Transcripts
1. Introduction: So many different techniques
that you can use to create some truly beautiful
colored pencil drawings. But some of them can feel
a little bit overwhelming. I want to show you a very
popular technique today, which is blending colored
pencils with solvents. And it's not as difficult
as you might think. My name is Jimma Chambers, and I've been making online
art tutorials since 2020. I have helped tens of thousands of people improve
their art skills. But today, I want to really focus on a specific technique. Let's look at blending colored
pencils with solvents. This course is very much intended with the
beginner in mind. So if you haven't blended
with solvents before, or if you haven't drawn with
colored pencils before, I will talk you through
everything you need to know. I'll cover all of the
materials that you'll need, as well as the key
fundamental techniques. I'll then talk you through
the full process of drawing this flower using the
solvents. Let's get started.
2. Class Project - Drawing a Dahlia Flower: Class project we will be
drawing this daily a flower. It's a really pretty, vibrant flower, but with
a really soft background. Now, there are a
few reasons that I picked this specific picture, and why I think it will work particularly well while
blending with the solvents. First up, although there is
some quite intricate detail, particularly towards the center of the flower, on the most part, it's split into
individual petals, which all need to
be quite smooth. They have quite a soft color. So that is going to be
perfect for the blending. Also, the background
is very out of focus. We want to create, as I said, a really nice and
soft background. That is something that blending with solvents really excel. Now, I will show you everything that you'll need to
draw this flower, including how to
make this sketch. But if you would like
to use my sketch, I have included it in
the class resources, as well as details of all of the colors that I'm
using for this drawing. Next up, let's take a minute to talk about the materials
that you'll need.
3. Materials for Blending Coloured Pencils with Solvents: Let's talk about the
materials that you'll need. First up, the most
important material is, of course, a set of
colored pencils. Now, for this drawing, I will be using polychromos colored pencils by Faber Castel. They are a set of
professional colored pencils, which I find particularly good for obviously blending
with solvents, but also are amazing for
adding fine details. Now, you don't need to use
exactly these pencils. You could use a
much cheaper set, maybe something like Cona. I think it will be
easiest if you have a set of probably about 36 or more. Stop, an extremely
important material you'll need is paper, but the right type of paper. You don't want to use
something like sketch paper. We're not going to be able
to build up the pigment and the pencil enough to blend if
you use a paper like that. You're going to want to use a much more substantial paper. Now, I always like using
a smooth bristol board. I find that that is a nice
and thick paper that's not only able to take all of the layers of pencil that we're going to need to build up, but also can cope with the
solvent when we put that on. I can't stress enough that the paper is more important
than the pencils. This is going to work so much better with
the right paper. Next up, you will need
a pencil sharpener. Now, I use this hand
crank pencil sharpener, but you don't need
something this fancy, as long as it makes a
really nice and sharp point on the pencils,
that's all you need. Next, obviously,
this whole course is about blending with solvents, you will need some solvent. Now, for this course, I am using a solvent
called Zesta, which is a solvent specifically designed to be used
with colored pencils. That is easier to get hold of in some countries
than others. I would recommend
experimenting with a few different
types of solvents, if you're unsure on what to try. Generally speaking, I recommend
using isopropal alcohol, which is a rubbing alcohol. Certainly trying that and
experimenting with that. Next up to use
with your solvent, you will need a paint brush. Now, I'm not using any
sort of fancy paint brush. This is just one
that I had to hand. We just want something
that we're going to be able to apply that
solvent to the paper. Material you'll need is actually something
you'll need to make. It's not something you can buy. This is a set of swatches. Now, what this is is a sheet of paper with all of the
colors in your set. For every color, I
like to go as light as I can to as dark as I
can, and then label it. And this will show me what the color actually looks
like on the paper. On the kind of paper
I'm going to draw on. If I try and rely on
either the barrel of the pencil or the lead is
just not very accurate. It's not going to show
a realistic example of what the pencil looks like. Although this is quite a time
consuming process to make the swatches do bear
in mind that is not something that needs
to be done frequently. The set of swatches that I'm using are at least 4-years-old. Now, for all of the
drawings that I create, because I'm drawing
realistically, I work from a reference photo. And the last material
that you'll need is some way of looking
at that reference. I always put the reference
photos onto my iPad. I find it really
really helpful that I can zoom in to see all
of the fine details. That said you don't
have to do that, you could always print
out the reference photo. So you will need a set
of colored pencils, the right kind of paper,
a pencil sharpeners, some sort of solvent, a paintbrush to
apply that solvent, color swatches, and some way of looking at the
reference photo. In the next section,
let's take a look at the really basic techniques
that you'll need to know.
4. The Key Basic Techniques: Let's talk about the most
important techniques you'll need to know to
blend with solvents. The absolute key
thing is that you need to put down enough
pencil to blend. I see a lot of
people putting down such a small amount of the pencil and then trying
to blend with solvents, and it doesn't do anything. That is because you need to get a reasonable amount of it down. And this leads me very nicely into how you put that
pencil on the paper. Now, it's worth noting that the solvent isn't
going to be magic. It's not going to
magically smooth out the pencil if you put it
down in a really rough way. So what we want to do,
particularly on things like the background where
we want that to be really nice and
soft and smooth, is put the pencil down in
as smooth way as possible. This is very much
the standard method that I use with all
color pencil drawings. So what I want to
do is first up, put down the pencil
nice and lightly. We do want to build up
a lot of the pencil, but I don't want to just
press really hard to do ding up the pencil gradually, putting light layers of
the pencil one on top of another is going to create a much better base
for us to blend. Now, one thing that I
always do when building up light layers of
the pencil is hold it much further back
than you might expect. Rather than holding the pencil
really close to the tip, if I hold the pencil
more like here, it stops me from being
able to press too hard. As I said, I also want
to be putting down the pencil in as smooth
a way as possible. And the best way that I have found to do this is to work in some small circular
or oval motions rather than just
scribbling back and forth. Working in these oval motions just builds up the pencil in a much smoother and
more consistent way and will make it look
smoother when we blend. Finally, it is far easier if you're working
with a sharp pencil. You don't want the pencil
to get really blunt. Again, it's not
going to go down in as smooth and consistent way. You want to have a sharp pencil and make sure you
keep it sharpened, so you will need to
sharpen frequently. Once you've got the right
amount of pencil down, you then want to make sure that you use the solvent
in the correct way. So first of, you don't
want to put too much down. You don't want to
absolutely flood the paper. Generally speaking, I pour some of the solvent
into the lid. Dip my paintbrush in, gently wipe it on the
side and use that. I find that's generally
the right amount. Wouldn't want to dip
the paint brush in and then just chuck
the solvent on. That's just going to
create a wet mess. Once you've got the
right amount of solvent on your paint
brush, you also, generally speaking, want to blend from the light
colors to the dark colors. So the solvent will break down that pigment and allow
it to move on the paper. If you blend from dark to light, you'll end up just making your
light areas really muddy, much darker than they were. If you blend from light to dark, you get a much better gradient. Now, there are situations where I would blend from
dark to light. But you'll see that when
we're drawing the flower. Finally, the most important
thing that you should remember before you start
using the solvents is to test. Now, I'm using
polychromo pencils on a smooth bristol board paper, and I'm blending with
something called zesti. If you're not using exactly
these three materials, they may well play
differently with each other. And it's important to know
that before you go through the effort of building
up a lot of the pencil, if you're using a
different solvent, or maybe not even
exactly the same paper. Or it could even be that you are using the
same materials as me, but you've put down the pencil in a slightly different way. It's just worth testing on a few little practice
sheets before going straight into the
drawing, cause, as I say, you don't want to
end up spending ages putting down a lot
of the pencil, and then it doesn't work
as you expect it to. So those are the absolute key techniques that
you need to know. Next up, let's talk through the full process of drawing
and blending with solvents.
