Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Emily. I'm
a drawing teacher from New Zealand
And in this class, I'm going to share some
tips for how to shade fur. We're going to begin
with practicing some technical
skills that you need to master so that you have all the skills that you need
to be able to draw fur. Then I'm going to take you
through some simple steps that will follow to draw
different types of animal fur. We're going to use
photographs as a reference. And we're not going to be
drawing a full animal, just sections of the fur treat. This class as a practice
project to improve your skills. Before you move on
to drawing animals, go get your materials ready
and practice along with me.
2. Materials: For materials, you're
just going to need an HB pencil and a two B pencil. We won't be using anything
too technical in this class. Handy tools for drawing
fur could also include mechanical pencils and
a mechanical eraser. But I won't use those today just in case you
don't have them, but feel free to use them
if you do have them.
3. The Skills Needed For Drawing Fur: There are two things
that you need to master before you can shade fur
or even shade human hair. They are control of your line quality and
control of pressure. What is line quality? Here's a line, doesn't
really change much. Even a curved line, the actual line itself, not the direction of the line, but the quality of the line
hasn't really changed much. Quality of the line is how thin, how thick, how broken, how soft, how hard
edged a line is. You might be able to play
around with your pencil on its tip and then getting
thick and then thin. That's line quality with
drawing fur or hair. The line quality that
we're looking for is the quality that
we get from a flick. It's thicker at one end and
thinner at the other end. It's quite a quick movement, we need to be able
to change that line around in terms of direction, but we need to be able to
control that taper on the end. It's pushing quite
hard at the start and then flicking across and lifting the pressure
up off the paper. Have a go at that.
That's the first thing we need to be able to do. It's very hard to draw
accurate looking hair or fur before your
lines look like this, the line quality
hasn't changed at all. Then the other thing we need
to be able to control is the pressure that we put on our pencil when we're making
each one of these marks. Can you do these
marks dark then? Can you also do
them quite light? These darker ones are also quite blunt and maybe a little bit wider than
these lighter ones. It's another thing you could try using your pencil
right on its tip to get very fine and light lines. This is all describing the line quality or
holding it so that your pencil is a
little bit more on its side and pushing harder. You get darker, thicker,
maybe softer marks. We need to be able to
control those things, line quality and
pressure of your pencil.
4. The Process: At the moment, we're
going to have to go at shading three different
kinds of fur. There are three steps that
we're going to go through. The very first step is to just shade the general value
of the fur itself. Is it dark fur or
is it light fur? I think this is
probably something that people miss when they first
start drawing hair or fur. They just start
drawing lines like this without really thinking about the overall value
of the fur itself. And you end up with
something that is very high contrast and all these little
white gaps in here, it's all the same as well. There's no light areas of
fur or dark areas of fur. Even if we lighten our pencil
marks up a little bit, it's all still very similar. What we can do is we can put
down a layer of shading. First, some areas
might be light, some areas of the
fur might be dark. Then we can put our
texture over top. The first step is the
value of the fur. The second step is the
shapes of the locks, the outlines of the
shapes that you can see. Hair and fur is usually
clumped together in locks of fur
or locks of hair. They're usually long
triangle shapes like this, or the hairs are
clumped together, sometimes they're
slightly curved, sometimes they're
more just pointy. Sometimes if you're
drawing human here, the long shapes like this. The second step is to actually
find these shapes and put those over top of your
general value of fur. Maybe some shapes
that go like this, some darker shapes, this
could be a darker shape here, shade in that darker shape. Then the very last step is
to bring in the fine detail. That's where we might bring
in some of these flicks. But as we do that, we
want to pay attention to how light or how dark
the different areas are. This lighter area
here, I don't want to push really hard and
have lots of dark fur. I want to keep it really light. This darker area here, I could push a little bit
harder or have a darker pencil. The three steps we're
going to go through, number one, shade,
the value of the fur. We can use a tissue to just smudge it a little bit to get a nice even surface to work on. Number two is to lightly outline the shapes
of locks that you can see. Number three is to add in the fur detail with
our line quality and our light in our dark.
