How to Draw a Realistic Halloween Witches Hat: Drawing with Colored Pencils

1. Introduction: I absolutely love creating seasonal drawings, and since we're now in October, how can I resist a new Halloween drawing? I want to show you today how to draw this witch's hat. Now, this may look very complicated, but actually, I'll show you if you break it down into small sections, it's not as difficult as you might expect. My name's Gemma Chambers, and I've been making online art tutorial since 2020. I've helped tens of thousands of people improve their art. But today, I want to get seasonal. We're going to specifically focus on creating this fun Halloween drawing. Now, I will show you everything that you need to know to create this hat, including the materials you'll need and how to make this sketch. And then we can start working our way through the process. Now, this witch's hat goes hand in hand with a previous Halloween themed class that I've made, where we drew a pumpkin. So don't forget to have a look at that class as well as this hat. Let's start drawing. 2. Class Project - Drawing a Witches Hat: Now for the class project, we will be drawing this witch's hat. I've picked this hat specifically for a few reasons. Generally speaking, if you're trying to draw a witch's hat, so it's black, if you don't pick something that has a good amount of particularly highlights, as well as the darker areas, it's going to look very flat. For this reference photo, I love that it's got a huge amount of interesting and colored light down the left hand side, as well as general lighter areas on the right. And it's built up of a lot of folds, which adds a huge amount of interest. Certainly a lot more color in this hat than you might expect from a black hat. Now, way, we'll show you everything that you need to know to create this drawing, including how to make this sketch. If you want to use my sketches, I have included them in the class resources. When you've finished your witch's hat, please do upload it into the class projects. I would love to see what you've done. Let's talk about the materials that you'll need to complete this drawing. 3. The Materials You'll Need for Drawing with Coloured Pencils: Let's talk about the materials you'll need to complete this drawing. And the first most obvious material you'll need is some colored pencils. Now, for my drawing, I'm using polychromos from the set of 60. But you don't need to use exactly the same pencils as I am. In fact, you can make some absolutely beautiful pictures with something cheaper like crayola. I do recommend getting a larger set, though, something like at least a set of 36, just so you've got enough colors to select the next material that you'll need is some paper. And actually, the paper is, I would say, more important than the pencils. In order to build up all of the colors that we can see within the hat, what we're going to do is build up the pencil in a series of light layers, rather than just pressing really hard with the pencil. We're going to need to mix all of these colors together, and we're going to need a paper that's going to be able to take all of those layers. So I like drawing on something called Bristol Board. This is a very smooth paper. It's almost thick like a card, and that is going to work so much better than something like printer paper or sketch paper. Next thing you'll need is a pencil sharpener. It doesn't need to be anything particularly special or fancy, just something that's going to make a really nice and sharp point with your pencils. If you're creating your own sketch, you will need a graphite pencil, a ruler, and an eraser. And I'll talk in a short while on how these are going to be used. From here, the next material you'll need is actually not something you can buy, is something you're going to need to make. This is a set of color swatches. For every set of pencils that I own, I create a set of swatches. This is where I draw out a grid, and I go from as light as I can go to as dark as I can go with each color, and then I label it. And what that does it shows me exactly what each of these colors actually look like on the paper, the kind of paper that I'm going to draw on. I don't want to rely on the barrel of the pencil or the lead of the pencil because that doesn't tend to be very accurate. We can then use these swatches throughout the drawing to compare to the reference photo and the drawing to see which color we need to select. Now, it is a reasonable amount of work to create these swatches, but they're actually not something that need doing very often. The swatches that I've got here are at least 5-years-old. The final material that you'll need to complete this drawing is some way of looking at the reference photo. Now, for every drawing that I create, I work from a reference photo. Because I work realistically, I find this is the best way to create as realistic drawing as possible. But I need some way of looking at that reference photo. I like looking at the reference on my iPad. I particularly like that I can zoom in to see all of the details. But you don't need an iPad for this. You can always print out the reference photo. So those are all of the materials that you'll need to create this picture. Let's start working through the process. 4. Studying the Reference Photo: Now before I start any drawing, what I first like to do is take a minute to look at the reference photo. Really look at all of the things I'm going to need to bear in mind when creating the drawing. So let's do this now with the witch's hat reference photo, and hopefully you'll see a bit better what I mean. So the number one main thing that I'm noticing about this hat is the black areas, the hat itself. It's not as solid one block color as you May 1 expect. Firstly, because it's a slightly crumpled hat, it's got a lot of lights and darks creating the shapes of that crumpled I'm noticing that there's a lot of darker patches over the left hand side. There's some kind of dark almost triangular, I would say, shapes along here, and then a lighter line going all in a wiggly line along here. It's generally then lighter on the right hand side and darker on the left. That said, on the left hand side, we have this very bright, bluy purple, more of a purple going all down this left hand side, which we're going to need to add in. That's going to create some really lovely light. Over this lighter right hand side here, it's all very patchy. I'm noticing that we've got a mixture of kind of a cool gray, I would say, maybe a little bit of a blue around this right hand side. But there's also lighter patches and darker patches all around here. It's not a nice, smooth, solid color. So we're going to need to build up that patchiness whilst also keeping this light line that's going all through here and adding in these darker patches on this side. I am also noticing that kind of surrounding these darker patches, it has a bit of a hint of a dark blue, I guess. You can see quite a deep blue around here as well. Some of these darker patches aren't so much standard gray. They're more of a dark bluy gray, I would say. So I need to bear that in mind, particularly around the top as I'm drawing. Even down the bottom, you can see this whole left hand side here has a real purple tinge to it, that same kind of bright purple. And then on the right hand side here, we've again got a similar kind of texture, maybe a bit darker here than what we've got up here. But it's still generally patchy and kind of mid tone, I would say around here, but then we have some much darker areas like the shadow here. The edge of the hat, I can see that there's a line of stitching, and then it's much lighter underneath. And then we've got some darker lines under here, just creating the seam of the hat. So all of these patches and shapes will have to build up bit by bit and kind of map in the shapes and then build up the patchiness as we go. I think that's going to be the easiest thing to. Let's now just have a look at this ribbon and the brooch here. The ribbon, I'd say isn't too tricky. It doesn't look too tricky. It's generally got a lot of lights and darks. It's obviously quite a bright green. Well, maybe it's more of a kind of bluy green. It's a funny mixture of colors, I feel. It's not quite bright green. A lot of the greens in my set are quite vibrant greens. But it's also not blue. It is green. It's kind of a more blue side of green. Going to need to mix a lot of colors together, I think, to build this color. We've got some lighter areas, the darker areas, or the midtone areas around here, I think are more of just kind of a standard darker green, and then we've got some much darker areas like in all of the shadows. On the most part, what needs building up here is all of the folds that I can see within this ribbon. A little bit of texture to the ribbon, kind of stitching, but I think it's going to be better on this ribbon to build it up smoother. I think it will be 'cause it's not got any clear kind of stitching. It's just a slight stitchy texture. I think it'll be quite hard to build that up, so I think it'll be easiest to build this up smooth. On this left hand side, again, at the edge here, it's this very bright purple. We've lost all of the green. It kind of goes from that light green to a very dark green and then goes to the bright purple on the left hand side. So I need to think about creating that gradient, but it's really really want to make sure that I keep this purple because I think that's a really interesting part of the drawing that's going to give it a real pop. Now, in terms of the brooch, it's actually not too tricky, I wouldn't say. It's got a couple of light lines that we're going to need to be very careful to avoid around the edge of the moon shape. You can see that it's got this darker shadow patch over the left hand side. It's also shadows generally around the edges of the moon. Most part, we're just going to need to build up a few different browns and kind of gold colors. I don't have a gold in my set, but we can build up some gold tones to make this brooch look gold. So those are the main things that I want to bear in mind to begin with. Let's create our sketch. 5. Sketching the Outlines: Before I start putting down any color, I first off need to create some sketch lines. I need to have a rough template of where everything needs to go so that I know that my drawing is going to be in proportion. Now, to do this, I always like using something called the grid method. This is where I draw a grid on my drawing paper and I put a grid on my reference photo, and I just draw what's in each individual square. This stops me from drawing this as a witch's hat, and I'm just looking at it as a series of shapes. If I were drawing something that's really simple, I could create really big grid lines. If I'm drawing something that's much more complicated, I can create smaller grid lines. Just like to work through here one step at a time drawing in all of these key shapes. Once I've created my sketch, I can then erase those grid lines and I have my sketch outlines. Now, do bear in mind here that when you're creating your sketch outlines, you actually want to make them as light as possible. I've made them quite dark here, specifically, so you can see them on camera. If you work much lighter, it will end up looking much cleaner. You want to have your finished sketch to be so light you can barely see it because we don't want it to be showing through the colored pencils at the end. Don't forget if you don't want to create your own sketch lines, you can use mine that are in the class resources. Now that we've created our sketch, we can get started with the drawing. 