How to Draw a Realistic Gingerbread House: Christmas Drawing with Colored Pencils

1. Introduction: I love Christmas, and what feels more Christmasy than an adorable gingerbread house? Now, this is a very complicated looking drawing which can feel very overwhelming. But hopefully, you'll see today that if you break it down into sections, it's not as complicated as you might think. My name's Gemma Chambers, and I've been making online art tutorials since 2020. I've helped tens of thousands of people improve their drawing. But today, I want to focus on what appears to be quite a complicated drawing. I want to show you that if you have the right materials and work through the process one step at a time, it's maybe not as difficult as you might think. Let's get started with this fun Christmas drawing. 2. Class Project - Drawing a Gingerbread House: Now for the class project, we will be drawing this little gingerbread house. And I've picked this house for a couple of reasons. First up, it has some amazing detail on it. Which may seem like a bad thing. It may seem very difficult, but it is going to give it a lot more wow factor. I've also selected this drawing because it's got amazing contrast. It's got some really good light areas, a good amount of darks, and a wide variety of mid tones. And that's already setting us up to create a really good drawing. Finally, I particularly have picked it because it's kind of at eye level of the house. We're looking at it head often I find pictures are taken from above, and that's always going to create a slightly odd looking drawing in my experience. Now, I will show you everything you need to know to create this drawing, including how to create this sketch. But if you want to use my sketch, that is available in the class resources. Once you finish your drawing, please do upload it into the class projects. I would love to see what you've done. So let's talk about the materials you'll need to create this gingerbread house. 3. Materials You'll Need for Drawing with Coloured Pencils: Talk about the materials you'll need to create this house. And the first most obvious thing you'll need is a set of colored pencils. Now, I'm drawing this with some pencils called Prismacolor. They are a professional set of pencils. But you don't need to have exactly the same pencils as I do. You can create an amazing picture with pencils that are much cheaper like Creola, for example. Now, I'm drawing this with the set of 72 pencils. I do think it'll be easier if you have a reasonably large set, just trying to find closer matches to the colors we can see. I'd recommend maybe 36 set as a the next thing you'll need is the right kind of paper. In order to build up this picture, we're going to need to work in a series of light layers, and we need a type of paper that's going to be able to take those layers. So we don't want to be working on printer paper or sketch paper. I like working on something called bristle board. This is a really smooth paper, and it's also very thick. It's very good at allowing you to build up those layers. Next up, you will need a pencil sharpener. Now, I have a hand crank pencil sharpener. I particularly like it because I can change the blades. But you don't need a sharpener as fancy as this. As long as it creates a really nice and sharp point on the pencils, that's the most important thing. Next up, if you're wanting to create your own sketch, you will need a pencil ruler and an eraser. An optional item is a jelly roll pen, and this is to add in some really light details at the end. Then the next thing you'll need is not actually something you can buy. This is something you're going to need to make. I'm talking about color swatches. Now, for every set of pencils that I own, I swatch out all of my colors. I go from as light as I can go to as dark as I can go with each pencil, and then I label it, and this shows me what the pencil actually looks like on the paper. It stops me from relying on the lead of the pencil or the barrel because that doesn't tend to be very accurate. I am constantly comparing the reference photo to these color swatches to try and find the closest color that I need at that particular moment. These are quite time consuming to make, but they don't need making very often. The set of color swatches that I've got I've had for at least five years. Now, the final thing you'll need is some way of looking at the reference photo. Because I draw realistically, I work from a reference, I find this is the best way to create realistic drawing. I like looking at the reference photo on my iPad. I particularly like that I can zoom in to see all of the details. You don't need to do it on an iPad, though, you could print out the reference photo. So you will need a set of colored pencils, the right kind of paper, a pencil sharpener. If you're creating your own sketch, you will need a pencil ruler and an eraser. You could get a jelly roll pen. You'll need to make some color swatches and you'll need some way of looking at the reference photo. Now, let's think about making this sketch. 4. Creating the Sketch Outlines: Now before I start putting any color down on the paper, I need to create a sketch. I want to have some really nice light outlines to show me what's going to need to go where. And to create this, I like to use something called the grid method. This is where you draw a grid on your drawing paper and you add a grid to your reference photo, and you just draw what's in each individual square. So rather than looking at the drawing as a whole, looking at it one square at a time kind of breaks it down into a series of random shapes and will make the whole sketch much more accurate. Once I've gone through and drawn what's in each square, I can then use an eraser to erase the grid line. You'll notice that my sketch here is quite dark. I've specifically drawn out the grid and added in the sketch with quite a dark pencil. This is just so you can see it on the camera. In actuality, I would be pressing really lightly to try and create the lightest lines possible so it won't show at the end of the drawing. It'll also make raising the grid much easier. Now, if you want to go through the grid method in a lot more detail, check out my beginner's guide to colored pencils. I'll include a link in the class description. And do remember if you want to use my sketch outlines, they are in the class resources. Now, before we start drawing, let's take a minute to have a look at the reference photo. 5. Studying the Reference Photo: Before I start drawing anything with colored pencils, I always like to take a minute to have a good look at the reference photo, rather than just jumping straight into the drawing. If I take a minute to look at the key, colors and shapes, things I need to bear in mind, I just find it makes the whole process so much easier. So let's do that now and you'll see a bit better what I mean. See the house is made of gingerbread, so it's this kind of light brownish color. And we're going to want to take our time mixing up this color, but a lot of the picture, actually, is a white color. It's white from the icing. So let's start off by having a look at that icing. The most important thing that I want you to notice is it's not just completely white. Because there are all of these drips coming down here, there's a lot of lumps and bumps, particularly in this section. And you'll notice that actually there is some pretty dark spots. Kind of outlining these drip shapes, it's reasonably dark gray, and there's all sorts of odd gray patches here. So that's what's giving this section the texture. On the house itself, it's even darker. So again, all along here, there's all of these little I don't know what they're called tile shapes. But this is also pretty dark. These lines up here are very, very dark, and I'm going to want to draw in all of these patterns. Again, it's the same at the bottom, all textured similar to along here. Although down this side, it really does get quite dark. Some of the shadows are extremely dark, whereas at the front, it's much much lighter. So looking at some of the green sections, here, this is made up of a few different greens. There's some very dark greens and some lighter greens, the same on the trees. But probably the thing that I'm noticing the most about the gingerbread house is how dark some of the shadows are. So, along the edge up here, this is very dark, almost reddish brown. It's very dark along the side of the Christmas trees all under here and along here around the side of the door. And then it gets really dark down this side here, particularly these little window openings. And I think adding in all of these darker shadows is going to be the absolute key to making this really pop. So those are the main things that I am initially noticing. Let's start the drawing. 