Introduction to monochrome and color drawing art media

1. Choosing a drawing object: Four. For the whole set of introduction courses, I picked up a very simple subject a cap. Any cap, it can be imaginary cap. It can be your favorite cup that you use every day. The one that you saw in the shop, the one from the present, from the Internet board or anything, absolutely any cap. I choose it because this object is very simple. It's probably clear to everyone, and it has a big variety of shapes, colors, forms, and so on. And it will give us a great opportunity to explore the ability of different art materials. There is no wrong or right drawing. You can either follow my examples or using the techniques and ideas I will provide, I will share, create your own cup and use your own references. In this course, we're not going to focus on academic drawing and structure, but rather on a creative drawing. What I want to do, I want to introduce you some common and popular drawing art materials from a different perspective in a very easy way. And a simple cap will help us with this. For every art medium, I will provide a list of absolute minimum and maximum you need to start, and believe me, you don't need to have a lot for the beginning. This statement is valid for both art materials you need to have and your art be ground. Your desire, some basic things, and the things I will share is everything you need to start. So let's move on. 2. Introduction to charcoal as a medium: We start our journey with a charcoal. Very first art material I picked up for you is this amazing black piece of burn wood. And it's not by accident. This is probably one of the very, very first medium known to people. Prehistorical people used it in cave art. That is quant amazing, very amazing. You can check it online if you don't know what it is. Or in some special books, articles, and I really recommend you if you can go somewhere and check, this is incredible. This little piece of wood can do incredible things, and it is still used extensively nowadays. From anything from sketching to very, very fine artworks, very realistic and beautiful looking artworks. I personally use it for sketching and live jogging mostly. Okay, let's have a look what you can bind on the market. Charcoal is presented in two main types. It's either willow, wine, charcoal, or anything else, similar to this. Or it's a compressed charcoal. What is willow or wine charcoal? It's basically a burn branches of either willow tree or grape wines, and they come in these beautiful sticks, different sickness. I'll show you a little bit later. And compressed charcoal, maybe I'll show you better this one. Compressed charcoal is it is charcoal powder that is combined with a binding material such as glue or gum or bags, and it comes in this square type chokes, chunks or sticks or even any pencils. Let's have a quick overview of what of these types. So willow charcoal, as I told you, it can come in different sizes. This one is something in the middle. This is a medium size, six to 11 millimeters. I usually stick to this one. But I also have something to show you, I have a smaller one. Like this, I use it rarely because it's super soft, easily to break. And still I can create the fine line even with this size. So what is different in Wlow charcoal? Willow charcoal is very nice. It's super natural, and I think it's some kind in our blood to use it. It's in our genes. The main qualities of this type are probably softness. It is very soft. Because it is soft, it's easily to smudge it, easily to rub on the paper. It doesn't give you the very, very dark shades. It's probably giving you something like dark gray shades, no black, but it's also very useful and it's easily correct you can easily correct it. If you do a mistake, it's very nicely and easy. With the tip of it, we can do the lines. You will see who can do the lines very lightly pressing the lines. Won't be very noticeable, press harder and the line would be bold and nice. But the most important is to use the side of your stick. With the side of your stick, we can cover bigger areas. And if you press something somehow on one side, you can create the line. Yeah, the line with the shade. This kind of technique, I would say, used very commonly is used very commonly in drawing. With the side, you can see, if you press light, it would be light, press harder will be dark and we can do layering. And as I told you, it is very soft, so it's easily easily, easily rubbing and sminching together, creating very nice and smooth look. And we can cover and layer more more more to achieve the more intense color. So this is willow. Compressed charcoal. Compressed charcoal is more harder material, not that easy to break. It is not that easy to smudge or rub on the paper, not easy to remove from the paper, but it gives very nice and intense black color. Let's have a look, so the same we can create the lines. We'll see that. And with the side, I can create Hey, see, it is already too dark, even I'm pressing very lightly. If I press very hard, it will be super blare. See, very nice and black colored. And look at this, not smadging nicely, not smadging nicely. I still see the texture where here, it is super soft and texture is almost not noticeable. So there are two main differences. That's why the bolls are very commonly used together because what you usually do you start you draw in with the willow charcoal. And when you are ready to intense and create the very dark shadows, you use the willow charcoal for your details and for the dark side. So this is the two main types. Another interesting type of charcoal you can find on the market is artificial charcoal. It looks more like something between sticks or pencil, and the quality is pretty much similar to compressed charcoal. I use it mostly like a pencil. And of course, we have charcoal pencils. They come in different softness because with the compressed charcoal, you can achieve it by different proportion of binding material and the charcoal powder. So they come in different grays grades of darkness and softness. And there are dozens and dozens pencils on the market. This one, for example, is marked as soft for B, maybe six B, nine B, two B, but they have the same quality as this compressed chunk. And the only difference with the pencil, we can create a fine line and do more hatching and cross hatching, different drawing techniques that are applicable for the pencils. Look at this. Yeah. The only thing that you have to remember, pencils are very fragile. It's not only related to charcoal pencils to any kind of pencil, so don't drop them. If you drop them, see the inside part, this nice, very soft part. It gets crashed, broken in many, many, many pieces, and you won't be able to sharpen it like this one, for example, very nice pencil that I hardly can use. When the pencil is very little, you can buy an extension and still use it because you can hold that small part. But with the extension, you can. Um, so very useful as well. You might need to have a few pencils or just one pencil, it's all up to you. So this is in terms of pencil. A one way thing is how to sharpen the pencil. All these tools, the sharpeners, they are pretty useless for the charcoal pencils because they're very soft. So use the special knives, art knives, or if you don't have it, some very nice and sharp kitchen knife will do the job. I also have to mention here erasers. EEasers are very nice and interesting things. But in art, we usually do not use them for correcting the mistakes. We use them as a part of joan. So different type of erasers we have, just the normal erasors or ers of different softness because they can make of different softness. The erasors that comes in a shape of pencils or something you can sharpen to create a fine line with this one, for example, or there is another type that is very, very useful and I recommend you buying it is this is this one. Yeah, looks very funny. It looks like you chewing gum. It's called a kneadable eraser. It has slightly different qualities. It's very soft. It's not damaging the paper the same way these erasers do. If you have something that is too dark, what you do with this eraser, you can use it the same way as a normal one, but you can also press and remove extra darkness, like this. With the compressed charcoal, it doesn't work the same way. It's nicely still, it does your job. An interesting thing I want to tell you, when I was little and we didn't have these wonderful erasers, dibll erasers, we used bread. We used bread, soft bread, just to press and remove the extra darkness from a pencil or charcoal. It worked the same way pretty much. So you can try it as well if you don't have these materials. Another thing to quickly mention are blending tools. What I demonstrated you before the blending can be done with your fingers, just with your hands. Some artists prefer to use special tools such as this paper blending thing, looking like a pencil to me. I don't use it. So to begin your journey with a charcoal, don't bother buying it, but just so that you know this is a blending tool. So if you let's do a piece of charcoal from here and without touching the paper with your finger, you can blend with this dough. Or as an alternative, you can use the tissue. Just a normal tissue will do the same job as well. Something like this. This is pretty much everything that you need to understand about the charcoal for the beginning. 3. Min and Max required art materials to start drawing with charcoal: What do we need to start drawing? An absolute minimum would be a piece of paper. Any cheap paper would be good. Smooth surface white paper, something like office paper for printers like this one, or any cheap notebook or paper for art graft for kids. Anything would be suitable. The only thing I recommend you stick to the smooth paper. We are not going to investigate textured paper in this particular course because this is just introduction. Just to quickly show you the difference, this is a textured paper, and if you draw here, it creates a beautiful touch on looks. And this is something we are not covering in introduction because it's totally different area. A lot of interesting stuff to discuss and try. We can do this later. And for now, you just need to have a piece of white paper, smooth white paper, and a piece of charcoal, Willow or wine charcoal. Even if you don't have that one in suppose you had a barbecue in an open fire. You can find a piece of burned wood over there and use it for drawing as well. I will create absolutely the same and identical picture. So this is our absolute minimum. For the maximum, I recommend you buying and trying, of course, the charcoal pencil, the kneadable eraser or a normal eraser, if you want. And optionally compressed charcoal just to see the difference and look how it is on your paper. So this is the maximum. And now, as we have all these materials, we are ready to start our drawing. 4. Drawing a Japanese cup with charcoal: And now it's time to see what our amazing charcoal can do. Let's take a piece of willow charcoal, and we will start slowly with something very, very simple. Let's draw a cup, something like a Japanese cup. I won't do that. Okay. And I know the inside. Press very lightly. Do not make dark lines because it's not a final drawing yet. It's just pre drawing. Do not focus on a shape and maybe rough, maybe not very nice and even one side larger, one side shorter. It doesn't really matter. The lines should be a line. This is what they call a live line. Um it looks nicer than very precise lines anyway. So let's do something that is resembling the cup. It doesn't need to be super super, super, super straight. So this is our cup. And now, with the side of the chok as I told you, let's create the background. I will press I will do medium pressure on it, and I'll do it probably all around the cup. Maybe creating a bit of layering on top. Now let's try to smadg it, okay? With my finger or you can use the tissue, as I told you, I will do the smdgic but probably not everywhere. Just maybe somewhere close to the close to the side of the cup, maybe here, maybe a little bit here, a little bit over here, and a little bit over here. Okay? Now I see it's not dark enough. My cup won't be standing out of the background, so I will make it even more darker. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. There are no mistakes in art. Everything that is a mistake to you is a piece of art, and it creates its character. So there are no mistakes. Forget about this work in art. Just forget about it. That's it. H Okay? So my second layer won't be smudging because I like that texture that charcoal created, and I want to leave it. As the next step, I want to create the shape of my cup. And this is the rule is pretty simple. We have the light side and the dark side. Suppose I have the light coming from the light side, so the right side would be slightly darker. And to make it a bit different to my background, I'm not going to press hard, so it will have a different tone. Tone is very important. The very important things in painting and drawing is the contrast, and the contrast can be achieved by colors and different things. There are a lot of studies about that. But the main one that is very attractive to our eyes is the tonal contrast. So light and dark comes together, they're creating the contrast that is very pleasant to see for our eyes. So if we have a darker ground, my cup will be light. So I'm not crecen to height and maybe just on the side. And a little bit on light a little bit on the. If this is dark size, that means inside we have opposite. Inside the cup, the left side will be darker. And if the light comes from the left, this is the light, this is the light. Okay? And I will smatch it a little bit. I'm going to create a soaked look to my cup. I'm a little bit more shadow on the light. The next step I want to do is to create maybe even a bigger contrast between the background and the cup and create a proper line and the edge of the cup. So with that, I will take my compressed charcoal and I make it even darker. But this time, I will be more accurate and I will be going on the edge of the cup to creating it shape properly. And this time, I'm not going to do this around the cuff. As we decided that right side would be shadow, I will do it only on the right side. And I'm lightly pressing it somehow to merge with my background, with my existing background. Now I want to add a little bit of more even more dark. I add a little bit of more darkness to my cart a little bit of more contrast inside. Now it's time to fix my edges of the cup. For these purposes, I will take my pencil and lightly, I'll start edding I'll start edding the edge. But the most important thing, do not do with a one line. Do it very nicely and try to create broken lines. The very important thing is not to create the sharp and very intensive outline so that our eyes is not too attractive to the line, but rather to the whole picture. To try to make your lines very light and a little bit, as I told you, broken. Now, I want to make light looking really, really light. What I'll do, I'll take my eraser and I start and I start painting with I start drawing with light, see? And kind of erasing it. And the border, the thickness on the cap it is. See, I'm not correcting the mistakes. I'm drawing with the eraser. I'm adding the light to it. And maybe with a need top razor. I mean, I want to make that edge so funny how I made it feel dark. And as the last step to add to my sketch, I want to add some more details. And it's very important to add the very, very fine details, something like dots or different patterns or, like, small lines, broken lines to your detail to your picture because our brain is designed the way everything we look at we wanted to analyze and we wanted to create and to think about it. That's why it is very important to leave something like a food for your brain. If you leave everything plain or everything clear, it won't be interesting. You need to add some details, something that your eyes can catch, something your eyes can follow. For these purposes, I'm creating the pattern on my cup. I will pick up something very simple, maybe the shapes of the hearts, and I'll probably use the word hark, so it won't be that dark. And I don't need to color the whole heart. As I told, it should be interesting. It should be something that your brain can create and can add. On the dark side, when we have the shadow, I will make it more intense, pressing harder to create a darker grade. Now I can add maybe a little bit, a little bit kind of hatching for my room. To create. And just to create to look that there is a table probably or something like this where the cope tending. Then I can go over and over again, but it's very important to stop in at the right time. And I think it's a good time to stop. We did pretty good job. We tried all our materials. We drew a very nice cup. We tried everything. We looked how all these materials work together, what we can do with all of them. We didn't cover the hatching or the spraying and layering, the fixing the material, and then covering again. But this is more than enough to start drawing or to understand what you can do or to start playing and creating different things with your kids or on your own or on your art classes or introducing your new art material to your already existing background. So I hope you enjoyed this lesson. I hope you try doing something similar using different techniques, something new for you. And please don't forget to share your images, to share your drawings with us. 5. Introduction to pen as an art medium: Another very powerful art material that I want to mention is the pen. Okay? We often overlook it. We all have it. We all use it from a school time or even earlier. But we never think about it as a proper art medio. And you might think, Okay, pen is a pen. We all know about it, what to talk about it. We saw it. We used it, nothing interesting. But let's have a look and let's have a quick overview of a pen from a different side, from an art side. First of all, there are many types of pen. There are ball pens, gel pens, pun pin pens, markers, technical pens, brush pens, and so on, a lot of different brands on the market. And they all give you slightly different qualities and different things you can use in your art. So what exactly? First of all, of course, colors. Secondly, there are so many brands and they all have different varieties of their characteristics. Also, the sickness of the pen, the sickness of the knee and the marks they leave on the page. It is also different. The way you apply the pen is different. This is a very simple. Look at this. This is so simple, but it gives you really, really a lot of stuff. So