5. Shading Cat Fur: We're going to draw three
different types of, we're going to draw
the fur of a cat, the fur of a horse,
and the fur of a bear. I've just selected
portions of the fur, so we're not going to
draw the whole animal. We're going to keep these
boxes quite small as well. Don't go too big or it's
just going to take you ages. This is just like maybe
half of my finger in size. Let's have a look at the fur of this cat that I've isolated. Very light colored fur. You can squint and
give you an idea of how light it is compared
to the darker areas. But it's not white, which means there is going to be a layer of shading that
we need to put down. We don't want white
gaps in between the marks that
we're going to make because there is no
white in this fur. I'm just using my pencil to very lightly layer down a surface that we're
going to work on. It's the general
value of the fur, the lightest value that
we can see in that fur, which is like a light gray just using my
pencil on its side, using overhead my HB pencil. I'm doing it quite messy, but I'm relying on my
piece of tissue there. I'm going to smudge this a little bit just to get it nice. And even that step one, step two is to identify the
shapes that you can see. We can see these
long tufts of fur. We may not get them
all exactly right, but we can get an idea of them. I want you to go ahead and
draw in what you can see. I'm going to do mine quite dark, but keep yours as
light as you can. Draw it dark enough
that hopefully you can see it on the video, just picking out these
main tufts here. What we're looking for is
those triangle shapes. If you can't clearly
see what's happening, just look for the
bigger triangle shapes with one big one. Here's another long,
skinny one here, a little bit shorter
than that one. Then there's a few
long ones here. Then maybe we can also
see some darker shapes. There's a darker shape down
here, maybe here as well. Now remember, if you've
taken the shading, how to tutorial, our outlines should only be as dark as our shading is going to be here. It's fine because the shading
underneath these tufts, or between these
tufts, is going to be darker than the
tufts themselves. We've done a layer of shading, we've identified some
of the shapes or the shapes that we're going
to want to bring out. Then we're going
to just build up a little bit of shading
and put in our detail. Now I'm just layering up some
shading still using my HB. I'm leaving the tufts alone. The tufts themselves, those
long triangle shapes, because I want them
to be that value that I've already laid down. But the spaces between the
tufts or the locks are darker. Actually, all of this s down
here is a little bit darker. We can layer that up. As I do this, I'm shading and
I'm looking at the photo. Shading. Looking at the photo
as I move up the square. I'm looking to see where
I should be shading, how hard I should be pressing
darker one down here. You could be doing this very, very carefully
with your shading, having nice tiny
marks, it's fur. We can keep it loose as well. The important thing is to shade in the
direction of the fur. You notice I'm moving in the direction that
all of that fur goes. I'm not going across it. I guess there's
actually four steps, when I think about it, there's the first
layer of shading. There's drawing out our shapes, then the building
up the shading, and then we're going
to add the detail. Now, I haven't built the shading up as far as it needs to go, but I'm going to use my
two B pencil to do that. And as I do that, I'm going to start bringing in
some of these flicks. I'm just looking at
the darkest parts, these long triangles, using
that flicking motion, controlling the pressure
of your pencil. Some of these are
darker than others. This one here is a little
bit lighter than this one. I need to use less
pressure with my flicks, we're looking at this in color, probably helped to put this
into black and white as well. It helps us see a
little bit more clearly the relationship between the tufts themselves and the
shadows underneath them. We're starting to
get a sense now of that light area of fur. Sitting on top of
this next level of fur that's underneath
it is a little bit darker. I want to bring in more
detail now I'm using my HB, going back to my HB
because it's lighter. I'm just starting from the
end of these tufts and I'm looking for any patterns
that I can see here, There are some heirs
moving up the next one, starting from the