6. Building up the Base Layers: What I want to do to start with here is put down some of the base layers. So what I'm wanting to do is essentially just get something on the paper. So I'm starting off here by wanting to look for the lightest color in each section. And I'm starting off by focusing on the gingerbread area. So I want to be thinking about the lightest color that's in here. Actually, I don't know if I have a color that's particularly similar to this. Probably the closest is the cream, which is a very, very light yellow. That's certainly a color that I think I can start to build off of. So I want to be putting this cream pencil down over the whole of the gingerbread area. And there's a few things that I'm particularly wanting to do here. First off, I want to make sure that I'm getting this down as lightly as possible. So because I want to be able to build a lot of pencil over the top of here, not just this color, but a number of other colors to mix up that gingerbread. Color. I need to press really lightly so that it's possible for me to put down all of this pencil. Now, to help me press really nice and lightly, I'm holding the pencil quite far back. So you'll see that I'm not holding it really close to the tip. If I hold it further back back here, then it makes it impossible for me to press too hard. Now, on this specific pencil, I use this one quite a lot, so it's quite a small pencil now. You'll notice that I've put a pencil extender on the end of it. I just find it's far more comfortable to draw with. If I didn't have the pencil extender, I wouldn't be able to hold it back here, basically. Other thing that I'm doing to help this go down as smooth as possible is I'm working in some circular or kind of oval motions. So rather than just going back and forth with the pencil, I'm working in these small oval shapes, and it's just helping the pencil go down in a much more smooth and consistent way. So now, it is reasonably hard to see what I'm doing here, but that is essentially all I'm doing. I'm just blocking in all of the gingerbread areas as smoothly as I can. Final thing that I particularly want you to notice and think about is that I am working with a really nice and sharp pencil. If I work with the blunt pencil, I find it just doesn't go down as smoothly. So, particularly with something like prisma color, I do sharpen it more frequently. So as far as specifically where I'm putting the pencil, I want to be going over this whole area on the front as well as in here, all along here. Don't forget to go along the bottom and along here. And also these couple of places on the chimney. I've gone over all of these areas, I want to be looking for the lightest pencil I can see, but in a different section now. So I'm particularly thinking now about the icing. Now, the lightest color on the icing you might think would be white because the icing is white. But actually, if we take a look at what's really here, this is probably the lightest color around here, and I wouldn't say that this is really white. Probably the closest match that I have to this very light color is more like the lightest French gray. So it's still a very light color, but not white. And that's going to help distinguish the roof from the background because I'm wanting to leave the background white. See here, I'm once again using that very light French gray and once again, just shading in over the whole of the roof area. I literally just want to get some pencil down all over the house. And you can see that I'm beginning to build up some of the shapes here. Now, my main goal in this chapter, beyond getting something down on the paper is I also want to be marking out the key shapes. I don't need this to look amazing by the end of this chapter, but I certainly do want to have my bearings know what needs to go where and have all of those key shapes marked. I've got something marked down on the whole roof area and also anywhere else I can see the snow. So I don't want to forget to go over the snow patches on the trees. So all of these areas along here, I once again want to be using that same French gray. I can just be really nice and consistent with this. And filling in these tree patches is made far, far easier because I have been really thorough with my sketch. You'll find the same if you're using this sketch outline. They filled in the French gray on all of the snow areas. I once again want to be looking at where I haven't currently got any pencil. And there's only a few colors left that I need to add in. There's specifically red and green. So I'm going to start off with the red. And again, I want to be looking for the closest match to the lightest red that I'm using here. Actuality, some of the red areas are actually really quite bright. Let's take a minute to really quickly have a look at these. You can see along here, for example, there's quite a light shine. It's not a huge amount, but a little light shine here along some of the tops of these markings on the door. Again, there's some patches of light around the bow here. Though I probably could have used more like pink to fill these in, I'm going to use the red that I think closest matches the general red in these areas. So this is the crimson red, because if I need to light in an area, I can always put white over the top of it, and I think I'm going to get a more consistent color if I do it that way. So now I've gone over the bow, I'm going to use this red to go over all of these baubles, both on the wreath up here, but also on the trees on the garlands on the corner and on the door. You see on the door, I'm once again working through this in the same way as it did for the rest, although it's probably a bit easier to see here because it's a bit of a darker color. So I can go around the edge of the door, and then you can see me pressing really lightly and working in these little circular motions just to fill in the general shapes of the door. I'm not going to worry too much about those little shapes on the door. I can add those in a little bit later. But now I just want to block in the door, get a nice and smooth, consistent color. Main reason on the trees and the wreath, for example, where there's both red and green there. The main reason that I'm doing the red before doing the green is because I think it's just much, much easier. If I draw in where all of the red baubles go first, it'll be easier to work the green around them rather than if I do the green first. I'll end up having to put the red on top of the green, I think, if I do it that way. And then I'll end up just accidentally mixing brown, and that's not why I want. I've gone over all of those red spots, I'm going to move on to a green. This is a reasonably bright green. I think it's the closest match I have to the lighter green. This is grass green, and I just carefully want to work my way around the baubles, but also around the snow on the tree, for example, and just get something marked in here. It all looks a little bit kind of rough and ready and almost a little bit cartoonish, I feel. But that's okay. For now, as I say, we're really only focusing on putting something down, putting down some base layers, getting things mapped out in the right place. And then we can think about adding to that and adding some of the details in a later chapter. I don't want to forget to fill in this garland along the back here, although it is very, very dark, you can see it. It does look green. We're going to have to find a way to darken it down, but for now, I do want to map it in with the green. So let's think about slightly changing and adjusting this gingerbread color. Obviously, the cream is not a very close match for it, and I want to get it a little bit closer. I don't need it to be perfect, but I do want it to get it a bit of a closer match to the general gingerbread color. And I think the main color that's missing when I compare my drawing to the reference photo is the light umber. It's a very light brown that does have a kind of I don't know, the light brown gingerbread color to it. I feel like it's reasonably similar, actually. So I'm literally going to go over all of the areas I did with the cream once again with this pencil, just to make everything a little bit clearer marked out a little bit better. Now, once again, I want to be working as smoothly and lightly as possible. And you'll see I'm still holding the pencil quite far back, sort of halfway down the barrel. There are a few things that I want to be thinking about beyond just getting this down really smoothly, maybe adding in a few of the darker areas, at least getting an idea of where they're going to go. So you'll see that on the chimney at the top here, this gingerbread isn't all smooth and consistently one color. In fact, along the edge here, it's really very dark. Along the edge here a few spots sort of in these dips, and it's also very dark, this side even more so. It's probably much darker than the light amber, although I'm going to worry about that right now. So I do want to put more of the pencil down, I would say, in this area. I'm also looking around the top up here. You can see how many shadows there are around here and around in between some of these little icing droplets. And I also want to just begin marking in some of these darker shadows along here. As I said, when we were having a look at the reference photo, I do think that these shadows are the key to this looking realistic. So although I don't need to perfectly get them mapped in at this point, I certainly want to get something in there that I can begin building upon. This right hand side here. I've just marked in where those windows are going to be. Literally, I've just drawn the shapes of them. I've also gone along the top, following my sketch to mark in all of those icing drips and make the brown a little bit darker around them. And once I've done this area on the right hand side, which will need to be a lot darker later, we'll build that up a little bit more as we go. I'm not going to worry about that at this point. Don't want to forget to go on the gingerbread down the bottom, as well. I need to make sure that I get all of these gingerbread areas. Now, before I move on from using this pencil, I want to be having to think about if there's any other areas where I can see maybe a slight hint of it. And I'm particularly looking at the roof now. So all of these darker sort of zig zag shapes up the top here, although they're probably actually a darker brown than the light umber. I think it's a good idea to get these all marked in with the light umber pencil for now. As I said, this chapter, to me, is all about trying to get our bearings work out what needs to go where. And these are all marked in on my sketch. So if I could go over them at this point before I put down much darker pencil, I can still pretty much see them. And it's just going to make my life a lot easier. Now, it does look a little bit messy right now, but as always, don't worry about that. The last thing that I want to do in this chapter to really help me get everything mapped out, see what needs to go where I want to be paying a little bit more attention to the roof. Now, as I mentioned, all along here, there are these darker shadowed areas, which is part of what's making up all of the drips. Same on the roof, there's all of these little shapes I want to be marking in with the darker color. Now, actually, I think it's not a dissimilar color to the base color we put down. So that was the 20% French gray. So I want to be carrying on along that vein. And so I want to be