing that I generally like to do when selecting a reference photo is have the photo taken at the animal's eye level. So you can see with the squirrel, it's very much taken at the level of the squirrel. I always think it looks a little bit peculiar if you're looking down on an animal. Particularly when it's translated into a drawing. So once I've selected my reference photo, what I then want to do is take the time to really look at that reference photo. I want to be looking at anything particularly obvious that I'm going to want to bear in mind. So maybe any key colors within the drawing, any key shapes. I'll show you a bit better what I mean by this. We'll look at the squirrel photo together before we start drawing. Next up, I want to sketch my outlines. I want to have a basic template that I can work from. Now, I like to work with the grid method to do this. I draw a grid on my drawing paper and a grid on my reference photo, and then I just draw what's in each individual square. Once I've drawn out every square, I can then erase the grid, and I'm left with a really accurate sketch outline. From here, I want to gradually layer and build up the pencil, and I want to start off by working on some base layers. So I'm not worrying about any of the fair texture at this point. I just want to be putting down those underlying colors. So I start off with the absolute lightest colors I can see in each area. Put down this in a really smooth and even way. So working in those circular motions. And once I've got something down all over the drawing, I can then activate this with the water. And this gives me a really rough outline of my animal. Now, I can't stress enough. You don't expect it to look good at this point, or for quite a while, to be honest. But we certainly should have a rough squirrel in this case that we can work on. So, I now do the same thing, but looking at the mid tones in each area. So it might be that in some areas, I don't need to put any pencil because it is just the lighter pencil. But if it's a mid or a darker area, I put some of the pencil down, add in those mid tones, and then again activate it with the water. And then I do exactly the same with the darkest colors. So there's not necessarily a huge amount to add of the darker colors. I can add those in and activate those with the water. Now, it's so important to wait between each layer for the pencil to completely dry. So, generally speaking, I leave it for at least half an hour and come back to it when it is dry. At this point, what I then want to do is add in some of the fur texture. So generally working through the same colors that I've already added in in those initial base layers, I want to be using flicking motions now to build up some of that texture. And there's a few things that I'm thinking about here. First off, I want to be thinking about the length of the fur. I want to be really looking at the reference photo. Making smaller flicks where there is shorter fur, longer flicks where there's longer fur, working my way through these colors. I also want to be particularly thinking about the direction of the hair. Generally speaking, it doesn't all go in one consistent direction. It's going in all sorts of different directions. And I can see this on the reference photo. I want to be trying to follow that direction. Now, make sure that you have a really nice and sharp pencil for this. It is so important to create some really good detailed flicks. I built up all of that fair texture, I once again want to activate this with the water one last time. And I do want to be making similar kind of flicks with my paintbrush. So making light flicks going in the direction of the pencil that I've put down. So kind of keep that texture. And what I have now is a really good but very rough and ready looking squirrel. What I want to start doing now once it's again completely dried is add in all of that detail. So I'd like to focus one section at a time. So starting off on the head in this case and the front paws. Working through those same colors again, really just focusing on the detail. I'm not focusing too much on getting the color looking absolutely perfect. I just want to get for example, the paws marked in. There's so much detail with the claws. I want to get that marked in and then the same for the bottom of the squirrel with the back legs as well. And then at this point, I do have a nice and detailed watercolor pencil squirrel, but it's not looking particularly smooth. The final step, I want to go back over all of this fair now with circular motions to smooth it all out and make it look much softer and fluffier. I can also at this point, use this as an opportunity to maybe adjust some of the colors. If I think it's not dark gray enough, for example, I can add more dark gray in or add some extra browning on the face. I can just generally adjust these colors. Now, I'll talk you through this whole squirrel in a lot more detail, but that is the process that I always use. So let's start working through that process. 6. Studying the Reference Photo: I want to begin here by having a really good look at the reference photo. I want to be looking for the most obvious colors and shapes that are within here. So, the first thing that I'm noticing about this is the colors. Generally speaking, I would think of this as a red squirrel. But if I look at the actual colors that are here, it's quite gray. First off, looking at the squirrels back here because there is some light falling on the This looks like a light to mid cool gray all along here and round here. And actually, there's a number of areas of gray. I'm noticing a light gray round here. This is white fair, but it's looking gray. There's also some gray underneath here in the tail. And a lot of gray around here and around the nose. This is a bit of a darker gray. What's making the squirrel look red is the few little sections of red. So there's a little bit of red fair around here. I would say this is kind of an orangey brown color, a little bit of orangey brown around here on the feet and around the bulk of the tail. But there's also quite a few areas of pink, actually. It's particularly prominent around here and around here. Now, in terms of the fur, as we all know about squirrels, they have a lot of different lengths of fur. So the fur on the face is pretty short. The fur on the body is a little bit longer. It's a little bit longer around the ears, and then it's really fluffy on the tail. So we're going to want to make sure that we map in the underlying colors and then really build up the texture of these areas of fur. We want to be looking at things like the direction of the fair, so the direction of the tail fur. It's generally going up until we get around here when it's going both this way and some of the fur is going this way because there's the bend in the tail. So those are the main things that I'm noticing to begin with, particularly this gray is really standing out to me. So now that we've had a good look at the reference photo, let's think about drawing out our sketch. 7. Creating the Sketch Outlines: I want to think about drawing out my sketch now. And as I said earlier, I want to draw this out using the grid method. So what I want to be doing is adding a grid onto my reference photo first. Now, I've done this using photo shop, but you could use an app on your phone. I also want to create a grid on my drawing paper, so I want to work out how many squares I need to fit onto my paper. So I'm going to make each square 1.5 centimeters wide. And then once I've measured it all, I can draw in the lines. And I now have a grid on both the paper and the reference photo. So now, what I'm going to do is work one square at a time. And I'm going to start with the square in the top left corner. So you can see I've counted which square I want to be working in. And then what I want to do is look at the square, particularly look at where the lines around the edge of the squirrel are crossing the edge of the square. So this line here, I would say that this is maybe two thirds of the way along, maybe a little bit less than two thirds of the way along. Here. And then this where this line is crossing the edge of the square here, it's maybe two thirds up. So I can draw a mark here and mark here, and then I want to follow this line and join them. So you can see I'm putting the lines either edge of the square, and then I can just join these two lines. And what I'm going to do is work one square at a time doing this for every single square. So let's take a look at the next square. So let's look at this square here with the top of the squirrel's nose. Now, here where this line is crossing the edge of the square here, it's maybe a third of the way And I've already got where this line is crossing here because I've got it from this square. So what I want to be doing is thinking about this is a slightly more complicated shape. It kind of bends around and then goes almost straight up, maybe a little bit to the side. So where the end of this bend is, it's pretty much in the middle of the square. So I can do that with my pencil, I want to go round and to the middle of the square, marking the middle of the square and then creating the rounded shape, and then I can go up from that point. And I also just need to add a little notch here for where the nose is curling round. Then let's do the same for the next square. So this square is particularly easy. It's only a little sliver. Although it does have the eye in the bottom right hand corner. When I'm drawing the ye, I want to not only draw the edge of the eye here, but I also want to be adding this line around the edge. I always want to make sure that I'm adding in any prominent lines for my sketch. I want to get really all of the key shapes marked in. So pretty much just going to work my way around one square at a time, trying to follow the shapes that I can see. Now, because I'm using the grid method to do this, it means that this will be in proportion because the squares are helping me keep it in proportion. Now, if I was drawing an area that's really, really fiddly, for example, the pores. I could put an even smaller grid in that area if I'm getting stuck. So once I've drawn out the whole of the squirrel, what I now want to do is erase all of those grid lines. Now, I'm doing this with the putty erasor. You don't have to use a putty eraser. You could use a standard eraser. And in actuality, you will be doing this with much lighter pencil. So you should find that the lines are much, much easier to erase. Now, what I want to end with here is a really nice and light sketch. I don't want it to show through all of the watercolor pencil at the end And if I feel like it is looking still too dark, I can always erase the actual sketch outline to really lighten that up as well. Remember, by the end of drawing your sketch, your sketch should look something like this. So very, very light. You want it to be so light, you can barely see it. So let's start adding some color. 