5. The Process: Let's talk through the full
process that I always go through if I'm blending a color pencil drawing
with solvents. The first thing that you want to do is select a reference photo. Now, as I mentioned, because I focus on drawing
realistic items, every drawing that I create, whether with solvents or not
is from a reference photo. But I want to make
sure that I pick the right kind of
reference photo. So first up, the most
important thing is that I get a reference photo with
really good contrast. Want to have really
light light areas and really dark ducks. If I selected a reference
photo that was just mid tones, my drawing is going
to look really flat. Now, I also want to select a photo that has
really great detail. I don't want to have
something that is blurry. Again, it's going to
be very hard to create a detailed drawing if I
can't see that detail. And I also want to have
something that is kind of appropriate for
blending with solvents. So having a drawing that is solely made up of
a lot of detail. There's not going
to be a huge amount of point to using solvents. Something with maybe a blurry background
like we've got here. Or just a picture with
some good solid blocks of color is just going to use the solvent to
its full potential. Once I've selected
a reference photo, what I then want to do is
sketch out my outlines. So I want to take the time to get all of the
proportions mapped out. Now, generally
speaking, I like doing this with something
called the grid method. This is where I put a grid on my drawing paper and a grid
on my reference photo, and I just draw what I see
in each individual square. Rather than looking at
the drawing as a whole, if I look at it as a series
of shapes in squares, it's just much easier
to get a more accurate picture. Now, I can
put a smaller grid in areas like maybe the center
of the flower where I really need to get a lot of
the detail in and maybe a larger grid around the edge where there
isn't as much detail. Once I've drawn everything out, I can then remove the grid
lines with an eraser. I can also use the eraser to make the sketch as
light as possible. This point, I can start using some of the colored pencils. And as I mentioned, we
want to be getting down a good amount of the pencil so that we
have enough to blend. What I like to do is
generally start from the lighter colors and work
towards the darker colors. Looking for the lightest
color in each area, then blocking that in. So, for example, adding yellow on the background
of the flower, then adding in some of the main shapes with the
next darkest pencil. Keep working my
way along until I have the general
shapes marked out. In this case, I have the bulk
of the flower marked out. It's maybe not as smooth
as it should be and probably not as dark or
detailed as it should be. But I do have a clear flower. Now, there's no point in adding all of the details
on the center of the flower because
when we blend this with the solvent,
that'll all get lost. I want to do exactly the
same for the background, start from the lighter colors, work my way towards
the darker colors, really mapping out the main
shapes along the back and making sure that I build up
a good amount of the pencil, that I'll then be able to
blend this with the solvent. Once I built up all of
that pigment on the paper, I can then start
using the solvent. And I want to blend
one area at a time. So I can blend each
individual petal, working generally from the left towards the right so I
don't smudge anything. And then I can work on
the background, again, working on each
section at a time, generally blending from
the lighter colors towards the darker colors. So blended with the solvent, what I then have is a
kind of patchy drawing. Before doing anything else, I want to wait for this
to completely dry. I don't want to
try and draw over the top of it when the
solvent is still wet. And once it is dry, I can
then go back over the top, add in all of the details. So starting with the
background, as I mentioned, it looks a little bit patchy, so I can go back over all
of this just very lightly. I don't need to add in a
huge amount of the pencil, but just enough
to smooth it out. I can then start
focusing on a lot of the details towards the
center of the flour. Now that I know
that I'm not going to blend again with solvents, I can start adding in
all of those details. And once I'm happy that I've
built up all the details, maybe I want to adjust
some of the colors if I think it's not looking
quite vibrant enough, or maybe it needs to be a little bit more red, for example. I can add that in. Now, you can see that this
is a much faster process. We can create a much more detailed and more
vibrant drawing using solvents much faster than if I try and build up just with the
pencils on their own. So that is the full
process that I always use. Let's start working through it.
6. Studying the Reference Photo: 've already selected
the reference photo that we're going to use. Something that I often
find helpful is to take a minute to have a look
at the reference photo, rather than just cracking on straight away
with the drawing. If I take a look at
what's actually here, it will make the whole
drawing process much easier. So let's take a minute
to have a look. So first up, I want to really notice the shape of the flower. So the flower,
generally speaking, is all folding into the middle. It's all quite
tight together and has some pretty small
petals towards the center. Then as they're kind
of furling out, they're much larger, but also a bit lighter around the edge. So these are a
brighter pink towards the middle and a lighter
pink around the edge. No, I'm particularly noticing the amount of yellow
in this flower. Primarily, I would say
it's a pink flower, but every single one of these petals has a
yellow tip to it. So noticing here where these petals sort go towards
the center of the flower, these are quite a bright yellowy orange around here and
all of these gaps. So I'm going to want
to add that in. And I'm noticing that
generally speaking, it is lighter at the top
and darker at the bottom. There's much more shadowed
areas down the bottom. On the most part, I
say that the color of the flowers is all
reasonably simple. And although there are some details like the odd line
on here, on the most part, we just want particularly
the outside petals to be as smooth as possible. And that's where the solvents really going to come in handy. Will also be drawing in
the background here. And for the background,
it's really only immediately around the edge of the flower that I'm
going to be drawing. I'm noticing all of the
different colors within here. So it's our focus. I can't see any detail within
the background. But I'm noticing that there's some light blue spots like
here and here and around here. There's some darker blue areas, particularly around
the bottom here, around the stem of the plant. And up here, look.
And then there's some very dark green areas like around here
and around here. I want to draw in the
patchiness around the flower, and that's going to
really help make the lighter petals around
the edge pop a bit more. And adding the solvent onto these more out
of focused areas, it's going to help them
to be much smoother. I am noticing that on
some areas of the flower, there are some
pretty dark areas. I'm really looking at
the shadows in here. And really all around
the center area, it's really finely detailed, so I want to be bearing that in mind as I map everything in. Those are the main
things that I'm noticing on the reference photo. Let's draw out our sketch.
7. Sketching the Outlines: Let's create the sketch
outlines for this Dalia. Now, as I mentioned when we
were looking at the process, whenever I draw sketch outlines, I find it easiest to do it with something called
the grid method. This is where you
add a grid onto your drawing paper and
onto your reference voto, and just draw what's in
each individual square. Now, before we get started,
creating the sketch, do remember that you want to do this as lightly as possible. So that it shows up on camera, I am pressing quite hard. I'm using the pencil
in quite a dark way, but you want to be pressing
much, much lighter. At the end of this,
you want it so that you can barely
see the sketch. Do you remember, if
you don't want to create your own sketch,
you can use mine. It's in the class resources. I've also included in
the class resources, the reference photo
with a grid on it. So the first thing I want
to do is work out how big each of my squares need to
be to fit onto the paper. You'll notice the grid on the reference photo here has some darker lines and
some lighter lines. I'm focusing on drawing squares the size of
the darker lines. I'll talk in a second
about the lighter lines, and why we'll need those
in a little while. For my sheet of paper here, I want to be making two
centimeter lines for the squares, and then I can draw out
the two centimeter grid. Then what I want to do is start working one square at a time. I'm going to start in the
top left hand corner. I first off want
to make sure that I'm starting in
the right square, so I can just count down it's quite easy in this situation. I'm starting by looking
at this square here, and what I want to do is look at particularly
where the lines of this very small area of petal are crossing the
edges of my square. So this is all we need to
draw in this first square, and I want to draw a mark about just slightly less
than halfway across and about a sixth of
the way up the square. So I can mark in
just over halfway across here and about a sixth
of the way up about here, and then I can just
draw these two marks. Now, this fair square is
obviously very simple, is a tiny bit of a petal
that we're drawing. Let's look at the
next square down. Looking at this square here and it's quite easy to
see where this line is, I've already marked this in. What I particularly
want to do is mark where this corner where these
two petals are meeting. So this is just over a third of the way along and just over
a third of the way up. You can see how helpful
these extra lines inside of the bigger square are in terms of working out
where these marks need to be. I also want to do a line here where this petal is meeting
the edge of this square. So this is again about
a sixth of the way up. So I can mark in where those key points are
going to be where those petals are crossing the edge lines or the corner where those petals are meeting, and then I literally just
need to join them again. And that's really all there is to it for each and every square. So let me show you with just
another couple of squares. So I'm particularly looking
at this square here now. And you'll notice
that the line between these two petals is actually stopping pretty
much in the middle, and then it's cross probably about a sixth of the way up here and about a third
of the way up here I can put that marker about halfway down the
edge of the square. Then because I've done a lot of the surrounding
squares around here, I pretty much just need
to join up the marks, just join to what I've already mapped in in the
surrounding squares. You can see that I'm working my way around here
one square at a time. I generally find it easiest to work in a reasonably
mythological way, so I'm just working along and down down different
rows of squares. I get to the center
of the flower, it gets a lot more complicated. A lot of the petals around the edge are
really quite large. So it's much easier
to map them in. But as we get to here, look how small all
of these petals are. So what I'm going to do is draw a smaller grid within the grid, and that's where
these smaller lines here are really going
to come into their own. So these smaller grids, I need to split the squares
into three equal pieces. The squares are 2
centimeters wide, so I need to put marks just under every 0.7 of a centimeter. Map that grid in in exactly the same way
as we did before, and what this gives
me, it's just a nice, much smaller grid so
that I'm really going to be able to map in those
smaller petals a bit easier. Then it's exactly
the same process. I'm working again,
one square at a time, really just trying to
fill in the shapes that I can see within
each of these squares. I just want to mark these
shapes in as best I can. By the end of filling
in this middle section, I have something that
looks like this. I can keep working my
way around the edge until I'm happy that
I've got my full sketch. Now, all I want to do is take an eraser and erase
those grid lines, so I'm left with just my sketch. Now, don't forget
that in actuality, you want to have drawn
yours out so so lightly. I am trying to erase mine, but because I pressed quite
firmly with the sketch, so you can see it on the camera. It's not really possible to
erase the lines completely. But if you press really lightly, this will be very, very simple. I also want to
erase the lines of the smaller grid
towards the middle. And what I want to be
left with is a series of sketch outlines that are so light that I can
barely see them. And now that we've got
our sketch outlines done, we can start thinking about
adding some sort of color.