6. Build up the Base Layers and Key Shapes: This first section, all I want to do is get something down on the paper. I want to get some sort of color marked in in each section. So what I'm going to do is look for the lightest color that I can see in each area, and then we're going to build up a really nice and light layer of that color. So let's start off by looking at the hat section. And I want to be looking for the lightest color within this hat. So I'm particularly looking around here, for example, some of these lighter little flicks all around the hat. I want to be looking for the closest color in my set that matches that color. So I would say the hat, generally speaking, is quite a cool gray. I'm going to use the lightest cool gray that I have in my set to go over the whole of the hat. So I've only got two cold grays in my set. This is cold gray, too. I want to be putting this color down over that whole hat section as lightly and smoothly as I can. So there's a few ways that I'm doing this. First up, you'll notice that I'm not holding the pencil really close to the tip. I'm holding it roughly halfway down the barrel of pencil. What this does is literally stops me from being able to press too hard. If I hold it really close to the tip, I can still press lightly, but I have to have a lot more control over that pencil. Now, we need to be pressing lightly with the pencil because we're going to need to build up a lot of layers of color. If I just press really hard with the pencil, not only would the color go down really inconsistently, but it wouldn't be possible for me to build up the amount of color and mix all the colors together that I'm going to need to. Now notice that I'm going over even the areas where we will be adding that purple for now, I just want to put this everywhere over the hat. Next up, in order to get this down as smoothly as possible, I don't want to just scribble back and forth with the pencil. You'll notice that I'm working in some quite large kind of circular or oval motions. So you'll see that I'm making these ovals, and that again, puts down the pencil in a much smoother and more consistent way rather than just scribble. Finally, I want to make sure that I'm always working with a sharp pencil. The pencil will go down in a much more consistent way if it is sharp. You'll see me sharpening my pencil. Quite often, when I'm covering a large space like this, I think I have sharpened my pencil about three times throughout just this one color. So I need to sharpen it a lot. It wears down quite quickly, and we're going to get a better color by doing this. Now, it is quite forgiving when you're working with such a light color like this, because if it does look a little bit scribbly, it's not going to show as much as if you're using a darker color. But we will move on to some slightly darker colors in a short while, and you'll see, again, how important all of these same techniques are. So I want to be carefully working my way around the ribbon. So you'll see here I am going over this little patch on the right hand side, and there's a little patch between the two ends of the ribbon. I can go all the way along the bottom section along here, once again, holding the pencil about halfway down the barrel, using a light pressure, working with a sharp pencil and working in circular motions. I am being very careful where I go around that brooch. For example, I don't want to be putting a block of this color over there. I'm going to need a different color for that section. I've got something down on all of the hat section, we'll obviously be building on this a lot. What I then want to do is look for the next section and I want to be looking for the next lightest color in the next area. So I think it'll all become a lot clearer, a lot faster if I fill in the ribbon. So I want to be looking for the lightest color I can see within that ribbon section. So I would say the lightest color is probably this kind of color around here or maybe the light sections along here. This is a slightly trickier one because I don't feel like I have a very close color necessarily to this light green. I feel like a lot of the greens in my set are very bright and bold greens, but this is more of a slightly bluy green, but maybe not as bluey green as this color. But that's okay. What I want to be doing is selecting the closest color that I have in my set. I think the closest green is this deep cobalt green. And what we can do later on, once we filled in all of the main shapes and the main colors, we can then look at adjusting this color, mixing a few colors together to make it closer to the ribbon in the reference photo. Now, this is a slightly darker color than that gray that we were working with to start with. It's still the lightest color in this section. But it's going to be much more obvious if I create a scribbly color. So once again, you'll see me holding the pencil far back here, pressing really nice and lightly, working in circular motions and with a sharp pencil. You'll see as I work around this is not going to be perfect, I am going to try and get it as smooth as possible. I'm not worrying at this point about adding in any of the shadows for the ribbon folds. I'm going to add those in as we work towards the darker colors. I just want to put down a solid block of this color. Notice that I've drawn in the outline of this shape first. That helps me get my bearings on where this ribbon edge needs to be this section of the ribbon. I can then shade up to that line, and it just makes it a little bit clearer. So I can go along the edge of that line so I get a nice clean edge. But still working generally in these circular motions to try and make it smooth. It's important to make sure that we're mapping things out correctly, but also try and make it nice and smooth. Once I've drawn in this little section of the bow, I can draw in the rest so I can draw in the knot of the bow, I want to make sure that I am going around this moon. I don't want to be putting the green over that moon section. Once again, you'll see that I've gone around the edge of this area, and then I'm shading in with those circular motion. Is exactly the same for each section of the ribbon. So I'm using my sketch lines to work out where the edges of each shape need to go. And then once I've got a shape clearly marked in, which again is far easier if you've got a sharp pencil, I can then use my circular motions to block an area in. So this is really all there is to the beginning of this drawing. We're going through this one section at a time and putting something down. I think by putting the ribbon in as the second color, hopefully, it makes the hat a little bit easier to see where that's going to be. It is quite hard to see the hat at the moment because it's such a light gray that I've marked in. But we will obviously be building a lot of darker colors over the top of that to build up the depth of the hat. So I again want to be marking around the shape of the moon. And then this time, I'm not going to shade all the way up to the edge of the section. I'm going to roughly mark in where I think that purple area starts. So let's just put a line all along here. And then I'm going to use secular motions, again, to shade in this whole section on the right hand side of I think the whole initial base there is that we're adding in here. This is the very beginning of getting our bearings and working out what is going to need to go we. We need to have something down on the paper that we can then start building off of. So once I'm happy with the green areas, let's move on to the lightest color in the next section. So let's put the lightest color down on the moon now. Once again, I think the lightest color here is still a gray. Around the edge here, I think the closest color in my set to this color is a gray. Different gray this time. This is the warm gray, too, so the same kind of color, but this time, the warm gray version. And I'm just going to block in this color over the whole of the moon. Now let's move on to the lightest color in the next section, and I want to get something down for the purple. Now, again, the purple is a kind of tricky color. It's a reasonably bright purple, but it's also, I would say, more on the blue side. I'm going to use this pencil. This is kind of purply blue for now. And just like with the green section, we can tweak the color a bit later. So in some areas, I might want to make the purple a little bit more on the pink side. I can add that lightly over the top here. Again, we just want to get something down. I actually think this color looks a little bit more purple in life than what it does on camera. So you should see yours looking a little bit more purple than what mine is looking here. Now, as I'm filling in these purple sections, I am also looking for any shapes I can see within the purple. I want to get that marked. Note that it's not a solid and smooth line going up the edge of the hat. It's kind of jetting out. So we've got some folds coming along here, and then it goes around and comes along here. There's kind of a curve going around here, and then we've got some purple going along here, along here, along here. I can start marking in those shapes at this point, getting a bit of an idea on where these are all going to go, and that's going to make it much easier as we start marking in some of the folds a bit later. So you can see it's kind of made a bit of a funny shape up the side, but those are the shapes that I can see. So that's why I'm drawing them it also fill some of this color in on the left hand side of the ribbon here. Ever so slightly going over the green, but I don't want to blend these colors together too much. We'll blend them much more later when I start filling in those darker colors. But again, with this color, it's so important to be working lightly and in circular motions because if it looks scratchy, it will really show up later. So let's just blocking a whole area of this purple down on this bottom left section. We'll be able to refine some of the darker areas around this a little bit later. Now, I'm generally happy with the lightest colors in each section. Let's start building up some of the shapes that I can see within the hat. So a lot of those folds, I want to get mapped in now. It'll be much easier if I can get them mapped in at this point. As I say, literally, the whole point of this chapter is to put something down on paper but also get our bearings on what is going to need to go well. Just before moving on from this purple, use this color to mark in some of those lighter lines going down the middle of the hat here. So I feel like this light line coming around here has a real purple tinge to it, and you can particularly see purple on this top section here. So let's get a bit of an idea on where that wiggly line, that wiggly light line is going to go. It may look a bit kind of severe that I'm using this purple to mark in that line now. But once we fill in all of the darker areas around this section, this line is going to look much lighter. It only looks quite dark in comparison to what we've got here, which isn't a huge amount. Just block in and put down a little bit of this color on this patch here. And then let's make the bulk of the hat look a bit darker. So right now we've got that very, very light color. I think it probably could stand to be a bit darker, and we