marking in all of these shapes with the 50% French gray. I have the sketch outlines to guide me, although I haven't drawn any of the sort of drippy shapes higher up, I have drawn the outline, which is going to give me a little bit of a guide. I'm literally just going to look at this like drawing a series of shapes. I'm not going to think about the fact that I'm drawing icing or think about that it needs to look like drips. I don't need to worry about that. I literally am looking at each area along the roof. Seeing what shapes and patterns I can here and very lightly marking them in. You can see me drawing in the main shape and then maybe adding some shading out from there to kind of smooth it into its surrounding areas. And I'm starting off by working all the way down this left hand side down here, and then I'll do the same round the front. So I think the main thing that I'm noticing about the roof is that it's kind of split into two main sections. There's this area along the front, which is quite a lot lighter around here. It is made up of all these drippy parts, and then, as I say, there is much more organized roof around here, which, generally speaking, is darker. It kind of looks like the outline around here is just, much lighter. So I'm going to need to add some extra shading in this area so this area looks lighter. I'm also noticing on the chimney, it looks as light, maybe a bit lighter here than it looks here. And you can still see some of the patchiness, but it's a little bit out of focus, and maybe I want to kind of slightly keep. Ing down the bottom down here, there's not a huge amount that I'm going to need to do in terms of mapping in on this front side. There are obviously some darker patches, but not a huge amount. And then I am going to need to add in a lot of patches and shapes around this right hand side and generally shade it in a lot darker. So once I worked along the edge of the roof there, I can then start sort of expanding down each of these shapes I drew in before. Now this is made a lot easier because I can still see my sketch here. So I can just draw in each of these shapes and shade them it looks a little bit messy, it looks a little bit peculiar, but don't worry about that. For now, I'm just nice and lightly, still with those circular motions that we were using before, trying to map in these shapes. And I'm once again looking at each shape at a time. Again, I do have my sketch to help me. I am looking at each shape at a time because they're not all necessarily the same shape because of the angle of the roof in comparison to the camera. Once I've gone over the whole of the roof and added in all of those shapes, I'm just going to draw a very faint line where the roof meets the lighter edge sections, and then I'm going to add a really light covering of this pencil, really, really lightly over the top here, which I think is going to split the roof into these two sections a little bit. We will certainly expand upon it a bit later. I'm going to speed through this now. I'm working around the side really looking at the shapes. Sometimes I think it helps when trying to draw these slightly odd and random shapes to squint at the reference photo. I think it helps you see more the shapes that are actually there. And although I do want to try and get it as close to the reference as I can, I don't think it needs to be perfect. You do want to see exactly what I did for this section, don't forget that you can have a look at the real time footage and see absolutely everything I did here, but I am really just going through and drawing in these patches, using those drips as a reference. So by the time that you get to the end of the first chapter, you should have a gingerbread house that looks not massively detailed and also it doesn't look particularly realistic, but all of those main shapes are marked out. And I do think that that is the hardest part of the drawing. Next chapter, we can start working our way towards some of the darker colors and really start perfecting the shapes that are here. So I'm just going to add a little bit of shading to darken down this section on the right hand side here, and then that is it for this chapter. 7. Building up the Darker Colours: Chapter, I want to start adding a little bit more definition and generally working my way up through the colors, gradually working towards some of the darker colors. I'm going to start off by focusing on the green section. Right now, all I've done is block in the green shapes. What I want to do now is really start adding in some of the more intricate shapes. I'm literally looking at this one section at a time. So for example, here at the top, really, the only light area, I would say is this little green section here, so I can add some of the darker green all the way around the edge, just slightly fading into that section. And then in this area down here, there's this kind of triangular, I guess, part here and a bit of dark green around the edge. And then there's some dark green going up and then I can see that there is a little patch of dark green, maybe darker than dark green, but I'm going to use dark green for now next to this snowy top of the tree. And I can just keep working my way down really looking at the shapes here. I'm not worrying about what actually is what? I just want to block in these areas so I can put dark green on this bottom part here, fill in this little section here and along here and along here, for example. Can just gradually be building up these shapes. Now, you'll notice that I'm holding the pencil much closer to the tip here. Now, although I am still pressing lightly, I don't want to be pressing really hard. I do need to be quite precise on where the pencil is going here. If I want to try and get these shapes resembling the reference, I do need to be able to control where this pencil is going. Holding it fair, the back is really good if I'm blocking in a large area, but not so much for detailed work. So I can move on now to the Christmas tree. And again, I want to be looking at where the darker green areas are. So on this tree here, generally speaking, the darker green areas are either around the edge or where the green is meeting the white snow. So, for example, along the top, it's a lot darker in this little dip here, a lot darker in this dip here, and it kind of comes down. There's a kind of dark shadow. All around the edge and around here, this whole section is quite dark. And then generally some dark here and here and all around here, and here is particularly prominent. You can see me lightly building up those greens, as I say, holding the pencil nice and close to the end now, so I can be really precise. But still pressing really lightly. It's just a case of practicing and practicing some pencil control here. Now, I would say that it's not really hugely looking like a Christmas tree at this point, but that's okay. It'll all come together as I work my way through. So, generally speaking, I'm working my way from the left hand side towards the right hand side of the drawing. So let's start drawing in the wreath up here. Actually, this seems very complicated, but I don't think it's too bad. The way that the wreath icing has been put on, it's a lot of individual leaves. So I'm finding it easiest to draw that leaf shape and then shade around the darker edge of it. So again, I can draw the leaf shape here and then just shade in the middle this one's so dark. I can generally work my way around the wreath, literally using these boblls as a little bit of a guide so I can see between these two barbuls, I need to make kind of a line and a circle and then do some dark shading here and here around it. I need to do a light curby line and some dark shading directly next to the barbel, and generally add some darker shading around the edge, although I add to that more a little bit later. So that's what I need to do between these two barbuls. So you can see me kind of drawing in those main shapes and then adding a little bit of shading. And then once I'm reasonably happy that that looks about right, I can move on to in between the next two baubles. Though I am looking at the shapes between the ball balls and trying my best to replicate it as much as I can, I don't think that it needs to be absolutely perfect. In actuality, this is quite a small area of the drawing. So although I will try and get it as close as possible, I don't think it matters too much if it isn't quite right. I don't think you'll really notice. So work my way around, and I'm really focusing on filling in those darker areas of the green. Maybe in some of the lighter areas, I can just add a really light covering of the pencil just to kind of make it a little bit harsh between that light green and dark green. And then for now, I'm happy with that bow. I can move on to this tree here. And this is very similar to the tree on the left hand side. Once again, a lot of the shading that I need to add is around where the white of the snow is, and I generally just need to add a little bit of shading out from those particularly darker edges. I don't want to leave the middle that really light green. I can work my way onto this section on the corner here. Now, actually, this area is really pretty dark on the most part. There is a lot of dark green here. There are some very prominent light sections. But on the most part, it's just very dark. So the easiest thing for me to do is to draw around the edge of where the light parts are going to go and then shade out from there. And so I can draw. So this is kind of if it goes this way, then this way, so I can draw around the outside of that. There's some more kind of triangular shapes lower down. On this side, there's these more pointy shapes. Now, you can see some extra detail. It's not hugely obvious, but there is some extra detail in here, but I'm not going to worry about that right now because if I do want to add in these details, they need to be done with a darker pencil. The general base color, I would say, in this area, is a dark green. And most of what you can see, most of the lighter green areas are down this left hand side. So you can see me here going around marking the edge of a lighter