8. Build up the Lightest Colours on the Flower: I want to start this
off by putting down the lightest color I can
see within the flower. And the lightest color
on this reference photo, I would say is probably this quite light and bright
yellow color over here. So I'm going to start
with this color called light yellow glaze. This isn't the lightest
yellow that I have in my set. It's the second lightest. The lightest is a color called cream that I think is too light. And what I want to do with
this pencil is literally put a covering of it everywhere
where the flower will be. So because all of
the undertone of the flower is this
kind of yellowy color. I can put this color everywhere. Then we can build other
colors over the top of it. Now, in terms of
how I'm doing this, there's a few things that you
want to be thinking about. First a, I want to be pressing
really nice and lightly. We will need to be building up a lot of the pencils so that I can have enough pigment down to blend this with the solvents. But I don't want to just press really hard with the
pencil all in one go. I still want to build this up in the same way that
I would usually. Now, to help me press
really nice and lightly, as I've mentioned before, I want to be holding the pencil further back than
you might expect. So holding it about
halfway down the pencil, and what that does is it stops me from being able
to press too hard. Also want to be
getting this down as smoothly as possible. The flower does have an
amount of texture to it, but I don't want to worry
about that right now. Right now, I just want to
put down this as smooth as possible because
it's our base color that we're going to
build everything on. So if I work in circular
or kind of val motions, that just helps the pencil go down in a smoother and
more consistent way. Is literally all I'm doing. Another thing I
want to make sure I do is frequently
sharpen my pencil. The pencil is going
to go down in a much better smoother way, and it's going to
be much easier to control if the pencil
is nice and sharp. So you do want to
make sure that you are frequently
sharpening your pencil. And that is really all I'm doing for this
first little step, just putting down the
yellow everywhere. Now, in this first section, I'm not worrying
about the background. We're going to think about
that a little bit later. But now we're only focusing
on the flower section. I've got yellow down
over the whole area. What I then want to do
is start thinking about the next darkest color that
I can see within the flower. And what we're going
to do is work from these lighter colors gradually
towards the darker colors. So I would say that the next
darkest color is probably this kind of peachy pink
color that actually, I think features a lot in the flower in a few
different ways, but the lightest area is around sort of on the
petals towards the top. Would say that the
closest color I have to that in my set is
this pinky color. It's rose carmine. And what I'm going to do is work through this one
pestle at a time, regardless of how light or dark the colors are
within each petal, I want to be using this
pencil to map out the shape. Now, as we work our way through, generally working from the
lighter to the darker colors, we will be going over a lot of this pink with a lot
of darker colors. But this is really going to
help map everything out. I can check that everything is in the right place
before I move on. I also right now can still
lightly see my sketch. So I want to map everything
out while I still can, once I put a certain number of pencils over the top of it, as it gets a little bit darker, it gets much easier to see this sketch because
it is so light, so it doesn't show
through at the end. L et's take a look at
the reference photo, and I'll show you
what I'm seeing here. But this really
is a case of just marking in those main shapes, using this sketch as
a really good guide. So I'm starting
off by looking at this petal here,
generally speaking, I like starting from the top left and
working my way towards the bottom right and
looking at this petal here, so it's got a very light
outline around the edge. It's also got a lighter
yellow strip running up here, but then most of the rest of the petal is a very light pink. Got all of this area here, and this area here is also a little bit pink
just around the edge. I'm not going to worry
about the faint lines, the kind of rough texture
that can be seen on here. For now, I just want to be
blocking in those shapes. Looking at the next petal. There's a line going up here, slightly darker
line going up and around and curves round. And then I want to shade in this section
and this section, just kind of blocking
in this whole area. So you can see I've drawn
in the outline shape here. I can then using a sharp
pencil and circular motions, begin working my way around and filling in
blocking in this patch. Here I can move on
to the next pestle. I once again want to look
at the main shapes here. And I find it easiest to draw around the outline
of the pestle and then shade in and mark
in the block of shape. I just think that's the
easiest way to approach this. It means I can use my
sketch a little bit easier. Now, I find this
easiest to as I say, start from the top left and work my way gradually
towards the bottom right. By far the most intricate area that we're going to
be marking in on this section is that center of the dahlia where the
petals get really small. Let's start off by focusing on the larger petals
around the edge. Just really looking at the
main shapes that are here, as I say, can't
stress enough that I don't need to be adding
in loads of detail. Then once I filled in
a reasonable amount of the petals around the edge, I can then gradually
start working my way towards
those middle ones, which is going to be
pretty time consuming. One thing that I really
want to pay attention to is the yellow
tips to the petals. So on every one of these petals, there's this bright yellow
tip on the outside petals, to the lighter petals, these slightly darker petals, and even on the ones
towards the middle here. Now, what I want
to be particularly careful of as I'm
drawing in all of these petals is that I am leaving where those bright
yellow areas are going to be. So I don't want to
be just marking and making one petal overlap another because it will
stop me a bit later from being able to fill
in those yellow tips. Think this will be
a bit clearer as I add in some more
of the shapes here. Sort of what I mean,
but I don't want to be going over where
those yellow tips will be. I want to make sure that I can keep them the bright yellow. Now, once again, remember, as
you're going through here, you do want to have a really
nice and sharp pencil. Particularly as we get
towards the middle, you really want to be able to focus on what is going where. You want to make sure that you can accurately add in
all of the detail, which is really only possible
with a sharp pencil. As they say, you
want to be pressing really nice and lightly. Hopefully, by the
end of this chapter, we will have something
that resembles a very faint dahlia. But what I want to do by
working lightly at this point, it just allows me to make any mistakes that I make if I get something in
slightly the wrong place. If my sketch isn't hugely
accurate in a particular area, or I can't see the sketch, then it means that I can
adjust it in the future. It just is a lot more forgiving. They've done half of
the outside petals. I can then start working
on the middle petals. Again, I'm really heavily
relying on my sketch here. Because they've already mapped
out all of these petals, and because they're all going in very specific directions, it's just much much easier
if I can follow the lines. You can faintly see
it on the camera, the lines I'm working from, and it's easier to see
them in real life. Particularly trying to do
with the pencil now though is maybe if an area
is particularly dark, so it's going to have to
be a dark brown in future. I'm not pressing firmer
with the pencil, but I am going
over it more times to make some areas
darker than others. So, for example, where
this patch here is quite a bright and almost dark pink. I'm going over this area more times than the
outside of the petal, where I don't need to go
over it as many times. Me on, for example, these
petals down the bottom, around the edge here,
this is much darker. I can go over these
petals around the edge more times than up the top where
it needs to be lighter. It can be much lighter and go
over it a fewer times here. And it's just going to
make my life so much easier as we work through
here. Now, remember petals are all pointing
in their own directions. They're all pointing
in the same direction. They're generally speaking, all going towards obviously
the center of the flower. The center of the flower in
the reference photo isn't the actual center of
where the flower is. So the center of
the flower is here, I think actually the center of the flower is
probably a bit lower. But because the flower
is pointing up, it looks like the center of the flower is more like up here. So that's another way in
that it's really helpful for me to be able to use my sketch because I took the time
to mark all of these out. Really start to see
as we're working our way through
here how going over some areas more times is making some areas look
a little bit darker, some petals look a
little bit darker. I think it's just going
to make life so much easier as we move
on from this point. But even on the areas
where I've built up more of the pencil,
it's not a lot. There's still a lot more pencil that I can put over
the top of this. I'd still say it's a
reasonably light layer. Is our goal right now is to
map things out, get the f, all of the details of the flower marked out so that
as we build up more of the pencil enough that we can blend this
with the solvents. We're pretty clear on
what needs to go well. So as I'm happy with
those central petals, I can once again work
around the edge. And I think, again, it gets
a lot easier from here. I can really see with my sketch outlines
which petals, which. I can look at them one
at a time and look at the shapes within
these petals. Looking at some of these
petals towards the bottom. On this petal here, for example, it's got two pretty
prominent lines coming down here and here. I want to make sure that I'm
marking in areas like these. So just lightly marking in
where they're going to go, and then I can shade around them to build up
some of the color. And again, I think that's
just going to make my life so much easier as
we move on here. And with these strips, if I've got an area that is darker, like the strips, again, I can go over this area
more times with the pencil, be lighter on some of the
outside lighter areas, and it just makes
my life so much easier as we go. I
can see what goes That's really all we're
doing for this first step. You can see quite quickly, we have got something
that looks like a Dalia. It obviously doesn't
have the contrast, it's quite scratchy,
but that's okay. We've got something that
we can really focus on building up in
the next section. Now before we move
on, I'm just going to go over a couple of other areas, a little bit more
build up a little bit more of the pencil
here, not a lot more. And then that is it for
this first section.