can block in the same area with a slightly darker color. So I'm still working with a cold gray here. This is the other cold gray that's in my set, the slightly darker cold gray. I still don't think it's a dark color, but it's certainly much darker than what we have at the moment. And I'm mostly just going to block this color in over the whole of the hat at this point. Let's go through this a little bit faster because it is so similar to what we've already done. I'm going to block this in all the way down the hat, slightly going over the purple sections that I've built up. And I'm using this to refine the shape of the edge of the hat. But also just, as I say, give it a little bit more darkness. I think it's looking too light. The very light areas that I mentioned right at the very beginning of this chapter, I do still think they are I think the general base color for the hat needs to be made a bit darker. So go around this light section here. And remember, throughout all of this, you still want to be working with circular motions and pressing lightly. It's going to be important that we gradually build up all of the colors here. As I say, there's so many colors that we're going to be building up one on top of another. So we don't want to create something that's going to be really scribbly and scratchy. So let's just block this color over the whole area. And it will also make it easier to see where we're working. Generally, I think it will make it a lot clearer on camera. Just shading this in over the whole section, you'll see that I've gone around the moon. I've created a nice clear line around that brooch so that we can just shade up to that point. It makes it a bit clearer where this patch, this slightly darker patch needs to end. And once I've gone around the top of the hat, I want to do exactly the same along the bottom here. Before I move on from this first chapter, I also want to take a minute to get the shapes of the hat marked in a bit clearer. We've got the light, squiggly purple line down the center of the hat at the top, but most of the shapes aren't marked in here. I don't want to get everything marked in perfectly, but I do want to get something, some kind of rough shapes mapped. I want to do is start looking for the next darkest color I can see in this section to map in those shapes. And as I mentioned earlier when we were looking at the reference photo, I can see quite a lot of dark blue. So I'm actually going to use this blue. This is the dark indigo. This is the darkest blue that I've got in my set. Going to use this pencil to map in everywhere that is this kind of blue or darker. So for a lot of the hats, particularly on the left hand side, I do think it is generally darker than this color. But I'm going to use this color to start mapping in those initial shapes, get the bearings on what's going where. And then we can start making it a lot darker in the next few sections. Start off by looking at the very tip of the hat here. I want to be making a very clear line and marking in where this line here is. But then you can see it's got this dark kind of curved shape, along here, then it comes up, and then it comes down, and then up and down. There's a few other very prominent lines like along here and along here. And generally, the tip of the hat, I think, is a pretty dark and solid. Color. That is essentially what I want to be filling in towards the top here, marking in those shapes. Now, there's a few reasons that I'm using this blue. Firstly, I do genuinely think in some of the more mid tone, some of the areas that aren't jet black, they do look like this kind of dark blue, rather than a very dark gray, I think it's a very dark blue. But even in the areas that are needing to be a very dark black, like what I'm filling in around here, that black is going to look a lot deeper and a lot richer if it's got this blue underneath it. I find if you just layer area of black, it looks a bit flat. If you have some richer blues mixed with that black, it's going to be a lot more of an interesting color. And we need to create as interesting colors as possible on this hat, because if we just block it in with a series of grays, I think there's a risk it could look quite kind of dull. Once again, remember to be holding the pencil further back, still working with a sharp pencil that's so important and working with the circular motions. And we can just continue to look at the shapes within the hat and really think about what's going to be going where. So it's important to note that I'm not trying to necessarily get everything marked in absolutely perfectly. And I don't need to get every single shape marked in. What I'm particularly trying to do is get my bearings, so that when we move on to some of the much darker colors, it's much clearer to see what's going to go we. To mark in where this darker kind of triangular shape here is. But I don't necessarily need to make it perfect. You can see how patchy this area is. So there's this triangular, very dark section here. Then we've got a patch here, for example. We've got a few patches around here. We've got a quite prominent patch here. We've got some patches all around here, around and up to the purple, and even here, we've got a darker patch in the purple section, really. So I want to be trying to replicate those patches as well as I can within what I can see of the reference photo. Can use that purple line that I've marked in as a little bit of a guide on where I think these patches are going to go. Remember, because although this may seem like a dark color at this point, we will be using some much darker colors later on and generally building up more colors so they look darker as well. If I get something in the wrong place, it's going to be reasonably easy to change because I'm still going to build up all of those darker colors later. Think it's worth noting that although I filled in shapes much lower than here and I'm generally starting from the top and working towards the bottom. If I feel like I need to go back and add another shape like I'm doing here, I can do that. I generally find it easiest to work reasonably methodically, I guess. Generally, I work either from the top to the bottom or the left to the right, but that doesn't mean that I can never go back and adjust if I need to. So I'm just adding a little bit more on this right hand side where I want to build up some of these patches, and hopefully that will make my life easier in the next chapter. I get towards the bottom of the hat, I feel like the main shapes we need to be marking in are much bigger. I'm just going to mark out roughly where I think the edge of this section is going to go, looking at the shape of the darker patch on the hat. So looking at this line curving around here, I just want to mark that in and then I can start shading in some of these darker patches. It's kind of like a darker triangle here again. And it's generally again, darker on the left hand side, lighter on the right. I need to fill in some of the shadows around the bow. And there's some darker patches here and here and here. Just filling in these shapes gradually. So I would say that this is quite a time consuming process, but it will be well worth it when all of these shapes are built up because obviously this is very key to the drawing. You want to make the hat have all of these lovely folds, but we also need to build up the patchiness that we can see. Do you remember this is only the first chapter. We're not expecting it to look amazing in color or in shapes, patchiness, all of this that we're building up. I'm just trying to get something on the paper, and honestly, we will be able to adjust it so much as we go that I really don't think it's necessary for it to be perfect. So when I'm generally happy on this area at the top, let's just have a look at some of the shapes that I can see on the bottom of the hat as well. I'm noticing around the seam of the hat, it's firstly quite kind of wobbly. It's not a very smooth line. This is supposed to be quite a well worn hat. We've also got a line for the seam around the edge. We haven't really got any stitching here. It is just a line. I'm going to want to add that line in, but also add a line along here and the line for the edge of the hat here. I'm not going to worry at this point about the shadow. We'll come back and do that later. Also noticing that there's a very prominent shadow along here just underneath the ribbon, as well as under here as well, but it's a little bit lighter in this patch. This darkness follows all under the brooch, all along here and around the left hand edge here. I don't want to build up a huge amount of the color on this section, though, because this is that much brighter purple. So you can see that I've filled in that shadow that I've marked in under the ribbon, and then I'm just going to go along, following the lines from the sketch where I can, filling in the lines of the stitching and the lines from the edge of the seam of the hat along here. I need to make this perfect, and I can tweak this a lot later, but I do want to get something marked in along this bottom. I'm not going to worry about filling in the shadow down the bottom here as well. I'm going to add that in a bit later. For now, I just want to get the general hat marked in and we can adjust and tweak things as we go. So it's also fill in some of the shapes I can see on the left hand side. I think with this color for now, it's easier to just approach this as we're just trying to build up some contrast. I want to get the key shapes marked in, get the lights and darks in the right place. And then we can adjust and build everything up much more from there. By the end of this first section, you should have actually a reasonably clear witch's hat. It does look quite patchy. It's certainly not looking realistic yet, but we've got a general template that we can then build on and add to. From here, we can start thinking about building up the key shapes and colors more clearly on both the ribbon and the brooch. I think when that comes together, it's all going to look much better. But that is the end of this section. 