8. Draw the Lightest Colours: I want to begin here by drawing in the lightest colors that I can see within the squirrel spur. And as I mentioned, I would say that the lightest color is a very light cool gray. So what I want to do is block in the background colors. I want to put in this light, cold gray. Anywhere where I can see this color really nice and smoothly. So let's take a minute to have a look at the reference photo and really point out those main gray areas. So I'm starting off here on the eye, drawing in both the light patches on the eye itself. This area, this part of the light patch does maybe look a little bit more blue. We can add that in later. For now, I'm want to be just adding in the gray. And I also want to be adding in some gray around this outer corner of the eye. And then with this lighter gray, I'm also particularly noticing along the edge of the back around here, as well as this little tuft of white fur, this area here, and some of these claws and around the top of the p I'm just going to work around those areas. Now, as far as how I'm putting down the pencil, you want to be making sure that you're pressing nice and lightly, working in these small circular motions to try and get it as smooth as possible. And I just want to be really looking at the sketch and trying to map things out reasonably accurately. So one of the main things to think about whilst mapping in these lighter colors is that we want to be building up our initial base layers. We want to be mapping out the general shape of the squirrel. Kind of get our bearings. Now, it's hard to see on the camera, but I can see my sketch really lightly. I don't necessarily need to get all of the patches of fur exactly in the right place, but I can use my sketch to get them in roughly the right place, and then we can tweak it as we work towards the darker colors. But this will all start making a lot more sense as I put more colors down. So you can see here I am putting this lighter gray over the whole tummy area. Still trying to get it nice and smooth. You'll see it's a little bit scratchy, but that's okay. It'll all come out as we activate this. So you also want to be drawing in the claws on the feet as well on the back feet. So just lightly mark these in these feet, I really only need to mark in the very end. You'll see that this is the only area that is that very light gray just towards the end. Then I'm also going to use this gray to just very, very lightly mark in the log. I want the log to kind of fade out. I don't want it to be a really harsh line down here, but I do want my squirrel to be standing on something. Do you see I'm really not building up a lot of color here by am building up more around the edge of the log and then kind of fading out as we get from there. So now let's move on to this area on the back around the outline edge of the squirrel. Then I'll also add some of this gray a little bit lower. I will be adding some of the darker gray here as well. I think that there's kind of a mixture of the grays. But let's just mark in roughly where this needs to go for now. Again, you want to be pressing nice and lightly. And then before we move on, I'm just going to add a little bit of the gray around between the ears. So just a little bit of gray round here. I think this is primarily a more pinky color, but I think there is an underlying gray here as well. So I'm reasonably happy now with my absolute lightest color. I want to be generally working through any other light colors I can see on the squirrel. So we're going to move on to the darker cold gray. And again, I want to put this anywhere where I think there is a slightly darker tone. So starting off here on the nose, which is really quite a dark gray, I would say. It's a mid gray round here. Which is quite a bit darker than this gray around here. So I want to put some covering on this area. But what we'll actually do is build this up as we get towards the mid tones and the darker colors. But I want to put something down so we have something to build off of. So really, following the outline of the nose here, using again, those circular motions, nice and smooth, and then I can kind of fade it out. Let's also add a little bit of shading around the front of the eye. So around here, this is still that gray color, but it's just a bit darker than around the back, for example. And then I'm going to work my way down really looking for all of these areas where I need to be adding in some of the gray. Now, a lot of it is just adding to the lighter gray. You can see I'm going over the back here, but not so much towards the edge. I'm going a little bit closer or a little bit further into the body of the squirrel. I'm really bringing the gray patch down. There is a lot of gray on this back as the underlying color. And I really want to have a lot here that I can then be building the texture on in a little while. I filled in a lot of the body, I again want to be looking for any other major areas where I need to add this color. So particularly looking around the top of the tail here. So, there's this underlying gray. But then there are all of these more orangey brown hairs that are coming out of it. So I want to be drawing in that underlying color that we can then add orange fair to a little bit later. Now, it's worth bearing in mind that I'm not taking this all the way to the edge of all of the fluffy fair. I want to be only drawing the area where I can't see any of the background poking through. So this area, for example. Now I'm generally happy with the gray. Let's move on to as I mentioned, I've seen a lot of pink in this squirrel. So I want to move on to the most kind of earthy pink I have in my set. This is the coral pencil. And I want to be putting this over the top of the head. Again, I've pointed out a number of times that I can see some pink here. Also seeing a little bit of pink around the edge of the ear. So a little bit around here and around here. And then I'm also noticing an ever so slight kind of pinky tone around on this nut. So I add a pink base here that I can build some of this more orange color on similar to the fair. There's a lot of pink around this edge here all along here in the fair and a little bit around here. All in all, I would say that there is a lot more pink than you might expect on this squirrel. And it all looks a little bit harsh at this point, but once we activate it and build the other colors over the top, it will really tone down a lot. It won't look as prominent. To be making sure that I'm going over the gray area as well. I want these two areas, the pink and the gray to kind of blend together. And again, you'll see that I'm working reasonably quickly. I want to get everything mapped out, but I don't need it to be super accurate. I just want to use this as an opportunity to start to get my bearings on what's going on, particularly with the colors in the Now, as I have said a few times, do make sure that you're pressing nice and lightly. If you start pressing too firmly with the pencil at this point, then it'll just mean when you activate it, you can see all of the pencil marks that end up looking very scratchy. So, nice and soft circular motions. And then we'll end up with a much smoother underlying color. In actuality, though, we don't need it to be perfect. We will be, as I say, building a lot more colors over the top of this. I'm just going to switch back to the darker gray. I just want to smooth out a few areas. Particularly around here, I think it's looking a little bit too scratchy. So I can add a light layer over the top. And I also think that I want to add a little bit of gray around the edge of the face here. There's a little hint of a darker gray around here that I haven't drawn in at the moment. So the last color I'll use for now is an orangey brown, and I'm pretty much going to use this color. This is the burn ochre to put something down on the rest of the squirrel. Now, in actuality, this is more of a mid tone color I would say, but because I'm using it so lightly and because it's the first layer, it's not going to look mid tone. It is going to look nice and light. So I'm still looking at my reference photo to check that there is orange in all of the areas and putting this color. But I'm pretty much just working round and putting something everywhere else on the drawing. So working round nice and lightly putting some color on the ears so that when I activate this, it'll look a bit more like a squirrel. It'll be a bit easier for me to be getting my bearings. And that's really all there is to start with with these base layers. You don't expect it to look perfect. In fact, I would say that this is looking a little bit peculiar right now, and it's not going to look better when we blend it. I think it will look even worse once we activate it with the water, but that's okay. This is just the first layer we want to be getting the general shapes and lightest colors of the squirrel marked in that we will then be able to build on. Once I've gone around the whole squirrel, I've got everything marked in. What I want to be doing is activating this with the water. I like to work quite methodically with this. I'm going to start in the top left around the face and gradually work my way towards the tail. Now, I've got a medium sized paint brush here. I put a little bit of water on it, not a huge amount. Now, generally speaking, I want to activate the pencil working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors. But actually, I would say that all of these colors are reasonably similar. I don't think that the burn ochre is much darker than the pink. I'm not too worried about the mixing. I do, however, generally speaking, want to activate the light gray before activating any other areas. In terms of how we're activating this, I do want to try and make it as smooth as possible. But I do know that it's never going to be perfect. Particularly with the first layer of pencil, I always looks a little bit patchy. I find that as I said, working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors helps also helps if you can try and work quite methodically. You don't want an area to completely dry until you've finished that area. So you can see it's starting to look a little bit patchy around here because I have had an area that dried. But that's okay. It will be covered up and we'll build it up a little bit later. I also find that working in circular or oval motions blends this out in as smooth the way as possible. So you can see on the tail here, I'm starting on the gray section on the kind of corner. And then I can work out from there. And I'm also starting with the top half of the tail and then working towards the bottom half of the tail. So by the end of this first section, what you should have is something that resembles a squirrel. We've certainly got everything mapped out roughly. We've got the general shape. So we'd say that it looks like a squirrel, and we're going to be able to build the mid tones and refine the overarching shapes a little bit more from here. That is the end of the first section. 9. Draw in the Midtone Colours: A the lightest layers marked in and a very rough framework. I want to start in this chapter, filling in some of the mid tones. Now, first up, before you get started on this chapter, please do make sure that your pencil is completely dry. You don't want to try and put this over the top of even slightly wet paper. I've left mine for about half an hour before carrying on. So I want to again, think about these mid tone colors, and I'm going to start off with actually the same gray that I used in the last chapter. The difference here being I'm going to use a bit more of it. It's still the cold gray, but it's the slightly darker cold gray, not the lighter cold gray. Want to be putting this anywhere where I can see a hint of the slightly darker gray. So actually, it's a lot of the same areas as before. So I'm staying off here on the nose. You can see that this is more of a mid tone color, and I want to be marking in the shape of the nose, looking at this little bit of extra shading here and generally adding more shading around this whole patch. I then want to move on to any other areas that has a hint of gray so I'm particularly looking at around here and around the edge. I can also use this pencil to begin to mark in the shape of the eye. Now, most of the eye is actually much more of a black color. I think it's good to get it marked in initially with a lighter color, so using this gray. Just in case I make a little mistake or I want to adjust the shape lightly, maybe. It means I would be able to do that, which I wouldn't necessarily be able to do as easily if I go straight in with a darker pencil. So after drawing in the eye, I can then start working my way over all of these gray areas. So I want to be working around and avoiding that very light area around the eye. And