9. Build up the Midtones on the Flower: The main shapes have
now been marked out. Let's continue to refine this, start adding in some brighter
and some darker colors. Now, before we gradually work our way towards
the darker colors, I want to start off by brightening up some
of the lighter areas. So particularly looking at these orangy tones near
the center of the flower, where these petals are
joining the center. So here, all around the edge, all around here, there's this quite orangy tone,
particularly around the top. L et's add that in with
this orange yellow. Just very, very lightly. I want to be going about this in the same way that
I did previously. I want to be pressing
nice and lightly, but gradually building
up the pencil by going over the
area lots of times. And I want to be
working once again in circular motions to try and get this down as smoothly
as possible. Just want to put this anywhere where I can see a little
bit of that orange. So in some areas, I need to go reasonably far up the petals. So up here it goes quite high. And generally speaking,
I would say that this orange color is really only on these top petals,
the lighter petals. This is all part of building up enough of the
pigment on the paper, and when we activate
this with the solvent, there is something there
that we can blend. Add a few bits of the orange around the bottom here as well. You can see it's just
changing the pink color to be more of a brighter yellowy pink. But I wouldn't say I'm
adding a huge amount. Then from here, I want
to be thinking about the next darkest
color that's missing. You can see I've
added a little bit of this pencil the
whole way round now. I want to be adding a
slightly brighter pinky Particularly looking
at the color on this petal here,
this petal here. This quite bright. It's maybe
more on the side of red. It is featuring a lot
throughout the flower. Some areas, it's a
little bit lighter. You can still see that
pinky red around here, and in some areas, it's much darker like on these petals and generally
around the middle. I'm going to use the
pale geranium lake red. It's a kind of a slightly more on the side
of orange she red. Going to once again work through this one
petal at a time. Now, I do want to be building up a reasonable amount of the
color on this petal here. I'm not just putting down a smooth covering
over the whole petal. I am making it smooth, but I'm doing a little bit more in some areas and
less in others. So on this first
petal, for example, you'll see that
there's more color here at the bottom
and to the side, and it's much lighter
going through the middle. The same with this
petal here is darker in this top left corner
and along the bottom, and it's generally, I would say lighter over this
right hand side. I also want to be going
over this petal here. This petal I will need
to be lighter with, as I say, it doesn't
need as much of the red. But I do want to build up
a line going along here and along here and build up a little bit more
around the end. So you see, I've
built up those lines, and then I can just add
some light shading. There's still a case of
pressing lightly because I do need to be more accurate
about where this is going. I'm holding the pencil
much closer to the tip. I can't be as accurate on where the pencil is coming when
I hold it further back. I am still pressing lightly. I want to, as I say, build up a decent amount
of the pigment that we can blend this with the solvent. But I don't want to put so much down that I'm
pressing firmly. And I'm literally
going to work my way around looking at
one petal at a time. This is so much easier now that it's all mapped out
with that lighter pink. And I just want to
be looking at where the lights and darkes
are on each petal. To say it's absolutely tons of this pencil we
need to be adding in. It's really just refining
a little bit what's here. It's needing much more
adding towards the center, as I said a second ago
than around the outside. So on all of these petals, you can see this
quite bright red, particularly where
the fold is on the petal and on the end, where you can see in
the end of the petal. All along here along here
and this section at the end, even around here
around the bottom. Some of these are a little
bit more of a darker color, and we will full
this in in a second. I'm trying to focus a bit
more on the brighter red. I do want to be careful towards
the ends of the petals. As I mentioned in
the last section, the ends of the petals have
usually a yellow tip to them. I don't want to go
over that yellow tip. I want to be able
to fill that in once this has all been
blended and brighten it up. So I'm being very
conscious to avoid that. But beyond that, I am just going around one
petal at a time. See, it's not a huge
amount that I've added, but I do think it looks
much much better. Now, before I move
on to another color, I do also want to put some of this red towards the center. I'm not going to blend
the center too much. The center of the flower
has a huge amount of detail on it. So I don't want to necessarily blend it too much
with the solvent. I don't want to lose
all of that detail. Or I certainly don't
want to add in too much detail at this point. I think if I don't
add anything here, it's just going to look
a little bit washed out. So I'm going over
each of the petals. Now, this is, again, far easier because I've already
mapped this all out. I want to be particularly going over the bottoms of each petal, where the more
shadowed area will be and lightly build up
some of this red color. But I'm not going to worry about going all the way
into the center. You can see the center
is just hugely detailed, and it's got a lot of
very dark sections, a lot of shadows in
between the petals. I don't want to go
all between them at this point when I
blend with solvents, a lot of that detail
would get lost anyway. Now, I'm generally happy
with this red section. What I now want to do is move on to the next darkest color. I'm particularly
looking in some of the more shadowed areas now. I want to select this color
that we can see here. Comparing my swatches
to the reference photo, the closest color
that I can see to this is is called
sanguine pencil. This is a kind of
terracotta color. I'm once again working
one petal at a time. We're literally doing the same process
over and over again, lightly building up the
pencil in a series of layers, gradually getting towards
those darker colors until the shapes of all of
the petals has been built up. Now, generally
speaking, this color needs to be put towards where the petals are meeting each other where one
petal is under another. Or where the petals are
folding over one another. You look at the reference photo, you can see how much
of this color is all over all of these petals. Particularly around the bottom, I can't see anywhere near
as much of it around the top it generally seems
to be much lighter shadows. But down here, you
can see this kind of terracotta color
here and here. Around here as well in
between these petals. You can see so much of I lightly put a small
amount of this color over some of the red areas
just very, very lightly. So that they match a
little bit better. The whole flower looks like
it's matching one another. It makes those colors look
a little bit more similar. Then I once again
want to carry on working towards
the darker colors. So I would say that
the next darkest color is kind of a reddish brown. So this is the sienna brown, and there's really
not a huge amount of this color that
I need to add. It's basically right
in the corners of any of the folds
of the flower. You can see I'm still really lightly building up this color, gradually making
these shadows darker. Still find it helpful to start on the left and
gradually work my way towards the right
because the flower is built up of all
of these petals. I find it best to just work
as methodically as possible. Now I do also want
to go over some of the more shadowed areas around the bottom of these
center petals. Just to try and make them look a little bit more refined and try and cut down on some of those lighter edges
of the petals. Generally happy with the
lighter to the darker colors. I think that the mid tones, it's kind of lacking a bit is
not looking bright enough. So let's go back to the pink that we used in
the last chapter. This is the rose carmine. And I'm going to go over a
lot of these areas again. Reasonably quickly. I don't need to spend
absolutely ages doing this. I'm just quite quickly
going over all of the areas and using this to brighten up. So any areas that are particularly looking
very bright and light, and I want them to be a bit
more of mid tone pinky tone, I can just very lightly go
over this with the pink, and it brightens
the whole flower. Up. Now, as I've said before, I do want to be
careful not to go over the tips of the petals
because I am going to want those to be a much
brighter, more yellow color. But I just want to brighten
up the rest of the petals. So once again, I'm working
on these one at a time. I want to be really looking
at the reference photos, seeing what's on each
of these petals, seeing if there's an
area that they need. Kind of toning down the lighter
areas need toning down. You can see how just building
up a small light layer of this pencil over the top really changes the color of
the whole flower. It suddenly looks much
more like a pink flower. I'm trying to make this
as smooth as possible. It is looking a little bit
scratchy, but that's okay. We can blend that out
with the solvent. And most of this color, I need to be building up around the bottom
half of the flower. I can just add a little
light amount around the top. But adding a little bit, I do think makes
a big difference. So now I've added in these pink, the darker areas are
looking not dark enough. So what I'm going to do is just take a small amount
of a dark brown. This is the walnut brown. Going to go over the same areas where we put the Cena brown, make it a little bit darker. I might add to this
more a bit later. I'll definitely add to it
after adding in the solvents. But what I want to do after this point is fill
in the background. And then I think before
we use the solvent, let's get an idea of what the whole drawing is
going to look like. And then I can work out if we
need to add any more color onto the actual
flower area after see, I'm not adding
a huge amount at all of this color, just very, very lightly still
in select areas, and it's pretty subtle. And then once I've done
this, the last thing I want to add in
this chapter is, I'm just going to go back
to that same pink and tone down some of the really light areas
towards the middle. So I'm going over these
one petal at a time, making sure that
I'm still leaving the yellow tip area blank, but just going down the
side of each petals. Because it all just
looks way too light, and I've left kind
of a white outline around all of the petals. I don't need that much white. By the end of this section, you should have a
flower that looks reasonably detailed and
quite nice and bright. Let's focus in the next section at drawing in the background. And then, as I
say, it'd be a bit easier to work out if there's anything else we need
to add once we've got the context of
the background.