7. Build up the Colour on the Bow: This chapter, let's focus on building up a lot of the contrast on the bow and the brooch. I generally want to mark out the main shapes a lot clearer. So I'm going to start off by adding in a slightly darker pencil than that first bluy green we used. I want to be adding in a color, sort of like I can see around here or around this sort of color here. Essentially what I need is a darker green. So I think the closest green that I have to this color in my set is the pine green. This is probably, I would say the darkest green that I have. And I'm going to use this to just start mapping in anywhere that is this kind of color or darker. So I'm going to generally start actually at the right and work towards the left this time, but I'm also starting at the top and working down. I'm beginning by focusing on this fold on the bow. So I just want to focus on this shape here. Now, I'm noticing that it's much darker in this section and down the bottom here and it's very dark around the edge. So let's lightly build up some of this color. You'll see that I am mapping in the edge of this section. So marking in where that edge needs to go. It'll be easier to get that mapped in first, and then I can use circular motions. Start making some gradual shading and building up some of that darker color. Let's add a nice line around the edge. As I said, it's much darker along once again, we want to be doing this in the same way that we have done before. I don't want to be pressing really hard with the pencil. I want to be gradually building up some color, working lightly in circular motion still. And you'll see I'm still not holding the pencil really close to the tip. Once I'm happy with that first section, let's move on and look at some of the lights and dark in this next section. So I'm looking at this section of the bow here. I'm noticing that it's darker along here and around here. There's also this darker kind of triangle here. It's generally dark down the bottom. And there's this dark triangle here as well. But I want to avoid this line all around here, which is much lighter. Literally just want to look at the shapes that I can see within the section, and I'm just trying to get the lights and darks marked in in the right place. So firstly, I want to be adding this pencil into any area that is this color or darker, and then I'll build a darker color over the top of this with those darkest values. But this is really just a good way for me to get my bearings and work out what will need to go where. And because it's not a particularly dark color at the moment, if I make a mistake, if I show something in the wrong area, it will be reasonably easy to fix. I think it's also important to take note if I want an area to be a darker green, I am still not pressing harder on that area. What I want to do is continually build up in circular motions going over the same area multiple times, and that will make the section darker rather than pressing harder. So just keep going over an area, building up the color more and more, and that will make a darker. See here, I'm marking in the outside of this shape where I think this needs to go, and then I can use circular motions here to block in this area. And I'll just roughly mark in the edge of this section. And then any other prominent shapes I mark in bit by bit. You'll see I'm just gradually working one section at a time. I think it's often helpful to not think about drawing a bow, for example. Rather than me focusing on drawing a bow, I'm literally just looking at the area that I'm drawing, looking at the shapes, the lights and darks within this section, and I'm drawing those in, and it will come together to look like a bow. So I'm not drawing a bow. I'm just drawing a random series of shapes, and it will come together. I also think that mapping in these initial shapes is the hardest part of the whole drawing, trying to make all of these areas look in the right place. Once we've got these shapes really clearly marked in, from there, it's just a case of adjusting the color and building things up, but we have a very clear template on what we're working so I'm happy that I've got all of the shapes marked in here. I'm just going to generally make a lot of the bow here darker. I think it's looking too light at the moment. I want to generally not go too much over those very light areas around the bow, but I need to add a lot more shading around, particularly the edges of some of the shapes that I've marked in. I think that they all look a little bit too harsh at the moment. Let's now focus on the center of the bow. Let's look at the shapes that are here. So on the knot in the middle, there is really only a few kind of lines, stripes coming down, and there's this line here. But it's actually reasonably simple, I would say, on this knot. We've got this light line coming through, this kind of glare coming through, and then it's generally shaded along the top and bottom. Again, on this section here, I just want to draw in all of these lines where these are going to go. And then I need to add a reasonable amount of shading around them, leaving the odd lighter patch. So I can start off by marking where I think those lines need to be. I can still see my sketch lines very, very lightly through here. So I'm focusing on going over those lines before I've built up too much color to see them, and then I can start shading around. See I'm just adding to the shading, building up the color around those lines. Right now, I think it looks a little bit peculiar, but it will look better later when we build some of the darker colors over the top here. The important part is to just focus on drawing what you can see. I can see these lines going through this section and I can see where the darker areas are around the outside. So that's what I need to be doing. So let's mark in where these lines need to go on this section here as well. And then I can add quite a lot of shading around those lines. But I do want to be extremely careful. I don't go over the moon brooch here. I want to make sure I've got a nice crisp edge. So let's carry on doing exactly the same thing for the last few sections of the ribbon, and I'm going to go through this a little bit faster because it is very much doing the same as what we've already done. The most important thing, as I say, is to be working in circular motions, building up the color gradually in a light layer, and working with a sharp pencil. The ends of the bows here, we've got a very deep shadow around the top on this one, and generally all along this edge. It's also very dark around this section, but a bit lighter here. And there's kind of a seam coming down here I'm going to want to mark in. It's also darker in a patch here and along here. There's a darker patch here from a little bend in the ribbon and here. So let's gradually start building up all of these shapes and gently marking them in, working in these circular motion. I feel like building up all of these shapes can be a little bit time consuming, but it does really form that basis and make everything else so much easier when we start building up some of the darker colors. It just makes it much clearer where everything needs to be going. So once I'm happy with this bow here, let's focus on this last section of along here, we've got, again, a few folds of the fabric. We've got a fold all along here, and we've got a little bit of a shadow along here and here, but it gets a lot darker on this section, and in fact, I don't want to put any of the green as we get anywhere near over here because this is a much brighter purple. So that's marking that central line and then start shading down from that point. It's working circular motions all along here, just building up some of the colour. From here, I'm generally happy with the bow. I think the colors not perfect, but we can continue tweaking the color a bit later. What we particularly want to be doing at this point is getting the main shapes and contrasts marked in, and then we can adjust everything else later on. So let's now start focusing on the brooch. And I want to begin by mapping in the main shapes I can see on this brooch. So I particularly want to start off by adding in this very light line, the light line around the moon. Now, I can't add in that light line. What I actually need to do is draw dark lines either side of that light line. So I'm using kind of gold pencil, this kind of coppery color to mark in the shape of the moon, and then this outer edge here, as well. And I want to be building up the color anywhere that isn't going to be very light. So like, here is very light and around here. Show you what I mean. So in terms of the color that I'm using here, this is the raw umber pencil. I kind of think it looks like a gold brown, and it works very well on this section of the drawing. So you'll see that here I am just mapping in the edge of the moon shape. And actually, here it's really clear how sharp my pencil is. It needs to be so sharp for times like this because I need it to be so accurate on where this is going. Let's also draw around here, just leaving that nice thin light line. So I'm leaving a gap between the moon and the edge of this section. I'm going to use some light little circular motions to shade in between those lines that I've marked in. So you'll see that I'm avoiding that area at the very top. But generally, I'm adding this color everywhere else. There are some lighter and some darker sections on the moon, but we'll mark those in with a darker pencil because actually, quite a lot of the brooch does need to be really quite dark, I would say. Let's just work around where that light section is this light section here. So I'm just going to avoid that section, but generally add circular motions everywhere else. And then let's continue filling in down the bottom, as well. So this is already starting to be a bit clearer on what is needing to go where. Let's now also add some shading on the left hand side of this moon. So I want to be filling in the other line around that very light outline of this moon shape, and then I'm going to shade in everything to the left of that line. This section actually will need to be a lot darker than this, but we can add that in a second. But now I just want to get a good idea on what's going where before I move on to a darker pencil. So let's move on now to a darker brown, and this pencil is called walnut brown. This is the darkest brown that I have in my set. I don't think it's hugely dark, but it is a lot darker than what we have here at the moment. And I can use this to add in all of the main shading on the brooch. So you can see, there's a lot of dark brown, particularly down this left hand side here, a little bit around here. There's obviously this dark line just above that light line. All around the bottom, and generally this whole left hand section looks very dark. So there is quite a lot of shading that I'm needing to build up here. But again, note that I'm working lightly and in circular motions, and I can just gradually build up all of these colors until I think it's looking right. So also add this color in around this left hand side. As I mentioned, this whole area needs to be a lot darker. But adding in this darker color is making that nice lighter color around the moon look much more prominent. From here, I'm now happy with that brooch section. I think the bow and the brooch are all looking kind of a similar level. They've got the lights and the mid tones marked in and those main shapes marked in. Let's now go through again and really build up the contrast. So for the rest of this chapter, I'm going to use the black pencil, and what I'm now going to do is build up this color in all of the darkest areas. So actually, generally on this drawing, a lot of the drawing is very dark. So we are going to need to build up a reasonable amount of this color. Start in the same way that I did before by building up on this section here. So where we added in this very dark patch around this loop, let's add some more of this color over here and towards the bottom, as well. You'll see that we are literally doing the exact same thing, but this is just adding it in darker. Once I'm happy with this first section, I can then start building up some of the black on this next section. I want a lot of the darker folds here to be a lot more prominent than what they are at the moment. So let's go over. I can see all of the shapes I've marked in, so this is much easier this time because I'm going over what I've already added. It's very much the same as what we did earlier. Now, as I start building up this color, some of the green will get a little bit lost. It kind of is still showing through the black, but it's certainly not looking as prominent as it once was, but that's okay. What we're going to do is build up all of the contrast. Sure that we've got all of these darkest areas in the right place, and