patch. And then once I'm happy with the shape, I can then add some shading around the edge. And I still don't think it needs to be absolutely perfect, but I am trying where possible to follow the reference photo, just to try and make it look as realistic as I can. So once I finish this whole green section here, the last green section I need to add in, is just this little green part at the back. It's very, very dark, as I've said before, and I will add a darker color over the top of it, but it does look green to me. So I do want to make sure that it does have this hint of green. I want to keep building up some of the darker colors, and I'm really wanting to compare my drawing to the reference photo and thinking about the main color I think is missing. So actually, in a lot of the shadows, there's this kind of reddish brown color. So you can see it particularly all along the shadow here for the Christmas tree. All along here, this kind of reddish brown in the shadow here, a lot around the bottom, particularly on this side. Just generally, the gingerbread has this kind of reddy brown tone to it. And it's probably most obvious in the gingerbread, shadowed areas here and here. Can use the Sienna brown just to begin marking in where some of those shadows are going to go. Now, I am still pressing lightly. I'm still going to want to build up a lot of the pencil on the whole drawing. I am holding it a little bit closer to the tip, not as close as I was when I was drawing the green sections, but also not as far back as I was at the very beginning. I want to have some control over the pencil, but I don't need to have as much as I did for the green. Just going to block in the main shapes down the side here of that shadow, that biscuit section, and then I can just blend it and smooth it out. I don't want to have too harsh of a line, so I can just slightly fade that into the rest of the gingerbread house. I just want to work around putting this anywhere where I can see a little hint of this color. So as I mentioned, particularly the shadow of the door here, as well as on the back of the Christmas tree or the biscuit section here. So I find it easiest to go around the white snow areas and then shade from there just so I know that I don't accidentally get this on those white area. We want to be looking for any areas that have a hint of this brown around the top. There's not a huge amount, particularly on this right hand side, but there is quite a lot on this left hand side. In fact, some of the shapes here are kind of sorted into, I guess, triangular shapes. These shadows here, which are shadows created from these points of icing, these drips of icing. And they kind of go down up and down and up, down up and down and up. That's essentially what I'm drawing in here. But then I do want to give it a really good shade around the edge. I want to really blend it into the rest of the gingerbread house. I don't want to have really harsh contrast between these shapes. Then I can have a look and see if there's anywhere else I want to put some of this color. So around some of these drops at the top. And I don't want to forget to go around these darker parts on the chimney, and you'll also see they've added some around the w. Now for this chimney section, this is very, very similar to what I did before. I'm just going over the same parts, so I particularly want to be going around the edge on the left hand side. I also want to just get a nice solid covering of this color on the right section of the chimney. As I've mentioned before, the gingerbread here is just quite dark. I think if I put a layer down of this color for now, I'll be able to add to that a bit later, but I generally want to gradually make that area a bit darker. Now, whilst I've got this pencil out, I think it's a good pencil to mark in some of the detail on the door. So I'm just following the shapes that I can see in the reference. Go over that kind of arched shape at the top. I want to make sure that I do a line around the edge and around the inside because it's kind of lighter in the bump, bit, I guess. I also want to mark in these little panels down the bottom. Now I will add some light shading around it as well, but I'm not going to worry too much about doing too much because I am going to add to this a bit later. So I'm just going to speed through working along the bottom. This is exactly the same as it did before. I'm just putting this color anywhere where I can see a hint of this kind of reddish brown. So I don't need to add loads, particularly on this front section, although there is quite a lot I'm going to need to add around the right hand side. You can see that it's just kind of adding a little bit more depth, a little bit more color. I'm just going to once again block in this area on the right hand side. So nice and lightly, using those circular motions, just get another block of color. As I said, with the chimney, we just want to gradually start making it darker. Do you notice that I did go over the areas where the windows are, though? I've marked that out before, but I just want to make sure I don't lose it as I go over with some darker colors. From here I want to gradually still be working through some of the darker colors. And actually, the darkest color that I'll use now for the rest of this chapter is once again a French gray. This is the darkest French gray I have. This is the 70% French gray because I can see so much of it on the roof. It's just a really good color to add a bit more definition along the roof. And also, I can see a hint of this similar kind of color in a lot of the shadows. So I'm going to start off by just in this section, marking out this a little bit darker. I think it was a little bit too light to start with. What I want to be doing is just looking for the absolute darkest parts, particularly around the roof for now. So I'm particularly looking at these lines around the edge all along here. Avoiding areas like this drip, for example. There's a very dark line here, a very dark line here. Then there are just some areas that need not too much, but a little bit of extra shading like here, for example, and here, maybe a little bit along here. There's also particularly along here, I would say. In fact, going down this side of the roof here, I want to add in some really dark areas along here, particularly going up in the drips, here, along here, here, down here and here. I think that's making a lot more sense on the roof. It does make the rest of the gingerbread to me look a little bit more faded, but that's okay. In another chapter, we can really start building up some more of the color on the rest of the house. Just shade these areas in, blend it into the shadows we added here a little bit better, just lightly building that up. And then I'm going to start focusing on the roof. And this is very similar to what I did before, but I just want to do more of it. So on the roof, before we added in all of these dark curvy lines at the top of each of these roof tiles, I guess. But they've all kind of got lost. Also just generally want to add a little bit more shading on the darker areas. So on the inside of the roof tiles, I'm not going to worry about these edge pieces for now. I am going to build these up a bit more because they're not looking massively close right now to this reference photo. But for now, I just want to focus on filling in the centre bits and filling in the lines. So you can see I'm going back over those lines at the top and then just adding some light shading on this area underneath. Particularly, generally, I'm finding around the left hand side and around the bottom. That's the main area that I'm building up a bit more it does look quite harsh, I think, right now, but that's okay. When we build up some more of the lighter French grays on here once again, I think it will make a lot more sense. But for now, we just really want to focus on getting all of these roof tile sections marked in nice and clearly so we can build up around it. So from here, I can carry on working around any other areas that I think need more of this French gray. So I'm going to go over these window shapes once again, and then I want to be just like we did before, putting a covering of this color down, similar to what we did with the Sienna Brown. I just want to make this half of the house a bit darker. Actually, I can do the same on the top up here on the chimney. And then I'm generally going to work my way around the bottom of the house and on all of the shadowed areas. So I'm mostly actually going over now where I put that sienna brown. So going over these darker areas, there's not a huge amount, actually, where the snow is meeting the gingerbread. I'm also going all along the bottom. Right around the bottom of the house, there's a particularly dark line, which I'm not currently too concerned with. We will add that in in a little while, but I'm not worrying about it right this second. Need to add in quite a lot of shading on this section. As I've mentioned before, generally speaking, around this right hand side, it is just particularly dark, so I do want to build up a reasonable amount of this dark of French gray. From here, let's go over just the darkest areas of the back of this biscuit. You'll see the darkest line goes around here, around here, kind of in a wibbly line going down, and then also along here and it's very dark here and here. And the same here, you can see the line going all the way around here, which is just particularly dark. It's more like that darker French gray or maybe even darker pencil, but if I can mark it in with the French gray, it allows me to correct any mistakes if I make. This is all looking a lot better. It's looking much more defined. We will need to build a lot more to it still, but it's certainly becoming a lot clearer what is needing to go where. And then the last thing I want to do to brighten up for this chapter for now is go back to that bright red pencil. Now, I'm literally just noticing that all of the baubles are looking kind of pink right now. The same with the door. So if I can go over them and really brighten them up, that's just going to help me, I think, visualize things much better