what you can do with a pen, you can do the line. Line can be used in hatching in stipping maybe some something actually in some sort of painting as well, like this one, for example, I'll show you a little bit later. Before we start using a pen as an art to let's have a quick overview of what you can find on the market and what it gives you. Basically, I'll give you just the very basic. There are a lot of more things you can find and try. This is the minimum, I think it is good to understand to start. First of all, as I mentioned, the very, very first thing that you can notice in the pen, apart from the colors, we're not going to focus on the colors at the moment, are the nibs, the thickness of the nibs, and you can find a huge variety of different things and brands from the nibs. I have the smallest one I was able to find look at this 0.03 millimeters. It's very, very fine in in pan. Then it goes in a different grades, zero, one, zero, three, five, four, eight, Anything. I even found something like two or zero, although it is not round anymore. It's a flat like a marker, but still it is a pen, and we can use it as a pen. You can see a lot of very, very nice realistic drawings made by pen. And I'll be honest with you, I do not use it quite often. I use it mostly for sketching for investigation works of some new projects that I'm going to do. Or I'm using it as an addition in mixed media drawing and painting painting, I do. Why I'm not using it mostly because it is time consuming medium. I love drawing. I love drawing more than painting, but I find it very, very slow. It's not the pace I used to work. Let's have a look at the lines we can create and the sickness of the line. So this one is the finest I was able to find on the market, and I didn't use it for the drawing itself. I used it for pre drawing. So something I was not sure about how the shape will be at the end, how the composition will look like at the end. So I used that one because in the final work, it's almost not noticeable. You won't see it. It's very, very simple. Just look at it. It's great amazing amazing singing line, very fine lines. Zero? And the need is very soft and fragile, so if you have it, use it very accurately. Then it goes with the different grades of 0.10 0.3 0.45, two different things you can find. My work in two is usually 0.5 or three. Sometimes I add details with a bolder line. This one ache 0.8, but I think it's finishing soon, so it's not that bold as it used to be at the beginning. And just to show you the sickness can be even bigger, look at this. Still in a fan, but already is a marker. This one I use only for highlighting the details. For my working, nibs are 0.3 and 0.5. Usually, I stick to that one in my sketching. The brand can be anything. This is a very expensive brand, Gopi, very nice one. They have a good quality of drawing materials. I like it because it doesn't dissolve in water. If I use it in mixed media techniques, this one I use with watercolor, for example, if I want to keep the line. But on the contrary, there are pens that are water soluble. They look like a normal pen. But if I fly in my water rush, why water rush? And if I apply a bit of water, the line gets a bit of watercolor. And I love that effect and I use it very often in my sketching. So this one is very cheap then, but I use it more often than anything else because it gives me that nice effect that it can achieve without applying any other art materials. This is very nice. And when it gets dry, I can apply more fine lines to finish my work. So this one I definitely recommend. I'm not sure but other brands, I just found this one, but the effect is really amazing. And just to demonstrate you with the copiqu, we cannot do that. A plan of water doesn't do anything, nothing at all. So knowing these two abilities will give you quite an interesting range of possibilities in art. Another one is the brush band. And the brush band is something between the pen and the brush. So it's a brush with an ink that comes in a way of pen. And as long as you create the fine lines, you can create the bold line together. And the nice thing comes from seem to bold in one stroke. See you can put very interesting things with the brush pens. They also come in different brands and they all have different colors and different abilities. Some of them have a bigger need, a finer, smaller, bolder, try different things, whatever you like. I will demonstrate you a little bit later what you can do with this pen. But just to mention it, it is something very interesting. What else we also have normal bold pens. That can also create amazing things. And I'm not a big fan of them, but you can check on the Internet what people do. Amazing work. Simply amazing. And I also want to say a few words about gel pens. They come in different colors that are very bright and nice. They have sparkles and shine inside them. But I use only mostly actually white color, white color because it gives me natural look and it suits to any kind of any style of rawing engine. And I'm using it as a final details as highlights and outlines on top of my pinch It's a final step. And if I have something very dark and I want to add a light or some details on top or patterns or anything. So here we are a lot of pens to consider and to have a look. 6. Min and Max required art materials to start drawing with a pen: The materials we need for this lesson and the materials I recommend you to start with is simply any papers, anything you have, and any pen you have absolutely anything. The maximum materials I recommend you again any paper, try experimenting. All papers are good for this type of drawing and try different kind of pens. It can be either ink pen or boil pen. Brush pen, I recommend you trying brush pen as well as the maximum maybe some white gel pen on top. That's it. 7. Line drawing cups: Is not continuous. And the broken line in a drawing looks very nice, very nice, but you need to understand how to use it. If I whole cup with a broken line, let me show you Look at this. It's not even a cap. It looks like incomplete drawing that you have to finish, that you have to connect. It's more like a parcel to play with your kids or to have fun when you are in the train. I don't know. But it doesn't look like a proper drawing. The key thing here is to use a broken line but with the consideration of one simple rule. You cannot use a broken line everywhere. In the places where the line is joining with another line, you have to do a continuous line. Option one. See where you have the connection, the corners, the point of joining together a few sides, please use a continuous line. So for example, here, here, here, here, all are our connections, and we have to do continuous lines in order to look in it properly. Let's try to do the same with the continuous line and broken lines together. So for example, see the corner here is this is the lex of my cup, and I know that here are the connections, so I'm using a continuous line. Here at the side, I can leave it a little bit broken. And the handle. Well, I leave it maybe bit broken. I see the difference, what's now difficult to understand with my circles. But see the difference. Now, it looks more like a proper object. All the corners, all the corners that have a proper connections. All here is connected. All the lines are connected, and the object looks very solid and it looks more sketchy, more interesting. Another important thing to mention, see, I didn't use the broken line here, I didn't use the broken line here. I intentionally left it continuous because this side is the shadow. Somehow with the line, I want to emphasize it is solid and dark. That's why I didn't use the broken line. The bottom line is also something like holding the cup. I want to make it also solid and strong. So we understand the cap is standing. This is a quick overview for the line drawing. Now you can start doing it. Try it with a simple objects. Try something in your house, find a cup, a chair, a table, maybe your hand. Try to look at some very simple fin, draw a line, use it with the help of the dots, try to do continuous line or broken line. This is very interesting exercise, and there are very simple techniques, but they're very powerful and they help you to open an absolutely new world of just very quickly, I want to demonstrate you what you can do with a brush pen. The pens are very powerful and interesting things. Something between the painting with a brush and between the drawing, mostly like drawing. They giving you the brush strokes that look like drawing. Issei demonstrated you we can do the line that is going bolder and bolder and then you can make it smooth and soft and even broken and sein. And if it's not connected, you can connect it. I agree. You can make it even bolder. You know, when I think about the brush pen, I always remember the pretty logos and illustration of the cups that you can find you takeaway cups. And they look something like when you start doing bolder than you Oh maybe With a bit of practice, you can do a lot of interesting drawing just with the one stroke. A bit of practice, patience, and it will be amazing. What I'm using it for usually for sketching again and the bold line to lighten the shadow and the important things that are closer to me, you can do a combination, for example, you can do a combination with a pen of just a continuous normal line and with a brush pen of different color. I can do, for example, just like a color in it or even the hatching. You can say this is the shadow. Why can add the audience to my cup. In combination with a few different fans, it can be absolutely new and amazing drawing. Now it's time for art creation. Let's do a few small works with different art materials, with a different type of pen. And we will discuss a few techniques and a few different approaches you can use in this type of drawing, and then you can create your own masterpiece. Of course. So first of all, the pen is good for line. So line drawing is probably the best and the first option you can think about. My advice is do a confident lines, if you are not sure and you think, Oh, that's not good enough or I have to do better. I have to redo or this one I cannot remove. The pen is not erasable. That's not good. Any any run even not flat broken, but any confident line is better than not confident line, okay? And I will demonstrate to you that because anything you can sell is an art, and you can say, Okay, this is my type, okay? This is my style. This is my illustration. But it has to be confident. It can be childish. It can be incomplete. It can look like it is falling somewhere or anything, but it has to be confident. If you are a little bit afraid of starting. Okay, this is white page I'm doing a mistake now, try to do kind of kind of composition of your object using the dots. Okay? So if we are sticking to our object in this particular session that is cup a cup, I will do a dot okay? This is the top. This is the top part of my cup, and I think it will be opened like this, so there will be an oval. Over there, an opening of the cup, and I think the cup will end here. Okay, I think the couple end here. So this is my cup. Now when I have a little of help, I can start connecting it. And first one first one I want to show you is the continuous confident line. So let's try try and connecting the doors. Doesn't matter if we don't connect them precisely, but it should be confident lines I tell you, Okay? We connecting Is it if we stick to continuous line, it should be continuous. Okay, this see, it's not perfect. But still, it's already looking like a cup. I want to add a tea inside. Okay? I want to add some steam. Well, do something that looks more like a steam. It's a very hot cup of tea. Okay. And at the handle, I think the handle looks like this. I'm not sure whether that doesn't matter for me. I think the handle is like this and enhance the sickness somewhere here. Look at this simple drawing. It is super simple. It's not even. It doesn't look even like a proper cap. But I think because it is confident, it looks pretty much cool. And if I show it to any person and I say, Oh, this was made by illustration or even if I shrink it and create an icon for a small illustration, for logo even. It can be a logo of some coffee coffee shop, for example, no one will even understand it was made first time without any consideration by anyone who is not professional because the clue is because my line is confident and it is one continuous line. No mistakes. You cannot say even this is a mistake because it's very, very confident drawing. So this is a confident, continuous line. Another thing I want to show you quickly is a breaking, broken line, okay? Broken line. The broken line, they look nice and they look more sketchy, more natural. Look. But there is a trick with a broken line. What is the broken line? So the continuous line is like this, but the broken line, it goes short, long, short, long, long, long. Anything 8. Doodling as a drawing art: Now, I want to demonstrate you Doodling and how we use Doodling to create different interesting effects, patterns and textures in drawing. I just quickly want to show you one of my very, very, very, very old sketchbook. Here I did a little bit of play and examination of different different patterns I can create with Hetching dippling and just doodling, basically. This one, for example, I just did something, this one, I did something and equated the very interesting patterns that you can use to show different textures. This one, for example, if it can be good for anything for showing any material. This is good for a wall, for a garden, maybe for a sky, for water or something for anything. This one I did a little bit of an investigation. See? If you apply more of your pattern, it looks like a shadow. If you apply less, it looks like a light. Simple rule, but it's already creating you a three D effect. And what else here, I did a little bit of investigation with a simple line and different different patterns, just a simple one. The pattern of the Cs, creating you a cookie with a sees, and this is a pattern of doodling, creating you a nice big round around. This one is by the way, it's just a sketching with a brush ban. See the brush band I used here, just to show you quickly. Yeah, this is look at this. Over here. I also tried experimenting different patterns to differentiate the differentiate the texture and the material. Okay, something like this and just the simple lines. What I'll try to do now, I'll try to use a few of the things I just show you over here. Let's pick up something that we all understand. For example, I use this as nice one for the background. Maybe I use a little bit of hatching to highlight the shadow. I like these bubbles, and this form, maybe I'll create a look of cappuccino form or something like that. We'll we'll see how it goes. So our grade is something like a k. Don't forget we are not focusing on something super, super duper realistic. Our aim is to reveal and open our imagination and our ability and our artibility. So just do not stress out about that as well, just do something you like. I think it's pretty cool. This is actually looking fun. So I'll start with the Bground first, and I'll start doodling. So see's I want to add a more dark area that's close to my cup, so I'll do more more, more, more circle close to the edge of my mug. Okay. I'll do bigger circle that are further from the cup and smaller, more intense, that are clothed with cod. The good thing I can stop at any point, and I will continue if I need. Now I want to add something that is slathy looking like a delicious, delicious form from the warm milk. I will pick up this side darker. Maybe the sun comes from here. So on the left side as the shadow side, I will do more intense pattern than on the right side. Maybe I add a little bit more of a steam. And again, I'm trying to add it in the way of the pattern to keep the consistency and the look, that it will be the same style. I'm a little bit darker on here. And I add a little bit of the patterns to my cup. Even with the patterns, look how I'm doing it, I will do just a few on the left side and a bit more. Sorry, no, on one side, on the darker side that is left now, I'll do more, and on the right side, I do less. That sign. That's it. With a simple technique of Dudbin we created a pretty cool illustration. I hope you liked it and you start using it more and more in your life because for this, you don't need even a lot of time, a few minutes, and a pretty cool piece of art is ready. I have to admit that here, I didn't spend a lot of time on a technique that is using hetching. Hetching is what when you draw a line next to each other and you can do it on the different angles, you can do it one by one. You can do it continuous. You can do cross hetching under the angle. You can do one more layer of hetching to create a darker shade, one more under different angles. I didn't spend a lot of time on that because it is very time consuming, but you can try it. I'll just show you with a small car. Hey, the car lin down. And with the hatching, it's basically the rule is you start slowly. You start slowly with the shadow part, you go through light. And then as you progress, you drawing you add the layers. It is a very long process. It takes so much time, but this is a very fun time. And the processes I told you very meditative. I might you find that you might find it suitable for you. It's absolutely not suitable for me. I can do it for some time. Um, just to finalize my work, but I prefer to use different techniques to create the base. And then on top, I can do hatching either with a pen or with a pencil to create some sort of shadow and fine effect on it. Another thing, it can go forever. You can do a load layers after layers, layers after layers to achieve the effect you like. So try this as well if you are interested. At the moment, I will start over here because my goal is to show you and demonstrate the power of certain material. And if you want, you can try this so you can mix all different techniques we just discussed. And the most important thing, do not step on one art material. Try with one pen, try with another one. They all have different abilities. They all create different marks, and you get a different things from them. Try combining it with a brush pen. Try combining maybe with a gel pen. There are also other types of pens that are not covered in this section. Just go and experiment and see what art for. 9. Introduction to ink as an art medium: One more very attractive medium is ink. It seems like a very simple material, something like pigmented liquid, but it's more than that. Ink has been used for thousands of years, and one of the very first mentioned artworks