then shading out from there. Now, once again, you want to make sure that you're going over this really nice and lightly. I don't want to be making really heavy marks. Work lightly so that when I activate this, I avoid seeing all of those pencil marks. That said, on areas like on the ear here, I do want to be building up a reasonable amount of the color, but I can go over the area more times rather than just pressing really hard. So here I'm drawing in these shapes in the inner ear. So along here and around, there's this shape here. I'm going to leave this area for now and then fill in these shapes around the bottom round here. I get something marked in in these areas, and then I can gradually work This isn't looking completely right right now. It looks a little bit peculiar, but don't worry about that. A lot of the reason that it looks a little bit odd, I think, is just because we're drawing something that should have fair, but we're not drawing fair on it at this point. So obviously, at the moment, we're just drawing a smooth squirrel, and I think it looks a bit odd. Still following the shapes that I can see here. I'm just slightly adjusting the shape of the arm here. Sort of around, I'm going to say around the elbow area. I think what I drew in the last chapter looks a little bit too pointy, so I can begin just adjusting that shape. And it'll look a lot better once I've activated this with water. Then I want to go over all of the shadows in between the toes of the leg here to get these roughly marked out. Remember, we will be redefining all of this when we get to the final chapter. When we add in all the detail, it'll all get a lot clearer. I'm happy with these paws. I'm just going to carry on working my way down. I don't need to add a huge amount of the gray, particularly along the back of the squirrel. Because as I said, that needs to remain very light. You can see how quickly the patchiness is improving though. It'll obviously improve a lot more as we go. But I think already it looks much much better. Let's also go between the toes on the bottom here, just adding in where these shadows need to be. And I can really rely on my sketch for this because they did take the time to draw in all of these sketch outlines and draw in all of the little toes. Also want to add a little bit of gray along the edge of the tail, not a huge amount because I would say that this area is more of a reddish brown. But I do want to add some sort of darker gray along here for now. I do already think that this looks a lot better. It's still got a lot more to go, but I think it's looking much, much closer already to the reference photo. So let's just drawing the few little shapes that I can see on the tail. So this sort of V shape of darker here, and then there's a couple of lines here and there, I think will just benefit from being added in here. I'm generally happy, I would say with the gray section. Let's move on to the next most obvious color that's missing on the squirrel. And what I want to do here is use the burnt sienna. So this is a reddish brown. And actually, if you look if you've made yourself some color swatches, you'll see how different this looks when activated in comparison to when it's left is just pencil. Once it's activated, it is so much redder. It's going to look much redder than you can see here. So I do want to bear that in mind and kind of picture what it's going to look like when it is that much redder. So maybe I don't need to add as much of this color to certain areas when I bear in mind how red it's going to So let's really look at the reference photo. Here, look particularly on the head on where most of the reddish areas are. I'm particularly looking on this side of the ear here. Most of this ear here, particularly around the top around here and all around here. This all looks much redder to me than around here, for example. Add a little bit of light shading into these areas, making sure that I avoid that lighter patch around the eye. It looks a little bit peculiar, I think at the moment, but that's okay. I think with watercolor pencils, it very much all just comes together at the end. So do bear that in mind. We just need to carry on working our way through the process. Let's go over this arm area here that is particularly red, and I can just go over where I put the gray. I still want to slightly change the shape of the arm here. I want it to be a bit more curved. It just looks quite pointy as it is also go over some of the finger areas. And then there's not a huge amount of this red on the general back. It's mostly along the side and front of the squirrel. I add a very soft amount here, but really not a huge amount. But most of this color needs to be around the bottom round here, and will also be adding a lot onto the tail. So, particularly around the edge around here, but there's just a lot in this section. I want to forget to add a little bit at the end of the tail as well. So now, I think that that is pretty much all of the mid tones that I want to be adding in for now. But the main area that's particularly standing out to me is that maybe it's a little bit too light in some areas on the back. So just go back to that cold gray, the cold gray four. Add a little bit more here, or a huge amount, and not over the whole back. I don't want to be going near the sort of top of the back. Because as I say, that is much, much lighter. I also want to be adding a reasonable amount of this gray down here. It is just generally a lot darker down here. And this is going to help really smooth out this area, make it look a bit less patchy. Before we move on, let's just add a little bit of shading, a very small amount to the nut here. This is the burn acre. I would say it's the closest color right now that I have to this nut. So add a really light covering and add a little bit of extra shading back with that gray onto the tree that the squirrel is standing on. I'm not going to add loads of detail into the tree down here because I think I want the main subject, the main thing you're noticing to be the squirrel. But I don't want it to be just standing on nothing, so I'm just going to give it a nice smooth sort of tree to stand on. Now that I'm happy with that, I'm going to once again activate this with the water. I'm starting off here with the same size paintbrush as I used before, it's a medium sized paintbrush, and I am starting off by going around the eye very, very carefully. Activating that so it looks a bit bolder, and then I can start working my way over the rest of the squirrels. So going over the nose here and then moving on to the red areas. And you can see how much brighter that I want to be very careful when I get to an edge of an area like here because I don't want to have really abrupt lines around the edge. I want to gently blend it into its surrounding areas. I'd say the key is, you can see here, I've got it up to this point. I'm going to get some clean water on my paintbrush, and then I'm going to very, very carefully, just smooth it out, get a little bit more clean water on my paintbrush and smooth out the edge here so that it's a nice and clean transition or as clean as I can get with these pencils. Worked my way in the same way that I did before, starting at the top generally the top left and working my way down. And you'll also see that I'm starting on the head, and I'm gradually working my way towards the rest of the squirrel. And you'll also see that I'm generally focusing on a more reddish area and then moving onto a more gray area. I am trying to avoid the areas from blending together too much. I say, you expect it to be a little bit kind of patchy. I don't expect to be able to get perfect blends on everything. I am trying my best to make it as smooth as possible. Now as I work down here, you can see how much better this arm is looking now that I've activated the pencil. I say it stops you from noticing as much where the previous pencil, where I marked the arm in a slightly the wrong place, it stops being as noticeable. Notice that I'm really only having to activate down the left hand side, and I'll also need to do the tail because the back section, the right hand side of the squirrel is that really light area where we haven't actually put any of the pencil. So I would say that it is quicker and easier this time around, and actually in the next chapter, when we do the darkest values, that's probably going to be the easiest and quickest of all of these sections. Go along the edge here and then blend this into the rest of the body like this. Then I'll just go over the feet and the tree here. There's not a huge amount of I need to do to the feet. I didn't add a huge amount of pencil in this chapter. Then let's go over the tail. You can see on areas where I've built up more of the watercolor pencil, how much more vibrant it is when you activate it? This area is really quite a bright red, I would say, so I do want it to look as vibrant as possible around here, and I'll be adding more to this area again in the next chapter with the darker pencil. At the end of this chapter, you should have both the lightest and the mid tones marked in. In the next chapter, we can move on to those darkest areas. 10. Draw the Darkest Colours: In this chapter, let's add in the absolute darkest values. So I'm going to start off here with the black pencil, and I'm going to go over the eye again in exactly the same way as I did with the gray, maybe slightly adjusting the shape because I think it's looking just a little bit out. But again, this is where it's good that I filled it in previously with the gray pencil because it means I can adjust it with the black. So you can see I'm just making it a tiny bit bigger underneath and maybe rounding it off a little bit. Now, this is the only area that I'm going to want to do with the black. I think the rest of the darkest areas are more like a dark brown rather than a Do you remember as well that when we activate this black with the water, it is going to get much darker again. So even though it looks very dark as it is, it will be even darker. Once I filled in the black area. I'm going to move onto the walnut brown. So, as I say, I think most of the very dark areas are more of a brown than a black. And I'm going to use this walnut brown. This is the darkest brown in my set to just really define those key areas. So if we have a look around the face, the darkest areas, I would say, is this patch of ear here, this strip along here, the inner ear section here, a little bit around here and this section around here. And I'm going to go over these same areas again, blocking these in. This is all made a lot easier because I've already got this framework now. Go over these brown sections to make it a little bit darker. It won't make it too much darker, but hopefully it will just help this area to pop a bit better so that when we put other colors over the top it it'll stand out a bit more. And let's also go over this strip here. I am going to add a little bit just around the edge of this light section of the eye. I'm not adding a huge amount of the pencil at all here there you'll notice. Just a tiny little covering. And then I also want to fill in this area where those whiskers are. It's worth remembering. Although the background may still look quite light at this point, we will be building up a lot more pencil over this in the next chapter with all of the fur texture. So there is still a lot more pencil that will be added to here, even though it looks quite muted at the moment. So I'm going to once again work my way from the top and gradually down, and I'm really filling this in over the darkest areas. So I want to be making this area of this little curve here a little bit darker underneath as well, really defining this edge. And around here, And then also in between all of the I'm going to call them fingers. I know they're not fingers, as well as this shadow around here. But beyond this area, the