then we can start adjusting the color, building up that green a bit more, and generally making the whole drawing look more vibrant and colorful. So let's go over these very prominent folds that you can see on the ribbon down here. And I'm just really focusing on trying to make sure that there's no particularly harsh edges to the black. So where the edge of this ribbon needs to fade out into the rest of the ribbon, I'm just trying to make that transition that gradient as smooth as possible. Can't stress how much easier this is because I've already marked in a lot of these shapes, I'm just going over what we did in the earlier section of this chapter. Which is why I am now going through this reasonably quickly because it is exactly the same as what we did before. So once again, go over those lines around the bow here. And actually, I can add a little bit of extra careful detail with this black pencil. Just want to make sure that around the edge of this brooch, it is really nice and dark. That's going to help those light lines that we drew in a second ago look much nicer and brighter. So it's a very dark kind of triangle down here, I want to make sure that I'm marking that in. And then I can start shading in, particularly around the top and bottom of this central section, the central knot here, because those are the areas that need to be much darker. Let's fill in the lines on this central part here, going over the lines that I added with the green. So as I say, it's very easy to see where these lines need to go and then I can shade from there. So I'm going to keep working from the right here to the left. So let's go over on the brooch in the middle here anywhere that needs to be much darker. Again, I think the black can look quite harsh, particularly going over somewhere like this. But what we can do is put some of the brown over the top of this black a bit later, and it will calm down that black and make it look a little bit less harsh. So although it looks quite a lot at the moment, it will tone down as we work through. Let's finally go over the folds on the left hand side here, this section of ribbon. So going over the main fold. I'm going to add quite a lot of shading near where the brooches. That needs to have quite a deep shadow around here. And then an area that we're going to need to build quite a lot of color on is where the green and the purple are meet. Can see how dark it is both here and here. Let's build up quite a lot of color on this area and kind of fade it into the purple a little bit. I will build up more of this color later. But for now, I just want to get an idea on where this darker section needs to be. So by the end of this chapter, you should have, actually, a pretty clear looking bow and brooch. But I think these areas now look quite odd in comparison to the rest of the hat. They look much darker and more detailed. And in the next section, we're going to need to get the rest of the hat to that same level. Just add a few little extra bits of shading along here, make this a little bit darker, and then that's it for this section. 8. Build up the Contrast on the Hat: Now that the bow is looking much darker and richer, I want to do the same to the rest of the hat. So I'm only going to use the black pencil for the whole of this section, and I am going to work my way around the hats, filling in any area that I think needs to be particularly dark. So let's start off right by the bow. And there is such a deep shadow all around here and up to around here. I'm going to start off by filling this area in. So as usual, I want to go around the edge of this section, marking where the edges need to be so you can see I've gone around the edge of the brooch. I want to be filling this in in the same way that I have before. So I'm still working in circular motions. I'm holding the pencil further back. You'll see that with this pencil, it's quite a short pencil, so I'm using something here called a pencil extender. This means that I can still comfortably use this pencil, even though it's quite small, and actually, I'll be able to use it until it's a very tiny pencil. Just working again in circular motions, building up the color all around here, and it's going to make a lot more sense next to the bow once the hat's up to a similar level. So really, the goal of this is to try and get the contrast of the hat to match the bow at the moment, the bow looks very dark, it looks a lot more detailed than the rest of the picture. This is all made a lot easier than it would otherwise be because a lot of the shapes that we're marking in in this chapter have already been marked in with that indigo blue that we used a little while ago. So it's quite clear really what needs to go where. So once I've worked around that first section, you can see me starting to add in some of the shapes just above this area. Sometimes I think it helps to look from a little bit further away. If I'm really zoomed in, I think it's harder to see some of these different patches. I can see a line that's going up here and a line along here. I want to add that in, and then I can start adding some of the darker shading that is generally around the edge of the ribbon here. On the most part, with this hat, I'm noticing that it's lighter on the right. The main areas where we need to build up, a lot of color is generally around here, around here. And that's where I'm really going to want to build up that contrast. Let's add in a nice crisp line around the edge of the ribbon and then start shading up to that line. My general plan here is to start shading at the bottom of this section next to the ribbon and then I'm going to work from here up and then I'm going to finish the bottom of the hat. I think it makes most sense to start filling in the shading around the area that we already have the black, so around the ribbon, rather than just starting at the top and working down. Once I've got this section around the very edge of the ribbon sorted, I'm going to start working my way up. Again, I just want to be following the patches that I can see here and that I've already marked in with the dark indigo pencil. You can see how gradually I can build up the color by following all the methods that we've been talking about. So let's go through this a little bit faster now because it is going to be so similar to what we did with that dark indigo. To particularly focus on building up a lot of the shading on this dark triangle. So, as I've mentioned a few times, there's a few triangles along the hat and generally along here that are just much darker, I would say, than the rest of the hats. As you can see, I've already gone back over that first triangle. We will build up some more darker color there in a second. Just add quite a nice and crisp line along the edge of the hat. There's a dark line around the edge. It is a little bit fluffy. I'm not going to worry about that right now. But it's darker around the edge, then it gets a bit lighter for the purple, and then it's darker again closer to the right. So I'll add in that darker line around the edge here, and that's going to really help give some firm edges to the shapes. It's going to help make the hat stand out a bit better on the back. Find the more of this black that I build up, the more that the purple we added in looks very muted. I feel like you can barely see the purple where it's next to the black, but that's okay. We can build up a lot of those brighter colors in the next few sections. Now, as I say, I'm going through this chapter reasonably quickly, but filling in all of the black on the hat has taken about 45 minutes, so it's not hugely time consuming, but it's not a fast process. I'm genuinely happy with a lot of the hat towards the bottom. Let's build up this triangle, as I mentioned, to make it a bit darker. Now, just like I said in the last chapter, if I want an area to be darker, I just want to go over it more times with the same color rather than press much firmer. So you can see I'm going back over this section that I will want to be really dark. And you can see I keep going over the same areas over and over again to build up more of the color. Now, don't worry that it looks quite patchy at the moment. That will become less so as we build more colors up. To begin with, in comparison to the lighter areas, looks very patchy. Add a little bit of detail to the right hand side, as well, although I don't need to add a huge amount on this right side with the black because so much of what's along here needs to be so much lighter. And then I can keep working my way up. So you can see I'm still going along both sides, adding this darker outline. I can see it on both sides. And then I can start going over some of the shapes that I can see along here as well. I say, it is literally a case of going over everything we did with the blue but just making it darker. Now, the blue in some areas is still showing through. It might need to be made a bit more prominent in some areas later. But I do think that adding it underneath the black is making the whole thing look much richer and more interesting, or it certainly will do by the end. So as I work along and up here, I'm going along some of these folds. So again, you can see how prominent and dark it is, particularly around the edge of this section and the same along here and up here and on the tip of the build up a lot more of the color here. The goal isn't to make this area look jet black. I just want it to be much darker than what it is at the moment. And I'm just going to mark in very clearly the edge of the hat, the end of the hat here, really looking at where the kind of lumps and bumps are in this section. You can see me marking in those shapes and then shading up from that line. And then I'm going to go back over these same areas to make some parts a little bit darker again. That's generally the top of the hat looking better. Obviously still needs a lot more color added, but I think the main lights and darks are in, and it's kind of matching the bow section much better. Let's just work down and really build up some of these darker areas a bit more. So going over those darker triangles that I mentioned, making these darker. So you can see I'm just working down the hat, making some of the areas a bit darker. And we will build on this further as we go. I certainly don't think this section of the hat is done at this. Once I'm happy with this top section, let's move on to the bottom of the hat. So I'm once again focusing on going around the brooch to begin with. There's a lot of dark shadows around here. I have talked about them before when we were doing the blue again. But I would say that the darkest shadowed areas is around the underside of the brooch and to the left of the ribbon tails that are coming. Let's add a lot of shading all along here. And then once I've generally marked this section in, I can then start smoothing out the edges and blending it a bit better into the rest of the hat. Going all around the edge of the ribbon. I want to build up quite a lot of shading over on this left hand side. So around here, again, you can see how much the color that we had before with the purple has been lost. Where we've added in now a much darker colors just less obvious where the purple is, so we will need to build up a lot more of this purple in the next few sections. That's okay. We'll gradually add to these colors. So let's just add a bit more shading on the ribbon, particularly this darker section here. I added a little bit, but when I add some more of the black around this section, you can start to see how much more black we need to add. And then I can start adding some extra shading on the hat. So, generally speaking, a lot of the hat, I don't think needs that darker shading sort of towards the middle. The main areas that need attention is, as I mentioned, around the brooch and around the tails of the ribbon, but also around the bottom edge of the hat. Let's go over these lines that we added in before, make them a lot more prominent and generally tidy up, along with the stitching, as well. And then I feel like the main hat kind of template is now looking pretty clear. What the hat is missing is a lot more of the mid tones, maybe some details on the lighter areas as well. But more than anything, it's missing color. It's missing the purple sections, for example, as well as a lot of the brightness on the green. So we can start adding that in and building that up a lot more in the next few chapters. But the important area of building up the contrast is now looking a lot better. Just tidy up and smooth out this area along here, make this a little bit less abrupt. And then that is it for this chapter. 