that are left till our age are as old as from ancient Greece. However, it was really developed to a high level in Chinese art, something between seven to tenth century. Depending on the pigment, that has been through a lot of changes and a lot of transformation through the history, depending on the soluble material and the binding material. There are different types and qualities of inks that they can give you. There are several types of ink, alcohol based ink. Very vibrant in colors, very fast trying, pigment based ink that is used in calligraphy in writing and fountain paint, solvent based, water based, good to use with the brushes together. There are variety of opportunities, how to use ink is incredible. It's not only for drawing and writing. It's also for painting with the brush. It can be used for stampling and stenciling, rolling, airbrush with airbrush together, fabric printing and many, many more. And depending on what type of art you want to do depend then what is your goal. You have to consider that when you're picking up the bottle of ink you want, because the variety of things you can buy in the shop is amazing. So you have to remember about the qualities the ink gives you. There are several things to consider. It's drying time, fast or slow, sickness, how saturated is your ink? How color will stay on your page. For example, this one I'll show you. This is very vibrant yellow color, but this is acrylic ink and it won't be that vibrant on the page. So the sickness finishes. It can be glossy, it can be mat, it is important to remember solubility, how it is soluble with water. Is it waterproof? Will it stay a vibrant through the age, something that they call light fast. This is important because you can draw something very, very beautiful and then put it on the wall, and in a few months time, it will fade. So this is important and few more things as well. So before we start looking into ink a little bit closer, I'll quickly mention you the tools which you use the ink. Of course, it's first of all, deep pen. Or fountain pen. There is a big variety of pens on the market. They're very simple. They basically have the holder and the nips. You can buy something super cheap like this one or something very fancy and expensive with gold and things or something engraving. But for sketching purposes, for drawing, try to start with the simple tools and see if you need to do more. So this is the nips changeable, maybe on this one, I'll show you here. So this is the one that I use quite often. And there are a few nips for my drawing that gives me the different widths of the line. Fine line a little bit medium and bolder line. Another thing you can buy rechargeable pen or refillable pens. So they also have the knives, but they also have the reservoirs with ink that you can quickly change, and they come in a very convenient way. But I find them very good for writing, but probably not for drawing. But there is an option to use them as well. See this as an example. I have, of course, the brush. For water soluble ink or for acrylic ink, you can use the brush and water to do the wash. The techniques that you can use with ink are pretty much the same identical to any other types of drawing to the drawings we discussed e with a charcoal or pen, it's either hatching or crosshatching or simple lines, stippling, creating patterns and using doodling or random figures to fill the space and washing, of course. Washing is used with water. Maybe also smudging. You can use extra tools to smudge. You can use tissues or maybe some old toothbrush to create interesting marks on the page with the ink as well. I'll demonstrate you this later. For now, let's quickly discuss ink. I definitely don't have all that variety that I just told you. I'm not using everything. I use ink mostly for sketching. I love the effect and the beautiful fresh look it gives. I'll show you what you have to consider. When you buy an ink, obviously you can get the advice from the shop assistant, but all the information is here as well. For example, this is a pigmented ink, so this is a pigment water soluble ink, and it has apart from the color description of a little bit of the quality. So it says it's water resistant and it lasts light fast. So it will last forever, maybe not forever, but for a long time in the art. So it might be a decent quality. Although I don't find it very saturated, it's a bit light for me, not that intense that I want to use. So I use it sometimes as a wash as a combination of other ink types. This is acrylic ink. This is an example of acrylic ink, very, very beautiful and bright colors that you can find in acrylic paint. But because of the liquid, they're not that intense, but also can be used for in a combination with other materials. And this one, I want to show you this one I bought as a starting not as a starting, but a sketch sketching set that I can quickly take with me anywhere that is small. And apparently I'm using it most because it's super convenient and it's everything I um, actually. And it has the small bottle of ink that doesn't have even any brand, but it works really well. The color is very intense. It is very well dissolved with water, so I can use it both either with a line drawing or with a wash. So this one works for me. Just go to the shop and read and talk and find something that will work for your style. As I said before, I'll quickly show you the ink acrylic based ink, and it comes with the drops. You can either use it with a brush, with a pen or a strop and look at that. I'll do one drop. So if we wait, it's looking more like watercolor. So to achieve that very intense color, I'll probably have to leave all this to dry that is not very convenient. I'll just remove it to show you that the color is not that saturated as in the bottle. So this is the quality to consider. In the contrary, this black one, for example, use it with a brush. It is very intense and very black. This brand art spectrum, this one is also not very intense. But it's very good because the transparency painting. This is important as well. Getting a different tones and the different shades of one color can play a huge role in your drawing and your painting, depending on what you want to do. Apart from the pen, as I told you, we can use other tools to create different marks. For example, the tissue, you can just take the tissue and leave the marks with them with the stamping, okay? Or you can do the smudging to create the beautiful effect of as something different, not the line. The one that I showed you the brush, gp something similar, but maybe more rot. Mm, show you here. Maybe more rot and more interesting line. I like this. Then, of course, the very, very classical hatching, crosshatching, stippling, doodling, The technique I will be demonstrating and the technique that I'm using more often for my drawing is something in the mix between washing and hatching. Okay? So what is washing and hatching together? First, I usually throw a line. And then with the brush and with the water coming along the edge. I apply water to dissolve some of the ink and to get darker colors in that area. So this is the one that I will be showing you. For this one, you can buy pretty much any ink, any pen and any brush would be good. This is a quick overview, very quick overview of the ink because that's a very wide area as well. But to start drawing this information is more than enough. My recommendation is started with something simple and small. Like this set, I have a very nice small set where you have already a pen and an ink and then see how you go. 10. Min and Max required art materials to start drawing with ink: The minimum set of art materials for the next exercise would be, of course, the paper. My recommendation is stick to a smooth paper. You can take any paper, of course, any roughness, any texture, but smooth paper would be easier and nice to start with the sickness of the paper is recommended to be 200 or 300 grams so that it can take a lot of water and a lot of things you can do. Office paper won't be as good for this type of drawings. And of course, we need ink. As I told you, any ink, probably start with leg and the dip pen with ink. Nip can be anyone. I probably don't use the nibs for calligraphi when they have a bold and like this, use the fine nips. Medium size would be good to start. I'll use this one, this one, and the paper. So this is my minimum. As a maximum, you can try different colors of the ink. For example, you can try to use other materials and other things to make your work even more interesting. You can use gelpen white gelpen or white markers on top to highlight interesting white areas, and I will be using water brush because it is convenient. But any brush with water, any soft brush, synthetic soft brush would be good as well. This is the maximum. 11. Imaginary cup and cookies with ink: Now let's start drawing. With a pen and the kp of medium whiteness. I don't recommend taking anything bold because you will be creating the mess and you will want to understand how to control it. Try to start with a scene or medium thickness of the line. This is a medium something medium size for me. And with dipping my pen into the ink, I'll start drawing immediately. But you can do it pre drawing with a pencil, do it correct it. I use the razor if you want, and then remove everything. Just leave a very, very fine, almost not noticeable line so that you can still see what to draw, but it won't be that visible. Then you can remove it on top, but I don't recommend messing with that. Um, do it as a help for you. If you need, I will start drawing straight away because I want to have my line flexible life and mistakes do not bother me. So I'll start with the opening of the cup. See, I'm doing the broken line as we discussed in the earlier exercises. This will be the sickness, maybe, I want to do some crack. This will be a crack to creating a character to my cup. Ah, this is the sickness. See, I'm also doing different applying different pressure to the pan to achieve a bolder line. I press more to achieve very fine and in line. I pressed very lightly. Maybe, I will add a equation to my cut. This would be the bubbles, and coffee. And see, I'm not drawing the circles. They all have different size and they all have different shapes to make them interesting. This would be the handle. I still have, it seems like I didn't do appropriate composition. I have a lot of space here. It looks like a mistake if I want to leave just the cup. But I will add some more objects here. I will add he plate. And the cookies. Maybe some pattern to the wall. Remember, we have the overlapping rule and the crossing rule. At the places where there is a connection or overlapping with other objects, it should be clear and it should not be all in one place here, for example, the table, the cup, the bottom of the cup, and the plate, they all are different. They do not all these lines, they do not come together. This is important to have a harmonical picture. This is my base. Now let's have a little bit of fun. I'll put down my pen, and I'll take a water pen or a brush if you don't have that one. And I'll start washing my painting, my drawing. I'll do it not everywhere. I'll do it only in the places the places where I want to highlight the darkness and the shadow or where I want to play with the color. For example, I want to make my coffee and my bubbles darker. I want to leave the cup probably light. The heart will be dark as well, and the cookies will be darker than the cup. And I'll see what I'll do with the ground after that. So what I'll do with the brush, having it wet, I'll come closer to the line. To the lines where I want to make dark and I'll start washing. I'll start washing and move it away from the line to dissolve and make it transparent. Please be accurate because it's very especially with the bold lines, it's very easy to get dark too fast. We don't need to do that. We don't want to spoil our painting and our drawing super fast. We want to increase the intensity and the tone of the drawing slowly. So I'll start with the shadow of the cut. That would be my right side. And over here and probably I'll go first with the coffee. I'll try to leave the bubbles white, but I don't care if they're not too accurate. And if I have a little bit of relaxing here, that's okay. It is a drawing. It is a sketching. It's better to do the second layer and intense darkness rather than correcting it and not knowing what to do with that tone anymore. I especially left the bolder line here so that I can create a darker color for the heart. Try to wash not continuously with one move. Try to remove your brush from the paper to leave a more like impressionist look marks. So this is a shadow. Cars would be darker. If your brush gets very dirty, very dark, somewhere you don't want to make a mark, wash your brush, or with this one just just use it on a white clean paper to remove extra grains. This is a very good wash for the first layer. If you are quick thrower, maybe one layer of everything would be enough. But at this stage, I think I need to make the second round and I need to make some areas darker. So not even waiting until it is dry, I'm applying more lines. I'm adding more lines to the area when I want to make it darker so that I have the ink to wash. I'll make darker the heart. I make darker the coffee. The stand of the cut. And don't do not always, you need to do the second line on top of the first line. It might be additional lines, might be some new details, maybe some of them you will leave, maybe something that will come close next line. Don't do everything on top. Something can be done on top, but most of them probably make new marks. Okay, and now I'll do one more wash to make the colors darker. Always be brave. Don't afraid of making marks that won't be removable or something, everything is part of your drawing and everything is beautiful, and it should be like this. Just have that attitude, and you will be happy and very, very pleased with your final result. So this is a good one for the second wash. Probably I even leave it like that. I'm not going to do a third and five and so on, but I'll just quickly want to show you one more thing. We used the pen to do the fine line. We use the water to wash and do different tones and gradients of our black and gray colors. And we can use the brush just to paint with the ink. So I'll just do maybe a little bit of very, very dark almost black highlights to some of the area. This one, one probably do when I'm sketching because I'm not using a lot of tools. I'm not using a brush and that and this. I'm using just the pen with one or two nips and the ink and the water brush, that's it. But to demonstrate you what you can do, Not too much because I I don't want to make it too dark. Okay, and I will do a little bit of wash too to connect it with my gray color. If I don't need something or if something is too wet or too dark, before it gets dry, I will wipe it or just press press press and remove extra intensity with the tissue. Now, not even waiting until it's dry, I'll just quickly do some patterns for my table with this brush. Again, it's not something I'm using often, but just to demonstrate you, I'll put a little bit of ink and maybe a little bit of water to make it not that dark. I dissolve it with water. Deep in my brush bin here, my um, toothbrush, old toothbrush, I will leave some marks. Something like this, but again, it's not the thing I'm often using. I just want to demonstrate to you the different techniques. Okay. When this layer is dry or next to dry, my next step will be to add the details. So with my pen, I dip it again in the ink and I'll start adding some interesting lines that I already have a little bit, but I will add even more. Maybe, maybe the handle. Just don't do too much because it will be over drawing is not good as well. Now, that this time, I'm not going to apply any wash on top, so this marks, they will be the final marks. I recommend you starting with something quick as well so that you don't get bored. You can play it. You can play with your kids and do a little bit of drawing together. It's a lot of fun combining the lines, the wash, and the brush together. At this stage, I think I have enough of a contrast tunnel contrast between light and dark. I have all varieties starting from white going to black. So my picture looks very contrast and very detailed to me. I have all the lines, all the edges and all the shapes are pretty clear. I have different textures for the table, for the cookies, for the cup and the bubble wall. This is fine. As a last step, I would wait until my ink is completely dry so super dry, or you can use a hair fan, for example, to make you dry very fast or wait because this ink in particular is quite fast dry. So I will wait, and I will add final lines and details with a white color. The white that I'm going to use is either gel fan, I will see if the marks are intensive enough for my drawing, or alternatively, my recommendation is to use acrylic markers. That's it. I want sketches ready, and I hope you enjoyed and you learn something new regarding the ink. You learn some new techniques that you will be using, please share your works and your experience. 