10. Draw in the Background: This point I'm pretty
happy with the flower. Let's now focus on
the background. Now, the background is
quite out of focus, and it's mostly
made up of greens, but what we want to do
is build this up from the lightest color
we can see within the background gradually
towards the darkest color. And actually, the lightest
color around here, I would say is more of
a kind of bluey gray. So I want to pick the
color in my set that I think is the closest
to that bluey gray. And I would say that
that is this pencil, this is the light ultramarine. Maybe it's a little
bit bluer than the color on the
reference photo, but I think it
will come together nicely as we build
up the colors. So, I want to put this
anywhere where there is a little bit of
that kind of blue. So there's the odd patches, particularly around
here around here. This is quite an
obvious one here. There's quite a bluey kind
of tone all around here, although it is quite dark, the underlying color, I would
say, is that light blue. There's blue around the bottom either side of the stem. And here, this is almost it has
a slight blue tinge to it, although I don't think it's as blue as some of the other areas. And I'm literally going to put this pencil down in
all of those spots. Now, I do want to be
very, very careful as I'm going near the
edge of the flower. I want to have a nice
and crisp edge here. And then I can sort of
fade out from that edge. So the most important
things that I'm doing here is once again, getting this pencil
down in as smooth, even, and light way as possible. Once again, I want
to be working in those circular motions and holding the pencil
reasonably far back. I maybe not holding it as far back as I have done previously, just because I need to
be pretty accurate, particularly when I'm going around the edge of the flower. But I'm certainly not holding
it really close to the tip, and once again,
that just stops me from being able to
press too hard. Si want to be working in
the circular motions, because this background
is out of focus, it is so so important that I try and get this
really smooth, as smooth as I can, so that it does look more out of focus. So now, don't forget as
you're working through here, you do want to frequently take your pencil
away and sharpen it. Once again, the pencil
is going to go down in a far more even and smooth way if you have a nice
and sharp pencil. Now, because I'm working
with polychromos here, they don't need sharpening as often as maybe something
like prisma color. But they do still need a
decent amount of sharpening. Just put the blue,
either side of the stem, as I mentioned, it
is pretty blue here. Then let's once again look at the reference photo and think about the next color
we want to use. I want to be looking
for that next darkest color,
generally speaking, I would say it's
this quite light green around here,
this kind of green. The closest match that
I would say I have to this color is the
earth green yellowish. This is quite an earthy green. It's not really a vibrant green. Have two of these types
of greens in my set, and this is the
lighter of the two. So you can see,
I'm very carefully going around the
edge of the flower, marking a nice crisp
line around the edge. And then I once again want to be working here in
circular motions, really nicely and lightly putting down a covering
of the pencil. Once again, I do want to get
this as smooth as possible. Obviously, we will be activating
this with the solvent, but it's going to be
much smoother if I can get the pencil down as smooth as possible
at this point. I'm literally just going to put this color down
almost everywhere. So as I get towards the
blue sections here, I do want to slightly overlap
that blue just so that it has a nice and smooth
gradient at the edge here. And it kind of blends
together a little bit better, and then I am, as I say, literally blocking this in. Now, this is a reasonably
time consuming process. Not really anything more
to what I'm doing here. So you can see how far back
I'm holding the pencil at this point because
I don't need to be hugely accurate about
where it's going. Particularly in the
corner up here, I just need to be
shading in this corner. I'm holding it really far back. And then holding it much
closer to the tip when I then want to be going around
the edges of the petals. Now, it may be hard to see on camera where the edges
of those petals are. But I can see still very clearly my sketch when I am
looking in real life. So you should be able to lightly still see your sketch here, as well as the yellow that we put down right
at the beginning. Again, drawing a nice crisp edge around the edge of the flower. And then I can lightly
shade to that, slightly shading over the
blue to blend that in a bit better and generally
blocking this area in. And again, you can see how light the color is
that we're putting down. We're really not needing to
add absolutely blades of it. We don't want a really dark
color because we do want to be able to put more
colors over the top of this. I'm going to start
working through this a little bit faster because we are literally just blocking in this green over almost
all of the background. As we work towards
this corner here, there's actually a huge area here where I'm not
going to put the green. When you look at this area here, it does have green
around the edges of it, but this doesn't have
an undertone of green. This is actually more
of a bluey gray. At the moment, I've
only really marked in this curvy piece here. Maybe I need to go back
and block in this area. But for now with the green,
I'm going to avoid this. Actually, there's a
similar area here that looks more like a blue
rather than a green. So I can work around
this area as well, but fill in the green around
the edge of the petals. And I can use these
petals to get a really good bearing on what needs to go where
on the background. Obviously, there's general
blue patches, green patches. There's also some much darker patches we'll look
at in a minute. To get those all in
the right place. Using the petals and
the placement of the petals does make
that an easier process. Let's move on to
the left hand side. And again, I just want to
block in this whole edge, this whole side around here. I say, this is quite a
time consuming process. I would say that this took about 20 minutes to get all
of this area marked in, all of this area, having a smooth layer of
the green down. So it's not something
that you expect to be a really fast process
if you're putting down the pencil in as
smooth a way as possible. As log as I'm happy with
this left hand side. I can then move on to the right. Once again, I can fill in
this whole side, although, I am going to leave
a little patch in the bottom right hand corner. Once again, the
underlying colors here look more like a
light blue to me. So once I filled in
all of this green, I can then go back to
that lighter blue. And just fill in these
areas that actually, I think do need to be
more of that blue. This is exactly the same blue
as we used a second ago. And then what I have
managed to do is get some sort of color over
the whole of the flower. So I've got something that
I can be working with Once again, slightly
take the blue over the green area just to blend
these colors together, so it doesn't look like
it's as harsh of a line. So what I want to do, at this point is once again
look at the reference photo. I want to look for the
next darkest color. Actually, the main color that is throughout the background
is a darker green. We've got the very
light green like here, and then some darker patches and shapes
with a similar green, but as I say, it's
just a bit darker. Ever I use the lighter green
that we used a second ago, I generally pair this
green with it as well. It just feels to
me like a darker, earthy green that matches really well with
the previous one. And what I want to do
with this green is map in all of the main darker areas, whether it's an area
that is slightly darker. An area that will need
to be very, very dark. I'm going to put this
green in that area. So let's have a look at this patch at the
top to start with. Generally speaking, I
do like to start in the top left and gradually work my way towards
the bottom right. I just think it really helps
to work in a systematic way. So I want to fill in around
the edge of the flower here. I'm noticing that
this is a bit darker. I don't want to go onto
that lighter blue section, but I do want to
come around here, and then there's this kind of almost a diamond kind of shape
here that I can mark in. And this, as I say,
although it's more of a a bit darker, maybe
a dark grayy brown. I'm going to fill this in with
the green for now just so that I have this shape
marked in as a darker color. I'm also noticing, so it's quite light around
this blue section, and then it gets much
darker around here. It's actually quite
a prominent line around the edge of the flower, and then it's pretty dark here. There's almost a light
circle patch here, and then it gets much darker. Look at the shapes around here. So I will need to fill in this whole area down here again, even though it is
so much darker. Above this patch here. I need to add the green around the edge of
the petal here, and then again, it gets much darker in this area
all around here. So that is essentially
what I'm looking at here. I'm looking at those
darker patches and really wanting to
fill in the shapes. I would say it
looks a little bit peculiar as I'm doing
this. But that's fine. It will build up as we go. And it will end up making
sense towards the end. Once again, I still want to
be working really nice and lightly and working in circular
motions with this pencil. Let's go nice and crisp around the edge
of the petals here, and then once again shade out. As I say, I'm literally
going to follow the shapes that I can see within the reference
photo as best I can, using particularly the
petals and now the blue patches as a bit of a guide on where I need to
build up the color. Let's have a look at some of the shapes towards
the bottom here. So this darker patch that I
mentioned a second ago here, this is coming down
to about here, kind of a pointy shape. And then there's this
lighter green patch here, kind of a wedge
coming down here. It's a little bit darker in
the corner of the petal here and also a little bit darker
around the bottom here. You see those darker areas gradually building up
around the bottom here. And then let's add a little
bit of shading on the stem. Note that it is darker
on this right hand side, lighter on the left. So I'm building up a lot
more of the color on that right and then lightly
shading just a short line, a little line on the left. I'm going to start
back at the top and work my way down the
right hand side. So let's look at the main
shapes that are around here. There's quite a prominent
line where there's a lighter green section here and a darker green section here. So let's mark in where that
line is going to be and then shade green
to the left of it. I also want to be adding
in a darker green, almost triangular shape here to the right of
this light patch. A little bit up in what will be the corner of the drawing. The drawing kind of cuts
off around maybe here. I need to add a
little tiny patch in the corner, a patch here. And then I want to be adding
a reasonable amount of green in this area around
the petals here. And then a lot of green
all around the bottom. This area here is pretty
dark, as you can see, but I want to be building
up that green in this area. I do want to leave these
few curved shapes here, so I'm going to mark these out. You can only see
up to about here. So I just need to mark out this kind of swell and
this kind of swell. Then this green ends around here where it
blends into the blue. I think this is something that seems pretty complicated
at this point, but when you actually look at the shapes and colors that are within the background
and you realize that you're just drawing
those shapes, it's not as complicated
as maybe you might think. So this point, I'm pretty happy with the darker green areas. I once again want to be thinking about the next darkest color. The next darkest color is all of those darker patches that I mentioned where we have
built up this green.'s also some of the darker areas around the blue,
particularly around here. You can see how dark this is around the edges
of the petals. It's like a very deep blue and around the bottom around here. So let's start off by using the darkest blue that