only real other areas with particularly dark shading is along this line here of the tail and around the feet. So let's fill in these areas, fill in this little dark patch here. It's not a huge amount that I need here. And I can start filling in this area around the bottom, this kind of it's almost a triangular patch that's particularly dark here. And I'll go up the tail. So I do want to fade out, add a little bit less color as I get towards the right, and then I want a little bit more of the brown closer to the body. Now, I'm generally happy with the tail. I can just work around the feet here really looking at the shadow, thinking about, if there's anything that I want made a little bit darker. It's very similar to what we did before. I just want to be adjusting the shading here and making this area a little bit darker. I'm going to move on to that darker cold gray that we've used a lot throughout. And I'm going to build up a bit more of this color on the log that the squirrels standing on. I just want to be building up a bit more color. It's looking too muted right now. As I've said before, I don't want this to be one of the main focuses of the drawing, but I do want a bit more here than what we have at the moment. I'm just going to switch back to the walnut brown, add in a few areas that I think I've missed, like around here under the bottom of the face. And I'm also going to add a little bit of gray to this patch, this patch is just looking way too light. These are just some minor adjustments from what we've done before. Now I'm generally happy with these darkest values that I've put down. Let's once again activate this with the water in exactly the same way as before. So I'm starting off with the eye just with a small amount of water on my paint brush, and I want to be very slow and precise about where this is going. And then I want to make sure I clean it really well. Before moving on to the darker shading we added on the nose to start with. Really trying to blend that into the rest of the face. And then I'm going to work around anywhere else where I put some of that darker brown. A lot of what I've added here is reasonably light. I didn't add a huge amount of shading on the face here. I'd say that a lot of the darker shading that we're going to add on the face is going to come with the fair texture in a second. What's be going over the ears as well, and you can see how much darker it makes the pencil. Really helps it to pop and gives us a really nice solid base that we're going to be able to build off of. I'm going to work down in exactly the same way as I have done up until now. Really activating all of that pencil so that we have a really solid base. Now, don't forget when you get to the end of this chapter, to make sure that everything is completely dry, we don't want to try and draw over the top of paper that's still a little bit damp. Just try and smooth this out as much as possible and then activate it down the bottom here. I can start working my way between the toes and then activate the log area. Just smoothing it all out and giving it that nice wash The last area that we're going to need to activate is the tail. And I once again, starting from the lighter areas and working towards the darker areas. So I'm starting at the edge here to try and get it as smooth as possible and then working towards the darker area that I built up a bit more towards the body. You see that that does look smoother than if I started on the darker area and work towards the light. So at the end of this chapter, you should have a squirrel that looks like this. It still looks quite muted and it's got no fair. But we now have a really good template that we can build all of our fair text uron. 11. Add in the Fur Texture: In this chapter, I want to think about adding in some of the fair texture. So I'm going to start here by focusing on the gray section. And I'm once again going to use that darker cool gray to add these in. Now, what I want to be doing here is making flicking motions going in the direction of the fair. And the fair on the body is actually reasonably long, so I need to make reasonably long So let's take a minute to look at the reference photo and really see where this fa is going. So do you see the fair on the body is reasonably long. And I would say it's going in pretty sensible directions. It's going down this way and to here. This part is going round and round here. Along the back, it's going along, up and down in almost like an S shape, a very mild S shape. And then the only bit that's a little bit different is there's a bit of a kind of wiggle here. You can see the fare is going in a kind of S shape here as well before going again in the direction that you would expect in this So those are the main things that I'm thinking about whilst adding in this fair texture. Now, I selected the gray pencil because the bulk of the body is very much gray. And although we've already put the gray down and then activated it, it's been a series of light layers so far. And I'm pressing still lightly, but the pencil is going down in a slightly darker way because of how I'm flicking it. So remember, you want to be gently flicking the pencil against the paper in that direction, and in this part, reasonably long flick. Now, I would say that this is a reasonably time consuming process. You don't want to rush it and then end up making really thick lines. No, around the edge here, I am easing up with the amount of flicks making as we get to that top section because that's where the fur gets so much lighter. And probably one of the most important parts is to have a really sharp pencil. Do remember that. If you end up with a blunt pencil as it wears down, it'll just end up making really thick lines, and that's not what we want. When we activate this with the water, we are still going to be able to see all of these lines. Now, remember as you get towards the edge, you want to make flick slightly going off of the body as well. Because we don't want our squirrel to have a really neat outline. That's not how squirrels look. And then before we move on to another section, I do want to add a little bit of the gray on the body here on this white patch of fair. If you look at this section, particularly up the middle here, there is some really quite dark fair, and it's all going in generally this direction. So we do want to follow this. And again, I want to use the same gray to just add some light flicks around the edge of the body here as well. So that's already looking much better. It's not by any means a finished drawing or finished fur texture, but it's certainly looking a lot more textured. But there's still other areas that I want to be using this gray. So I'm pretty much going to use it in any area where there's white hairs poking out. So I'm particularly thinking of all around the edge around here, some around here and a lot around the tail. You can kind of see some light gray underneath particularly here. Once again, I want to be lightly flicking my pencil against the paper and really looking at the direction of the fur and the length of the fur here. It's actually probably longer than you might expect around the legs here. And I'd say the same around the ear as well. So, I'm happy with most of that. Let's add some flicks around the tail, and I need much longer flicks. Obviously, the hair on the tail is really very long. So really long gentle flick, and I'm really looking at the reference photo really focusing on the direction of the fair. In some places, it goes a little bit all over the place. So it's going in a generally outward direction around here until we get round to the bottom where it is curling round like this. But there's also some hair, you can see coming in this direction, and they're kind of crossing over each other. So we want to make sure that we mark this in, and it's going to be a good way for us to start getting our bearings before moving on to the kind of more red color. And then along here, note that it's a little bit sorted intersection. So there's a bit more fur here, a little bit more fur here, a bit more fur here. And they're kind of sorted into almost some clumps. So when I'm marking this in, I don't want to be evenly spacing lines all along here. I do want to put the hair into almost like sections. As you can see, all looks a little bit peculiar right now. Certainly, the tail is not looking great. But that's okay. We will build upon this as we go. My goal is to just get something down on the tail here trying to get them in the right direction. Then I want to be thinking about if there's any other areas where I want to put this gray. So I'm particularly thinking about this little area here. Area here has some pretty prominent fair, I would say, and it is very much a gray color. So on the most part, it is going in this direction, up here, it's going around and up and down the bottom, it's going in this direction, and it's very, very short hairs. So let's make really small flicks around the head, particularly copying those directions. Now, again, do make sure that you have a really sharp pencil for this. It is so so important. So now that I've got all of the gray marked in. What I'm going to do now is do very similar but with the black pencil. So I'm really just focusing on the body itself, and I want to add just a few little black flicks. So when I look at the body of the squirrel, it looks kind of patchy with some lighter gray hairs and some darker gray hairs. So the best way to add this in is to just add some very light flicks with the black. Now, this is all made a lot easier now that I've already added in the gray because it's very clear to see the direction that these flips need to go in. Now, we've added a few more flips around the dark patch in the middle. This darker patch here, is not hugely black, but it is certainly darker than the rest. I'm really only focusing on putting the black. So more towards the front of the squirrel. I don't want to add a huge amount at all near the top of the back because, as I've said before, it's just so light there. Let's just add a few flicks around here for where the whiskers are with the black. And then I'm going to move on to the burnt ocher. This is this kind of orangey brown. And I need to add quite a lot of this color, I would say. So first off, around the edge of the ears, you'll see that it's got all of these little hairs coming up, and they're quite long on the top, but much shorter, but there's still this kind of orange color around the side. So it's add flicks on the top, and I'm also going to add some really small flicks around the edge of the head, around here. Now, there's no point in adding too much of the orangey color onto the actual body of the squirrel, sort of where there's already that orange color, 'cause it would just get a bit lost. So really focusing on putting this around the edge more than anything else. So around the edge of the ears, around the edge of the arms here as well. And around the bottom around here. And from here, I want to start focusing on the tail. So again, I want to make some really good flicks, nice and long light flicks going in the same direction as that gray I added a little while ago. Again, this is made a lot easier because I've already marked in the direction of those gray hairs, which is kind of giving me a clue on the direction that this orange needs to go in. Now, I don't need to add a huge amount of the orange around the top. The top of the tail just gets so so light that I really don't need to add a lot in this area. It's that more gray color, I would say. I do want to add the orange all the way down the side. And this is just part of slowly building up the texture around the edge of the tail. I will be adding some much darker colors around here as well. It looks a little bit kind of washed out at the moment. It is worth remembering, though, that when we activate this with water, which we'll be doing for the last time, it