bottom and curving up again, just using flicks. I don't want to bring
them all lines and lines through here because you
can't see all those lines. You can only see maybe an
indication of them up here. Some thicker lines bring in
a little bit of shading with our flicks up here following the direction that you
see the fur going. When we come to this one it's coming down and then
around and then down. Almost like a very
shallow S shape. Now remember to control the
pressure of your pencil. We don't want to put dark, dark lines in here where
it's a very light tuft. We can go a little
bit darker here because it's darker
up in this corner, but on these tufts themselves,
very light pressure. Then the last detail you might look for is just some
long triangle shapes. Even within those light
areas, those light tufts. What I'd encourage you
to do is to only put down lines and flicks
if you can see them. If we look at this area here, can you see any lines in
there? We know it's fur. We know it's made up
of very thin lines. If we were to separate that fur, but can you actually see
them? You can't really. Maybe a bit of a shading
pattern and that's all. I think it's a trap
that people fall into is that they know that he is made up of all these long strands and
that's what they draw. Long strands all the time. You don't get that illusion
of layers and of clumps, which is what we're looking for. Now if you need to, you can use your eraser to just bring
out any light areas. Remember we don't
want them white, but I'm just making this
one a little bit more defined then it's got just a little bit of shadow here where this one is sitting
on top of it a little bit. Lots of very small details that can make a big difference. There's a long line through here that I don't
quite have dark enough. That's really the
only thing I need to change and think about the line quality of that
shape or the edge quality. It's not all just
like one hard line. It darker here, then it gets a little bit
lighter and then it gets a little
bit darker again. You can keep working on this, getting more and more detailed. The more you look, the
more you're going to see. I think I'll leave
that one there. I've got the sense of that. Especially those fluffy
tufts of lighter colored fur sitting on top
of another layer of fur. That's a little bit in shadow.
6. Shading Bear Fur: Moving on to bear fur. Look how dark that is
compared to the last one. Our first step, remember, is to put down a base
layer of shading. And we need to really
build it up so that it's going to look a lot
darker than this last one. Did we want it to look
like it's dark brown fur? If you were to isolate
the highlighted areas, you see it's made up of black
areas and lighter areas. Highlighted areas are
not going to be white, they're going to be probably a middle gray to a dark gray. I'm using HB pencil, layering it up, being
messy, giving smudge. I don't want to go
to soft just yet. It could go to a two pencil. This one is quite soft. This is another two B pencil, but it's just not quite as soft. I think I'll use this one now. I'm starting to go in the
direction of the fur. I'm not thinking
about this in terms of this is the fur
that I'm drawing, I'm just moving in the direction to create that first layer, that base layer that we're
then going to build on top of. It looks a little bit
like just because of the marks that
I'm making don't get stuck in that
trap of just drawing a whole lot of lines that are the same value and
the same quality. What we're looking for
with the space layer is the value that is going to match the
lightest areas in that fur that we can see. This is probably about it. I think this is probably good. And then we're going
to go much darker with our second layer of
shading and our details. I'm going to draw in the
shapes that I can see. I'm using A to B pencil. We're just looking
for the main shapes. I know sometimes you might
look at them and go, oh, there's so many shapes in there but we're just looking
for the bigger areas. Can you see through here? There's like a jagged
line, something like that. There's another quite
strong line coming up here. Maybe almost like a long
triangle shape there. Maybe another line here. I guess what we're drawing
really is the dark shapes. By drawing the dark shapes, we're also drawing
the light shapes something that shows you where
you're going to go darker. Don't worry about getting
this absolutely perfect these in exactly the right place.