I have in my set. This is the dark indigo pencil. I'm going to use
this first to add in the darker areas
around the blue, and then we can add the darker areas around
the green in a second. He, I'm looking at each
individual blue patch for where I need to be building
up some of this color. Generally speaking, it is where the petals are
meeting the blue, and that helps the petals
stand out a little bit more. You can see on this
blue patch here, it's much darker
towards the top. There's this bluey
color on here, and then it's also
generally darker. I say around the
top here as well. Let's just add a light
layering of this pencil. Still holding it really
far back, you can see, and still not pressing hard, and I'm literally going to work around these spots
one at a time. Some of the spots, I
barely need to put any of the pencil down in
others like here. I need to build up a
reasonable amount, particularly around
where the stem is meeting the background. So you can see that building up the pencil going
over the same area bit by bit does really build up quite the prominent color, but I'm still able to add more color over the
top if I need to. I haven't pressed really
hard with the pencil, I've just gone over
it more times. Et's do the same
to the other side. Now let's start
focusing on this patch. Here. This is probably the
area where we need to be building up the most
of this dark indigo. And we really need
to be building up a lot around the edge here, but there's even on this area still a reasonable
amount of the color. The main area I need to avoid is this curved lighter patch. Let's go around the edge and
then lightly shade out from that point so that it
blends reasonably well. You can see I'm just
getting a little bit of a gradient going on here. I'm also going to add a bit of the blue down here in this area. I am going to fade it a bit
into that lighter blue band. And then let's add small amount of the blue in the
other areas as well. I don't need to
add a huge amount. On this patch down the bottom, I almost need to fill in
some kind of stripes. You see here there's almost some lines going through here. Let's fill that in. And
then let's move on to those darkest areas
with the walnut brown. So particularly all of
the darker patches, I mentioned, just building
that up gradually. That's in so many
different areas. Anywhere that looks
a little bit darker, all of these areas, some are particularly dark, particularly here and here, but some are just needing to be a bit darker than what
they are at the moment, and particularly
thinking about the edge of the stem here. And generally all around here. See that that's
giving the background a lot more kind of shape
and a lot more depth. I can maybe tone down these
patches here a little bit, maybe they're a bit too light. And then let's move on to the black pencil
and just build up a small amount of this color anywhere that is
particularly dark. So I'm particularly thinking of, again, this patch here, a few areas where the petals
are meeting the background, but really not a huge amount. But I can build up some
of this black here. As I mentioned,
I'd say this area is kind of a gray
color, gray blue. So if I put a light
layer of the black, it will end up looking gray when we activate this
a little bit later. Put some of this black around the edge here but not too much. And then, as I say,
most of the black I want to be building
up in this area. Now, at this point, I'm generally happy with
the background. I think it's looking
pretty accurate, I would say, to the
reference photo. Maybe it's not looking
hugely rich at this point. But once it has been
activated with the solvent, it will look
completely different. It will be a much richer color. See how just going over that same area over and over again makes the color here
look much, much darker. Then I'm just going to go
back to that darker green and maybe smooth out some of
the edges. Just help blend. Now that I put particularly
the black and brown in here, just help blend
that a little bit better into the surroundings. But there's not a huge
amount I need to do, just maybe going over some of the brown areas
to smooth it out. Again, going over this area
to tone it down a little bit. Now, the last thing that I want to do whilst filling in some of the color on the
background here is just add tiny bit of a brighter green. So particularly looking at the
kind of green around here. It just looks much brighter, much more vibrant than the
greens that we've got. Let's add a really small
amount of this green. This is just called light green. It's just a really bright green. Specifically, in this
area around here, you can see I'm not putting
a huge amount down, but I do think it is really
brightening the patch. I'm going to put a little
bit up here as well. Still really lightly working
in those circular motions, holding the pencil
quite far back. It's very much the same as what we've been
doing up until now. And then that is it
for this section.
11. Use the Solvent to Blend: Now, that I'm happy
that I've built up enough of the pigment
on the paper. What I now need to do is
blend this with the solvent. So what I want to do is work through here one
petal at a time. I don't want to just blend
over the whole thing. That's just going to
make a big muddy mess. I'm going to start on the flour. Let's start towards the
middle of the flour. All of this more kind of
detailed central section, and then work
towards the outside, I want to do the background us. Literally, all I'm doing is lightly going over
one petal at a time. Now you'll notice that
reasonably frequently, I'm going to be taking
the paint brush away. I want to be cleaning
it on some tissue and then getting more solvent onto the paint brush so that we're always working with
a reasonable amount, not too much of the solvent. And I'm always going to
get a certain amount of build up on the paint
brush of pigment. I don't want to let that
bleed over into other areas. I want to try and keep this nice and clean as clean as possible. Think whilst I'm working
through these fair sections, it doesn't look too different. It will start looking much more impactful, particularly
on the background, but also as we start
working our way through some of
the larger petals. It will also look much more different on petals that
have more pigment on them. These petals down
the bottom here, for example, are going
to blend much more, and it's going to look much
more obvious than towards the middle where I
haven't really got a huge amount of pigment down. It is literally all I'm going to do here is work one
petal at a time. Now, generally speaking,
I want to be working from the lighter areas and going
towards the darker areas. In most situations, that said because on some
of these petals, there's such a small
amount of pigment, particularly towards the top, I can go more from the darker areas towards
the lighter areas, but only on these central
petals towards the middle here. Don't you forget in terms of how much of the solvent
you're putting down? Firstly, it's well worth doing that test before you just
go in at this point. You're going to have
a much better idea of what the solvent
is going to do. Also, it's a good idea to
experiment with the amount of solvent that is
needing to be put down. Ificly focusing on the type
of paper that you're using, and also the amount of
pencil that you've put down, the type of pencil
you're using as well. Unless you're using
the same solvent, the same pencil and the
same paper as I am. You wouldn't necessarily expect to get exactly the same results, or more the point expect the solvent to act in the
same way as it is for me. I find that I had to put down
probably a medium amount of solvent to get it to blend
how I would like it to. That I said, it's so important that you don't
put too much down. It's better to put
down too little than too much because
you can always add more. Going to work over some
of the bigger petals now. And you can see, I'm not taking a long time going over these. It is a reasonably
quick process. And you can see how much smoother it makes
the pencil look. And as I said, I
think it is way more impactful on the background than it is on the flower even. Although I do think the flower
is looking much smoother. Generally speaking,
I want to be working my way around from the
left towards the right, mostly because whilst this is
still wet before it dries, I don't want to risk
putting my hand in it, I don't want to smudge it. So I can work with the
fact that I'm right handed that I need to be going towards that
right hand side. This is literally
all there is to it, just working through
one petal at a time. Generally speaking, working from the lighter areas
towards the darker, except I would say in
those middle petals. Because towards the center we haven't got a huge amount of will be adding a lot of dark values towards the
middle of the flower. But I don't want to
do that before I use the solvents because I'll end up losing all of that
detail that I added in. So once I'm happy
with the flower, I'm happy that it's
all nicely blended. I want to start focusing
on the background. And it's very similar. What I want to be doing here. I want to be once
again working from the lighter areas towards
the darker areas. So I can start off by
blending over all of the blue sections. So just going
through here one at a time. And I kind of I would say, almost using the paint
brush in kind of circular motions to try and blend this in as smooth
way as possible. It's not necessarily going
to be perfectly smooth, and that's okay because
we will be able to put some pencil over the top of this to smooth it out a
little bit more. But again, I do
want to blend this to be as smooth as
I possibly can. So I can blend over the blue sections from
the lighter areas, so, for example,
from here towards the darker areas so
closer to the flower. It's just making the whole
thing much more solid. Once I'm happy that I've gone
over all of the blue areas, being so careful not to blend the blue onto
the flower petals. I really want to keep that nice firm edge
around the petals. I can then start thinking about moving on to
the green section. Just once again, blending the green sections with
these circular motions, and generally
speaking, starting in the lighter green areas and working towards the
darker green areas. Here, for example, I've
blended the lighter green. I can move on to this
very dark patch here. I am working on this section
generally to start with, then taking my paint brush
away to clean it before, then blending this
lighter green area here and then blending the
darker areas around that. Want to be kind of working
one section at a time. But now now that I've gone through and emblended
all the blue, I can go through and blend these darker areas around
the lighter areas. I think that that ends up giving a more consistent blender, more consistent
background. I would say. It's actually a
reasonably fast process, and you can see
how much better it looks around the background
already. It looks much softer, but also more vibrant. Now, to give you an idea of how fast this is that I'm
working through here. Blending all of
this whole picture, the flower and the background
has taken about 25 minutes, a little bit under 25 minutes. So it's really not a long
and time consuming process. But don't rush it because
you do want to make sure that you are blending
as smoothly as possible. Again, on this side,
I want to be so careful as I'm blending
near the petals here. Also, you can really start to see the amount of
pigment that I've got building up on my paint brush because I'm blending
such a dark area. So do remember to frequently
clean your paint brush. You don't want to end up making some of the lighter
areas look muddy. Can just finish these last few green areas down the bottom. And then I'm happy that I have blended the whole
of the picture. Now, what's very important now is that I leave this to dry properly before I
start trying to add the final details
over the top. I don't want to try
and go over the top of this when it is still
even slightly damp. So I've left mine for a couple
of hours before moving on. All right, but by the
end of this section, you should have a
flower on a background. That doesn't have a
huge amount of detail, but it is pretty
nice and smooth, maybe a bit patchy in
places from the blending. But certainly something that we can build all of the details on.