is going to get a lot darker once again. So let's move on now to the burnt Senna. This is this reddish brown. And again, I want to be building up some of the flicks, particularly in this area behind the ear. This has a kind of reddish tone to it. And this is another area with the smaller flicks. And I'm going to literally work my way round one color at a time. I'm only using colors that I've previously used in this section. In the next section, it may well be that I use other new colors. But for now, because I'm really just wanting to build up some sort of texture. I want to focus on using the colors I've already used. Let's add some of these flips around the edge of the tail. And particularly with this color, do remember how much brighter it gets when it's activated with the water. It gets so much brighter. I think it's one of the ones that gets the brightest in comparison to its original color. And then I can again think of what the next most obvious color is that's missing within the fair, and what I haven't added yet. And I'm thinking about the walnut brown now. So I just want to be adding this in in the darkest areas, the darkest areas where I want to add some fur texture. Which are very much the same areas that I built up this color before, this time, I am adding those flicks. So really building up a lot of nice flips down the bottom here where it is so much darker. And I also want to be making some flicks going from the tail up into the body to try and make this line a little bit more kind of f On the tail itself, I want to be adding most of my flicks close to the tail or close to where the tails meeting the body. So, along here, this is a pretty dark brown, but it's not a very dark brown on the edges of the tail. So I want to be adding flick going just past where we filled in all of those base layers, but not a lot past it. Now, you may be thinking from looking at the tail that it looks very, very sparse. Remember that we will be activating this with the water, and it will get so much darker and it will look so much fuller. Now, I'm generally happy with all of the fur texture that I've built up on the squirrel. Remember, it's not about making everything perfectly correct. Right now, we just want to be creating that really good base layer so that when we add the water, we can in the next chapter really start adding in some details. So I've got a slightly smaller brush than what I was using before, and you'll see that I am making flicking motions again, but with a small amount of water, which is just softening all of the edges. So just lightly flicking the paint brush, following that same direction as all the fur, and it's making a really lovely soft Look, you can still see all of the pencil strokes that I added in. It's just softening them and making it look a lot fuller and a lot richer. So once again, I'm going to start at the top and work my way down, and I'm literally just lightly with these flicking motions going over everything. Now, you'll notice when I get to going over these gray areas, how much darker the black goes than the gray section? It's really creating a good fur texture and making it look very nice and kind of patchy but patchy in the way that I think the squirrel looks on the reference photo. And this is really going to create a good base that we're going to be able to build up a lot better. So you'll notice that, as I say, you can still see all of the texture that we built up. This is just softening it and making it so much darker. So I can add my flicking motions all around the edge here, as well as flicking up into the top area. Don't worry if it's not absolutely perfect because as I say, we will be going over this and using the watercolor pencils as sort of colored pencils to tweak and adjust anything that is needed after this. Really add a lot of extra richness. Now let's go along the tail, make those flips going up and into the body first. So all along this line, making these gentle little flips, and you can see how much darker it looks. And then I can once again start making flicking motions with the paint brush from the tail out. Now, it's so important that I gently flip because you can see that it is moving some of the pigment, and I don't want to make any big smears. I want to really keep that texture. It's amazing how much thicker all of the fur looks here. Just from going over this reasonably small amount of pigment, I would say, Now, as I say, I am going to want to build up more color on top of this as we go. But this is certainly a much better basis. It looks like a much nicer and softer tail in comparison to what we had not very long ago. So, by the end of this chapter, you should have something marked in for the fur, as well as some really good base layers. What we're missing is all of the details, which you can particularly see in the feet. We need to add all of those details, which is going to add that life like look. And that's what we will start doing in the next chapter. 12. Add in Details on the Face and Front Paws: Now in this chapter, I want to really start refining the shapes and adding some detail. We're now done with activating the pencil. And I'm really just going to use these pencils like standard pencils to, as I say, define the shapes. Things like the squirrels hands at the moment, are not looking great. So, I want to start here with the most obvious color that's missing. And I would say the most obvious color within the fur that's missing right now is a gray So I'm going to use the darker gray, the same gray that I used before. And I'm going to begin adding in these flicking motions. So starting off from the top and working my way down. And on this chapter, I am really only focusing on the head arms and the nut. So let's start at the top of the head and work down. Now, there's a few things that I'm particularly doing here. First off, I want to be making flicks going in the direction of the fur. So I really want to be looking at the directions on this reference photo. Around the edge, it's reasonably simple. It's generally pointing sort of up and away from the head a little bit. As we get round the rest of the face, there's some areas that are going in, I would say, a reasonably obvious direction. But around here, for example, you can see it kind of curves round and flips up. That's a little bit less obvious. And here it goes straight on and then flips round here. Here it's going round and up. And then when it gets round it under the face, it's going round and then round. So that's what I particularly want to be noticing. I'm also really looking at the length of the fair. So around where I'm working now, this is particularly short fair. So I want to be making really, really small flicks. Again, going in that direction of the fa. Whereas, as I work my way around the bottom of the face, for example, I want to be making much longer flicks because the fair is going to get longer. So let's take a minute to look around the eye here. I'm noticing that around the edge of the eye, there is this gray line. So at the moment, we've just got the black shape blocked in. In actuality, there is this line around the edge, which goes to around here and then comes in. It's also going around the top to about here. So let's mark those shapes in. And then once I'm happy that I've got this general edge, it just helps blend that black, I think, into the rest of the fair. Then I can carry on building up this fair texture. Now, probably one of the most important parts of drawing this fur is to have a really sharp pencil. So I am frequently sharpening the pencil. I do find with watercolor pencils. They tend to wear down reasonably quickly. So I do need to sharpen them again and again just so I can get that really nice crisp fur. It's not as important when just building up sort of a more smooth texture. But if I want to be accurate with the pencil or make these really good flicks, I do want to be sharpening really frequently. So that's all there is to it for this first section, just working around and building up these flicks, particularly while I'm working on the face. Now, I think this whole section is made a lot easier because we've already got such a detailed sort of framework that we're working on. So I can just be looking at one section at a time without worrying about the overall shape and just look at the fine details within each section. Now, it might be that I want to slightly change the shape of the ear, for example, or the shape of the squirrels fingers. But they're really minor adjustments, I would say, at this point. Make these curve flips around and under here. And then I'm going to start building up some flicks on the body. So as I mentioned before, the fur on the body, particularly around here is very much a gray color. There's the odd red patch, but on the most part, it's gray. But it just looks a little bit too light to me at the moment. So we will build up some more color underneath it a little bit later. But right now, I just want to be building up these flicks, going in the directions that I've already marked in and just making this look much, much darker. Add the odd flick around the ear as well around here. Again, looking at the direction of the fur, as I mentioned, here, it goes in some pretty random directions, I think. And then I'm going to carry on building up some more of this gray. Now, I'm not going to go down too far in this section. I'm really only focusing on the face and just the top little part of the body. We can focus on the body more generally in the next chapter. Don't forget as you get towards the top, you do want to fade up on the gray. On the top sort of edge of the squirrel, it is much, much lighter. So I am easing up. I want it to be much darker, build up, much more of this fur texture. Closer to the squirrels arm. I guess. You can see, as I get up here, I'm getting lighter and I'm building up less of the color. So now I'm generally happy with the body. Let's take a minute to focus on the paws. And you can see here, I've drawn around the edge of the nail. So I can draw around the edge of the nail here as well. Really look at the claw shape. Draw that in, and then I want to be looking at the shapes surrounding it. So there's a claw here, and then there's these flicks going generally up in this direction, and it's generally darker around here and around here. And much darker around the bottom and then much lighter around the top. So I can add these flips really looking at the direction of the fur on the poor here, and then draw around this claw, make these flips going up in this direction, and then this claw and make the flips going up in this direction. Now, again, this is made a bit easier because I already had marked in the key shapes. I think it's all very rough, but I had marked in the darker fur where that's going to be a little bit higher up around here. So, just want to tweak and add in some fur texture here. When I built up the fire texture in the last chapter, I didn't build any on the claw, just because it needs to be quite detailed. So although it's still not looking amazing at this point, I do think it's looking much better, has a little bit more definition. So let's do the same to the other poor here. So again, mark in where those claws are. And then I need to mark in the edge of the I'm going to call them fingers. I don't think they're fingers, but I want to mark in the edges here. I'm also noticing that there is the odd gray patch so around here. There's a gray patch where again, I'm going to call it a finger, the finger dips in here. A bit of gray here. And along this edge, this shadow has quite a gray tone to it. So let's add in these areas. I don't so much need to worry here about adding in the fur texture. I just want to build this area up with a series of circular motions. I want to mark in this overall shape. It's not so much obvious with the fur, I would say, on this board. Now, before I move on from this general area. Let's