in the next chapter. Now, the main thing that I'm thinking about here is any areas that are lighter that I need to leave. So on the most part on the Bubles, they are pretty dark. In fact, they're going to need some extra shading beyond the red. So, generally speaking, they have a lighter side up the top, but they're dark around the bottom, and you can see they're really dark these boblls. Same on these ones and these ones. But when we come to the bow, I'm not going to want to put much of the red on this little patch here, this patch here. And on the door, I'm going to want to avoid this patch up here so it stays lighter. And a lot around this sort of piped section of the door. See me avoiding some of those lighter areas on the bow. It doesn't need to be absolutely perfect as the bow so small, it's not necessarily going to show up too much. I think it'll be a bit easier to see on the door. So you can see that I've avoided that area around the top, and I'm also avoiding a lot of that piped area. I will add some extra detail to that in a little while, but for now, I just want to brighten up the door. And then once I'm happy with the door for now, I can just move on and brighten up the rest of the Buble. At the end of this chapter, we still have a pretty washed out looking gingerbread house, but it is looking much better. It certainly is pretty clear now what needs to go where, and it's going to make life a lot easier as we work our way through, really adding in those darkest areas and brightening everything up. Alright, but that is it for this chapter. 8. Building up the Darkest Colours: This chapter, I want to focus on building up those darkest values. But before I do that, I first want to just adjust the gingerbread color. I'm finding it a little bit harder to work out where the darker values will need to go because the front looks so pale. So all I'm doing here is taking the light umber pencil. Just really lightly building up a bit of extra color on here. You can see it's not a lot. I'm still pressing really lightly. I don't want to put a huge amount on here, but it just looks so pale at the moment that I think it helps to just build something up. Now, do notice that I'm going about this in exactly the same way as I have before. I'm still holding the pencil further back. I've still got a really nice sharp point and I'm pressing, of course, really nice lightly working in secular motions. You can see there it's looking reasonably smooth. It's never going to look perfect, but it does look reasonably good. Now, actually, while I've got this pencil, I'm also going to go over this section a little bit more, build that up a bit extra. I also don't want to forget to go over the chimney at the top. This was looking just as pale as the rest of it. So I just want to build that up a little bit better. And now I've gone over all of these gingerbread areas. I want to start working my way through the darkest color that I'll use in this drawing. Now, this is the dark amber pencil. It's not actually black. It's a very, very dark brown. It's generally my go to when it comes to dark colors. I really like this pencil. I think sometimes using the black can look a little bit too harsh. So this is a nice, slightly kind of a way to add in the darkest values. So let's take a minute to look at the reference photo, and I'll show you what I'm doing here, what I'm drawing. So it's actually very similar to what I was doing in the previous chapter. I'm once again starting off on this part down the side, really looking at the shapes that are here, and now I'm only wanting to build this pencil up in the darkest areas. So actually, on this section, for example, there's not a huge amount. There's some particularly dark shading around the edge of this first section. There's quite a lot here, really. So all around the edge here, along here, around the edge here as well, and this kind of triangular section here. Also noticing that I want to add some extra shading around, particularly this right hand side, kind of right bottom hand side of this bauble. And the same with this bauble here. But then there's not a huge amount more that I need to do in this top section. So you can see me just working reasonably slowly. I don't want to rush this because I do want to be pretty precise about where the pencils going. I'm still working generally lightly, although if I want to build up more of the pencil, maybe I'll press a little bit harder, but more than anything, I'm going over it more time. And you'll notice that here, I'm holding the pencil much closer to the tip just because I do want to be so precise on where this is going. So now we work our way down. I want to draw in this little triangle here. I need to shade in the right hand side of this red section. There's just a little bit here, and then I can start thinking about moving on to this tree. So on the tree, again, there's not a huge amount to do here. Most of the darker areas of this drawing are more on the right hand side. The main things that I'm noticing on the tree is, again, the bottom right of each of the bore balls needs a good amount of shading around here and then blending into the red section. A little bit of darker area here, sort of along here and around this is quite shadowed around here and all around the bottom of the tree. And I also do want to add a little bit of extra shading along this wiggly line on where the gingerbread is meeting the gingerbread house. Just start at the top of the tree and gradually work my way down, lightly adding in some of this color in anywhere where I can see. I do want to make sure here, for example, I'm building in quite a dark shadow. I want to make sure that I really fade that into the green section. In the next chapter, I will need to put more green here, but I don't want to have any really abrupt edges. So do make sure that you're fading these darker sections into the lighter sections just by easing up the pressure and letting the pencil gradually build. Just go over these particularly dark sections around the bottom, and then I can start working my way up this wiggly line. Now, I am slightly going to adjust what I've got here. I think it's not looking completely the right shape. But I don't need to change that huge amount. Is it looks a little bit off. And then I want to add in what's a particularly important part that I don't have right now, this line all around the bottom of the gingerbread. So where the gingerbread is meeting the table on the reference photo, it's got a really dark line. I did draw it in with, I can't remember which brown, but it's not dark enough. I want to build that. More. And I'll go around and do the side in a second. Let's just focus on the door now, particularly this darker shadow on the right hand side. So I really want to add to that shadow, but it's doing exactly the same as I did a bit earlier with that sienna brown. And then I also want to add a little bit of extra shading on the door, not a huge amount. If you look at the door, it's got this dark line Coming down this right hand side. So there's a dark shadow here, and then there's a lighter strip, and then there's a darker strip, so I need to add that in. There's a dark shadow around here, a dark shadow around here, generally quite dark in between these two red patches, and it's also dark along here and a long here. So I'm just building that up a little bit. Again, I will add to that a little bit more when I get towards the last chapter and I'm wanting to really brighten up the reds. So I'm working my way from generally the left hand side to the right hand side. So now I want to think about adding a bit more shading up the side of the house, not a huge amount, just on these particularly dark areas that I've mentioned a few times in this video. I can start thinking about moving on to the wreath. Now, once again, I really want to be looking at the wreath, thinking about the most obvious dark areas. So there are a number of leaves where half of the leaf or some of the leaf is a much darker green, and I can always add green over the top of this to change the color slightly. So the line all around this side here is particularly dark. I really want to build that up. But mostly, I just want to be filling in the odd darker patch. I also looking round this right hand side and really building the color up around here as well. This is actually reasonably simple because I spent so long marking this out in the last chapter, really getting everything right. Beyond marking in these darker areas, going back over them reasonably firmly, I am also adding some shading to each of the boblls as with all of the boblls I think on the tree, they all have that shadow on the right hand side. So I once again want to be adding a little bit of extra shading around there and fading it into the rest of the wreath. So let's keep working from the left towards the right. I now want to be focusing on this tree down here. It's very similar to the tree on the other side. Once again, those bubles need the extra shadow on the bottom right. And if you look at the reference, there's reasonably similar areas on this tree on this tree that needs that extra shading. So around here, for example, around here, down this side, all around here again, and then a lot round the bottom and up this line here. Do think as I add in this darker brown, it really shows how muted the green is. So in the next chapter, we can really start building up that green and the reds a little bit more because right now it was looking okay, but right now it just doesn't look anywhere near vibrant enough. And then I can move on to this section down here. This needs a lot of the brown adding to it. It's kind of the transition between the lighter front face and the more shadowed side of the gingerbread house. I am noticing that on this, there are some more shadowed stems that are a little bit more visible. So there are some areas that I haven't currently marked out, so you can see that there's a little green, a lighter green here, but it's darker here. It's quite dark in this top right hand corner. But there's a little light section here or a lighter section. So I am going to try and draw in some of these darker