They need to be close. I'm going back to
my softer to pencil now and I'm going to shade
in those darker areas. We'll build them
up to all black, but for now we'll just
do quite a dark gray. If you notice anything else
as you're going through this, any other shapes, noticed another little triangle
shape there. Add those in. It's very easy to get lost with all these shapes as
we're doing this. We want to be aware
of the values. I'm coming up along
this line here. But this layer of fur here or these tufts
of fur, they're lighter. On the right hand side,
going to make sure I don't shade that lighter
area, I'm going to leave it. Move to the next dark shape following the direction
of the fur again, it's always a good idea. Again, as I come out
towards the side here, it's lighter here
than it is in here. I'm going to make sure that
control the pressure of my pencil or how far that
dark area goes up to do whatever you need
to do to put in some place markers so that you keep track of
where you're at. I'm just making it a
little bit darker here. That long dark
triangle is really strong, maybe here as well. Just to help me remember where I am now we can start
to add the detail. And I think it's a good idea to start in the darkest place, the darkest places,
and we're going to move into the lighter places. Here's this dark area here, but you can see the little
cuts into that lighter area. The line quality
here is going to be quite thick rather
than single strokes. It might be more of a shaded
line that we're doing here. I'm just working my way up here, shading as I go, trying to
keep an eye on where I'm at. We don't want these to be
all completely even because they do Interlock a little bit. I'm going to work
my way across here. When I say Interlock, they're
not all in a straight line. And then all another
straight line there. And then one up a little bit, and one down a little bit
if you get a little bit, which I'm definitely lost. That's the pattern
that you follow. You look for a pattern,
you use that for those bigger areas
that don't have so much definition in terms of the light
and dark shadows. Each one of these is like maybe three scribble lines
shading it with three marks following the direction of
the fur. It's looking good. It's looking nice and coarse. It's very different
to our soft cat fur. Just going to work
my way across here and you see coming up this line, it's very dark on this side. And then we're going to cut into that lighter area and it's
dark on the other side of it. Some of those lines
will go right through from one dark side to
the other dark side. You could come from
either side. You could work this way or you
could work this way. What we're creating is this highlighted shape of fur here. It's got dark on either side. We're trying to create
these levels of fur. We've got this layer of sitting on top of this layer of fur sitting on top of
this layer of fur. And each layer is casting a partial shadow
over the next layer. It's not all in shadow,
but part of it is the part closest to the
layer that is on top of it. I'm going to move to, let's do this dark area
over this side. These ones are
just longish lines coming up to the
side of our square. Keep looking at the photo, look for the light areas. In the dark areas as you shade. I'm changing my
pressure of the pencil. Depending on what
I'm looking at, it is quite dark down here. I can push quite hard changing the way I
use my pencil too, if I want to sharper mark, I'm going to use
it on the point. These ones up here are
a little bit smaller so it could have a
sharp sharper line. Then I'm just going to balance
out some of the values. These are very light here
they are highlighted. This one might have a little
bit more shadow on it. Squint at the overall
photo, Where is it dark? It's a little bit
darker through here. Just add some more layers of make it darker through there. Look for those shapes again. It's quite dark as we
come down here as well. At least two very long pieces here that I need to
fix up a little bit. Just got them a little
bit too separate. So let's just put
another one in there. Darken this one up a little bit. If you're feeling a
little bit lost in that, then just come back to those main shapes that
we first looked at. This darker one down here. Whatever you can
see this long dark one up here And re
emphasize those. They are the things that are giving this area
of fur some form. It's not just all the same, it's on a moving creature
with different contours. That's the bare fur. If you decided that you
wanted it darker, then you just lightly
shade over top. Maybe even with your HB pencil, so that you're building up
another layer over top of that very first light
layer that we put down just to take away
some of the lights. It's not going to cover over your dark to pencil
your shading marks, it's just going to push the
lights back a little bit. Okay, moving on to the last one. We're going to do
some horse here.