9. Brighten up the Colours: So now we've got the general template of the hats. Let's start brightening up some of their underlying colors. I'm not worrying at this point about making the black darker. We will have to add a lot more black into this. I want to look at all of the maybe slightly more obscure colors, the general colors that need brightening up. So let's start off by drawing in this purple reflection down the left hand side. As I mentioned, we put this color in before, we added some purple in before. But now the extra colors like the black has been added in. It's not looking bright enough. So this is actually a different purple to the purple I used before. The last one was a little bit more on the blue side. I actually think we need at this point, a bit more of a purple. So, this is the purple violet pencil. I think it is the most sort of standard purple that I have in my set. And I'm just putting a light layer of this color down pretty much the whole left hand side, anywhere where I want to see some of this purple. To go along some of these lighter lines all along here. But I also want to add some of the purple to the area around the top. So this little light patch here, I think, should have a little bit of a purple tinge to it. And I also want to have a little bit of purple around this top section here. We have added purple in here already. But as I said, I think it looks too light now in comparison to some of the other colors that have been added. Now, it's the same as we've already been doing. I still want to be pressing lightly with this color. I still want to be working in circular motions because I still want this to go down as smoothly as possible. And I'm still working with a nice and sharp pencil. And already, I think that looks a bit better, particularly at the top. It just has a bit more of an interesting color up. Also add a little bit of the purple around some of these lighter lines. Again, we've added this in here before. I just want to add a bit more. So particularly along the edge of this darker section. And then I'm going to add some of the purple on the left of the ribbon here, making sure that I get a really nice crisp line along that left hand side. So I'm drawing in the line first and then making some nice light circular motions from that line to kind of add some of the extra purple generally on the left hand side of this ribbon. I am adding this color a little bit over that darker section towards the middle where we added the extra shading on the ribbon. But I'm going to tweak all of that a little bit later. So as I'm happy with the top section, I want to do the same down the bottom of the ribbon here, and I think already this purple is looking a lot brighter. It's looking much better. Let's also add some of this purple to this area on the left, down the bottom of the hat here. So now, for every color that I add in, I think it's going to make the next color that we need to add look a bit more obvious. So once I've added in this purple, I can think about what the next most obvious color that's missing is from here. Actually, I'm going to switch on to the other kind of purply tone. So still on the same idea, I think it did need to be more of a pinky purple. But now I want to mix that color with the purple I used at the beginning, that's slightly more blue purple. So I'm going to add this color over the top, add some light shading over the left hand side of the ribbon here. I'm going to work my way up just adding a slight little hint of this more bluey purple color. So mixing these two colors together to brighten up this left side even more. I think because it's generally speaking, a reasonably plain black hat, if we don't add in these more interesting areas of light and really make these look as vibrant as they look in the reference photo, we'll end up with quite a kind of boring or not as interesting as it should be draw I really want to make sure that where there's areas like this that do need to be quite nice and bright and colorful, that I am building up a decent amount of the pencil and blending these colors together so that it looks really nice and vibrant. So it's going all along the areas at the top. I'm going over everything that I built up a second ago. So going all along this area towards the tip of the hat, I do feel like the more colors that I build up over the top of what I've got here, the more it does show that we're going to have to build up a lot more black on this hat, but that's okay. We can look at doing that in the next section. I will go over these areas here where the black is just to give it that little extra bit of depth, just like we talked about earlier on in the drawing. It's going to be more interesting than if I didn't put this blue here. And then I don't want to forget to add some of this color down the bottom here as well. So as I say, I'm going over everywhere where I added that more standard purple and just mixing the colors together to make this slightly more bluey purple. I'm happy with the purple section down the left hand side. Let's think about any colors that need adding down the right. And you'll see all along here there is this other kind of brown color that's showing through through that black. So around this side and along here is more of that purple. This is a kind of still a little bit ready, purply, brown, I would say. It's kind of got a similar tone here to the maybe gold tones in the brooch, it looks to me. So I'm going to add a very small amount of the raw umber to start with just to give a hint of that kind of gold look from the brooch. I feel like this is the underlying color underneath all of the black that's there. And you can see how lightly I'm building this up. I want to add a hint of this color. I don't want it to be really, really prominent. But adding colors like this is the sort of thing that's going to add all of that extra interest and variety at the very end of the drawing. I'm also going to add a little bit of this color just under here. I don't need to add a huge amount onto the hat itself. Just a little bit on this section. I don't want to go adding it over the purple on the left hand side because they're kind of mixed together to make brown. So I'm happy with this color. I can think about the next color that's missing. I do think it has a little hint of purple to this, as well, maybe slightly more on the red side. So let's use the red violet pencil, which is kind of rich reddy purple, I guess, but mixed with the raw umber, it's making a very interesting and rich color that I think kind of matches reasonably well that undertone of the hat. I think it can be tricky to see some of these colors, but if you can see a hint of it, even if it seems a bit peculiar, I think you should add that in. Once we build up all the contrast and all of that black over the top of this section, it won't look as bright and colorful as it does at the moment. It will make a lot more sense. So you can see me just smoothing this color out towards the edge. And then what I add onto the top section, I want to be adding the same to the bottom of just going to add a little bit along here as well. With circular motions, again, to lightly build up some of this color, and it just mixes really well, I think, with that raw umber and creates a bit more of an interesting color underneath what will be all of that black. So you can see, I've built up a reasonable amount of the color nice and lightly, and I'm just fading it out. I don't want to go over that area on the left. I don't want to adjust the purple. I just want them to kind of almost meet on this bottom section. So add a little bit round here because it does have a hint of this color on this section of the hat as well. And then I once again want to be thinking about the most obvious color that's missing. So I'm looking at the very, very light area between these two sections, between that purple and the more reddy brown on the right. And all along this section, all along here, I feel like it's got quite a kind of subtle blue. It's not a really bright and colorful blue. It's kind of a tone down blue, I guess. I'm doing is adding a really nice and light layer of the dark indigo. This is a pencil that we used right at the very beginning. I've said a lot of times that I can see some blue underneath all of the different colors in the hat. What I want to use this color for is to add a bit more of a hint of that blue, but also just generally kind of tone down the light areas. So at the moment, we've got this very light strip running through the middle of the hat. We need to make it a little bit darker, have a darker kind of foundation that we're then in the next chapter, going to build up all of the black. When we add the black on, at the end, that's where the whole hat is going to come together. We need to build up all of these underlying colors so that we're not trying to build black on top of too light of a base. So you can see how much this blue is just toning down those light areas. I am leaving that very light line that kind of zig zags through the middle of the hat. I'm avoiding that for now. We will tone that down in the future. But for now, I want to focus on some of the areas around this line. I think the most important thing, though, is to remember that we're not building up loads of the color. I don't want to create a really harsh color. I just want to generally tone down the actually, I am going to add a little bit of this color over this reddish brown on the right hand side to tone that down a tiny bit. I think that's looking much better, and it's kind of matching the rest of the hat. You can still see the colors that we built up. They're just not as rich as they were. They're mixed with this blue to tone it down. So it also adds some of this blue towards the bottom of the hat. It's amazing because you think where you're adding in a blue, it's going to look really bright and vibrant, but it doesn't because we're building up this light layer. It's not a really bright and vibrant blue anyway. But also, we're adding such light layers that it's not going to create a really vibrant color just by adding a small amount of this color. So I'm particularly adding this blue here towards the bottom of the section, and then just slightly adding a little bit higher up at the bottom of the hat here. The main goal is to generally tone down how light the black of