use the same gray to fill in some of the really obvious folds on the nut. So the nut isn't perfectly smooth. It's reasonably subtle, but it has the odd kind of dip kind of fold. So like these odd lines around here. I don't need to mark them in perfectly, but I do want to get something in because it's just going to help that nut look a little bit more like a nut, make it look a bit more detailed. Now, I'm generally happy at this point with the gray sections. What I want to do now is, again, think about the most obvious color that's missing. So let's move on now to a particularly dark color. I really want to get these dark values marked in a bit better. This is the walnut brown. It's probably the main darkest color I'm going to be using. I have used black before, and I probably will again to further define the eyes. But this brown is a really good dark value that isn't too harsh. And I'm going to start off by focusing on the nose. So I think when adding in these really dark areas, I find that reasonably easy because you're just looking for these really dark areas that do particularly stand out. I'm looking at around the edge of the nose here really defining this line. And there's also a kind of backwards tick, it looks like to me, shape on the nose. Also, these little whiskers, these lines around the whiskers and dots. These are particularly dark I want to build up some of the walnut brown And then there's under the chin here around where the arm is meeting the nuts around this area and all around the ear. And I want to be looking at these areas one section at a time and just trying to fill in this brown where it needs to be made darker. Now, generally speaking, I would say that this is made a lot easier because a lot of these areas. I had already marked in with the gray. So I do feel like I already have my bearings quite well. So I can work around the top of the eye here where there's a particularly dark shadow, build up those flicks using the direction of the fair that I've already got from that gray. In some areas, I don't want to be adding a huge amount of color like around here. I do just want to be making it a tiny bit darker. Now, it's always worth remembering that we're always pressing lightly. I don't want to be going really hard with the pencil at any point, even if I want it to be particularly dark. Go over the area more times and you'll get a smoother and more consistent color. Otherwise, I think it just ends up looking a bit kind of scratchy. Now, you can see as I'm going over the ear here that I am slightly changing the shape. I just think it looks a little bit different from the reference photo. I'm just going to make it a little bit wider, and I also want to be making flix going into the lighter first surrounding. I'm so sorry. It's not hugely clear what I'm doing, but I'm just making flix going into the areas outside of this darker inside patch. And then once I've done that, I can add some light flicks. Anywhere else that needs to be made a little bit darker, particularly around this area here, I just want to be adding some light flicks to adjust the color and the same around the top of the ears, around here. Just some light flicks and quite long flicks, because remember, the fair on the ear is quite long. Let's use this brown to go over the darker areas around the claws. So again, on this area, I want to be looking for those darkest parts. So particularly under here and around here, this whole claw here and around the edge of this claw, as well as a little bit of light shading around in this sort of v of dark fur. Really all I'm doing is looking for these darker areas. In these parts here, because I don't need to be adding a huge amount of fair texture. I can just use circular motions. And you can see that that's just building up a nice smooth and consistent color. I don't need to worry about adding in a lot of fair detail necessarily down the bottom here. Let's look at adding in any darker shading on the nut as well. I don't need a huge amount. And then I can really start refining and adjusting the claws here using the basic framework that I already built up with the gray and just refining particularly between the fingers. Making those shadows a bit deeper and then adding some flicking motions going into the next finger. So you see how bit by bit we're building up this color and adding in those details. Now, around the bottom of the hand here or paw. You can see that it is a bit darker around here, and there's also a darker patch of fur that's coming around here. So let's add that using the flicking motions, and then I can carry on building up f between the fingers as we work our way down. Now that paw is looking much, much better. Let's add some extra flicking motions around the leg here. We get a little bit better contrast going in this area as well. Before I can then once again think of the next most obvious color that's missing. So when I'm getting towards the end of this now, I think that the squirrels, face and claws are looking much, much better. Now, at this point, the most obvious color that I would say is missing is the pink. The pink that we used before. This is a kind of earthy pink, and I don't need to add a huge amount of it. I just particularly want to add around the top of the head around here. I think it's really missing that color, as well as around the top of the ears. I can add some really good big flicks here to just make the edges of the squirrel a little bit more kind of wispy. And then I'm just going to use the pink to add a light little bit of shading on the walnut, and again, on the pores. So I would say that there is a kind of pinky orange, so we're going to start with the pink, particularly around the edge here around here and around here. And on some of the little fingers of the squirrel. Now, I say it's more like a pinky orange. I don't have the kind of color that I actually think it is in my set. I would say that the color that I want to make is a mixture between this pencil and the burn ochre. So I can add a light little layer of this color. And then in a second, I will put the burn ochre over the top just to mix these two colors together, and hopefully it'll get a little bit closer to the reference photo. Now, I don't need to get it absolutely perfect, particularly not at this point, because we are going to adjust all of the colors a little bit later on. So now that I am generally happy with the pink, I'll add a little bit more around here, but not a huge amount more. Let's switch to the burnt ocher. And as I said, let's just put this color over the top of all of these areas where I put the pink a second ago. I think that I am happy for now with the face and the pores. I want to do the same. The back feet are not looking brilliant at this point, so let's really refine the shapes there as well. And then we can start looking at the squirrel a bit more as a whole and start thinking about adding in those final details. But this is it for this chapter. 13. Add in Details on Back Paws and Tail: Section, I want to start really refining the back legs here, as well as generally the bottom half of the body and the tail. So I'm going to start off in a similar way to how I did in the last chapter. I want to begin with that darker cold gray again and just start building up a little bit of texture on the white fur on the front here. I have already mapped in very roughly some of the general shapes and colors here. Let's just take a minute to look at what's here on the reference photo. And what I'm particularly noticing about this patch of fair is that along here, the fair is a little bit darker in this corner. You can see it's still white, but this is a shadowed area of white fair. There's then a darker strip running through the middle here. With still that fair texture. And then there's a little bit towards the edge. This is generally, I would say quite light, but I am going to draw it in with a darker gray. So I want to be particularly building up the gray. As you can see, I've done in the corner up the top. I also want to be filling in some light flicks where the gray of the body is meeting the white fair here. Just to soften that line a little bit better. And then I'll also need to add some flicks on this gray section of her here, else, it just looks a little bit too different. I'm also going to use the same pencil to build up some extra flicking motions along here, really get this line a little bit better. Now, once again, you want to be just very lightly brushing your pencil against the paper. Also, having a sharp pencil is going to make this look much, much better. And once again, just like before, I do find that I have to sharpen my pencil reasonably frequently. Else, it just ends up looking the marks look a little bit too large. I filled in that middle section, I can then go around the edge again and really build up some of the texture around here. One of the main things that helps fur look realistic is having a good and realistic edge to it. I think just having a really sharp edge is never going to look right. So now I'm happy with that white fur on the stomach. Let's use the same gray pencil. To try and really accurately mark out the feet. So once again, I want to be approaching this in the same way that I did on the upper legs. I want to be using a really nice and sharp pencil, and I can start off by marking in where the claws are and then really look at the light and dark shapes anywhere where I can see a hint of gray and build upon it from there. So let's take a look at this foot on the left. So here I'm seeing, there's a reasonably subtle claw here, and the top, lighter area is much more prominent than this bottom section. Then there's a line that goes along here. There's this lighter strip on top. So I'm going to need to add a lot of extra shading on the side here. Then I can see three claws really close together here. These two are pretty much on top of each other. And this claw, you can see the underside of it, which has this pink tone. And then this claw at the back is a little bit more spaced out, but it's still pretty close to these two. And then on top, there's this large side dark patch which I have already roughly marked in, and then there's a couple of lines for the toes here. So, you see, I'm following that, and I've marked in and mapped in roughly what the side of that first toe is going to look like. Let's draw in the claws for the other three toes. And then once I've done that, I can start thinking about adding a little bit of shading to the log that the squirrels on and generally marking in the lights and darks. So now that I've got those three claws drawn in, let's just roughly mark in these lines of the toes that I mentioned. I'm also adding light shading down the bottom, because right now, I think the log the tree here is just looking way too light. I want to add a little bit of light shading underneath. And then I can start focusing on the other foot. So, as you can see from that foot on the left, you don't expect it to look amazing at this point. A lot of it's going to come together a lot more when we add in the darker brown. But I'm certainly beginning to map out my bearing. So let's once again mark in where the claws are going to go. And then once the claws are mapped in, I can once again look at where the light and darks are. So on the most part, I would say that this foot is reasonably simple. There's the four main claws. This toe is going up and over, and then there's a shadow here to the left of this section. You can also see a line along here going around and down. Then beyond that, there's shadows in between the toes, but that's about it really, as well as underneath down here. I can start off by mapping in those claws and then just mark here, for example, that line where that toe is just above the other one. Also going to mark in a few of the general gray shadows, but there's really not a huge amount that needs marking in at this. But