12. Introduction to colour pencils as an art material: Another very powerful art materials color pencils. Color pencils are amazing and they can be used either on their own to create masterpieces, or they can be used for final touches or finishing works over the watercolor or anything else. I personally use them for sketching mostly and as the final touches over my illustration works of watercolors, ink or anything else. When you go to an art shop, you will be surprised how many color pencils they have. There are so many brands, so many qualities. You might be lost. And I'll be honest with you, even professional artists that use pencil extensively might be confused. So let's find out a little bit the basics about color pencils. The very first question you might have is what to buy, where to start? Should I spend a fortune or do I need very small and basic things? I would recommend you buying a very basic set of good quality pencils and then extended when you work with pencils, extended with maybe other brands with other qualities, with other types of pencils. But start with simple and small. For example, to start with, you can buy something like a set of 12 colors. This, for example, is a very good brand and absolutely good series. We will have a look at it in a few minutes, or you can buy something like a little bit bigger, 24 colors. This one is also very good brand. I absolutely love the products, but unfortunately not this one. I'll show you why in a few minutes as well. Okay. And then when you have your own first set, then you buy more. But to start with, stick to a very good brand, good quality, and nothing more. What is good quality? When we talk about the pencils, there are two basic types that you call either artistic quality, artist quality, or student quality. When you buy the pencils, they usually say student quality or artist. This is finest artist quality. This is as well artist quality. The artist and students pencils, they look absolutely the same. The only difference is in lead in the pencil core, the artist quality pencils. They use more pigments and sometimes better pigments and less binding materials. That's why you have them in more vibrant and more rich colors and they're very soft in terms of usage. Whereas for student quality, I don't have them here. I presented because I don't buy them. You have less pigments and they are not that soft, not that nice. Now, the pencils, you can classify quickly by few types. First of all, normal pencils like this one, for example, watercolor pencils that are sluable with water and pastel pencils. Normal pencils, they can be either box or oil based. Mostly you can find on the market box pase, and they have a different softness, different variety of colors and shades and how you can apply them, the pressure you need to apply, and you have watercolors. Watercolor pencils, they're very nice and soft. They can be used both. Either the normal pencils or with water, they will create a watercolor loop and soft pastel pencils. They can be used either on their own over any other types of pencils or with a soft pastel. Now let's quickly try and past all of them, and let's find out what really you need to buy. Let's start with normal pencils with wax pencils. Yes, I told you, I will demonstrate you probably these two brands, but it doesn't really matter. I'll just show you the abilities. With this type of pencils, the main technique you use is hatching. The hatching is just basically drawing the lines. One next to each other. With the hatching, you can do crosshatching under the ankle and everything else. You achieve the light and darker color by the way you press on the pencil and by the way, how many layers you go over? These pencils I really like, they're very soft and nice. The only thing with hatching, it comes with a practice. You need to practice more to achieve more precise and sharp lines that come together in a very beautiful way. This is very meditative work as well. So if you like it, if you want to relax and think about something else, try this technique. But also, don't forget about the side of the pencil to cover a bigger area, Oh, to hedge quickly, to draw quickly, I use the side of the pen so see like this, very quickly covering the whole set of something. And just to demonstrate you the difference, this is another pencil, another brand. It's also artist quality. I didn't say it's artists quality, but I found it not that soft, and I have to press harder to achieve a darker color. So to me, this is not that convenient. So these pencils are used quite rarely unfortunately. Good pencils, but this one softer and nicer. In application. Just to show you, for example, red, let's compare the red. Red in this series. Lord, if I press harder, I can get dark and very light, very transparent application with this one. Probably the transparency is the same, but to achieve the dark, I can achieve the same intensity of red. See, this is very vibrant and very vibrant and intense. Whether this one seems like if I want to get really red, I need to apply more, but it's not applier. See that, I can cover it with this and get even more dark red. So when you go to the shop, try. If it's possible, try the pencil and see if you really like it, if you feel it's your type of drawing material. This is just a quickly to show you what normal pencils look like. And I absolutely love watercolor pencils. If I go to start my journey, I will recommend buying watercolor pencils. They give you a lot of opportunities to experiment, and the same way you can use them as normal pencils. See, for example, this one, looks absolutely the same. Absolutely the same. No difference. But if I apply water, I will use my water brush. I can create a water, watercolor look. With these pencils, applying the water doesn't do much, maybe a little bit, but not too much. And with other pencils, even nothing. When this is dry or not dry, you can apply even more. So see first you can create a watercolor look and then add a drawing a hatching on top. So if I had to go all over again from the very, very start and very beginning of using pencils, I would go for this type. And one more type that I absolutely love and I use them probably the most are soft pastel pencils. I use them the most because soft pastel is my passion, and I use them together with the soft pastel sticks. But they also can be used on their own or together with this one. Soft pastels they actually have they're very similar to soft pastel bed, but a little bit harder to create pencils. But again, if you compare with this one, they are very fragile. Use them gently, sharpen them gently because you very easily to break and will be useless. With soft pastel pencils, they also have different grade of softness and different brands, they have different qualities of pigments in tos. I'll demonstrate you if, for example, this one, Conte pari quite nice pencils, but with a soft pastel, I do not use them because they're too soft and they do not stick on the paper well. But on their own or as the covering layers the final layer or the work. They are amazing. With a soft pastel pencils, you do the same. You can apply the same techniques either hatching or covering with the side of the lid. But the most important because the material is very soft, you can snatch. And I love smudging. You can achieve a very soft and gentle look on your paper and soft pastel pencils. They are very nicely cover each other. So one on ff. I can create a very nice gradient. This one, conta pari very soft, very fragile, but quite nice is the finishing layers. This one is der Van, it's the same brand I showed you at the beginning, but soft pastel and soft pastel pencils, I absolutely love. They are a bit harder and you can use them for very, very fine details. And my favorite pencils are this one. I think it's brand Caron dash. I love using them on their own or with a soft pasta. They have a very nice pigment, very nice coverage, and they stick to paper very well to any kind of paper. Their coverage is also amazing on top of each other. This is a quick overview of different pencils you can buy. That's not everything. I'm sure on the Internet, you can find articles and videos and hours of information about the qualities about the demonstration. But let's keep it simple. Just remember you have to stick to a better quality and less colors. And just start experimenting, start with something. Do not read a lot. Do not watch a lot. Start doing. Your personal practice and your personal experience is much better than dozens of books and articles you read on the Internet or you watch YouTube. Just start buying and experimenting with the material. 13. Min and Max required art materials to start drawing with colour pencils: To identify the minimum and the maximum art materials we need for the next exercise, I just want to quickly show you the color wheel. You probably have seen it before or some of you know with very well. We're not going to do deeply into coloristics in this course because it's just introduction and this was a completely big, big area to dive in. But in the charcoal leg exercise, I quickly mentioned to you that using tonal contrast is important. As long as tunnel contrast, together with introducing the color, the color contrast is important as well. It's another type. There are many types. This is probably the second most powerful type. It's the color contrast. And the most color contrast that gives us the effects together with the tone is probably purple, the darkest here in the circle and yellow, the lightest here. So in my next tone, I will try to stick to these two colors as a base. I will use the next colors from the yellow. I will use warm green and orange as extra additional colors. So my absolute minimum would be of these days. I told you yellow and purple. And I will use warm green, maybe an orgy orange brown color for the coffee, like this. So these four pencils would be my minimum. See, you don't need to have a lot of materials. You can create a piece of work with one or two or three or even four pencils. Yeah, you don't need hundreds or 50 pencils. Stick to minimum, absolutely minimum to start with. This is my minimum. My maximum would be probably a few more extra colors, maybe this one or this to create the darker shades of tea or coffee, whatever I want to draw, maybe with a yellow more than enough, maybe few more greens, one maybe one more. And I will add a bit per cla as well. So this is my maximum. You probably have noticed that I didn't mention razors or any other tools because I'm not going to use them. As we discussed a bit earlier in other exercises, adding mistakes you do in art, try to play with them and create a character so that it will be part of your art. So no erasers for us. Of course, you might need to use a sharpener. There are different sharpeners on the market. They all work different with different thickness of the pencil with different types of the pencil. So just try uses whatever works best for you. What I find is very good quality sharpeners. They cost a lot. Something like mechanical sharpeners work. Well, if you draw a lot, or even the nice small simple sharpeners are also fine. For my work, I will be using the water brush pen. If you don't have it, just use a normal brush, any kind of brush, something like this, maybe will work. Well, this is a cheap. It looks nice. It looks beautiful, but this is a very cheap brush. By any synthetics of the brush, water, I will be using this one just because I have it and it's very convenient. Probably, that's it. Oh, and, of course, the paper. Yeah, the paper is important, but stick to a simple paper for the beginning. Just my advice is, maybe at this time, you need to buy a sika paper, something like 200 grams or 300 grams. Very thin office paper might not work for pencils as good as for charcoal or in coal, what we have discussed before. So this one, for example, the paper, I will be using this is 400 gram papers, but very cheap. I bought it in a pads for kids. The main thing might be the sickness and the texture. We stick to a very smoth paper. That's it. Let's start our drawing. 14. Drawing a cup with broken perspective using colour pencils: For this drawing, I want to show you an interesting approach, an interesting thing that I commonly use nowadays, a broken perspective. You know, um previously, all the drawings and paintings, they had to be very realistic and similar to what you see in nature because we didn't have the photography. Nowadays, the creativity is the main part, and achieving the photocopic effect is not that valuable anymore. That's why this interesting stuff, like a broken perspective when you see the buildings are kind of falling down, or there is no there is no three G effect or there is no perspective rules in terms of color or in terms of lines. It is all of this is creating an interesting and fresh artistic effect. So I want to make a very, very open cup, very, very open cup with I told you that I will be bolder, the line will be bolder. Maybe even the side of it would be like this. An absolutely flat bottom. See? Over here, I want to add over here, I want to add one more object. I want to add a plate with the same with the same style, and the plate will have two candies on it. Okay? Something like this. Again, just to demonstrate you so that you see clearly, my lines will be bolder and sicker, but you don't need to do that. I especially added few more objects here to demonstrate you a very important rule. You have to remember when you draw a few objects together. They need to be overlap. Ping each other. They cannot connect in the corner. For example, this plate is going a little bit over the cup. This candy is going a little bit over the plate so that they all come in a sequence in a plate together. When we do overlapping and not connecting or clashing the objects like this, it will create a very harmonical and look with a good composition. The important rule to Remember, do a little bit of overlapping always. The o the objects have to be either separated with a gap or overlapping, not connecting. So T here and the handle as well. This is my line drawing. Now let's get to the color. This is a big picture. I will start with the side of the pencil to cover bigger areas and then I will continue with hatching and doing final details on top. I start with a big round. And see how I'm applying the pencil, I don't really care about direction, how I'm drawing because this is a watercolor pencil, well I will be using water to dissolve it. So I just apply beginner some beginning layer of the color. Maybe be darker on that side. Okay, for the contrast this I told you we use in the opposite color in the color wheel, yellow. So for the light side, this would be my light side. I will use a yellow the same W the side of the pencil, I'm covering a big areas. Now the cap, I picked up this color warm green for the base, so this would be the color of my cup. And a little bit on the clade. This is my base. Now let's have fun with the water. I use my water brush and I start sewing the colors. I'm not going all over the whole color, the whole drawing. I'm going just in some areas, I want to touch. If I leave the places like this with a drawing, it will be nice and it will look very sketchy and here it will be connected with my yellow. Now I will wait a little bit until this is dry to apply a second layer. A step number three would be to use more hatching and more detailed work all over and probably introduce some other colors. For the cup, I will introduce some other green, maybe light green, and on the light side, I will add a little bit of hatching of this color. I'm not going to use it all over the cup, just a little bit on the edge, maybe a little bit over here. This is a little bit cooler and more grayish and lighter color, so it will be very noticeable on the light side, maybe over here. See, I'm starting very lightly, not doing a lot of pressure, very, very light. And then if I need to go darker, I'll do darker. See, this is a mistake, as I told you, but I'm not going to correct it. I'm going to use it. And I will maybe add a little bit of water to some. Now I will add I added one more green to my cup. I will add one more purple to the ground. Maybe this light purple comes here. Maybe a little bit of a here. Oh and yellow, maybe a little bit of yellow over here, maybe no. Yellow is good enough. Now, there is a very interesting tip. I want to give you an advice. If you want to achieve a picturesque look, very beautiful artistic painting, look to your drawing or any other technique at all that uses the color, what we need to do? We need to take one color of one place and put it somewhere around our picture. So for example, this purple cannot be purple just in this corner. We have to see a little bit of purple somewhere else. Okay? If there is a yellow, it has to be yellow somewhere else. In this way, our picture will look very harmonical and complete. So for example, with yellow, this is my light side, I want to add a little bit of yellow to the cup. So on the lightest side, I will add a little bit of yellow. The same for the plate maybe a bit over here. Maybe a little bit on that side as well. I don't want to make it too strong, so I will dissolve it with water. Okay. Now, the purple, we have a lot of purple here, so I want to introduce it as well. I start with a lighter purple. I add it to the shadow part inside of the cup. I will add a little bit of darker color, dark purple to my cup, but I have to keep it very, very light pressure because I don't want to make it too dark and I don't want to make it the same color as my big round. So just a little bit to infuse and dissolve one color into another color. I now see that at the edge, I need to add a little bit more intense intense color to the background, maybe not too big. Also with this pencil with a dark pencil, I want to add a little bit of the edge to the cup, but not everywhere. It's a broken line that we used before. We already know about the broken line. I will add a little bit of the edge to the cup to make it sharp and more pleasant for the eyes to look at. Not everywhere. It is the broken line. But do remember about the corners, right? At the overlapping and the corners where the lines are connected, about the edges. They have to be very, very sharp. That's it for a moment. Then let's do the coffee or the tea and the Kings. I let them to the last part because I want to use a different type of pencil that I mentioned. I want to demonstrate you past soft pastel pencils. So this one is the light color, and I'll do it a little bit over here, the same with the side, light, dark, quite And now come to my favorite pots mansion. So I will connect them together by merging them into one, blending one color into another color. And do a little bit more intense. Is the second layer. See this pencil is very soft, very fragile. That gives us the ability to blend it and smudge into the paper. Maybe I'll add it a little bit. Not that dark, maybe a light one. I add it to the cart. Remember that effect when we add another color to another object to make a picturesque look, maybe I'll add a little bit of brown over here. And the same for my candies. I will add a little bit of yellow to the candies. It will suit it well. Add a little bit of yellow to my tea. I think it's more looking like a tea. Maybe I'll add a little bit white to lighter color. Another important thing to remember, when you smagrabin with your fingers, try to remember and use different fingers for different colors. For example, if I use one finger with a purple, I cannot use the same one with the yellow. It will be dirty. So remember which one you used to which area. And now as the final touches, I can add layers and layers of other colors on top or more hychen more details. Maybe I will add something like a pattern to my cup, some patterns of flowers. That is more interesting to look at. Our eyes and brain are very intelligent, and we need a lot of details to look at. Otherwise, it will be boring. And even the thing is our cup has different colors. This is already interesting for our eyes to look and process. This is information that our brain needs. And see when I need to cover the bigger area with the side of the pencil I use I hold it differently. I hold it like this. I hold it like a choke, not like a pencil, not like a pen, like a piece of chalk this stick. I can go with details all over again and again, but I think it's a very nice piece of work already. It's a very good demonstration of different type of pencils you can use. I'm very happy with the result, and I really hope that you enjoyed this lesson, and you picked up something interesting for you, some new approaches, new techniques, new tips that you will be using in your future works, such as the introduction of color between the different objects or overlapping the objects, not afraid of doing the mistakes. See this one, the one that I consider it was a mistake. Is not noticeable. There is no mistake anymore. The picture looks nice, complete and harmonical. So don't be afraid. Start experimenting with pencil. They are absolutely beautiful and powerful tools. Um, and I hope you enjoy it. And please don't forget to share your experience. 