7. Shading Horse Hair: The very first thing
we're going to do is put down our base layer. Now there is some white here. Even before I put
down the base layer, I'm going to just identify where that area
of white is going to go. I've just left that in
there so that we can have a little bit of
variation between the different types
of fur on the horse. There's this light a little bit longer through here and
then it's very short. And you can see a
vein there as well. Everything else around
that white part has to be a base layer. Now what kind of value is it? Let's turn it into black
and white. It's quite dark. It's not as dark as this, probably about as
dark as this here. It's a dark gray. We're
going to build that up. Probably I should be following
the direction of the fur. It goes all over the place, but generally it
comes downwards. But just go with
whatever is comfortable. We're just getting
down a base layer. I always find it easier to
shade in this direction. Smudge, we're going to
build it up some more, might come to my two B pencil. Now going to spend a bit
more time on this layer. I'm actually just using small
circles this time so I can still shade in my
chosen direction or my natural direction, but it's not leaving any lines. Were actually quite long
ovals that I'm using. It might do one more layer pushing a little bit
harder this time. Remember we're aiming for,
apart from the white, we're aiming for the lightest
value for the space layer. It's this area through
here that comes down beneath the white tufts. That's probably
the lightest area. Okay, then the next step is to add in our shapes.
What shapes can you see? It's a little bit
harder in this one where there's a dark
shape that comes up here. Maybe that continues
just a little bit, creating this lighter
area which is almost like the
bridge of the nose, comes down from the white part
around here and then down. Don't push too hard. When
you're putting in these lines, we want them to disappear. You see that vein
coming out there? We could draw just
very lightly shade in the shadow part of that vein. It's a little bit
darker up here, They're really just marks. And down here as well,
they're marks for me to know where I'm going to shade a little bit darker,
their placeholders. Let's go ahead and shade in those darker parts
as this part here. Now we could pay attention to following the
direction of the fur. You'll be able to turn
your page around. I can't really do that too
much while I'm filming. But turn your page
around so you can shade in the direction that
you see the fur going. It's starting to
come out this way up here using my two B pencil.
It's nice and sharp. The paper I'm using
has a little bit of texture which helps when
you're shading fur like this, because it is like
a grainy texture. The fur is short. Call the horse here. You call it here for
a horse, don't you? It's, it has that
grainy appearance when we look at the
photograph like this. Just going through and shading these darker parts
on either side of this light gray gray patch. And then it's very
dark part down here, dark in this corner, maybe down here, it's
a little bit darker, so starting to see
some of the contour of the top of the face
between the eyes. There was going to say the nose, but I'm not sure that that's
the nose of the horse. I'm sure there's people
out there who know a lot more about horse
anatomy than I do. I know very little about horses. Okay, got in our values, if you've been following
the direction of the fur, you probably don't
need to smudge it. I try not to smudge it
because you'll have some nice marks
from your pencil. Just very fine marks, and they're going to help create that sense of the
direction of the fur. Let's do these white
tufts up here. I'm going to go back
to my HB pencil. I'm looking for some shapes
123 that point out this way. Then they start to point
out the other way. Now I'm not actually shading or drawing the tufts themselves. What I'm focusing more
on the shape of them, but also the spaces around them, because I want to
keep this light. If I start doing this
and drawing them in, my pencil is darker than white. I can't draw white.
I have to draw the darker spaces in
between the white. We need a nice sharp pencil, then we can really get into the detail here that's a
little bit darker there. We're looking for the contrast between the white and
the value outside it. There's more contrast on this
side than there is here. The white and the gray
here are closer together than the white and this gray. Okay, then we're going
to start flicking down, This is the light gray area. I'm using my HB pencil still. I'm following the direction of the fury coming
around like this. Again, we can't
see like the cat. We can't see every
individual piece of hair. We can only see the way the
heir is grouped together. And that creates those little shadows in between the groups, or the clumps of hair. That's really what
we're flicking, that's what we're
trying to put in. Don't get carried
away with F, F, F drawing, or what you imagine
to be every single here. We're just looking
for the shapes that the hair is forming
when it clumps together. And there's a good
example there. There's a shape
that comes round, there's a little
shape just above it where the hair transitions
from lighter to darker. You can quite clearly see