12. Add in the Finishing Touches: Now that I've
blended all of this out and I waited for it to dry, I can start thinking
about adding in the final details and smoothing anything
out that I need to. I'm going to start off by
focusing on the background. Now the background does look much better, much more vibrant, but I also think it
looks a little bit patchy and not as
smooth as I would like. I'm going to start
going over all of this, smoothing it out and
generally tidying it up. I'm beginning here
with the black pencil, the main thing that I
want to do to begin with is tidy up all of
the darker areas. This is going to be very similar to what I have done before. I want to be still
pressing lightly. I don't need to press hard
to gradually build up the same dark areas as
I went over before. So, for example, there's
this kind of diamond shape up the top here that just looks a little
bit kind of patchy. It also isn't quite
looking dark enough, so I can once again, still pressing lightly in the same way that we did before, go over this area, gradually building up some
more of the black. Worth noting that this is quite a time consuming
part of the drawing, but also it is
reasonably simple. It's very, very similar to all of the things
that we've done before. So, in actuality, I have spent about probably 2 hours doing
these tidy up end parts. But you'll see as we work
through here that actually it's just the same process that
we were doing before. So I want to once again
go over this area here. It's just looking not
as dark as it was. It's not looking as dark
as on the reference photo. So I want to go back
over this area, really build up a little
bit more of the black I can start working my way down in the same way
that I did before. So working around this
lighter patch here. Go over some of the brown, make it a little bit
less prominently brown, make it look a bit more
like a darker green. And then I really want
to build up a lot of the pencil on this
darker area down here. Again, it's exactly the same as we did
before when we were first filling in the background to mark in all of the shapes. The shapes are all now there. But they're just, as I say,
looking a little bit patchy, not looking quite neat and tidy. But even after going over this area on
the left hand side, that looks so much better if you compare the left
now to the right, just building up a little
bit more of this black. It looks so much nicer, so much kind of blurrier and smoother like I want
the background to look. So let's do the same down
this right hand side. Going back over this whole dark patch down the bottom here, you can really see
where I'm building up the black that it did
look very patchy, and it needs the black
to go over the top to make it look as dark as
it does in the reference. Still I'm pressing lightly here. I'm not pressing harder. Do you find after putting
down the solvents? The pencils look a little bit darker when
you put them down, like the black now looks a bit
darker than it did before. Even though, I'm pressing
as lightly as I was before. And then once I'm happy
with this area down here, I'm just also going to add
a small amount of black on the right hand side of the
stem here, the blending. It just doesn't it looks
really patchy in this area. Let's just tidy that up. Let's move on to
that darker blue, the dark indigo that
we used before, tidy up some of the blue areas, so just very lightly
going over here, smoothing out the blue, and maybe making
the edges blend a bit better into the black area. I can really build
up quite a lot of the blue less in some places, but down the bottom,
for example, down here, I do want to build
up a reasonable amount, as well as on this
patch up the top. And I just think
it makes it look much smoother, much less patch. Here we want to be thinking
about what other colors we want to be adding in to
smooth out the background. So let's go back to the darker green and just lightly
add some of this, maybe toning down some of the brighter green
areas like here, for example, It's just
looking too bright. So if I add some of this
green over the top, it's just going to
take it down a notch. But still I'm
pressing so lightly, I'm still working in
those circular motions to try and make this
as smooth as possible. I'm just trying to tide
you up the background. We're going to focus on the
background to start with, and then we can think
about adjusting and adding in a lot of detail
onto the flower itself. But I just find it easier to
focus on one area at a time. Now that I'm happy
with the background, let's really start adding in a lot of details on the flower. And I'm going to start
here using the brown. This is the walnut brown,
the very dark brown. And I'm going to very, very carefully fill in all
of the dark areas. So if we look at the
center of the flower, a lot of the detail here I haven't marked in yet
because I didn't want to mark in until after weed
blended with the solvent. But look at the dark
brown here and all of these shapes surrounding
all of the petals. So there's a dark brown shape here all along the top here. Some really dark places. This is probably the darkest, but also generally
towards the middle, there's all of this
dark brown all around here in between all
of these petals, as well as over
here, and then it does get very dark
around here as well. So all I'm doing
is going in with the very sharp brown pencil and trying to mark in
all of these gaps. Now, this is probably the most time consuming section or one of the most
time consuming sections of this chapter. Actually think that
these shapes might be darker than this dark brown, but if I mark it in with a
dark brown to begin with, I can always go over it with
the black if I need to. But I don't want to go in
full darkness straight away. Now, I do think that
this is quite as I say, a long, complicated,
time consuming process, but it is easier in that I have already so thoroughly mapped
out all of the petals here, and I can, in some places, still very lightly
see my sketch. So, I'm just working
through here following all of the kind of guides
that I've added in. I've got the guides
of the petal and the guides of the sketch to try and get these dark
areas in the right place. Now, I think the most important
thing is to work with a really sharp pencil because there's so
much detail in here, and I need to be really accurate about where
the pencils going. That is just so much easier and much more possible
with a sharp pencil. Go over all of these dark patches, and
generally speaking, it is at the bottom
of the petals, where the petal is
meeting the next petal. I have marked in a lot of
these darker areas already, but I'm just wanting
to go over it. The details towards
the middle are some of the areas that I hadn't
marked in already. I pretty much need to go through these one
petal at a time. I do need to add a bit more as I get towards
the bottom here. As I say, in between
all of these, it is just really dark. Also notice that it's
really well blended. It's not got really harsh lines. These dark patches here have
really sharp edges to them. Whereas, down here, it really blends into the
pinky orange red. Let's go back over all
of these darker areas that we went over before
in exactly the same way. Still nice and lightly, I don't want to press firmly. I find that for every extra
detail that I add in, it makes the next thing more
obvious that I need to do. Once I've gone through and added in all of these dark patches, I think that the darker areas
are now looking too harsh. It's kind of too much
of a harsh line and the mid tones aren't quite
where they need to be. Let's work through again, one pettil at a time
with the burnt sienna. This is a kind of reddish brown. And this is both a way to add more detail onto
each of the petals. But it is also a good way
to blend that last pencil that we added in and make it kind of blend in a bit
better with the pencil. So I'll show you what I'm
doing on the petals here. Darting on these petals
down the bottom, and you'll note
how they all have this light line going
through the middle. And then they've got much
darker red shading all around. So if I draw around that
light central line, and then add shading avoiding
right close to the edge, but add shading in this
kind of triangle here and this triangle here and do that for each
of these petals. So the same here, it's got
this line up the middle, the light line up the middle. There's a darker
line down this side, and then there's
shading about here, it's darker here
and darker here, and then it gets lighter
from this line up. To avoid particularly
this triangle here and add extra shading here. Here, for example, you can
see that central line, and then it's dark on
the left hand side. There's also a darker shadow
on the right hand side, but not as dark as on this side. That is exactly what I'm looking at for
every single petal. I'm looking for the lights
and darks in each one. Marking it in. And this
is really what's going to give the whole
flower its shape. And I'm starting off by
focusing on the central, the smaller petals here. I do think these are the
more time consuming petals. Most important that I don't
go towards the ends of the petals because they are
more of that yellow color. So I can work around from generally the edges towards the center of this
bottom section, and then we can
start thinking about working on the rest
of the petals. I'm not going to go through
every single petal here. I am literally following everything that we've
done up until this point. So going through this
one petal at a time, really looking at where the
lighter and darker areas are, and then building that up. As I say, once we've
gone through and done this for the
whole of the flower, I think it makes it
so much easier to see what the next color
is that's missing. This is the same as what we did in one of the
earlier sections, looking at each petal, really thinking about where it needs to be made a
little bit darker, which is generally
where one petal is up against another or where
there's a fold on the petal. There's a lot less of this color that I need to add towards the top because it's much darker towards the