the main thing I want to focus on is adding something underneath the foot to just make it look a little bit more realistic. I am following the reference photo for this to see where those shadows lay so that hopefully I can get them looking reasonably accurate. I can't stress, though, you don't expect the feet to look good at this point. These are not looking at all realistic right now. But that's okay. Whilst I've got this gray pencil, I'm going to now move on to the body of the squirrel, and once again, like we did above, add some flicking motions here to really build up a bit more texture and a bit more color on the body. So just some medium length, I would say, flicks going in the direction of the fur. But I don't want to be going right to the top because once again, the top is a much lighter color of fur. So once I'm happy with the back, I want to be thinking about the next color to add. I'm going to move on now to once again, the walnut brown. And I want to be putting this in just the darkest areas and really refining those shadows. Now, this is very much where I put the watercolor pencil when we activated it, but we're just refining those shapes a little bit more. Now, before we get too far in with it, you can see here, I've put a nice crisp line along the edge of the toe, and then I'm making flix up into this light section. You'll see that that is how it looks here. There's this dark patch down the bottom, and then it's kind of jaggedy because of the fair, so I can make flix up into that light section to kind of smooth these two areas. I have added some flick in here. I can really focus on putting this walnut brown, anywhere that needs to be made darker on the foot. Now, as I say, because everything's now been mapped out a lot clearer, it's much easier to work out where I need to put this color. I'm once again, just refining these shapes and then shading from that point. Now, generally speaking, along the bottom of the foot, I would say is much darker, just the shadow from underneath the foot. I'd say that's the case on both feet. Also between the toes on both is reasonably dark. So now, this isn't looking perfect, but I do think it's looking much, much better. Let's think about any other areas where I need to add the walnut brown. So let's focus on this area down the bottom down here. This is just a really dark patch of fur. You can see that I did fill it in with the watercolor pencils a little bit earlier when we activated with water in the first few chapters. I just want to go over that a bit more, really build up more of these flicking motions. Making sure they get a really good edge. I want to have a nice crisp edge where the body is meeting the log. I also want to have a nice kind of furry edge at the bottom Then let's also use clicking motions to add a little bit of extra shading onto this strip here. So this is a bit darker and this strip along here is where I want to be particularly adding the walnut brown. And then I can also be adding some extra walnut brown where the tail is meeting the body. So making flicks up into the body. And then I can also make some flicks coming out from the tail. Just build up the tail a little bit more Now, I haven't touched the tail whatsoever since we completed the darkest colors and the fur texture, and we activated that with the water. So right now, it looks very water colory and I just want to add a little bit more kind of definition to it. So it's add some flicking motions following that same direction that we built in before. I really want it to look much, much darker, as I say, where the tail meets the body. So I can just build up those flicking motions bit by bit. Do you make sure, again, you have a nice sharp pencil for this, you'll get some much nicer marks. And I'm building up quite a bit of the pencil close to the body because it does really need to be pretty dark. And in fact, once I've built up the flicking motions, I'm going to go over this stretch here, which does need to be pretty dark with circular motions, just nice and likely to build up a bit of extra color. Now, I'm generally happy with this darker area. Let's carry on working through the same colors that I did on the top section. So I'm going to move onto the coral now, that earthy pink, and I want to be adding it anywhere, particularly to the feet that needs brightening up a little bit. So, we're once again trying to match this kind of color here, which I still think is a mixture of the coral and the burn cha So I want to be putting the pink all along the top of the toes here. I do want to build up a reasonable amount of the pink under here around the bottom of the claws. I also want to be building up a reasonable amount. Again, here on the top of the toes around here and around here and on the top here. And I'm once again not worrying about texture at this point. I just want to be working in circular motions to put down a nice smooth and even amount of the color. But you can see that I'm not putting down a huge amount, and there aren't a huge amount of places that I want to put this color for now. Now, on the feet, I also want to be adding the pink to a couple of other places, particularly down the bottom down here. And you'll see that I'm once again adding circular motions just to build up some more of this underlying color all around the side around here as well, as well as a tiny bit around the bottom. And then I'm once again, like I did before going to take that burn ochre and go over the same places exactly the same. Just to tone down the pink a little bit and just slightly adjust the color. Now, this has left some of the feet looking a little bit too bright and muted, I think. So I'm going to go back to that cold gray, and just any areas that I think are a little bit too light, go back over them with this color. And maybe add a little bit of extra shading with the walnut brown, tone down some of the areas that are a little bit too light. But it's odd little tweaks right now, and we will be tweaking this much more in the next chapter. We certainly don't need to get it perfect at this point. Now, let's focus a little bit more on the tail now and add a bit of extra detail here. I'm really going over this in the same way that I did before, just more, more of these pencil strokes. So I'm starting off here with the worn up brown, and I really want to build up a reasonable amount of color on the edge of the tail here. Now, you might remember from when we looked at this before, this area here is quite a bit darker. So I want to be building up some of the worn up brown here, as well as generally down the main section of the tail. Now, make sure that you're making really nice and long flicks in the direction of that fair with once again a nice and sharp pencil. Now, this is all made a lot easier at this point because we can see all the marks that were made previously when we built up the fair texture to begin with. I'm going to add a little bit around the top, but I don't need to add a huge amount. I'm going to switch on to that cool gray again. And just mark these few gray sections. You'll remember that we added these in before. It's almost like a series of V shapes. All of these gray sections, there's a v here. There's a line here. There's quite a lot of gray all around this section. I want to be adding that back in with these flicking motions with this darker cool gray. What we're going to do now is work through quite a few colors really building up some of the texture and adding to the tail here. Now, I might add a little bit more later on, but right now, I'm trying to get the tail reasonably accurate. So once say I'm happy with the flicking motions they've built up with the gray pencil, I can think about the next most obvious color that's missing. So let's add in some of that coral pencil, really add in a bit of pink here. I can see quite a lot of pink, particularly around the top of the tail, and I think that that is already looking a lot better. I can now move on and define the gray parts a little bit better with the black pencil. I don't need to add a huge amount. Just a few subtle flicks on top of that gray on the darkest areas, some areas of this tail are pretty dark in that gray section. And then I can move on to the burnt sienna pencil. This is the reddish brown and build up a lot of the flips around the top. Do remember that it's generally a much lighter color around the top and a bit darker around this area, for example, and generally lower down on the tail. So I'll be working away, adding these flicking motions, building it up gradually. Before going back to the walnut brown and adding a very light covering of this pencil just to make it a little bit darker. So I'm going to keep working my way through. I probably will add a little bit of extra color on here in the next chapter. I do want to build up a reasonable amount of color now. So here's the burn ocher pencil. I'm doing a mixture of flicking motions. I'm mostly doing flicking motions, but as I work my way through, sometimes I do add some light shading as well. You can see me doing here. Just to bulk out the color a little bit, if I think it's looking a bit too sort of weak, a little bit too light. And I think that that's looking much better from adding a light shading of this color. I think that's looking much better. It's looking a bit thicker. Let's just add a bit more of the gray. Go over that gray area one more time. And then I'm generally happy at this point with most of the squirrel. What I want to do in the next chapter is really add in the absolute final details. Look at any areas that need to be made more vibrant or any areas that need any final tweaking. But that is the end of this section. 14. Add in the Final Details: In this chapter, I want to add the final details and really adjust all of the colors and brighten everything up. So what I'm going to do is compare my drawing to the reference photo, and I'm looking for the most obvious difference. Right now, the most obvious difference between my drawing and the reference, I would say, is that the gray area isn't looking dark enough. So what I'm doing is going back to the darker cold gray, and I'm just lightly using circular motions going over, particularly the left hand side. I don't necessarily at this point, need to worry about adding in any texture. I think the texture that I've got here is looking pretty good. I just want to brighten it up a little bit. And you can see, even just with a little bit of pencil, how much of a difference it makes, it stops it from looking as bright and really just tones it all down, makes it look quite a bit softer as well. Now, whilst I've got this color out, I also want to be having a look at any other areas where I think it would benefit from a bit more gray. So I'm going to be adding a little bit round the top round here. It just looks a bit too light right now. I'm also going to add with flicking motions instead just a little bit of detail around the edge here. As I said before, there's some light hairs, particularly under the legs here that have white hairs around the bottom that are showing in the light. I don't really have a huge amount here at the moment, so I'm just going to add some light flicks with this pencil, not too long, not too short. Just to give it a little bit of something extra rounder here. It also makes those arms look a little bit fluffier. And then let's just add a few extra flicks, particularly around the top of the tail around here and along the back lightly. So now I want to once again be looking for the most obvious color that's missing. Now I've added in that gray. And I think the most obvious color now is a brown. I think in some areas of the fur, particularly the more reddish areas. There may be looking a little bit too red and they're lacking some contrast. So I'm going to pretty lightly use the worn up brown over the top here. Again, using circular motions, as I said before, it doesn't take away all of the