15. Introduction to markers as an art medium: Another wonderful graphic instrument I want to show you is a marker. Maker is an interesting medium with a huge range of qualities and variety, and it all leads to a booming application in art. Nowadays, you can find them a lot of things made with markers, starting from hand writing, calligraphy to appropriate technical illustration or cartoon illustration or anything else. There are several main types of markers you can find most common are watercolor markers or water based markers, alcohol markers, and there are also acrylic markers. There are a few more types, but these probably are the most common ones. Depending on the soluble material, vis water or alcohol or acrylic, they all give slightly different qualities, and they all are applicable in a little bit different way, but they all can be mixed and matched. The variety of techniques you can use with markers is also quite white. Something from a simple drawing like a line drawing or just applying color next to each other, something like coloring. To a hetching layering on mixing meds or blending. A lot of possibilities over here. Let's have a little bit closer look to each of the one that I have here. Let's start with the watercolor. In the shop, you can find them as a watercolor markers. They are water based markers that give you a beautiful effect of watercolor when you're applying the water on top. With the watercolor markers, the only advice would be stick to a good quality branch. They have not only a good variety of natural colors and pigments inside them. They probably will be long lasting. They will have better quality nibs and it won't be that easily to breakable. This one, for example, is quite cheap brand. Something maybe even unbranded. I bought it on special super cheap to try. It's still good for sketching or something, and I can use it in addition to other brands. But to start with better to stick to nicer quality but less colors, fewer colors. Let's try how it works. This is winter Newton brand, very nice and brand, they have a huge variety of art materials. This marker is a black one. I use it for sketching, and it is double tipped. So one side has just a normal tip, and another side has a brush pen. So let's try with the brush pen. We already use the brush pan in another section. So the brush pen With a brush pen, it's easy to paint. It's something between drawing and painting altogether. No, just apply a little bit of other sure. Now, with water, I can dissolve and achieve a beautiful watercolor look. Same with a black. See this paper is not really suitable for watercolor. That's why the pigment goes straight away inside the paper, and I don't have time to dissolve it. Just try to find more suitable paper for this type of drawing. Another type are alcohol based markers. One of my favorite markets that they used most the alcohol based markers, they are interesting in the way. Instead of water, they have alcohol and pigment inside. So when you draw with the marker, the alcohol dries fast, but the pigment doesn't go inside the paper fast. So if you apply the next color on top or next to it, you can easily blend it. Another good thing about alcoholic markers. Most of the brands, they come with a big not with a big, but with a variety of nips of the pointer. So for example, with this Copic one, I I have different markers. With this one, I have the pointer NIM. And I have a flat nib for covering bigger areas. With these markers, I also have a brush band Brush nip, I used most commonly. So most of my markers are sketch series. The other brands, they also have that options, of course. I just have this one to present. But apart from that, the best point is that you have the refillers for the markers. Not all brands have, so probably invest your time and money into the markers that have because it will save you a fortune in the future. For example, for pi, I have a refillers. What you can do, you can buy a marker first. And then if you like the color and you think you will be using it extensively, you just buy the same refiller and use it for a long time after that. This is a void option. Also, with some brands, they can suggest you some extra accessories, something like changeable nips that I have for this one. So this marker can be really, really going forever with all the changing parts. You can also buy something like white paint on top of the markers, but again, it's not necessary. You can achieve the same result with other cheaper options, something like acrylic or a gel gel pen or acrylic markers. So this is for alcohol markers. And let's quickly have a look what we can do with that. So the first thing I mentioned is the blending. What is different for the blending? The blending gives you the opportunity to achieve a beautiful gradient. And these alcoholic markers, they are quite good for that. Let's pick up. Let's pick up maybe these markers. I just picked up them based on color, something like light green, darker, darker, and too dark. Maybe, let's do it will it. Okay? So what I'll do, I usually start with a lighter color these two movies with light color, you color the piece what do you want. Then you go with a slightly darker color, maybe next week overlapping it a little bit. And then you do one more layer on top when the colors are connecting. You might need to do a little bit of work here. Maybe one more layer of dark color would be needed. Sometimes you need to do this a few times. Sometimes it just one layer would be enough. Also, it is easy to blend if you have the colors of one series, and the colors next to each other. For example, this and these colors, there are different, there are different. This is IG 67, this is BG 99, two different color. But they are still blending very nicely. It just takes a little bit of time. I just takes a little bit of time. When the colors are next to each other, for example, if I had this is IG 67 and then I have 68, they would be blending quite easily. I works okay. And just to show you maybe one more, even darker black. Here we are, we achieve the nice gradient. See, This is probably not the best blending here. I just want to show you quickly the options. It also depends on the paper. Okay? The paper, the main idea here is you need to have a sick paper. Pick up a heavy paper, 300 grams would be a good option. Cinna paper may be not suitable. I just won't hold so much layering and blending. You can also find a special paper for markers. They have the layer where your marker doesn't go through, but it's not good when you want to use blending option. It's good when you want to use one layer of color, and that's it, but not for blending. For blending, stick to normal smooth, heavy paper. And the good thing with the blending of alcoholic markers, they're not necessarily need to be the same one color. You can use different colors. For example, let's try mixing pink. Angry. This one that I have is the zero. It has the color zero. It is a pure blender. I use it quite really when I blend to colors that quite different in terms of colors and tones. Like in this case, this would be a very good help. But apart from blending the colors next to each other, you can blend them in the way of layering. For example, I'll show you maybe I'll do a bit of hedging. And on top, I can apply different layer of different color hetching. See, it is kind of it's not blending, but it's another way of applying the markers. You can do it with a flat white tip. Hetching is also possible with this flat nib. Just with the side, you can do the hetching I find it even better. And one more type of markers I want to mention you are acrylic markers. Acrylic markers are good to use, not on the paper, but on anything else. There are artists that use them on their own. They use them on paper as well, but they are pretty good for any other surfaces, and they are very good on top of other materials, even acrylic paint. Try them. They have a very, very intense colors, very nice cover it. For example, when I put that dark blue, Now, the thing you have to remember, you need to wait until this layer is completely dry. Only in this case, the next color will stick on top of it and it won't damage the need of the marker. This one looks dry. Now if I paint over, see how intense is the color. The coverage is amazed and the situation is amazed. This one is the characteristic that gives us acrylic markers and they can go all over again layer after layer. Try them as well. The only thing I find the negative that the pain goes off very quickly. 16. Min and Max required art materials to start drawing with markers: O. Let's do the next join with alcoholic markers. I will use a few markers as my main instrument, and on top, maybe we can use something like acrylic marker or acrylic paint or even something from the same range that the brand provides us with alcohol markers and the markers in general in general, if you want to achieve the realistic illustration, the more colors are better. If you want to do something like cartoonish or sketchy or something vibrant or use the markers for accent only, one or two colors would be nice in the next join, I want to show you the ability of blending. This is the coolest option that alcohol markers can give us. And for these purposes, I need a few colors. So for my coffee cup, I will be using probably a few light brown colors, a few dark colors, and several colors for the cup. My cap would be white, to represent white, I need the colors for the shadow. For these purposes, I will be using I will be using gray colors. So let's just have a look white. If you light colors for the coffee, then I will be blending together. A few dark colors. Or the coffee and several colors for the cup. The thing is there is no minimum and maximum. The more colors you have, the better and easier would be the drawing. But to limit ourselves, I will stick to something with a step of one. Probably I start with zero, then I'll go with the two. Then 46 and eight. Six. This is probably dry and eight. To achieve a better blending, you might need to get something in the middle. 4-65 would be good. This is probably not. Or 0-21 would be good to create an easier blending. Let's stick to these colors to show you that creating a beautiful blended illustration with limited colors is possible. But if you have a better options, and I know, for example, in Copic, they already sell a preset of very nice colors of this, for example, range of a brown range. This would be good to start as well. And an extra, you can have blending zero color, or you can have a few more colors for your coffee to create wider range and easier blending options. So this would be my maxim. 17. Drawing coffee cup top view using alcohol markers: First of all, how do we really start drawing? There are several types how people draw. First of all, it's from real life object, from something you see. Nowadays, it's possible to do it from a reference, from a photo. Another thing is from your memory, if you remember and you draw something, but it works very well if you do a lot of sketching. So your brain is trained and your brain your brain remembers a lot of details and you can reproduce it on paper. And another thing from imagination, but it works with a combination of the first two. So when you look, when you look, when you process the information, when you remember it, and your brain can create something totally different, something you, this will be something imaginary. In my example here, and I recommend you to start with going from a live object. So what you can do, you can put a piece you can put a cap or any other small objects in front of you and start looking into it. Or the easiest way, even easier way would be to use the reference. In my drawing, the drawing that I will demonstrate to you now, I will be using this reference. So I found these cups. They look pretty nice. The only thing I don't like any of them in particular. But I like some elements. For example, I like the shadows. It's easy to do, and it is very effective. I like the shape that in this cup, for example, I see the coffee and I have a bubble side as well, but I don't like the small bubbles. I like the bubbles over here. I also like the gradients and the colors of the form. Over here, I like what else? This is also nice. In this joint, I'll try to consider these three cups and come with something one common cup and I will use this as a reference. But it might be even slightly harder to process that information to start. So when you just beginning, pick up something one you like, for example, pick up this one, try to repeat, try to look and see, Okay, this is dark red and I have to do it darker. This is dark brown. I have to do something darker. This is the bubbles they look like dots different size. I have to do them dark dots then. Um, try to stick and just to copy. When you do this one after another one after another one, you get a little bit of practice, and then you can mix and match and you can do imagination, do a cup from imagination or anything else from your imagination. But try starting with repeating. Repeating from the reference from the voter is easier because the object doesn't move anywhere. The light doesn't change. It's easy because it's always here. So try try starting with reference, either with yours or something from the Internet. Another important thing we have to remember that the white color is very important and it's not recoverable. So once we start drawing and leaving the marks of the markers, it's almost impossible to get rid of them. So we have to be we have to be cautious about the white color. We have to consider it and think in advance where we want to leave white, where we want to leave light colors, and leave that pitch white without covering with the markers. Another interesting fact about markers, usually the illustration are quite small. You won't find something super big because the ink and the material itself is expensive and it also might be a bit challenging do big blending and covering big areas. And also, I think there's no need in that. So the drawings are usually quite small. I'll start drawing my cup straightaway with the marker, and I'll take W zero, that is warm gray zero, the lightest color of gray. Hang on, I'll do the shape. Okay, I'll start drawing. I'll start drawing with the cup, so this will be my opening over here. Again, I'm not aiming to achieve something super round or something super realistic. It would be a sketch. Now, this will be the sickness of my cup. This would be the plate. And the handle and the word will be somewhere here. Now I will also mark the bubble area. Probably I will create some interesting shape like that. This will be my dark bubble area. So this will be the bubble area over here. This would be the bubbles, different small, big, smaller, smaller to the edge, and this would be my dark area over here. Now when I have a very, very light drawing, even if I have incorrect marks or something that I don't like, will be easier to correct on top with darker colors. I also will add the sickness to my plate. Now we can start either with a coffee or with the cup. My recommendation is to go parallel. So don't do one piece perfectly and then another piece perfectly. You can do that as well, of course, but better to see the whole picture together, how it is coming coming all parts coming together, better to do it slowly gradually, everything away will be. And it's not applicable to marks only. It's applicable to any medium. So we will start. My recommendation because Because white paper is really, really precious here and we don't want to spoil it and get too dark, that is not reversible, we will start with the lighter color. So I will pick up very, very light the lightest color I have for my coffee, and I'll start painting. So I will cover probably whole area for the coffee itself, I won't be in the bubbles. I mean, for the bubbles. I won't be concentrating and leaving white color yet here because they are very small and it will be easier. It will be much easier for me to do this vinyl touches and highlight on top with white marker. But if you don't have that white marker, just not a problem, just be cautious and I leave white spots. Now, I see on my reference that some areas are light, but other areas are dark. I'm trying to analyze which area are dark and I'm taking the next color, the next level, and I apply it. So in this, for example, corner, it is slightly darker. I will add a little bit, a little bit darker here and a little bit darker here. Now I will blend these two colors. So when I'm blending, I'm using the lighter color, the lighted tone, and I'm coming all across the edge to blend them together. This will be my one layer for the foam. This is good. Now, I will gradually come to other parts of my picture. I'll do the darkest side of my coffee. And again, I start with the light to color, even though it is super dark, I still want to make it a little bit colorful, so we'll have two colors, probably. I'll start with the light. And I will continue with dark. Straightaway, I'm doing the dark. You might think, okay, but isn't it the last step? It is the last step for the whole picture in general. But for the coffee, there's no other step in between, so I can apply the darkest side straight away to see the contrast and how it will be at the end. And I will blend. See, it's not blending super good because the tonal contrast is quite big. Maybe one more extra color in between would be nice. I will add extra color or using the blending tool would be an alternative option as well, a blending color like this and I have a little bit of darker here. What I'm doing, I'm just looking at my photo and I'm trying to analyze how this bubble inside. Or otherwise, I can do it from my memory as well. If you drink coffee a lot, you