How to Draw Fur in Colored Pencil

1. How to Draw Fur in Colored Pencil Introduction: Hi, my name is Laura Davis. I'm a self-taught artist and I mostly focus in pastel and colored pencils, but I sometimes do charcoal or graphite as well. I decided to make this how to draw first series because I wanted to help people who are either just learning or looking to improve their art. And I want it to be able to focus on small things that you can change, that can really create a lot more depth and realism in your art. So this course is how to draw for in colored pencil and we're going to be working on this little drawing. You may notice it's very small. And the reason for that is that colored pencil is a pretty slow medium. And I want it to be able to show you a full drawing that was not spit up a ton. And I really want to be able to walk you through it without it taking hours and hours and hours. So we're just gonna do this small little piece for this one. But I'm really going to go step-by-step for you. It's all in real time and hopefully it will still help you to get depth and a little bit more realism in your art. If you are interested in learning how to draw for an other mediums, I already have a course in how to draw for in graphite and how to draw for in charcoal. I'm also working on one in how to drop for in pastel, which will be up soon hopefully. For this course. I have listed in the course description all of the pencils that I use, but you are more than welcome to use whatever colored pencil brand you already own and just try to match the colors as close as you can. It doesn't have to be exactly the same. If you would like to draw along with me and draw this little one as well, I would love to see that and you can post it in the class project. You are also more than welcome to post a different for drawing in the course project for me and anybody else in the class to see if you need any help along the way. And you'd like to post your work in progress photos there. You can absolutely do that as well. And I can comment there and give you tips if you need them. Now, let's get into the lesson. 2. How to Draw Fur in Colored Pencil Materials: So for this colored pencil piece, I use the Strathmore Bristol Smooth paper. You can use whatever paper that you prefer to use for colored pencil. That's just the one that I picked. And I used a mix of fabric, castle and Karen dash luminance pencils. I have them listed in the course description, but I will also name them as we're working so you can know exactly which one I'm using at which time. I also used for this a mono eraser to get some of the finer lines. And then I also used a crafting knife. You can use anything that is a little bit of a bleed or anything that will scrape away the colored pencil. Then I also have this mop brush that I use just to get away the little pieces of colored pencil that you just get sometimes as you're working. So because of the time it takes to do colored pencil, I decided to do just a small portion of this reference photo. That way I can do it all in real-time for you, but it's still a relatively short lesson. If I were to do a larger section of this, it would end up being much more time than I'd like it to be. And I just wanted to make sure that we could. So keep this tutorial in real time so you can see exactly how it's done, but then it's not taking you hours and hours to complete what? To complete the project. 3. How to Draw Fur in Colored Pencil Base Layers: So the first thing that we're gonna do here is we're gonna put in some of the darker background areas. First, I'm using the Karen dash, luminance, dark indigo. This is a very, very dark blue and I like to use this anytime I have black fur that has a cooler undertone, it helps to give you a lot more depth than if you were just using black. I really liked this one because it is so dark on its own that you don't have to add much black on top of it. And you still get that really dark rich color. So here I'm just using that dark indigo to put in some of the darker areas with colored pencil. The way that you have to work is in a way that's preserving the lighter portions except for one year using an eraser or the crafting knife that we will use at the end. You can't really put light colors on top of dark colors for colored pencils. So it's really important to preserve those areas that are going to be light. So what I'm doing here is going in and putting some of the dark areas, but I'm leaving any areas that will be light completely blank for now. One thing that's really important when you're working in colored pencil is to make sure that you're using a very light hand. You don't want to be pressing into the paper too much because you're going to ruin the tooth of the paper. And because colored pencil is a little bit of a slower medium, it's very easy to get to a point where like, Oh, I just want to get this to go faster so you press harder. But then what ends up happening with that is you end up ruining the paper and you can't add anymore on top of it. Then you, then you don't get as much depth of color that you would have if you used a lighter hand and kinda took it slow. So this probably seems pretty light in comparison to the reference photo. But like I said, it's all about building those layers. So here I'm just going in and putting some of those little bit darker areas just so I have a reference of where they're going to be. Then I started using the Karen dash, illuminance, burnt ocher, 10%. This is the color that I decided to go with for the basis of the lighter, for it is kind of hard to tell in this video, you