areas to make the shapes of the icing look a little bit more apparent. As I always say it doesn't need to be perfect, but I do just want to try and get it reasonably as close to the reference as I can. I am going over all of the little red baubles here just very lightly with the pencil. You can see just to tone them down, they're just looking too bright as the red on its own. And again, I will be going over this with a green to really make those darker areas match in a bit better. Once I've put this color over, it really shows how muted that green is. I keep working my way towards the right hand side. And at this point, I just want to go over these windows here. I already have the shapes marked in. I'm not going to worry. I think you can see a little bit of the green of the kind of window baskets here, but I'm not going to worry about those. I think that they aren't really going to add anything to the drawing. I'm just going to go over the general shapes here that I've already previously marked in. The other area where I really want to build up a lot of this pencil is where these icing drips are meeting the bottom section. So I can use the nice sharp pencil to really start defining some of these areas along the top. So you can see that I've really gone around all of those icing drops around the top and around the bottom down here, so going around all of the bumps of icing, adding a reasonably thick line, I would say, down the bottom here. And then once I'm happy with the line, I can then start shading. I generally want to make this right hand side just a lot darker than it is at the moment. Can see me adding some light shading in exactly the same way as I have before, just gradually letting this build up, still nice and lightly working in those circular motions. You can see it quite quickly, actually, changes the color of what's here. When you look at the reference, you'll see how dark this section is. So once I filled in some of this patch and added in some of the shading along the side here, I can keep working along the top. Generally speaking, I want it darkest where those little icicles, I guess, are meeting the gingerbread and then gradually fade into a slightly lighter but still pretty dark color. You also want to just block in the whole of this green section at the back. Just make that whole area just much darker. It still looks green but much darker green than I have in my set. So now that I'm generally happy with this right hand side, I don't want to forget to extend this line along the bottom and add a little bit of extra shading all along here. I just want the shadow on the side of the building to match the shadow and the darker section down here, or it'll end up looking a little bit peculiar. And, of course, I don't want to forget the chimney. So I can once again do exactly the same to this side of the chimney here, adding a little bit more of the brown around the outside. And then I'll also add some of this brown to the darker areas up here. At this point, I've built up a lot of this darker color. It's all looking much, much better. It's looking richer. Some of the actual colors like the red and the green and maybe the gingerbread looks a little bit too weak now, but that's okay. I can adjust that in a little while. What I particularly want to focus on now is the icing. Now, I have previously marked this in reasonably thoroughly, looking at all of the patches of the icing. So all the shadows that I can see in and amongst here. What I want to do is build this up a little bit further. So actually, I'm not using the darkest French gray in my set. I'm still using a French gray, which is the same color I was using earlier earlier in the drawing. Is the 50% French gray, and I'm literally looking at each section and going over it, really looking at the reference photo, using what I've already marked in as a little bit of a guide, making sure that I am shading, I more than anything, want to blend one area into another. I don't really want very many harsh lines. I want it to be reasonably smooth from one section to another. To start with, I'm particularly focusing on the edge of the icing, where it's generally, I would say, a bit lighter. You can see it looks complicated, I think, but I am literally comparing the drawing to the reference photo and drawing all of these lumps and bumps like we did before, but just a little bit darker. And I think blending it in a little bit more thoroughly with the surrounding area. Wouldn't be too worried about getting this perfect because we've already got all of those lines marked in. I do think it is a bit simpler. But we don't need to as I always say, get it perfect, getting it perfectly the same, that will just take a really long time. I wouldn't say that I'm taking too long over this. I want to work through it reasonably quickly. Now I've done around the edge. I also do want to be going back over some of the shapes along the snow on the bottom. So filling up a lot of the shapes. It's actually not a huge amount on this section at the front. It's reasonably simple over here. Whereas I need to build up a lot more on the side. So if you want to see exactly what I'm doing, don't forget you can see that in the real time section. But basically, I'm needing to build up a lot more of this color down the right hand side, just because as I've mentioned, a few times, it is so much darker over here. Before I move on to the roof section, I don't want to forget to go over this area at the top, as well. Once again, I'm going over all of the shapes that I can see in this section. A lot of them I have already marked in. They were just really very light, and I'm going over them a little bit darker. The main thing that I think I want you to notice is that I am building up quite a lot of this French gray, even though these areas are white, building this up on here, building up the shadows that I can see in the reference isn't stopping this area from looking white. But it would look peculiar. If we didn't build up all of the texture here. I wouldn't make sense with the rest of the drawing. I'm generally happy with most of the gray, the snowy areas. I want to focus on the roof. And previously, I focused more, I would say, on the kind of inner sections. What I now want to focus on is the outer sections, the kind of piped roof tile sections. So I'm looking at how there's an extra shadow here. There's shadow around the bottom around here, particularly a line here. But then it's much lighter here, still quite dark, but much lighter than here, for example. What I'm doing is looking at each and every section of these lines, and it is made a lot easier because it's so thoroughly mapped out to just try and work out what needs to be wear. Now, it still looks far from perfect, but it is starting to make a little bit more sense. You can see me going around the edge, maybe making this area a little bit bigger, then adding some light shading to just generally make this area a little bit darker. I don't want to forget to mark in this part because that's where it gets a bit lighter on the one below it, and then just generally build up some more of the shading. So it is literally a case of looking at what you can see on the reference photo and trying your best to copy those shapes. You'll see that it still doesn't look perfect. It still looks a little bit rough and ready, but to a certain degree, I think that is just how this is going to look. It's not going to look perfect because we're drawing something that is almost cartoony because it's made of biscuit. It is cartoon esque, I guess. So I kind of expect the drawing to look like that. And because the roof tiles that have been made on the roof here aren't perfect. They're not obviously actual roof tiles, I kind of expect it to look a little bit cartoony. So now I'm genuinely happy with the roof for now. The main thing that I'm thinking now before I move on to the next section is that I need to add in a shadow. It looks a bit weird, just being on a plain white background. So I'm going to build up a few colors around the bottom here. I need to build up a lot more color on this right hand side because it is the more shadowed side. And if you look at the reference photo, it does have a more shadowed area around it. Do still want to build up something along the front as well. So I'm using here the 50% French gray to start with. This is the lightest color I'll use on the shadow. I just want to begin to map in where that shadow is going to be and generally make sure that I'm fading this as thoroughly as I can into the white of the paper. So going all around the front as well, just adding a little bit. I don't want to overdo it along. Once I'm happy with that, I can build up the darker French gray. Still, obviously, I want to be pressing lightly, working in circular motions, everything that we've been doing up until now to try and make this as smooth as possible. When I look at the shadow on the reference photo, I'm noticing that there's quite a harsh shadow that's coming around here. So particularly, you want to be building up this shadow here a lot darker. There is something along here, but as you see, it's not a huge amount. So you can see I'm starting to build up that shadow a little bit darker around the right hand side. I'll also just put a very light covering of this French gray along the bottom front all along here. I want to move on to the darkest color that I'll use for this shadow. This is also the darkest color I'll be using in the drawing. This is that dark umber, that very dark brown that we used at the beginning of this chapter again. I'm just bit by bit building it up, making the shadow darker where it's closer to the house and then fade out a little bit lighter. You'll notice that I'm mostly using this over this right hand side, though, where I particularly want to have that dark shadow. Now I'm reasonably happy with how the house is looking. I've got in those absolute darkest values now. In the next chapter, we want to really focus on brightening everything up and adding some extra vibrancy to this, as well as smoothing a lot of it out. 9. Brighten the Drawing and Final Details: Let's brighten up this house and add in