probably remember how it looked, how it looks like. And probably I will mark my bubbles just to understand where they are. So I will add a few big bubbles. Do them different shapes and do them not only different sites, but also the different shapes. And don't do them in a row. You have to play and find a nice sequence for them. So it has to be harmonical. It has to be natural. If you don't know how to do that, just find a beautiful photo and copy it. Just copy and then you will develop your own style and your own vision for the organization of the objects. Maybe maybe one more over here, maybe a few over here. See, I'm using the reference just as an example, an idea for me where to add the bubbles, but I'm not copying it straight away. This is the beginning of my coffee. Now I need to go slowly to other parts and I will go to the cup. I already do the perduan with zero color and I'll probably want to mark where I want to leave the light color. So over here would be light over here would be light over here and over here. With the cap, we have to be super, super accurate because we don't want to spoil a white. There is a lot of white and I don't want to remove it. So I will leave that zero color blending and I'll start with the tube with a number two. If you have one, better come to one, but I don't have one. I'll have two. So looking at my reference poder, I can see that there is a little bit of shadow coming on that side and a little bit of shadow coming on this side. It's getting super dark on the right side, but I'm not going straight away to the dark color, so I'll start slowly with my number two, and then I'll gradually increase it to darker tones. It looks pretty rough at the beginning, but that's why I'm using the blending. So with the zero tone, I will blend it a little bit here with the paper. And try not to use and cover the whole white area. Remember, we have to preserve white even with zero color because zero is not really transparent. It's still warm gray, a very, very light 1 gray. Now I see that I can intensify and make it even darker from the shadow, and I'll take my next level I have. If you have three, you can start with three. I will do my four. And with every next color, you don't cover a whole area. You cover smaller and smaller parts, right? The parts that you really have to be darker and darker, not everything. Otherwise, there is no point of doing underlaying underlayer with the previous color. The same as with other drawing techniques, I'm trying to create a broken line. So see, even with the shadow, I can do continuous line here to show that it is a shadow. But I don't want to do it. So some areas will be bolder, some areas will be sinner, and some will have the gaps. Now, I'll do my blending with the previous color. So if I have four, I'll do the blending with two. But I'm not going to blend it everywhere. Like here, for example, I like the shape and I like the line that it gives me. I'm leaving the lines. I'm blending just in the area when I want to achieve the gradient. And probably one more with zero. Some more details for the handle. Now I think this is a medium stage for me to step aside and have a look what is what is next. The next one would be probably intensify the colors, make the shadow darker, do more contrast and more more edge for my object because now cup is a little bit not visible. So I probably will do it just on one side on the shadow side. Here, I will leave it like that. And I will add more darker shadow under the plate on the shadow side from the right. Then I'll come to my coffee because I can make and add a little bit of more gradients to my bubble and probably to the form in some area and probably to the coffee, I will make it a bit dark in some areas as well. So the bubbles, I'll start with the bubbles. With the bubbles, I add one more color where the bubble. The bubble has the shape of the sphere. So it is pretty simple. One side still light, one side dark. This might be a little bit challenging because the bubbles are pretty small. But still possible. Don't make all bubbles dark. Some of them can stay light. The bigger bubble is the more contrast in the bigger variety of shadow and light it has, but smaller bubbles, they stay light. I think it's time for me to stop a little bit for coffee and do a little bit now for a cup. So as I told you, I will intensify the shadow, but I have to do it super slowly because I don't want to make my cup gray and dark. So just a little bit with the next gray that is six for me, but you might have four or five, I will add a dark color. This one is probably dry, so I'll take my five. That is also next one. And I will add slightly darker area. I will also add a little bit of dark gray to my coffee, not everywhere, along the edge where maybe there is shadow. Maybe to coffin of your coin, you summer to a cup. When you draw in with markers, you always switch between one color and another color. So when you will probably find yourself holding a lot of markers at your hands new hands. That's okay. Just always make sure you pick up the right color. There is no surprise. Then on the page. It's also good to remember that you have to stop at some point, so don't overdraw your picture. I will easily be spoiled very easily. A few more marks for the coffee, and then we can go to the detail. See, I ended up not using the darkest color at the beginning food I need. I think it's nice to leave it like this. I don't want to make too dark cut, and I think it's enough of the contrast for me for my shadow and my object. So think the darkest color is not enough. I can add a few more details a few more and extend my picture with other objects, but I think it's a good one to finish our introduction. Just a very, very final step. Wait, I will wait until everything is dry, and I will do the sparkles and the white light areas for the bubbles. For this, I will take the gel pen and I see if it works okay. I think it is actually nice. I don't need to use the marker. Don't leave these white blick everywhere. I leave them just for the bigger area. Another thing you can use with your markers are soft pastel pencils as well. The white color is pretty much nice covering the area. So maybe I'll add a little bit of lighter area here and I'll add white well smch it to create the same interesting look. See if you have a little bit mistake, you made something too dark, you can add you can cover it either with acrylic paint onto or you can use white pasta and sil as well. I think it's a good time to stop. Obviously, I can go all over again to make this picture looking more perfect. But I think it's a good one for introduction. And I really hope that you see that it's not that difficult to create a beautiful, realistic or cartoonish illustration. Everything you have to remember the trick of blending and the blending between colors and tones. The trick with leaving the white paper, the trick of going very slowly from the light to dark. The trick of when you have to stop and think what do you do next, all have to consider that you slowly gradually build your whole picture together and go ahead, start experimenting, start using your markers. 18. Introduction to oil pastel: Oil pastel is relatively new art material. It was invented just around 100 years ago in Japan for school students. Very soon it became popular. The quality started increasing. More companies started manufacturing it, and it became a very good artist media. Probably one of the most famous artists who used the oil pastel was Pablo Picasso. He was really eager to find a medium that would be very good on any surfaces and that will look like oil. So he asked Henry Senior to create and improve oil pastels for them. So they created these amazing sticks we still use for now, they're probably one of the best on the market, if not the best. This is all thanks to Picasso. Oil pastel comes in the sticks by that. They can be either round or square. It's basically bag in combination with oil and pigment. The oil that is in the sticks, the oil dictates the rules and the behavior of this amazing material. There are good things the oil gives us and some disadvantages as well. Because of this oil combination with bags, it gives us rich battery look with rich colors. You can use it as a drawing material and create an pastor look that is more suitable for painting, but this drawing material gives us that opportunity. But there are also some negative parts of using oil pastel. It is fragile and it's difficult to store it. So it can be easily, very easily can be smashed. So the work has to be framed and put under glass or there are also fixatives for oil pastel, but they don't work 100%. So probably I'm not going to cover this here. And one minus plus and minus the oil pastels can be used on any surfaces, can be metal, can be wood, paper. But the paper probably is more convenient, but because of oil, the border connection here, my conclusion would be you still can achieve a very nice result with this pastel, but not as easy and not as nice as with the very, very good quality pastels. This is to demonstrate you the layering and another thing, of course, we can mix it with other mediums and we can do the final touches on top with some pencils with charcoal pencil, for example, it will be very, very good. This is a quick overview of oil pastel. So everything you need to start is paper. Stick to a smooth, heavy paper. Heavy something like 300 grams is required to hold everything all manipulation. We will be doing with the paper, with the oil pastel. Maybe some solvent if you want, but not required, and most important, of course, an oil pastel set. The better quality is easier to start with, even though they say student quality or artist quality, I think it's an interesting trick when you're starting better focused on artist quality always. So buy your set of oil pastel or if you don't want to buy a set or if you don't have money for that, buy a few sticks, maybe three or four colors to start with. No need to focus on that at the beginning. Just to show you the difference, this is with solvent. We can make it transparent and smooth, and this is without solvent. Still rich and very nice blending together. Another technique is, of course, layering. Let's try to compare here two brands. As I told sin is more battery and this one is elisib I will use my orange. This is great path on sakura. And my orange from senior year. Look how it is applied. I don't need it even to press hard. It is already so smooth, so battery. It's like a flowing, very nice, rich color. And see, I don't have that dust kind of dust on top here. So it looks very, very nice and smooth and like a good quality. Now I'll use my white, for example, and I start drawing on top. See, first of all, with this one, I'm removing some part of the oil a lot, actually. And the white, even though I'm applying a lot of white on top, still doesn't and I press really hard. Let's try with a single white. Look at this. It's really, really coming like a white. See the difference. With SNL here, it looks richer. It looks more intense. I probably withdrawing, probably I will be able to do more with that. Let's try even the third level. The third level is also good. Look on this. With SNL, I can do a lot of layering. Let's try here just to experiment. Let's try this color green, and then white on top. I still can achieve the very nice and decent result here, but this one looks to me more professional and better. I don't have these artifacts that I have to deal with after all. I just quickly show you also with the finger. See with a finger. I can do very, very nice blending, and it's super easy with a soft past away. Here, I have to press really, really hard and I still see when you draw the oil stays on the paper, it sucks inside, and gradually it destroys the paper with time. So this is one more minus. But despite all these things, it's still very, very nice and amazing. I would say the unique art material for drawing sketching, for doing mixed media techniques. You can use oil pastels on top of anything, acrylic painting, any other painting. You can do it as underlayer for future works or with coustics also very nice. Start doing with oil pastel, you probably need just paper and some minimum set of oil pastes. There are also things additional you can use. Of course, different smdging and blending tools. I would say that cotton chips would be enough. No need to buy something special. Mixing and blending the colors can be done either with a finger or with these tips, and also with the help of some but spirits and solvents. I'm using gum soil. This one I have for my oil painting as well. It works well with the pastel. It can be anything, but I like this one because it's odorless and it's quite natural. Sometimes you can use also any oil like cooking oil, but don't focus on it because too much oil will simply destroy the paper and your painting. Now I want to show you a few brands that I have. And again, with any other mediums, the quality is important. The rule is, it's a golden rule. You better buy a smaller set with a great artist quality rather than color bigger set with wide range of colors, but cheap. I have two brands to show you quickly. So senil here is probably the best one that its on the market. It is expensive, but the quality is amazing the colors, amazing the variety, the softness, the butter, look, the coverage, it is impressive. We will have a look at it closer. And I have play pass, great pass. Created by apra. This is actually the brand. I have a set. This brand, they created the first oil pastel. It is but not this set, of course, something different. And after that, it has been approved. And this one, they say it is artist quality. Even though it is artist quality, I find it's a bit hard and the coverage is not nice. The covers are great. The variety and the price for it is great. But still, I think it won't compete with SNN here. Let's have a look. The techniques we use with oil pastels are the same as with other drawings with slightly different aspects of features of this material. So I'll try to create the gradient just to show you. I'll start with yellow. So what is important with oil pastel, layering is one of the approach, but you probably can't do a lot of layering, one underlayer and probably one another as the final touches as a final drawing. And then I'll put a bit darker color. Here I'm using this create pastel. I have now, first of all, color blending. Color blending happens immediately on the paper or on any other surface. It can be done either with your finger or with a cotton tip, for example, either with a clean cotton tip or with a solvent. Let's try first clean. I'm starting with the with a lighter color and then going to dark. I want to mess with my yellow. And another part, I'll try with a solvent. So I dip my cotton tip in a solvent and start mixing. So the solvency, it becomes first of all, you can cover bigger area and you can make smoother gradient and you can mix it with a paper color so you can lead it to transparency. I find that using solvent is good for your underpainting or underdrawing for the initial layer. But for the top layers and for the final touches, probably for fine details, probably solvent is not required. And anyway, solnts a good addition, but 19. Min and Max required art materials to start drawing with oil pastel: For the next drawing, my suggestion is to start with the paper, heavy paper and with a set of oil paster, good quality oil paster. I will be using, but it's not necessary for you. A few colors orange, white, green, but it can be any colors, any colors you want. I will be using a few. For example, my cup will be orange, so I will use orange and red. Maybe I'll add something like orange for the light. I will use a few colors for the background, maybe a few greens, few browns, and of course, I will be using white for my highlights. As a maximum, of course, I will use some solvent, some blending tools and helprns like cotton chips. I will add more colors, but not too much, maybe one more extra yellow, one more extra green, and I will add some details with a pencil on top with a soft charcoal pens. 20. Drawing an enamel cup with oil pastel: I will draw red animal mac somewhere on a picnic table. You can pick up any other objects you like, can be at the cup or anything else. Stick to something simple and something colorful. I don't focus on the copying the details. And for that purposes, I will be drawing from my memory. I don't want to use the references here. So I'll start with something medium colors, the color and the middle range for my cup. For my k, I will be using orange, maybe yellow orange, yellow, orange and red, red for shadow, yellow for light, and the main color is orange. So with the orange, I very likely do a line drawing. I think the k is Mags. Here I have the opening and the opening, if I remember correctly, is a little bit bolder. Here I will have some tea. Here is the handle. Maybe it sold a bit more. Who isn't it. And probably to make it creatier, I will have some polvkdos. Now I will start with coloring. I'll start with orange and yellow. This is my light. This is my light. I'm leaving the white dots white. I'm trying to preserve the beauty of white paper that I won't be able to achieve with layering. So I'm just coloring it kind of coloring, but not everywhere where I want to put the light to color. In this whole course, I'm keeping the simplicity of the object light and shadow because we can do a lot of studies here, but our aim is to investigate the ability of the materials. So the rule is very, very simple everywhere. Pick up the side from where you have a light. Let's say I have from the left side. So this is my light. This is my shadow. Light is lighter, shadow is darker, pretty simple. We will stick to that and it will already give you a wide range of possibilities and opportunities what you can do with your picture without studying very deeply all the aspects of the form of the shape et cetera. Now I'll do my orange. The next middle part, this in my main color, my orange. I will let it all across the shape of the mug. And now comes my red. The top part of the k is usually black, so I will hit a little bit of black here, but not too much. I will mix it with white so I keep a little bit of grayish color. I don't want to make too much contrast and lines. Again, I'm using the broken line. I'm not doing it consistently with a smooth line. I want to use a broken line to have a very interesting shape. So this is white and I will add white to blending and get a gray color. When I have more black, it will be dark gray. When I have less black will be a light gray. This is what I want to do. And maybe I'll color the pant Well. And with a light brown, I'll do the