should be able to see it a little bit better in the reference photo that I attached to the lesson. But it does have a slight pinky, orangey tone to it. It's not just white. So that's the reason why I decided to use this burnt ocher here. I forgot to mention this with the dark indigo. If you don't have these exact colors, that's fine. Just use whatever colors you have that are as close as possible. There are so many different brands of colored pencils out there. So if you don't have the exact same ones, that's okay. Just tried to get the closest color that you can to what I am using. With this burnt ocher. I'm going in and I'm still using a very light hand and I'm really just trying to fill in as much of that area as I can. I am using the pencil strokes to mimic differ. In some instances, when you're doing colored pencil, It's better to use small little circles so that you're really filling the tooth of the paper. When I'm doing for, I tried to always make sure that I'm following the directionality of the first. So that's what I'm trying to do here. You can see that it is slightly varied in the direction. So even though yes, they're technically somewhat straight lines, you don't want to make them all in the same direction. Now that I got my little basis there, I'm going back in and trying to get a little bit more depth. So I'm now using the Faber Castile black and going back over the places where I had put that dark indigo just to get a little bit more depth to that, to get it a little bit darker since it is meant to be black. Again, I'm still following that direction of the fur. You can see how I change the direction of my pencil strokes in different areas. And that's something that is going to really help your your first drawings look like for if you have all of the little pieces of firm going in the same direction, the same straight lines. It's not going to look very realistic because e.g. if you look at the reference photo, even if the general direction of the clumps are for going in the same direction, you can see that there are some that go off in a totally different direction or just curve a little bit. And that's how you get the look of many, many layers of first, you're going to get, say you're drawing a dog, It's going to look very fluffy. And that's how you can get that depth there is by making sure that you're varying pencil strokes so that they are not just the same up and down direction the entire time. I'm continuing here with the black. Like I said, very light hand. When it comes to colored pencils, you're really going to keep just doing lots and lots of layers. This is definitely not a medium for somebody who likes to rush through their art. So again, this is also why I did a smaller section so that we could still do a complete drawing here, but it's not going to take forever. Colored pencil definitely takes a lot of patients to get those layers. But the more layers you put on and the lighter you are with your pencil strokes, the more layers you'll be able to put in, the more depth you'll get, the more realistic it will look. So now that I put in a little bit more of that depth with the black, I went through over the lighter portion again with this is the Karen dash, illuminant, raw, umber ten per cent. And this is one that I like to use for this tan colored for a lot. As you can see, while I'm adding it, it's actually bringing out the color of the burnt ocher for that I had added previously. It mixes really well with the burnt umber and it helps give that tan tone to the four. This is the last of this first set of background layers of color. In the next lesson here we'll get into adding some more depth and making it look a little bit more detailed. 4. How to Draw Fur in Colored Pencil Adding Depth: Now that we have our background in there, we're going to go in and do a bit more of the detail. You're going to see a bit more depth happening in this lesson here. We're going to start with this as the Karen dash, luminance black. And this I'm going to use here to really darken up those areas that are truly black fur and not just darker portions of the firm. Again, I'm really trying to preserve the portions that are going to be lighter pieces of first. So I'm gonna do my best not to go into that section. I'm going to keep this in the darker sections of that for like I said, it's very hard to go back over a dark section with a light pencil. You won't get the same effect as if you leave it empty. The next color that I'm going to use to darken up some of the lighter spots. This one is the favorite Castile, burnt umber. And this one, I really like because it's dark, but if your light handed with it, it can add just a little pop of color onto the light areas and help it get a little bit more of the look of different layers of fur, as you can see in this one section, just by adding that little bit of color there, it looks like it's more layered on top of or on top of her. So just like with the previous lesson, I'm making sure to follow the direction of the fur and make sure that as much as possible, those pencil strokes that I'm putting in there are varied. They're not exactly the same up and down each one, even if they're following the same general direction, they're not exactly the same. This burnt this burnt umber is great for like I said, I'm darkening lighter areas without so you're getting the shadow in those darker areas, but you're not darkening them so much that they now look like a different color. So I just went and kind of went over all of those little shadows. And you can see just from that little bit, It's already