all of the final details. So I want to work my way reasonably systematically, kind of from one area to another. I think that's going to be the easiest thing to do here. So I'm going to start off by focusing on the white icing areas. And the first thing I want to do here is use that lightest French gray to just work around the edge. Right now, it's not completely clear where the white icing ends and the background begins, and I want to have a slightly better line between these two areas. You see, I'm just going around the edge of the drawing. I can still very lightly see my sketch here, so I'm following that sketch line. Just adding a little bit of shading just around that edge. I'm working around the edge and then slightly shading down into the main icing area, so it kind of blends in a little bit better. You can see already from that first section what a huge difference it makes in terms of being able to see the general shape of the gingerbread. Work the whole way round all the way up the side of the chimney, down the side of the roof here. I also want to go along these sections. This is the icing that's dripping down. I want to work along all of these. Then I can start to work just around the edge of the icing at the bottom. So I've done the right hand side. On this left hand side here, I once again want to do exactly the same thing. And as I say, it's just really nicely making the icing feel a little bit more finished. While I'm here, right now, I haven't really put anything on the snow areas of the trees. So whilst I've got this pencil, I am going to work my way through each of the snow patches to add just a small amount of something. Now, I do think it's reasonably subtle, but you can see, so for example, on this one here, you can see a slightly darker gray here and a darker gray here, and it's lighter around this top edge. And here, for example, you can see a slightly darker gray in the middle and a darker gray at the top. Those are the kind of areas I want to be adding in. But as I say, I do think it is reasonably subtle. I think adding these in are giving the snow patches just a little bit more shape to begin with, they kind of look like flat patches, and it's just making it look like there's a little bit more to them. So I can literally work one at a time, look at what's on there, and really focus on any of the darker areas, shade that in and move on to the next. That's all I'm doing here. Now that I've worked my way around those light areas on the tree, I'm also going to use this same French gray to just shade in the whole of the roof of the house. Now, as I've mentioned a couple of times, the bulk of the roof, the kind of middle section with the tiles is actually a lot darker than the lighter areas around the edge. And I think it's looking too similar in color to the rest or the edge of the roof. Just going to go over. You can see that it's not covering up all of those shapes that I marked on, but it's just smoothing out a little bit what's here and helping to make the edges stand out as a little bit whiter. This area here is also quite a lot darker, so I can just shade over the top of that. And then as I get to the edge around here, I just want to ease up a bit. I don't want to be putting down as much color on that very right hand side. Once I've gone through and added in that extra shading on the roof, I'm going to add a few little bits of extra shading around the chimney here, just any area that I think could be made a little bit darker. And then I'm also going to use this to begin blending some of the darker areas of the rest of the icing. So I don't want to just bulk shade like I did on the roof. But like here, for example, I'm just going over some of the darker areas on the icing. So going over this darker patch here, for example. I've noticed that this droplet just needs a little bit shading on the right hand side. And I'm going to work my way down, not taking too long. I'm working reasonably quickly here, just adding a little bit shading, pressing a little bit firmer here, and beginning to blend together what I've got. Now, I do think that it's darkening it down quite a bit, but I think it helps to make it look more realistic. It's not as dark because there's those lighter areas as the tiled section of the roof just all looks a little bit smoother. So I can work down this side along here as well. Again, just blending out those darker areas. So more than anything, I would say that I'm going over and slightly over the edges of these darker spots. And then when I get down to these area around here, I'm focusing more on the middle. I don't want to put too much on the drippy bits. Let's add a really good load of shading down here because this does need to be so dark. Kind of similar, I guess, to the roof at the top, it just needs to be a lot darker in this area. And then I'll also do a little bit of blending and shading on a few other areas of the snow at the front, but not a huge amount. I don't need to do much around here. Already think that the roof is looking much more realistic now. But what I want to do is give this further blend. There's some areas that I just think need smoothing out. They look a little bit scratchy at the moment. What I'm going to do is move on to the white pencil. I don't want to be adding any more color here. I don't want to be making anything darker. So I can just use this white pencil as a blending pencil maybe to lighten a few areas up a tiny bit. It's not going to make the area white, but it will brighten it up. You can see I'm being reasonably quick about this. I'm not worrying about being too accurate, I guess. I just want to smooth it all out and end up with a really nice and soft white looking icing. So once I've worked over all of these lighter areas and I've blended out all of the snow, it doesn't look a huge amount different, but I think it would look like this if I hadn't done it. I'm just going to use this white pencil also to blend a couple of the lighter areas on the door. Say, for example, along along the top of this frame here and a few other areas like around here, around here, around here. Because before I've done this, it looks a little bit kind of patchy. And I do want this to look a solid block. I will adjust it a little bit later. Right now, it's not looking quite red enough, but we'll do that in a second. So now I've got all of the white sections. I want to be once again thinking about kind of the most obvious difference between my drawing and the reference photo. I would say the most obvious thing right now is that the green sections are looking very muted. So I'm going to start off by going back to that darker green. And I'm mostly using this to go over those areas where I put that dark brown, the dark umber, going over those areas to turn them more into a dark green, but also just generally fading out a little bit from these areas as well. So just adding some rough shading to make the whole thing look a little bit greener. I will be adding another green in a second, but it just all looks very pale at the moment. So you can see here, I'm going over where I put that dark umber before and shading out a little bit from that point so that it's got just a little bit more of a darker green. I'm not pressing hard because I don't want to have a really harsh dark green on here. Just want to make the tree look a little bit brighter. So starting out in these darker sections and then fading out from that. And the light areas do still look very, very light, but I can add to that in a little while. And I'm pretty much going to use this green to go over all of the green sections. So I'm going back over all of those darker browns on the wreath, as well, and it still looks a bit faded, but maybe not as bad. We will add to it further. Also want to be doing the same to this tree as I did to the tree on the left. And then I can also go over the kind of garland on the corner and really particularly the areas, the lighter areas on the right hand side, really make those a lot darker. You can see what a huge difference that makes quite quickly. So I think the greens are looking a lot better, but they do need more. So what I'm going to do, I'm still working through the same colors that I used earlier. I'm going to move on to the grass green. I'm just lightly going over pretty much the rest of the green section. So you can see I'm going over all of those lighter sections on the tree here, as well as the lighter section on the garland at the back. As always, I'm not pressing hard at all. I really don't want a huge amount of this. I just want to brighten up what's here, but all of the attention that I've put on to making the gradients look right, I don't want to lose that. It's also worth remembering, although I don't think that this green combined with the other green is looking like a particularly realistic color. That doesn't really matter. What I'm actually seeing is that because it's just icing, it's some reasonably cartoonish greens, I guess. And that's okay. So once they've added in these greens, again, I think it makes it a bit clearer to see what the most obvious color is that's missing from here. So now those reds just aren't looking bright enough. So I can go back to that bright red that I used much earlier. And I want to be pressing reasonably firmly on these areas now. I'm not going to do anything else after this, I think on the baubles. I want to be particularly putting the red again over where I put that dark umber in a previous chapter. I don't want to be putting the red on the light spot, which is more towards the top left. I can just work my way around here as I always do reasonably systematically from left to right. Over all of the red on the wreath, including on the bow here, and I'm really looking at where the darker red areas are. And I can go over some of the rest of the bore balls. These ones, I don't need to worry so much about that shading on the right hand side because they're in a darker spot. Then I can focus on the door. And actually, I'm really going to be building up a lot of red here. What I want to do is put quite a lot of red in all areas, except for where I put that white pencil. I don't want to go over the