leach now and set for the tea I think it's not too dark, so I will introduce a little bit of black on top. You will see when we blend it nicely, it will be dark brown. This is step number one. Now I'll start blending. I'll use a little bit of solvent or actually, no, I'm not using the solvent. I'll start blending straight away just around the edges of connection of two tones and two colors. I don't want to do it everywhere. Maybe somewhere I will live like this. I like that it is more rough. Somewhere I will lend, somewhere I will cover the white spaces. Here, I will use a little bit of my black to create a darker, little bit of here as well. But don't mix a lot of black, especially at the beginning, because you can easily get the mud, the dirty color that is hard to remove. Okay. Was the same one. This is already orange. This is already dirty with orange, but I can use it for my black. And again, I'm not blending everywhere, at some areas where I want to do second layer and I want to get the smooth gradient. I will mix my tea or coffee whatever is inside, something hot and tasty. Maybe for this one, I will use a little bit of solvent because I want to make it smooth. With a solvent, when you're adding the solvent, you have to wait a little bit until it's dry and it dries pretty quickly to apply a second layer. I'm sticking to the rule I introduced you earlier. I'm building the picture gradually, so I will leave my mac as it is for now, as it said beautiful underpainting underlayering, for the second round. And I'll come to my background. So this would be kind of wooden table, but I want to focus on the mac, so all the details will be here, and the background will be kind of just for the picture. So I'm not going to focus on the details everywhere around. I just want to mark something that will look like a wooden table. I think it is obviously brown. I'll use a little bit of light brown here and dark brown. I can use even darker brown because I have it, but otherwise, I can use black and mix it. Light here, dark here because the light is coming from the left side for my selection. Don't focus here on strokes on the marks. It can be any direction because we can do smudging and layering on top. Now I'll do a little bit, maybe something like a grass with a green. I'll mix a few greens. Another thing, I'm not going right to the edges of the page. My main idea is to create a fresh sketchy look of the picture so I can leave a little bit of white. I don't need to go exactly to the edge. This is totally fine. Now with the solvent, I want to cover a little bit of area here. I want to mix it. Again, I'm not doing it everywhere. I want to create a sketchy look. If you do a very, very fine drawing, definitely, you need to think about all pieces of the art work every little bit. But it's not that I want to achieve over here. And with the solvent, I already can create something that will look like grass with my strokes. I find it would be faster if I use my finger instead. This is the first layer. I already looks very bright and rich. As the next step, I will add some more details and maybe some more colors to my map. I already have light, middle tone and shadow. Maybe I'll introduce a little bit of ground here as well for my shadow. At this stage, I probably won't be mixing and wending my original color. I'll just leave it like this and even a little green. Mixing with red shadow for the handle. Correcting a little bit the edge of my mark. Of course, we need to introduce the same color, yellowish color somewhere else, so I will add a little bit to the green grass, the corvette. But I know a little bit to the tik. I'll add a bit darker color to my key. Again this time, I'm not going through blended. A little bit of brown to this white inside white is a reflection from the T. See here I still have a little bit of white paper and this works pretty well for me because it's a perfect reflection. Now my white dots, they're not really white, so I will add a little bit of the colors to them. Not too much because we want to leave them white and easily easily can be spoiled. On the shadow parts on the shadow side, the white dots are not that white, so this should be brighter. This right dot should be kind of darker. Okay, maybe I'll add one more dot to the handle, as well. See, I forgot it, but it's fine with a very, very nice rich white, I still can do that. And I love this effect. When you layer in, it gives you imposte look. It gives you the look of oil strokes instead of the drawing material. It's very nice work, something like oil painting. And maybe I will introduce a little bit of orange to my grass, flowers or something like that. Not too much and focusing more to the center to my k rather than on the sides. It should be kind of dissolving the picture. I will introduce a little bit of orange to other parts of my picture. A little bit of light on board make the picture more airy. The second step of layering is done. We had the line doling, we had the angel laying, the first layer of our colors, we applied more colors and mixing them between different areas of the picture, and as a final step of the sketch. I recommend you doing some more details with more fine materials such as tensil for example, if you have it, although it's a very beautiful work already at this stage. It's very fresh, very sketchy, very oily in pasta. All these beautiful things that Oil pastor can give us are already there. So I can be done and stopped at this moment, but I'll do just a few things. And if you have a pencil, you can as well. So maybe I'll add a little bit of more line to my left arc. No everywhere again. I'm using the concept of broken line. And I will make makes And with another side of my pen of the side that isn't lit the marks, I can do something like something like removing the extra scratching and removing an extra oil to create a light marks of the page. I just want my detail, something that will resemble the pat. Even mark finger to the wooden half and wooden pattern. That's it. I hope you liked it and I hope you try to do something like this. You are not afraid of using this at the first look messy and dirty art material. It gives incredible incredible results, absolutely impressive look as for the drawing. So don't be afraid. By your first set or buy your first few sticks and try to start experimenting. 21. Introduction to soft pastel: Soft pastel is personally most loved drawing material. It is an amazing material that gives so much that often it is referenced as painting material, not drawing. Soft pastel is basically a pigment, combined with a binding material and the filler, and it usually comes in a presentation of chokes, different forms either around small chokes, in sicker or even bigger chokes or in square shaped chokes. And despite being in use for many, many years for quite a long time, it really became popular during impressionist time. For example, Edgar the gar created stunning drawings of Ballerina with his soft pastel. A famous chocolate girl that was even earlier is an amazing example of the beautiful creation this material can give us. Nowadays, there are more and more artists who are trapped in the power of soft pastels. There are a few of them. There are many, many more amazing artists you can find. E. There are things to consider and remember when using soft pastel. First of all, paper is important. Paper probably comes on the same level as the soft pastel itself. I'll quickly show you and describe the differences in paper. The soft pastel itself is important as well. There are limitation of using the soft pastel in terms of life lasting period of time, it is quite good material. It's probably not the same as oil, but still it can be for hundreds of years preserved very well if you take care of it, it should be framed, it should be under glass, it should be protected. If you store your drawing somewhere, not on the wall, use the layer and paper, something like a tracing paper, waking paper would be good enough or any paper to protect the layer from smudging and dusting. Probably it's the main limitation of the soft pastel. Everything else is just beautiful combination of opportunities and great things it gives us. It gives us the richness. It gives us the beautiful color, the quick, the and the pace the fastness which you can create a beautiful painting. I would reference it as a painting. It gives us the ability to draw everywhere. It might be a bit dusty, a bit dirty, so you have to be cautious about that using the tissues or a special place where you can clean it easily. But apart from that, it's simply amazing. And even within soft pastel itself, we can divide it by soft, probably medium and hard, or I would reference to soft and hard. The soft pastel is, the better it is, the easier to apply and the more expensive it is. Not all brands give us the same quality and the same softness. We will discuss that. Soft pastel usually comes in a round shape or square, but hard pastel are usually small sinner sticks in square shapes. And of course, soft pastel pencils, we discuss them quickly in a pencil section. They can be used on the own or as an addition and help for the soft pastel itself. Before going details of the soft pastel and the paper, I'll quickly mention that there are also other things you can use for the soft pastel. First of all, it's fixatives of course, when you want to fix the layers or your work, but I wouldn't recommend you buying it or doing it. It's quite tricky and you can damage your drawing. I know that many artists do not use them. I do not use them only for sketching purposes when I want an extra layer and I don't want to damage the previous layers or smudge it. But it's more advanced level. We're not going to focus on that. There are also other things like special paste that can create ground texture for the paper. Or any other things. But again, if you look and focus on the things around, there are a lot of other stuff, but you need just understand a little bit about paper and the soft pastel choke quality and the difference to start. This is the minimum you need to know. Let's come to the paper. This paper is very important. I have to quickly mention the differences in paper for pastel. First of all, when you apply your soft pastel on the paper, the color that is already there, either you use the technique was layering without smudging, or if you covered completely smudging, we layer layer after layer. The paper color still gives the and gives the effect. It's either creating kind of the mood for your future drawing, or if you do just the layering, you will still have the gaps and these gaps will come with the color of the paper and it gives the character and it gives the mood and the impression you want to achieve. The color is important. If you don't want to know where to start what do, start with a medium grade of gray color, something in the middle, not too dark, not too light, something like this. There are also different types of paper, different brands, smooth paper, just a normal paper, this brand, you probably can find it everywhere. It's a normal paper, it's a very good quality paper, but is inexpensive. You can start on that the paper has two sides. One side is more flat, one side rough and has a little bit of texture. Spy say that this texture at side is good for drawing, but I recommend you starting on the flat side. You can buy a normal pad that is suitable for any kind of drawings. This pad I have here, I used it for sketching. Mostly, and it has a very nice gray color and flat surface and I use it mostly for my investigation of my future projects and sketching somewhere outside. Just a normal paper for drawing would be good as well. Another type of paper is sanded paper. This is amazing paper. It's more expensive. You can achieve it by applying the special texture and paste on top of any other paper. Or you can buy the sanded paper, special paper for the drawing, for the soft pastel drawing. Like this paper, I know that in different countries, they call it differently, but it is from the brand I mentioned at the beginning from Kansan. There's also beautiful paper that is created by art and they have different grades. The grade is important as well, but not going to pri that, stick to something middle 400 or 600. It's the smoothness and the grade of the paper. The trick with ascended paper, you probably need to practice a little bit different strategies and different techniques of applying it. Not too much smudging will come on the texture paper, it is probably the best one to start investigating soft pastel. But I also want to show you that usually in the pads for soft pastel, it already comes with a layered paper in the middle to protect your drawing. This one I also used for sketching purposes. There is one more paper I found in the market that is called Wow. It is very expensive. I don't recommend buying you that at all for the beginning. It's nice. It's something in the middle between paper and the fabric and it gives a very beautiful soft look. But what I found it because it is kind of fabric, the soft pastel doesn't stick well to that, so you have to protect it very well. And with a sounded paper, another alternative is to buy a simple sanded paper from the building shop. This one, for example, is not a paper for drawing, but can give you also pretty much similar effect and look. It's also nice to try. Again, we're not going to focus on that. It's just an overview that there are different papers for soft pastel and the paper is very important. The choice of paper is very important. So remember that, but you can start simple with a simple paper for drawing purposes, something like this one. And now the fun point is the pastel. Well, pastel is my main drawing materials, so I know a lot about it and I can go for hours and hours talking about differences and practicing. I'll try to squeeze all my knowledge to the minimum unit to understand. First of all, there is hard and soft pastel within the soft pastel itself, and the softer pastel is the better, the more expensive it and the easier to draw. So to start with, my recommendation is to buy a set of a very good well known brand soft pastel. Something maybe like 36 or 48 colors would be good to start. Less is not good because with the soft pastel, you achieve the beautiful look on the page. Thanks to the variety of colors you have. If you want to draw a properly a waves or a seascape, you need to have a big range of bluish and greenish color. Otherwise, with few sticks, you want to achieve that amazing results. You can do something simple, sketchy, cartoonish, but not that beautiful that this particular medium can give you. Start with the set of 48 colors with a good brand. What is the good brand? The good brands for example, Rembrandt, is it good? It is good. It's a soft pastel. It is marketed as a soft gradient, but it is not. It is not. It was my mistake. I bought it to the beginning very big set of Rembrandt. The colors are amazing, but they are not soft and it's quite hard to start drawing with this type of pastel. What soft is is usually Sminke this one, the stick or that. Schminke is a very nice, one of the best. They're very good ones. Unison, I have a half of the stick here. Senor, again, the same as with oil pastel. Art spectrum are also nice, but not everything. There is big variety of American and handmade brands like great American, for example, we also have amazing range of colors. Probably stick to these brands to start with. There are also cheaper version of soft pastels, for example, this one, I have Mungio Well, I don't think it says it says it artist quality, but it's not really. It's not really the artist it's not that great. The pigment is not great, banding material is not great. It is dusty. You cannot achieve layering. I'll show you a little bit about that. Still, I use it for quick sketches and light drawing. And it is probably will be good on a sanded paper, but not on a smooth paper. I'm not going to talk about the hard soft pastel because I'm not using it again. It's good for one layer drawing or for the final touches if you want. But to start with, stick to the soft pastel. The soft pastel you can buy as a set or as individual sticks. My recommendation is to start with a set, something with a different variety of different colors, and then depending what kind of drawing you prefer to do, you can buy a separate set, for example, for a cityscape or for seescape or landscape where more greenish colors, bluish colors or buy individually different colors you want. When you have your sticks, what artists usually do, they break them. Yeah, it is hard. It's looking so beautiful and it's so nice in you. But yeah, you don't use the stick like that. What we usually do, we break them by two parts or three parts because what we need, we need the tip to create the line, but we need the side to cover the area. And the side, you can use it only with a half or a piece of stick. I know that some sets they already provide you half sticks. For example, Unison, they have beautiful range of sets, 48 colors with half sticks. It's a great way to start. A variety of techniques and approaches, how you use soft pastel and easing and every artist, they're trying experimenting and finding their own way of achieving the results and achieving their own style. I'll show you a few basic things and then you can build and try do anything else. First of all, the blending. The blending happens on the paper and the blending can be either with the paper color or the blending between colors. For example, I'll take this green and with the side, I'll start applying a little bit of the color here and see I can blend it between each other to cover the whole area, and then I can slowly come to the paper and blend it with the paper. Creating the gradient between the paper and the pastel. This is one approach. Another approach is to blend with another color. I can have a layer it, I put it next to it and blend it together. On the blending, it can give us absolutely new color, this warm green color. It's very important to remember that you cannot achieve any color with blending. You still need to have more colors with your sticks because this is a kind of mechanical blending on the page, and it gives you a bit of different colors, but in many cases, it gives you a dirty color. Whereas in a stick, there is a pure pigment and it gives it vibrant, rich, new color. So it is important to remember blending on the page gives you one color, but pigments in tide of sticks, it's different and in most cases, way more better. Another thing is layering is when we do not blend, do not smudg but layer at this cage, what we have we have a little bit of the color of the page, then the color of the first layer and the color