bottom of the flower. I'm happy with this brown. I once again want to be thinking about the most obvious
color that's missing. And now I would say the most obvious color
that's missing on the flower is that it's not
looking vibrant enough. So let's go over all of
those same colors again, the same browns again, but I want to liven
it up a bit more. So I want to keep the dark color that I added a second ago, but add this quite vibrant red. This is the pale
geranium lake red. It's kind of an orange red, and I'm literally going
to go over all of the areas where I put
the burnt sienna. Can see what a huge
difference that's making. It's just making the
whole flower look so much more lively,
so much brighter. Now, do you remember
whilst doing this, it is still very much the case that you want to be
pressing lightly. Building up the color slowly. You'd be amazed at
how little pencil you have to put down to
build up a bright color. And it's so much easier if you do this with
a sharp pencil. It's just so important to
remember to frequently sharpen. It's very easy to
get really absorbed in building up the color and forget to
sharpen the pencil. I built up a lot of that red going over where we
put the last color. I once again want to think about the most obvious thing
that's missing here. Now, I think the most obvious
thing is that a lot of the brighter pink that we added in right at the very beginning
has got a little bit lost. A lot of the lighter petals, particularly going around
the edge of the flower just don't look very
bright anymore. Let's go back to that bright
pink and go over all of these petals in exactly the
same way as we did before. Go over them all again
to brighten them up. I'm looking at all of the lighter areas
where the yellow is, going around these one
petal at a time and just making them look,
much more vibrant. Now, as I say, this is
all made far easier because we have already
built this up so much. We've already been
through and done this. We're just doing exactly
the same thing again, and so it's much easier
to work through it. Now once again, I'm
working around in a pretty methodical way and
working one petal at a time. I find it much easier to keep your bearings
if you do that. I'm also going to go
over some of the red. There's much more
of the red round the bottom and less
towards the top. So as I get round to the
walls of the bottom, to try and make the color
look quite nice and consistent over the
whole of the flower, I'm going to blend out some of their edges of the red and just generally brighten
up anywhere where I think it is looking
a little bit too pale. So again, really looking at the reference photo and
looking at the flower, comparing the two to try and get this brighter pink
in the right place. So, for example, when we look
at this little petal here, was all pretty much
close to white. In actuality, it's
only this corner, where it's actually the tip
of the petal is a yellow. The rest of it, I want it to
be more like a bright pink. And on this section, I
added quite a bit of pink on here because there's
a red down here, and then it got very
light towards the end. But look at how
bright that pink is. The same on this one, look
at how bright the pink is, particularly around the end here, but particularly
this part. Do still think it's a case of looking at these
petals one by one and really paying attention to the actual colors that
you can see there. The most important
thing I don't want to do is go over the very tips of the petals because
I will be adding a yellow into that in a second. As I'm happy with the
petals around the edges, I am going to pretty much go over all of these
central petals, also with the pink, but avoiding the yellow
tips, as I say. Go over some of the sides and
some of the centers of the petal that we've been leaving
out so far in this chapter. To try and give it a little
bit more of a brighter look. It just looks a little bit
too pale at the moment, and I want it to be
still a very light pink, but a bit brighter. You can see what
a huge difference that's making quite quick. So now, once again, I want
to be looking at the flower, comparing it to my reference
photo and thinking again about the most obvious
color that's now missing. Now that I'm happier with
the center of the flower. I think a lot of
the yellow around the edge here is not
looking bright enough. We did previously add a
reasonable amount in, but now you've added other
colors over the top. It's just looking a
little bit too faded. So anywhere where I saw
the orange yellow before, and you can see where
I've added it before. I'm going to go back
over these areas. Once again, with this
kind of orange yellow, this is the dark rome yellow. And you can see what
huge difference that's making on just brightening
the whole thing up. Now, I do want to
go over some of the pink areas as well, I think, adding this anywhere where I can see a hint of this kind of orange color is
really going to make the flower fit
together a bit better. It's going to all
match a bit better. I do think again, it makes
quite a big difference going over the red and
pink with this color. It just gives it that
slightly stronger peachy, kind of yellowy pink tone. I think the color gets
a bit more obvious as I start making my way up
the left hand side. Because as we get
towards the top, it is just a more
prominent color. Thinking of yellows, let's move on to quite a bright yellow now, and I'm just going to go over the tips of every single petals. You can see literally
all I'm doing is going over the edges here
and brightening it up. I'm not pressing super hard. I'm also not pressing
massively lightly. I'm say I'm using a kind of medium pressure to
just go over here, and it's just brightening up. Particularly the
center of the flower, where there is so much of
this yellow on those tips. I'm also going to add a little
bit of yellow in some of the other brighter tips
around the edge around here. I don't need to add
in a huge amount. Then I can once
again think about the main difference between my drawing and the
reference photo. So let's move on to
the black pencil. As I said, some of
these darker areas I don't think are
looking dark enough. I did want to mark them
in with the dark brown that walnut brown before then really committing
with the black here. I think that's
the main difference is, it's just looking a
little bit washed out, particularly in comparison
to the background. So I can look at my reference photo as I'm
working through here. I want to look at all of these
darker patches and think about anywhere where I think
it does need to be darker. All of these shadows are not all consistently the same colors, that do bear that in mind. So, for example, the
shadow in this little gap here isn't as dark here as
it is in these corners. So we need to add some of the black into the corners here, but not necessarily
this area here That's the same throughout. It's much darker here
and much darker here, but not as dark somewhere
like here or here. Now, it may be that I do still add some of the black
into those areas, but not to the same extent. I kind of want to
put the black in the darkest areas and then decide where
else it needs to go. I really need to focus on the
detail towards the middle of the flower because
I do want that to look quite nice
and intricate. Now, once again, remember to have a really nice
and sharp pencil. There's so much detail that
we need to be adding in here. It is just going to be ten times easier with
a sharp pencil. And with things like this, I
think the more that you add, the easier it is to
see what's missing. So I want to put the
black around here, in some of these gaps, but I also want to put the black in some of the
shadows around here. These just aren't
looking dark enough, particularly in
comparison to the center. They are pretty dark in comparison to the
rest of the flower. That's looking much much better, but let's also use the
dark brown just to smooth out the edges
of those black areas. The area, particularly
around where we're working now is really needs
to be very dark, but I don't want it
to be quite as harsh. And I think often putting the brown over the
top of the black does help make it just
a bit less harsh. To go over any
other areas that I think could stand to be
made a little bit darker. Just any areas where
I think the shadow isn't quite looking
as much as it should be or any black areas
that I want to go over just to tone down so
that they're not as dark. Then we're getting into
the absolute last pass, the last finishing touches
of the drawing now. Last thing I want to do is add in this kind of purply
pink, just a very, very light amount of this
is middle purple pink, in particularly some
of the central petals. I think they're not
quite the right color, and they just need brightening
up the tiniest bit. So I'm just going to
slightly change the color, particularly on
the middle petals. But then that is it.
13. Summary: Right, and that is the
end of the course. I hope that you
found it helpful. Hopefully, it makes the idea of blending with solvents
a little bit simpler. So you want to start off by
picking the right kind of reference photo
that's going to work really well when
blending with solvents. You then want to take
a minute to have a good look at that
reference photo, really see what's
actually there. From there, you can create
your sketch outlines. Do remember to make
this extremely light. She got your sketch,
you can start building up the
pencil on the paper, making sure that we really
build up a lot of the pencil. As always, you want to
make sure that you're doing this in as smooth
way as possible, so building up the
pencil nice and lightly and working
with circular motions. And once a decent amount of the pencil is built
up on the paper, at this point, you can use the solvent generally blending from the light to the dark. Once that solvent has
completely dried, you can then go in
and add in all of the final details
and maybe smooth out any areas that need
to be smoothed out. Now, I hope that you've
enjoyed this course. Please do review it if you have. And I look forward to seeing
you in the next course.
Gemma Chambers, Pencil Artist