white areas for now, but I do want to brighten up the rest of the door. And again, I would say that here, I'm using a medium pressure. I'm not pressing lightly anymore, because if I try and press lightly, I'm just not going to be able to get down the same amount of pencil. This is just really brightening up the whole door. From here, now that I'm happy with all the red areas, I once again want to think about the most obvious color that's missing. So now I think the gingerbread is just looking a bit kind of weak in color, especially in comparison to the red and the green. So I can go back to the light umber. And I'm mostly really focusing on the shadowed areas, so the shadow created from the Christmas tree gingerbread biscuit. I'm also going to add a really light covering on the rest of the gingerbread. So it is the same as what I've done before, a nice light layer. I'm also building up a little bit more color pressing a little bit firmer when it comes to any shadowed areas. So I can work all along the front here, putting down that nice, smooth, even coverage, and you can see how much better that looks. Then once I'm happy with all of that, I can focus on, again, these darker areas. So this part here is particularly shadowed. So I can build that up. And then once I'm happy with that, I need to make sure that I always do the same to all of the gingerbread areas. So I'm building up an extra layer of this light umbera here, particularly focusing on adding more on that left hand side where it does just need to be a little bit of a darker color. And then as I work my way over to the right, I want to start making this area here a bit more solid. So I previously built up quite a few darker colors. What I want to do now with the light umber still is press a lot firmer. I want to blend all of this together. You can see that that is smoothing out everything that I've got here. It's making the light umber look like a much darker pencil or a much darker color, and it's just kind of blocking in this area. I'm pressing nice and firmly, and I am still working in those kind of oval motions. I do want to try and get this as smooth as possible. Now, the same as normal, I want to do the same to the other dark shadowed areas as I did above. So I can go over this area here. And once again, I don't want to forget the darker side of the chimney here. Still just using that nice and firm pressure to blend it all together. Now, before I move on from this pencil, I do want to once again go over these shadows on the left hand side. So these areas where I can see the shadow coming down. This is the shadow from all of those drips from the icing. I'll also add to and build up a little bit more the shadow, particularly on the right hand side of the wreath because that's the direction of the light is clearly on the left. I'm just going to keep building up some more of this color bit by bit. So now that I've done that, I noticed that around here, looks like it needs building up a little bit more, and once again, I'm starting to press quite a lot firmer. In fact, once I've built up some more of this color kind of smooth some of the areas out a bit more, it's at this point that I think I need to move on and slightly adjust these shadows. So I'm moving on to the Sienna brown, going over exactly these same areas, add a slight red hint to them. So going over literally all of the shadowed areas everywhere where I put that light umber. So the shadows of the wreath here, as well as all around these areas, the shadows from those biscuits. As I've got this pencil, I'll also go over some of the darker areas. The areas that look like they need to be really dark red. I can do that with this brown pencil. So particularly over the right hand side here, as well as amongst some of these icing details. Also going to use it just to adjust this light umber area here. As I say, I'm literally putting it everywhere where I put that light umber. And then I think it's all looking a lot better. What I want to do now is really focus on smoothing out the front of the gingerbread, and again, adding the lighter areas, making them have a little bit more color, too. So the main color that I think is missing looking between my drawing and my reference photo is a beige. The beige is kind of yellowy wise beige. I add this over the top of the colors that I've already built up, I think it is much, much closer to the reference. So you'll notice that I'm using, I would say a medium to firm pressure here. I just want to smooth everything out. Although, one of the benefits, I think, of drawing gingerbread, is it does have a very small amount of kind of kind of spotty texture to it. So actually, the generally natural characteristic of color pencils is working quite well here because it's kind of giving it that light gingerbread, look, particularly because we've got a darker brown underneath and we're putting this lighter beige on top. Can work over the whole of the front of the gingerbread, and I can work along the bottom here, too. Now, once again, I want to be thinking about the most obvious color that's missing or the most obvious thing that's missing. So actually, a lot of these green sections are looking a little bit kind of spotty. They look like they need blending. But I don't want to go and do that with a dark green. What I'm going to do is blend this together with the white pencil. And actually, you would think that this would make the green a bit lighter. I think it does slightly change the color, but it looks more like a solid and kind of cartoony green, which I think works really well with the fact that this is icing. Work over all of those green sections, really smoothing out all of these parts. You can see that's looking far better. And then I'm just going to focus back on the roof again. So now that I added at the very beginning of this chapter that light French gray over the top of all of these sections, I think it's looking maybe a little bit too light. Maybe the sort of diamond shapes that are in here are looking a little bit too muted. So I'm just going to go over them again with this is the 70% French gray. Nothing particularly fancy that I'm doing here. It's very similar to what we did earlier in maybe the last chapter. So just going over the diamonds and maybe slightly defining some of the icing lines between each of the diamonds. As I said, I do want this to be reasonably dark. Now, this is I feel making the dark, those lines at the top of each diamond get a little bit lost, but that's okay because we can add that back in in a minute. In fact, the pencil that I think is going to be best for that. The main area that I think we can improve this with is that dark umber pencil, so the really dark brown. I think at this point, I'm generally happy with the overall color of the drawing, but some of the contrast doesn't look quite right. So I can use this pencil to really make some of the key areas a little bit darker. So I've shaded in that area on the right hand side of the chimney. I can now go through all of these dark spots at the top of each diamond and just redefine that. So I'm really just going over what I have done before. Think it's just helping the roof look a little bit more textured, it's looking a bit closer to the reference photo. Work my way over the whole of the drawing, going back over all of these dark umber areas that I have been over before. So back over the shadow along here, going around the shadow for the wreath, as well. I think that could be blended a lot better into the gingerbread section. I want to be really defining and better laying out the back of these biscuits here. I added a lot of shading in with a couple of browns, but I think the really dark sections have kind of been lost, so I can build that up before doing the same around the door and on the other gingerbread here. Whilst I've got this pencil, I'm just going to make this area on the right a little bit darker. I am pressing very lightly here. I don't want to be building up loads of the pencil. I just want to slightly adjust what I've got, and I'll do the same on this area at the bottom here. And then whilst I'm working in this area around the right, I'm also going to build up the shadow a bit more. Right now. Again, I don't think it's looking quite dark enough. I just want to make it reasonably prominent. Although I also do want to blend it a little bit, so I will use the 50% French gray just to smooth this out and blend it a little bit into the white background. At this point, I'm reasonably happy with the gingerbread. I'm just going to go back to that dark brown again and just redefine this line along the bottom. And then I think I'm into the final final details now. So what I'm doing, and this is very much optional is using what's called a jelly roll pen. This is a white pen that puts white over the top of color pencils. And I'm not using too much. I just want to go around some of the icing drops here to add just a little section of bright white. And I also want to go around some of the lighter sections on the door here. I think that's just really adding a nice little extra piece of detail. Now, once I've added in all of these light sections and maybe tidied up some of these white pieces of snow around here, what I want to do is maybe slightly tone down the white on that door. So, as I say, I want to make sure that the pen is completely dry. And then I can go back to that same red I've used before and just very, very lightly go over the top here. But then that is it. 10. Summary: And that is the end of this course. I hope you've enjoyed it and hopefully realize that if you break down a complicated drawing like this into sections, it's maybe not as difficult as you would expect. So I always like to start off with base layers, filling in the lightest color that I can see in each section. I can then gradually work up towards the darker colors, filling in all of the main shapes. And then we can start refining all of those colors and really brightening everything up. Now, if you've enjoyed this course, please do review it, and don't forget to upload your drawing into the class projects. Happy drawing and Merry Christmas guys. I'll see you in the next course.