those shapes and we can put in some more defined
lines there. But through here, especially
over here, what can you see? Can you see every
individual here? Can you see different values? Maybe a little bit,
maybe you just have a few slightly darker values in there. That's all you need. The I'm going to switch
to my two B pencil. It needs to be nice and sharp because remember we're
trying to draw course here. We don't want to feel soft. This is the trickiest one, just because it's so subtle. For something like this,
you could zoom in and you could draw every single
little shape that you see. Again, not every single here, but little dark and light shape. Or you can get an idea of it. Maybe pick out the main one, picking out two here, there's
a little one underneath it. And then try and leave the
lightest in the darkest parts. And then maybe just a scattering of the type of pattern that you see there to fill in space. We're coming down
to this vein here. It's going to be
slightly darker on the, just above the top of it. And then it's going to be even darker on the bottom part of it because
there's some shadow there and that's going
to bring it out. Not drawing a line,
I'm just shading little marks that
match the style of that fur as we come down here, it underneath that vein. As you come down, there's
a strong mark here. It's made up of maybe 12, maybe three longish marks. Then as we start to come down, we get to this darker area. Probably got mine
a little bit too far over this way,
but it's okay. We're just giving things a go here trying
things out but I can bring it over a
little bit. Is it dark? Yes, but you can see some little lighter
parts inside it using a short mark like this to let some of those
lighter parts show through. Here you can see some darker
parts and lighter parts. We could try and follow
the direction of the fur. And again, just use a pattern or a mark that makes
sense for that fur. There's not a lot
of contrast though, between here and here. There's quite a bit of
contrast in this area. It's not so strong controlling the pressure of your pencil
so that the marks that you leave are not too dark to get a bit darker
down the side here. The vein that I've got here is a little bit too prominent. It just means I need to bring a bit more detail on
both sides of it. Maybe push it back a
little bit so it's not quite so light again, once you get to this
part like we did here, once you get to this stage, if you feel like it's just gotten lost and everything's
looking the same, then go back through
and find those shapes. So we've got the
darker shape here, we've got the darker
shape down here. Maybe this one needs to
go a little bit darker. It's a little bit dark
all the way up the side, Actually, maybe a light layer of shading over anywhere
where there's white, where there shouldn't be white. I've gone back to my
HB pencil to do that. That HB pencil also just push back anything that's a bit too contrasty takes away some
of the lights on its own. It doesn't look like
too much because in the context of the
rest of the horse. But we could refine
this, keep going, keep looking for details. This here could be just a little bit more defined.
How do I do that? I can bring in a little
bit of light gray in here. Some of the white tufts do have a bit of shadow on
them, just in this area. Then I can bring in
some more contrasts, choosing anywhere you can
see quite a dark area. Curl down here is quite dark. It's like a little el there, so can make that a
little bit darker. And then there's those two
toughs that come out this way, which I've lost a little bit, so I can bring those
back with an eraser. You are using an eraser,
just be careful, you don't lose, lose everything. The white area is not all white. It's right at the top. And then here it's got a few
little tufts of white in it, but some of it is light gray. All those subtle things that make a big
difference if you had your mechanical pencil. And areas in here would be a really good place
to use that pencil to just create the
really fine spaces between the white tufts there.
8. Summary: I hope this has helped
you with shading fur. And you'll be able to use it when you're drawing animals or even drawing people
drawing human here. Remember those three steps, or actually turned out
to be four steps in the end for this
particular tutorial. The first one is to shape the general value of the fur or the hair
that you're drawing. Unless it's blond or very, very light fur, the base layer
is not going to be white. It's going to be a light
gray or a dark gray. The second step is to draw in the shapes
that you can see. The shapes of the locks or
the clumps of fur or hair. You're looking for
lighter shapes and darker shapes and
drawing those in. The third step was to start to shade in some of
those darker shapes. And then the last step is
to put in your fine detail, showing the direction
of the fur and defining some of those very small
tufts or clumps of hair. If you want to
take this further, I'd suggest a finding
some photographs of animals blowing them up a little bit so you
can see the detail. Then just doing what we've
done here, selecting an area, just choose a square or
a circle to work in, and following those four
steps and seeing how you go. The more you practice, the better you're going
to get at it.
Emily Armstrong, The Pencil Room Online