texture that we built up before. It's just slightly adjusting the color and making it look a little bit softer. And I want to be adding this to any areas that I think would benefit from being made a little bit darker. So I'm really just comparing this drawing to the reference, seeing that there are a few patches on the face or around here, for example, that should be a little bit darker and slightly adjusting this. And then, whilst I've got this pencil, I'm also going to use it to make this arm here a little bit darker. So here I am going to use some flicking motions, just because it's particularly those darker hairs around this section that I think will benefit from looking a little bit darker. Flicking back and forth with my pencil, going over the direction of the fur that I've already marked in, so this is made a lot easier because I've already marked that in. I'm also going to add some extra flicking motions with this walnut brown down a lot of the squirrels body. Just use now, in comparison to the arm, I think the body's looking a little bit too sparse on some of these darker hairs. I'm going to work my way down the body adding in a few extra hairs. It's really not very different to what I've been doing before, just gently flicking my pencil back and forth, taking my time to add a bit more detail into here. And then that brings me on to the next color. So I want to be once again thinking about the main color that's missing in comparison to my drawing. And particularly when I look around this strip here, this has a slight hint of yellow to it, kind of a yellowish brown. So I'm going to use a color that I haven't used up until this point in the drawing. This is raw umber. I do think of raw umber as a kind of yellowish brown. And I think just adding a little hint of this color in some areas where it does look a little bit yellow is going to add a little bit extra to the fur. I don't necessarily want to use a yellow pencil because I think that would be too much. But the underlying yellow tone of this color I think is a really good kind of compromise. So I'm literally working my way through looking for anywhere with the hint of this color, and I am, once again, on the most part, working in circular motions, I am adding a few flips over the top of the ear here. The most part, I'm wanting to just put a little bit of this color over the top of what's already here. Just with nice light circular motions. It is so important to be working lightly because we do want to be able to build up the color and see what's underneath this color. As I said, I don't want to lose everything that I have built up up until this Let's add a few tweaks onto the poor, but not huge amount. And maybe a little bit onto the nut, just over the top of particularly where I put that pink before. And then I'm going to keep working my way down. So once again, I like to work reasonably, systematically. As I've said before, this strip here has an extra bit of color, and I do think it has a little bit of yellow to it. And I also think there's a little bit of a kind of yellowy brown coming up quite a lot higher than where I've put the color before. So let's bring it around here. And then I'm also going to use this color, this raw umber to slightly go over the feet. Just on those more sort of light brown areas. I can just use this to tone down that pink color a little bit. And maybe add a little bit extra to the tail here, really more light shading so that the tail looks like it's thicker fair rather than adding in a lot more of flicking motions. Now, at this point, I think it's missing a little bit of a kind of reddish brown. So I can move on to the burnt sienna and add particularly some of this color around here, around this leg. And as you can see, I'm just working through slowly building up the color. I'm not necessarily adding in any major changes here. It's just a gradual builder. Partly to brighten the squirrel up, but also to slightly smooth out the fur, so it's not looking as kind of wiry. It just helps to make it look a bit softer. Now, this point, I want to focus on the eye, which right now is looking way too light. Now, when I look at the eye, it's not as clear in its shapes as what I have at the moment. So first off, the underlying color here, I wouldn't say is actually white. It's much more of a blue. It also has a series of kind of lines going up and into particularly this section. So I'll add those areas in in a minute. Start with I'm going to change this color, the white, tone it down with this light blue so that it's just not as kind of garish. I'm also going to add a little bit of this blue to the body. I think because we've used a cool gray a lot throughout the drawing. There's very much a kind of cool or bluish tone to the body. And I think it's just a little bit too muted at the moment. I want to add a little bit of extra blue. Just to brighten up that body. You can see because I'm working so lightly, it's not a huge difference by any stretch. But I do think it's one of those things that you'd notice if you didn't add in the extra blue. As always, I can see the blue, so I will draw it in. And let's just use the darker gray to adjust that line around the outside of the eye. I've talked about it before, around the edge here. It looks again a little bit too muted. And I'll also use the lighter cool gray again to just make the transition to the surrounding areas a little bit better. Little bit smoother. And now I'm going to use the black to start really perfecting what's here on this eye. So I haven't actually used the black yet for any of the fine detail work, particularly H penny, the black on the eye, since we activated it with the water. So putting the black over the top now, it is a much darker color because I'm pressing a bit firmer with the pencil to really get a decent amount of this down. It's just looking much more jet black. So I want to be looking at the eye, and maybe some areas are darker than others. So this whole section down the bottom, I would say is a lot darker than this strip in here. And maybe I should be adding a little bit of extra black, particularly around the edge. But I don't need it right in the corner of the eye, but I do want a little bit of it down the top here. So with a nice and sharp pens so I can just start perfecting that So once I've gone around the edge, I can start drawing in those details on the reflection here. And I'm so sorry. I'm holding the pencil cats so close to the tip that you can't really completely see. But in a second, you'll see here, I've literally just added a few lines going to that top corner. It doesn't need to be perfect, but you just want it to look a little bit more interesting than just a white space. So now I've done that. I want to be again, going over the darkest areas with this black. Now, I am going to be going over a lot of these areas with the brown, so don't worry if it looks a little bit harsh. I can start off by going over this section with the whiskers. I can then move on to the corners here where it's just looking a little bit too muted at the moment. I want them to pop a bit more. And then I can add in, again, over the darkest areas on the ear here. Just some light shading with the black. I just want to be toning down anything that I think isn't looking dark enough. So let's do the same with the darkest areas around the claws. Once again, do you make sure that you have a nice and sharp pencil for this? It's going to make your life ten times easier. And I'm literally working my way from the top down, looking for any areas that need to be made quite a lot darker. So around here, I don't think that this part of the leg is looking dark enough. So I can make those flicking motions back and forth for this area. To really add in and brighten up that darker. And then I'm going to generally add some extra flicks around here. Just add in a little bit more preferred texture, but with a darker color this time. It's once again, exactly the same as what we've been doing before. I just want to build up a little bit more of the color. And then I can do the same with filling in those darkest areas around the feet at the bottom. Maybe tweaking the shadow and the log down here a little bit, just slightly adjusting the shape. As I said, I don't want this branch that the squirrels standing on to have any sort of detail to it. So I just want to make it a little bit darker and make it look. Maybe a bit smoother, as well. Add a few more flicks to the body here, and then I'm going to go over the same areas, most of these same areas with the worn up brown. So just shading over these areas lightly to tone down that black. I'm not doing this with the eye, though. I do particularly want the eye to be a nice and jet black. I'm getting near the end now. I do want to be adding a bit of the worn up brown onto the body, not a lot you'll see here. I just think it's got a little bit of a brown hint on the bulk of the body as well as the g Now that you've built up all of the gray, I think it is what's missing. Particularly, actually, along this line here, it's not really looking dark enough the gradient from where the tail meets the body into the body isn't looking quite enough. Maybe I'll add a little bit of extra tweaks around the feet. Here again, where I put that black, as well as on the log. It just tones it down a little bit. Not a lot. I still want all of that contrast. But maybe what I have here is a bit too much. And the main area from here that I think needs more adding to it is this little section at the end of the tail. So I'm going to build up with the walnut brown using circular motions to begin with, really building up a lot more of this color in this area. And then I'm also going to add some flicks with my pencil here as well. So at this point, I'm pretty happy with the squirrel. You can still see some of the watercolor marks from right at the beginning, which is good. I want that. We don't need it to look absolutely perfect, but I'm happy it is looking like a realistic fluffy squirrel. Let's just use the white pencil now to add in some final details. So to lighten this area around the eye, which to me, is looking maybe a little bit too dark, and the white does go over the top quite nicely and brighten what's here quite nicely. I'm also going to use the nice and sharp white pencil to add in a couple of whiskers. Now, it's not going to look really bright white, but it is going to add some white over the top so that you kind of get a nice, subtle look of whiskers. And then let's finish off by adding a tiny bit more red with the burnt sienna. But that is the end of this tutor. 15. Summary: Alright, that is the end of this course. I hope you found this helpful, and I hope it takes the mystery out of drawing fair with watercolor pencils. So you want to start off by getting the right materials, including selecting the best reference photo. From here, you can take the time to really get a nice and accurate sketch and then start building up the base layers. So starting with the lighter colors and then activating it, then the mid tones and the darker colors activating in between. And then you can begin marking in some of this fair texture. Making longer flicks for the longer fair and shorter flips for the shorter fair and really focusing on the direction of that fair. You can then activate it one final time, making sure that it's completely dry before adding in the details. Then focus on getting everything marked in really nice and clearly, really getting all of those fine details mapped in, working one section at a time, before finishing off adjusting the colors and adding some nice smooth coverage over the top to really soften that Now, I hope you've enjoyed this course. Please do review it if you have. I would really, really appreciate it. And please do upload your drawings into the class projects. I would love to see what you've done. Happy drawing, guys, and I'll see you in the next course.