the hat looks, the hat it. I'm generally happy with the hat. Let's take a minute to focus on brightening up the bow and that ribbon. So I have already built up quite a lot of greens and other colors on here. What I now want to do is add more. So I'm going back to the dark green, the same dark green that I used before, and I'm going to do exactly the same process, but I'm just going to focus on making the mid tone, particularly colors a bit brighter and a bit richer. So I'm going to work through this just like I did before, going through it one section at a time. So starting off on the loop of the bow here. Going over any area that I think needs to be made darker. Generally speaking, I think at the moment, the bow looks very, very light. So I can go back over all of the shapes that I added before, add in this slightly richer green, going over all of those darker areas and just adding more. I think this is the benefit of building up the color slowly and gradually. We can add a little bit, and then once we've changed some of the other colors surrounding the section, it becomes quite clear where you then need to add more. Once again, don't forget to frequently sharpen your pencil as you're doing this. It is key to creating a really lovely and smooth color rather than creating something that's going to look scratchy. I'm happy with that section of the bow, I can then move on to the knot along here and making this darker and a richer green. So it is a time consuming process. It's exactly the same as we've done before, though. We are literally just adding more. I do think adding this green over the top of what we've already got maybe slightly tones down the contrast, so we can adjust that in the next chapter, as well. But it is making this bow have a much richer color to it. Go all along here. Now, you'll see that I am starting on some of the darker areas to use more like a medium pressure rather than a really light pressure. The more color that I build up, the more I have to start pressing a little bit harder just so the color keeps building up. But I would like to stress that I am absolutely not pressing hard. I don't want to be going through here pressing full force because it will end up making a really scratchy look again. Let's go over these sections of the ribbon here. So this is probably the vast majority of this section, this chapter is filling in the green, and I've gone through it reasonably quickly because it is exactly the same as what we've already done. You can see quite quickly how much darker and richer this can end up looking. So once I'm happy with this green, when I'm happy with the bow, I want to be thinking about if there's any other colors excluding black that I think the drawing would benefit. Now that I've added in that dark green, I now think the lighter green sections are kind of looking a little bit too light. I think they've lost a lot of that green that we had at the very beginning. So on these lighter sections, I think it's more like a bluish green rather than just a green. So let's add in some more of this color. This is the deep cobalt green to just slightly brighten this area up. So I'm just going over some of these lighter areas, and it's just toning it down, removing some of that very bright lightness and adding a little hint of this bluy green. See, it's not overpowering. It's not washing out everything that we've already added in. It's just toning down those light areas and adding a little hint of extra color. So let's do the same to the ribbon on the left hand side. I want to go over the whole ribbon. And now let's think about the most obvious color that's missing from here. So I now want to do is start to blend everything together and have a slightly softer, more solid base on the hat. So I'm actually going to go back to the darker cold gray that I used a little bit earlier to add a light covering of this color over everything. What this is going to do is not only tone down a lot of the colors that I've added in already, but also generally smooth everything out. And I'm just wanting to create a really good backbone for me in the next chapter to make all of the black areas a lot darker. So I'm just going over the top of everything that I've built up here. You can still see all of the patchiness that I've already built up. But also it still shows, but it looks smoother, as well. I can go a little bit onto the purple section at the top up here. It also wants to be going down generally around that light wiggly line towards the middle. So you can see it's just giving a much more solid and nicer color that we'll be able to work on. So I want to keep working my way down the hat, generally smoothing out a lot of the areas that we've built up, as well as toning it down, and then do exactly the same on the bottom of the hat. So if you think about where this drawing was at the beginning of this chapter, it's looking so much better. We've got a much more solid color, and we'll be able to build so much more on top of here in the next chapter as well. Once we're using this color all over the purple on the left hand side, it's so important to see that this is really smoothing everything out, but it's not taking away all of that purple that I've added in. You can very much still see it. Now, before I move on from this color, I'm also actually going to mark in all of the shadows. We haven't got the shadows marked in anything at the moment, but that's really going to help make the hat look like it's sitting on something. So we've got a little shadow showing along here, sort of coming down and then along. There's also a little shadow coming on here, and then there's a line going all the way around the edge and then coming in about here. And it's also worth noting how much purple there is on this left hand side. There is a lighter shadow than coming around this left hand side and fading out here. So I want to be marking this in to start with this darker, cool gray. We can add to this and add to the depth a lot, though, in the next chapter. I just want to get the general shadows and where they're going marked. I want to forget to go around this left hand side, as well. And then, as I say, for every color that I add, I think it makes the next color that is missing look more obvious. So still forgetting about the black. We're not doing that in this chapter. I'm going to go back to the purple instead. So starting off going back to the sort of brighter purple. Purple violet pencil. And as I mentioned, there is some purple on the shadow down here, so let's add that in. Only really around this left hand side. And then, actually, I'm going to go back to the more purple blue pencil and make this whole left hand side look more vibrant again. So I'm really wanting to mark in the lights and darks on the left hand side of the hat on the ribbon here, as well as just brightening up all of this left side. So now that I've built up a lot of the gray elsewhere on the hat, I think it shows that this area on the left does need to be brighter. So I can work my way up the hat in exactly the same way as I have done before. At this point, I feel like all of the foundation on the hat has been laid. It's all been built up really nicely. The only thing now that I think is missing is the black. It needs to be so much darker than what we've got at the moment. In fact, a lot of the black that was added in in the last chapter looks a bit muted now. So in the next chapter, we can think about darkening all of that further. 10. Increase Contrast and Add Final Details: Let's focus now on adding all of the darker areas in, again, much more prominently and generally finishing off this drawing. So for the vast majority of this chapter, I'm going to use the black pencil. I'm going to start at the top and work my way down. So, as I've mentioned a few times, a lot of these folds towards the top are really, very dark, particularly around the edge of the fold. So you can see I'm starting off. Using, I would say, a medium pressure now to really block in this focusing to begin with on going around the edge. I can then use circular motions in exactly the same way as I have been before to gradually build up this color. And I'm just focusing on looking at this little section here to begin with. So this little section in here, I can see that it needs to be pretty much completely jet black, but particularly along this line. I want to keep it a little bit lighter around here where there's some purple showing through. And I want to have all of these lines along the top marked in nice and dark, but also fading out around see me going over all of these areas with these circular motions to block in this section. And what we're essentially going to do is focus on one little area at a time, making the area darker where necessary, going over the whole of the drawing. So you can see on that first section how it now looks like a nice solid block of color, and that's because we've built up this color with the black, nice and smoothly, but also so much color has been built up underneath this section. All of those base layers we were building up not only in the last chapter, but throughout the whole drawing have led to a really lovely solid color. Let's work up into this next section on this area here. It's again, very dark, particularly on the bottom section. It's not so dark along the top, and it's very dark around the edges, I would say. And then I can move on to the next section. So towards the top of the hat, I would say this whole top section is all pretty dark except for maybe one little light pat, which we have drawn in before. You can see me gradually building up this color with circular motions, gradually building up the contrast, particularly with a drawing like this where it is so dark, so much of it is black. Contrast is going to be the key to this looking nice and realistic. Now, I want to make sure that I'm really careful when going around the edges. I want to maybe slightly adjust some of the shapes around the tip of the hat here if I think they're not looking quite right. And then on the most part, on this top section, I really just need to block it in. As I say, I would say I'm using a medium pressure now on particularly areas where it does need to be a solid block of black, like up the top. Let's start working down the top side. So there's a very prominent black line around. I've talked about it before. I would say the whole edge of the hat. I want to draw in that prominent line and then shade out from that point. So you can see me just lightly shading to make it a little bit less harsh. And then the very top of this hat, I now think is looking pretty good. Let's just keep working down and working section by section. As I say, this is all made a lot easier because a lot of these shapes and sections have already been marked in. I've already marked in this very dark section that I'm starting to fill in here, for example. I want to be following a lot of the curves that I've already marked in, but making sure that I'm keeping nice and soft edges, I'm fading out nicely from these darker patches. I'll do that over the whole of this patch. So as I say, it's very similar to what we've already been doing. So much of this has been done. We're just needing to add in more, more of the dark, particularly more of this black to build up that contrast and smooth everything out. Again, I want to have a really nice solid line around the outside of the hat. So I'm just making sure to mark this in with a really nice and sharp pencil. Going the whole way down, it's