starting to have more depth. Again, it's going to be lots of layering. So this is the fabric, Estelle, dark sepia. I'm putting a little bit more pressure here than I was previously to, again, darken up those areas of black. This is another one similar to the dark indigo where it's very close to black, but it does have a hint of color to it. So it is very good for dark areas that you really are black, but you want them to have a depth to them in a richness to them versus just being a flat black. So I went through again and put this in the darkest areas and then I am starting to drag it a little bit into the lighter areas. If you look at the reference photo, it has this portion where it goes from the black and it has a little bit of dark that's coming into the light section. So this is the perfect color to use for that because it's not actually black. It will allow you to bring that little bit of darkness in without making it too dark. Then I'm going back with the Karen dashed black again, just to really, really finished darkening this section underneath that is very black. This part obviously is going to need more layers than the lighter section just because two, with colored pencil to get an area to be very, very dark, like I was talking about before. You really want to have those layers. If you had a section that was meant to be a flat black, you could go in there on your first layer and press really hard with the pencil to get it really, really dark. The problem is that once you do that, you can't add anything else. So whenever I'm doing for I really want to make sure that there's a richness and the depth to that black. It doesn't just look straight flat black. Um, then I always try to do this layering technique. The color that I'm using now is the favorite Castile warm gray for I love the fabric castle gray series. For lighter for It's really great for making further that's almost white. Have a depth of where it's still keeping it, where your eyes still see it as white. But you're able to add the shadows to it. So I'm using this to Go from the shadows that I created with the burnt umber earlier and push that into the lighter areas a little bit. So you're getting the again, the feel like I'm saying this a lot but you're getting the different layers of the fur. If you think of a patch of firm like this, there's probably at least five or six different layers of an actual further on top of one another. And the only way that you can really portray that with your colored pencils is by having these different colors, these different layers of the different For happening. Now I'm using the burnt ocher ten per cent again, and I'm going to go over the lighter areas, leaving the brightest portions alone. So you can see I'm not going into every single light portion with this color this time, there's a few spots that I'm leaving without this burnt ocher just to preserve those super, super lighter portions. Now that I have a few layers of colored pencil on there, I am using a little bit more pressure. I'm still not pushing super hard into the paper, but if you use a little bit more pressure here, it will help you blend the colors. So I use that burnt ocher and the raw umber here to do that. I'm still following the direction of the fur. I'm still using those same first strokes with the pencil, but I'm pressing a little bit harder so that it's mixing those colors together and blending it a little bit. There are many different blending techniques that you can use with colored pencils. For this lesson. We're just using the pencils themselves to blend. So that's what I'm doing here. I'm just pushing the pencil into the colors that are already on there. And as you can see, it does help it blend out a little bit. So you do want to use a little bit more pressure, but still make sure that you're, if you're breaking your pencil point, then you're pushing too hard. You don't want to be pressing so hard that it's breaking the pencil because you will ruin the paper that way. I just continue to go through with those colors to blend. And that is the end of this lesson. You can see we got a lot more depth in this lesson that we had from the first one. And the next lesson is going to be showing you how to finish this up, give the final details to really get the realistic look of fur on the very top of this drawing. 5. How to Draw Fur in Colored Pencil Final Details: We're going to use my mono eraser to go back and pull out some of the highlights. Those portions of further I had actually left without color. I'm going to pull some of those out to get them even lighter than they are. And then I'm also going to go through and put in some tried to pull out some of the the pencil in areas where I think that there should be a lighter piece of forgoing in a certain direction. As you can see from this, most of the points that I'm doing with this are going in a different direction than the rest of the fur. I like to use the mono Zero eraser for things like this because you have a little bit more control with it. You can leave those areas completely blank if you wanted to. It really just depends on what the color for those areas should be. So in this case, those areas are light but they're not so light that they're the same color as the paper. The reason why I use the mono Zero eraser here is because it does pull out some of the colored pencil that you put down, but not all of it. So you still have some of that color underneath, which is making it so it's the color that I wanted it to be. So then I'm going through with the Karen dash, raw umber and putting in a few pencil strokes