of the second layer. This is another approach. When you have the sanded paper, the texture of the marks, they stay more visible, more distinguished. So it's slightly different with smooth paper. Another one more is probably would be when you first smash and blend your color with the paper to achieve a smooth underlayer, and then you draw with another color and it gives you a beautiful effect of roughness of the last layer. This is three main approaches and you can combine and mix them. There are much more when you can apply a little bit of that and then do a little bit of smudging and not everywhere. A lot of combination with using of different materials, this underpainting and everything else. But this is the main to understand. Now let's quickly have a look at the differences between cheap and expensive materials. This one is expensive Sminke very beautiful rich color. I'll apply it here, this one is the cheap wound your color. First of all, the richness of the color is different. Now, if I want to smash it, I will apply second layer here, second layer here. See, it creates a lot of dust around. It's very dusty and it doesn't stick to the paper nicely if I want to apply many layers and see I have a lot of dust one here. Even the dust that created the first stage, it will stick to the paper. Now I apply the color on top. There will be light blue and I mix it. Look how beautiful I created my new blue color. I have this. Over here, I don't have blue, so I'll use a little bit of light. Light yellowish color. See how much of the dust is created because the quality is a little bit poor and it doesn't stick to the paper that nicely at hike. Now, if I want to magic, I want to achieve the beautiful color. I will achieve something but I can achieve that lightness and I have to press very hard and I get a lot of dust, a lot of artifacts that I don't want to do. Maybe it is hard for you to notice proper difference, but believe me, when you start drawing, you will see the difference and you will be amazed with the things you can create with a good quality soft pastel. So please stick to a good quality. Maybe just to demonstrate you quick, but this is ndran what usually artists do they combine different brands and different abilities. It's not only about the color, but for example, I know the approach when some artists do hard pastel on top of the soft pastel for the details. Some artists do opposite. They use hard pastel as underground because it sticks very nicely to the paper. You can combine, but again, it's more on advanced level. You see that, for example, this is Rnbrand. Now if I mash Mina this is soft. See how rich and how very nice covering abilities it has. It's a covering ability is amazing for soft pastel. You can layer after layer and you will achieve still great result, whereas with harder pastels, you probably need to think in advance and do one at two layers maximum. So just to sum up quickly, soft pastel is amazing art material. It gives you a very quick, beautiful vibrant look with incredible range of color and tones and shades and everything you can create super fast on the paper. It doesn't need you extra time to dry as with other materials. Just remember about the paper. Paper is important and about the quality of soft pastel, it is important. And now let's start drawing. 22. Min and Max required art materials to start drawing with soft pastel: For the demonstration of abilities of soft pastel, I will be using a small reference of a cup I found on the Internet. But you can do anything you want, of course. And this one just for guidlance and a little help while drawing, and I will be using the paper that we just discussed. It's just um normal tenson paper for soft pastel, the simplest one. On the smooth side, I don't want to use the rough side because it leaves a lot of texture that needs to be controlled, and at the beginning, you don't know how to control it. So focus on a smooth side of the paper. Also, I know that most of the artists, they focused on a smooth paper because they can use it in their favor. If they want to achieve the texture or something, they use other instruments, not the instrument of the paper. Okay, so the smooth side of a normal drawing paper or special pastel paper, and the set of sticks of soft pastel. That purposes, what I usually do, I recommend you starting with the limited colors. So when you buy your set of pastel for the eight or 36, and you want to draw something to simplify your life because you can easily create a mess and you won't be able to understand how to control the mixture of the pigment on the paper. Stick to a limited limited number of colors. So for example, in this case, I have a green cap, so I need to pick up a few colors for the cup. I will pick up my green base color of the cap, then I'll add maybe a little bit of yellow for the light, and I'll add a little bit of dark for the shadow, like dark green. This will be the minimum. Then I'll need a few colors for the tea. I'll add light. A light brown and dark brown or maybe a little bit yellowish brown. And I would need maybe a few more dark colors, so I will take a dark brown or dark purple and few light colors. So that would feel white and a little bit maybe maybe more grayish white. That's it. That will be my minimum. Then I'll that will be my minimum. Then what is important is to try your colors. For example, I already picked up my paper. This will be dark gray paper for my work because I want to create the effect similar to that, but I don't want to focus on the leaves. So this will be my paper. That's why I need to understand my steaks, how my colors will look like on a paper. This is an extra step, not required, but you can try how the color will be a series on a final work. Just for demonstrations for cricket, I will show you, this is the color of my car. Is a a color. This will be the colors will be coffee. And see when you try and here in advance, you can understand if the colors edge, maybe something should be changed, maybe that color because what also happens, see that stick, it looks like a light gray, but on a different paper, it looks differently because in a combination with paper color, it creates a different contrast. So for example, these two colors light gray and white, they look pretty much very close. But on the paper, they have quite a big contrast on the gray paper, dark gray paper. On the white paper, I'll show you quickly here. If I apply it to white paper, see that white is not really white, and the gray looks like a light gray. Yeah, over here, they have a little bit different effect visual effect. So it is quite important to try in a plans if you want. This is my minimum, and my maximum for the work I would recommend you add more colors, but not too much, maybe a little bit like dark color for the shadow, purple or dark brown or dark brown, anything you have, maybe one more extra light color. I have a little bit of greenish color so the reflection from the cup, maybe a bit more of reddish color for the tea, but I'll see how it goes and to introduce a beautiful and interesting book to the cup, I probably will add something extraordinary. I add a torqueise as final details and touches and talk. But this is optional, maybe, yes, maybe, no. I'll just put it here for my use. And it is very important to put separately the colors you going to use, just to limit yourself and not going crazy, not to go crazy at the beginning, because it's very, very easily to start creating a mess. So try to limit, try to use a minimum colors. So this will be my minimum. So like this, here you are see just a few sticks. This will be minimum. And then you can adjust a few more, not too much. Another extra option, I will be using the pencils on toll. A few pencils with the same color, a bit of green light and dark, maybe a bit of whitish color. And this one I left maybe, no, maybe yes. We'll see this is. I'm not going to use here fixatives or anything like that, just because it's more like an advance and more complicated works, we will keep it simple. 23. Drawing a simplified cup from a reference with soft pastel: Wow. It's always good to start your work with a little bit of analysis and a little bit of investigation of your future objects. Of course, we're not talking about the composition and different mini works you need to do or you can do before, because we are more focused on the materials here. But it's important to understand what are you going to create? Whether you drawing from the real objects from a reference or from imagination, you need to think a little bit what you want to do. Where will be your composition? Should it be a little bit on the left, a little bit on the right side? Should it be just maybe part of it? How you going to apply the colors? Well, will be your dark side, light side. Do you need to make it warm or cool colors? Anything you can think about, you need to think in advance. In this exercise, we will keep it simple as it is in this whole course. I hope that in the future, I will create more developed and more advanced courses, especially for soft pastels that I really love. But at the moment, I'll just focus on a simple stuff. I will draw a very, very open white cap. I will have the tea with the light and dark tones. There is a little bit of reflection. There is a little bit on the shadow inside the cup. The cap itself has a lot of reflections from the light, but I'll do just a few basic things. I'm not going to do everything. It will be too much, just the main one. So for example, on the let side, there will be some reflections, so I'll keep this and this. On this saucer, on this little plate, there are reflections. So keep that big one, this one, and maybe on the edge. I'll probably will remove the handle because I don't want to focus a lot on details in this presentation. I'm not going to do the ag, but I'll try to make it more stylistic, something that will play with my paper. And that's it. Now I can start. I can start drawing either with a line pre drawing with a pencil or straight away with a choke. And my recommendation is to take the color that is similar to the past to your paper so that it will be easily covered during your drawing. I'll do a little bit of big opening here. See, I think I made a too big cup. So instead of removing it, I'll probably take either another pencil or I'll I'll take another pencil and I'll draw maybe I will make it smaller a bit too big for my page. So this will be my opening. This will be my tea. This will be my cup and the sauce. Something like this. And again, I'm not focusing on a grade and exactly the same. I'm just marking where my object will be like this and maybe I'll do a table over here. The next step will be to do the underlayer underdrawing with a simple color. So I'll take my green. This will be color here, a little bit of light over here, maybe a bit right green. And darker here. Again, I'm keeping it very simple just to show you the strategy of drawing. Like this. And the saucer as well, they have the light here. So what I'm doing. I'm just trying to trying to analyze and make it simple. How easily to simplify, there is a trick. If you squeeze your eyes, if you squeeze squeezequeze, you will see that a lot of details disappear and you see the picture more abstract. You don't see a lot of fine details and lines. You see more like a sport of dark and light parts. So if you squeeze, if you really squeeze and think, Okay, there is dark here, light here and dark here. And that's it. You need to repeat it at the beginning. Light here, light here. Dark here, and dark here. Easier. B Same for the inside part with the inside part, I'm not going to use white and I recommend you keeping your brightest and lightest colors for the last resort. Don't use white at the beginning. This will be a very, very final step to achieve the beautiful, the brightest color. I'll apply gray inside of my quad. Maybe a little bit of more green here and the same I'll do for the mate The next step will be blending my colors. I don't want to do it everywhere probably only where I want to have a solid solid color. So for example, in the shadow, I think a little bit of grayish is good. On this part, maybe I'll make it solid green, yellow. I here as well. I will leave a little bit texture here. Now cleaning my finger, I want to come back to the light part, so I need to make sure my fingers are clean, not to introduce unnecessary green here. With the lines I have here, but I don't want to have them. I have my table eraser that we used before infant cells. So just feel more mad. That's it. Yeah, that's my underground under layer. Now the fun part starts. The fun part with soft pastel is layering, mixing, blending, smudging, and doing everything you can do with the paper and the soft pastel themselves. Important thing is to remember, do it accurately and think what you want to do. If you really want to, for example, Smaging do you need the smudge? What do you want to achieve? You want to achieve the intense color and don't see the paper or why do you do that? Do you want to blend it and make it more transparent or what you want to achieve? Don't do Ms. It's very easy to spoil the drawing. And the more layers you do the more dotty and not fresh your picture would look like. So it has to be really, really controlled. But it's not that difficult and not that scary. All you need to do just experiment. So what I'll do, I'll have a look again to my reference and I'll think, Okay, now I want to make it more detail. Now, I don't want to squeeze. I did my squeezing work already. I want to see where are the other colors, where are the other shapes and the lights, where everything is going. And I'm still not going to white color. It will be the last step, but I'll do more in the middle. For example, the cut there is yellow on the cup, so I will add a little bit of yellowish here. And at this stage, I might smagin and blending colors, but I might be just leaving it like they see. I'm always using the side, and you can do that, as well. Little bit here. For example, if I add too much of yellow, okay, this is too much. I can blend it and I can cover on top with another with another layer of green or something like that. This one probably was not yellow, so I will reintroduce my green. Here, I will a little bit more yellowish. Here a little bit more dark. The saucer is very dark on that side, and there is quite a beautiful reflection just next to the cup. And every time I'm trying to do a broken line see even here, I'm not doing the outline of the cup. I'm doing the broken line. N, a little bit more bluish here, more yellowish to the reflection part to the tee. Always make sure your finger are clean enough for the next color. You need to think about it all the time. Then I will introduce a little bit of dark brown. See, I'm trying not to smath it everywhere, just a little bit. Just a little bit where I really want to I combine the colors. Somewhere I will leave the strokes that I create. I don't want to draw the table or anything. I will just mark that there is something, and I'm not even going to smdge it. I will just mark it and probably introduce the color from the tea as well and I will introduce it somewhere here, here. A little bit of dark vanili over here. Again, I can go all over again and again with the drawing, but we will keep it super simple. Suggest few details. Now I think now I think it's good enough for my second layer. Maybe I'll click a little bit the shape. I think it's not good enough. And as the next layer, I will be adding finer details with a brighter colors and maybe some effects on the background as well. We'll see. So I'll take my white and I'll start adding the reflection. With a broken line, always remember a broken line. First of all, here, this will be the sickness of the cut. I will add first the gray color to that and then on top, I'll add the white reflection somewhere. If you cannot do that with the sickness of your choke, you can try to do it with a pencil on top. I need reflection here. At this stage, I'm not I'm not blending my colors. I'm I'm not trying to smudge it. I'm trying to leave the marks and because the strokes, the stroke soft pastel gives us they are beautiful. So the final layers, no need to be smudged. The reflection on the cup, maybe some of them I can leave yellow, and I need to do white. Just to go really crazy, I still want to introduce this color to my cup. I will add it on the places where I have a reflection. This is to show you that you can do crazy brave things. You can apply and do layering and coloring with anything you want. I'm always using the broken line and strokes like hard light, pressing hard light combination. Where it is very strong, I will smash. I want to make it, um, looking soft. Then just to go really, really crazy, I'll probably introduce it around the edge. Go and be very light because I don't want to color everything. I just want to introduce something interesting effect. This is a sketchy cap. My goal was not to achieve the photocopy crosal. My goal was to show you how beautiful is the work with soft pastel. How amazingly pleasant is the work with soft pastel. And it's with any other materials, very important to think in advance, what do you want to achieve and not to overdraw it. So at this point, I will stop with my soft pasto. And I think the sketch is good enough. I might want to add the sharp corners with a pencil, but I think even for this dog and it is not required, I can lean it like that, probably. It's some areas where I don't want to add the sharpness, for example, here on the side that is further from me, I will do a little bit like a pressing or smudging just to make it not that sharp. So we focus on the front on the front layer on the front side. Now, we'll do a little bit of smudging all here and there. At this stage, I'm going to stop drawing completely. I hope you like this lesson. I hope that you really understand a little bit, at least, understand the ability of soft pastels and the approaches we can use. The importance of the paper. See, this example, this paper, I left a lot of the paper because it's part of my drawing. And even at the places where I didn't do all the matching, it goes through and gives me um the beautiful look and the beautiful effect was combination of migraine colors. These techniques with soft pastels. They are so wide and a lot of the teachers provide their own styles. You can find something new or maybe you are not going to use it, but at least you understand the ability and the approach of soft pastel. The material is amazing. Please give it a try. If you are not going to draw, at least I hope you see how beautiful and how amazing works can be with soft pastel. Otherwise, be brave and start experimenting on paper.