down both the left and the right hand side. Now, it is worth mentioning that because I'm filling in so much black here, it is making the pencil smudge a little bit more than it normally would just because I'm working with such a dark color. Now, you can either lean on something like tracing paper while you're doing that. I'm not leaning on anything. I just at the end, I'm going to go around with an eraser and tidy up any smudge. They actually probably look more obvious in real life than they do on camera. But as I say, you can either lean on something to protect the paper or go around with an eraser at the end. Either is fine. So starting off here by going all the way down the left hand side, particularly that very dark left hand side, there is so much of the black that needs building up here, and it is very time consuming. I'm trying to go through it reasonably quickly because it is the same process that we've already done. And once I'm happy with this very dark left hand side, we can then start building up the right hand side, which is a bit more textured, but also less dark. Just build up some of the shapes here as well. I think all of the really dark areas are probably marked in now, and I think the left hand side of certainly the top section of the hat is now looking really good. I just want to start adjusting some of the shapes and just gradually building up the color a bit more in this section, for example, which isn't as dark, but it is still much darker than what I've got at the moment. Now start focusing on the right hand side, and I'm going to start at the top and work my way down. Once again, I want to be approaching this one section at a time. So I want to look at this area here, for example, to the left of that squiggly line and look at any darker patches that I need to be adding in. These are very much the same patches that we've already been adding. I'm just going to go over them again, make them more prominent again, and generally add extra shading on this right hand side to make the hat look like a patchy, kind of black gray color. So you can see me going over all of the patches that we've already added and then generally adding some light shading around those patches so that they are not looking as harsh. But it's important to keep these kind of patchy shapes because that is very much the material of the hat and how the hat looks. See that I've been shading in all of these little kind of patches, and I can then go over the top of them and add general shading over the top to make the whole thing darker. You can see how important it was to build up all of those underlying colors in the last section before we did this because it would look really odd if we tried to fill in all of the black before we had more of the base layer underneath. Keep going with these patches around the bottom here. I feel like again, for every patch that I add in, it makes the next section a bit more obvious on what I need to add in. So it might be that I need to keep working my way over some of the higher up sections of the hat. Once I've added in this bottom section, it might become a bit more obvious that I need to add more shading. It's particularly important that I add enough black around that moon brooch, because it generally does have a lot of contrast around. Is what's helping the lightness of the moon stand out. So you can see I'm just gradually building it up going over the same area again and again until I think the top half of the hat looks right. It looks dark enough, but also textured enough that it matches the reference photo. I do think it's worth saying that you don't necessarily expect it to match the reference photo perfectly. It is quite a tricky texture, and we don't expect to get all of these patches in exactly the right place. But if I think it's looking about the same as the reference photo, that's good. That's what I'm going. Notice that I have toned down that light zig zag a lot because I think it was looking way too light in comparison to the rest of this section at the top. So now I'm happy with the top of the hat. Let's keep working our way down. So I now want to focus on making the darker areas of the ribbon look much darker. So these are the same areas that I've already marked in. But I need to build up more of the color. They're not looking dark enough. So the fold on the ribbon isn't looking rich enough black, especially now that I've done the top section. Also want to add there's some pretty prominent lines around the left hand side of the ribbon here. So let's go over this and generally all of these folds around the bottom, as well. And then I really want to make this patch towards the middle much darker. So I'm going over it in the same way as I did over the rest of the hat, slightly overlapping that purple section, so it blends a bit better. But this section towards the middle of the ribbon needs to be so much darker than what I've got at the moment. It's looking way too light right now. And you can see how just building up over the section over and over again has made a huge difference to this part of the ribbon. It looks so much darker, richer, and it matches the rest of the hat much better. So let's work towards the left. And I want to go over all of these folds on the ribbon that should be really dark but are not looking dark enough. Again, this is all made reasonably simple because I've built up so much of this already. We're just doing the same as we've already done. Just adding more. Start to go over all of these very prominent curves and lines on the left hand side of this section before then moving on to the rest of the ribbon. I think this is the third time now that I've built up these same shadows. And hopefully this demonstrates how important it is to be layering these colors on top of each other so that they do look nice and dark, how it takes more than just one color to add the richness that we need to an area like this. Once I'm happy with the ribbon, I want to be building up the black on the bottom section as well. So going over the shadow once again to the left of the ribbon tails here, making sure that I do blend out around the edge. I don't want to have a really harsh line. And then I generally need to build up a lot more black down the bottom, as well. But I think the main areas that need to be really jet black, where I need to build up a lot of color is generally under that brooch and to the left of that ribbon. I'm just going to build this up in the same way that I did before. I want more down the bottom. Need to build up too much over the purple section on the left because that's generally a lot lighter than the right hand side. But there is a really dark patch. You can see I've added in on the very left hand side. Honestly, throughout this whole process, the most important thing is to keep sharpening your pencil. You will find that you'll go through quite a lot of black for It's obviously the main key color of this hat. But it is well worth it to get that contrast looking right. Now, once I'm generally happy with the shading on the bottom half of the hat, I also want to just work around the seam of the hat here, making this a lot richer, as well. So I've already got the edges, these lines marked in on the hat, but it's not looking dark enough right now. I want to go over these lines and make them a lot more prominent. As I've got this black pencil, there's also a lot of extra shading that needs adding to the shadow along here. You'll see that we've got at the moment, just it's a reasonably light really cold gray. Although it is the darker cold gray in the set, it's not that dark of a color. And particularly around the outline of the shadow, I think it needs to be a lot darker. So I'm building up some of this black pencil. All around the outside here to make it darker. I also want to be building up a bit more of the black on these shadows here. And it's important to note where the darker areas are on these shadows. It's actually generally only down the bottom because of how the ribbon is making the shadow. And then I'm just going to build up and add a lot of extra black on the ribbon. So we're starting to get to the point now where I think the contrast is looking right on this drawing, or it's certainly looking very close. We've gone over the whole thing again with the I think helps at this point is to take a step back and compare the drawing to the reference photo, really look at what's here. So actually, I think that the bottom of the hat is not still looking dark enough. I'm going to build up more of this color along the bottom here, just lightly going over this whole area, keeping all of the general patchiness that I've added in, but just making the whole thing darker. Actually, before I carry on, I'm just going to use an eraser for a minute to just tidy up around those edges. Like I said. If you find that you've smudged your drawing, like how I feel I have, I do think it helps to just go over here. Look at how much brighter the paper looks for just tidying up. You can do this at the very end if you'd prefer. But, you can see that it's just lifting up a little bit of the smudges that I've made on here and making a much nicer and cleaner background. You don't have to use a party eraser for this like I am. Any eraser will be fine just to clean that up. I'm going to just take a minute to focus on the brooch again. So I think now that all of the contrast has been built up around here, this area is looking too light. I think it would be too dark to add all of the shading in with the black pencil. So starting off using these exactly the same colors that I used before, this is the worn up brown, that quite dark brown. To just go around the edges of the brooch, make this look a little bit deeper. Then moving on to the raw amber to add that kind of gold look to here. So just lightly going over the top of here with these light circular motions again to add a little hint of this color anywhere that has that gold style. Before then switching back to the black, and I'm going to add some more down the bottom here. So you can see I just need to keep going over the same areas, gradually building up more of the color until I think it's looking right. Think about adding in some absolute final tweaks now and I'm once again looking at the purple section. I think the purple is now looking too purple and we need to make it a bit more of a blue. I'm actually going to use the Tharlo blue to just go over all of the purple sections to add a little bit more vibrant and brighter blue tone. I still think it has a certain hint of purple to it. I just think it matches that reference photo a little bit better. I'm going to work with my whole way up and this also helps blend out any final bits on this left hand side. Want to forget to add a little bit of blue down the bottom here, and then that is the end of the tutorial. I hope you've enjoyed this Halloween style drawing, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. 11. Summary: That is the end of the drawing. I do hope that you've enjoyed drawing this witch's hat, and hopefully you see that if you break it down into smaller sections, it's actually not as tricky as you might expect. Now, don't forget if you do want to create another Halloween drawing, check out my pumpkin class. I've added a link into the description. And don't forget to upload your drawing into the class projects. I would love to see what you've done. If you've enjoyed this course, please do leave a review, and I look forward to seeing you in the next class.