that are to the sides of some of the lighter portions. And by having a little bit of a darker color directly next to a lighter spot, it's going to make that lighter spot then look even lighter. So one of the biggest things for getting realism in any kind of art, whether it's colored pencil painting, charcoal, pencils, pastels, whatever it is, way to really get a more realistic look is contrast. So by having this little bit of a darker color right next to those lighter colors. It's getting the it's kind of tricking your eye into making it look more contrasted and then therefore looks more realistic. There were a few spots that I wanted to darken even more. So I used the favorite Castillo, who's the dark sepia color? And again, these are only the areas that actually need that darker color. Not so dark that it's the black fur, but those areas where it's coming from the dark fur and going into the lighter portions. This color is pretty nice and dark, especially if you use a little more pressure with it. So you do have to be careful with this one that you don't get. Some of the lighter areas too dark. We're at the point with this drawing where you can see that every every place that I am putting color is adding more and more depth with each pencil stroke it's looking more and more realistic. You'll get to a point where you ask yourself, Okay, is this done? And generally, I always think, okay, I could probably add a few more layers. So it's really kind of a judgment decision on your part of where where do you stop? Obviously, if you're at a point where your paper won't take any more layers, then that's your limiting factor. But I've found with my own art that what helped my drawings get better and better is when I added more and more layers. So making sure you're using a lighter hand earlier on really helps with that. Just to make sure that you are really able to add more layers. So after I was done putting in those little dark areas, I'm using the burnt ocher ten per cent, again, again, to just add in a few pops of color that I wanted. And then I'm going to blend out the majority of the lighter portions with the Karen dashed illuminance, buff titanium. I really like this color because it's it looks white. When you're just looking at the pencil tip there. It looks white. But it has some, I would call it almost peach. Little bit of a tone to it. It's not straight white. And it's really good for blending for that's this color. If you were to blend this out with white, it would look very chalky. I really like this buff titanium color for this color for Because it does allow you to blend out the color without me, without really changing it. It does lighten it a little bit, but it doesn't give it that chalky appearance that you get if you were to blend with white. Again, just like how I blended earlier, this is applying a little bit more pressure than the earlier layers. Especially when you're going over an addict trying to add lighter in those areas that we erased, you have to apply a little bit more pressure to get any kind of color over those dark areas. And again, that's why the areas that are really light, we wanted to make sure we preserved them to start with so that we didn't have that issue. There were just a few areas that I wanted to fix the definition of the pieces of first, so I'm doing that with the dark sepia. Again. I'm really just using that again to start fixing the shape of a few spots. There were a few spots that I just felt like the way that I had done the lighter for, it wasn't going in the direction I wanted it to. So having this darker color like this is great for that because you just add a little bit here and there, and it kind of creates this effect that the first going in a different direction. Now I am done with all of the pencils. And I really want to add some light small pieces of fur that are going in different directions over the top. And this effect really helps the drawing look realistic because whether it's fur or hair, it's never going to be perfectly all going in the same direction. So I like to use a crafting knife for this. You can really use anything that's going to scrape, actually scrape away the colored pencil. It can't be just an eraser because that's not going to get enough of the colored pencil out. But anything that a little bit sharp, but not so sharp that you're cutting the paper. It's a fine line. But I like to use the crafting knife for this. And I just go in and I can get these tiny little pieces of fur that are generally going in completely different directions than the rest. And as you can see, it's lifting up the pencil that I put down so that you can put these lighter pieces over darker pieces. This is really the best way to do that for colored pencil, because like I said, you can't actually just draw over it. It won't come with the pencil as clearly as if you're using this crafting knife. If you don't have a crafting knife or something else that you can use, then you can just do that same thing with your eraser. It won't have exactly the same effect, but it will still be somewhat lifted even if it's not as much. So here is our final little drawing in colored pencil. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. Don't forget to post your version in the project section so that I can see it. And if you need any help along the way, you can post a work in progress and I can help you out if you are interested in the charcoal version or the graphite version of this, how to draw for tutorial. I have those already in my courses. I'm also working on a pastel version, so look out for that one soon.