Mastering Shading: How To Get A Realistic Effect With Graphite Pencils

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Emily, and welcome to this drawing lesson. Beginner drawing students often ask me, how can I make my drawing more realistic? And the answer is shading. It's the shading that brings a drawing to life by creating the illusion of three dimensional form. In this lesson, we're going to practice three kinds of shading, light shading, dark shading, and blended shading. And the key to all three of these is developing the control over the movement and the pressure of your pencil. To practice our shading, we're going to have a go at drawing the leaves of this succulent plant. Our goal is to create the illusion of depth and three dimensional forms so that those leaves really feel like they're coming out off the page towards us. I've included a printable template that you can use to trace the subject onto your page. If you can't print the template for tracing, I'll take you through how to use the grid method to transfer the subject into your sketchbook. Then we'll work through how to shade the leaves to create an overall illusion of depth and realism. For some parts of the drawing, I'll take you through it step by step, and for other parts of the drawing that might end up being a little bit repetitive, I'll let you practice what you've learned on your own. By practicing controlling the pressure of your pencil for light shading, dark shading, and blended shading, you develop the skills to create a drawing that looks more realistic. So grab your materials and let's get started. 2. Materials: So for materials for this class, we're going to stick with our three basic pencils, the ones I normally recommend, which are a two H for very light sketching at the start, then a two B for a lot of our shading, and then a six B pencil for some of the really dark shading. Now, whatever brand you have may dictate how hard or soft these are. So if you do find that something is not working for you, feel free to change out your pencils or your pencil grades. These are just a recommendation 2h2b and six B. You're also going to need either the template if you're going to trace or if you can't print something off to trace it, you need to print this off. Then you're going to need a ruler and what we'll do is we're actually grid it out, you can see the grid lines in the photo. They're very faint, but we'll draw a grid and then we will draw out this outline before we start on our shading. For the shading, you might like to have a piece of tissue just for a little bit of smudging. You want to play around with some blending stumps, you can. But I think for this one, it's really good if you can focus on getting all of the work done, all of the blending done with just shading. Once you can do that, you can shade pretty much anything. It's an easy, not a cheat, but it's something people turn to, I think, these blending stumps, thinking that they'll be able to do a quick job and they'll be able to blend things easily with them, but it's actually quite a skill to use these as well. They're most effective when you can do the shading first without this, this is just a finishing touch for getting rid of some of the texture of your paper, maybe a few marks or lines that have shown up with your shading. It's not a fix all so there is that option if you want to do a little bit of end with a blending stump, as well. Like I said, I recommend trying your hardest to just stick to using your pencils. And I can promise you that if you do that, it's going to be a challenge, but it is going to really push you to improve your shading skills, which is probably why you're here. You're also going to need an eraser of some kind. I've got my patty eraser, and I might use my tombo mono zero just to clean up some of the edges or bring out some of those white areas that you can see in the photo there. 3. How To Use The Template: For this class, we're really going to put all of our focus into the shading, and we need to start with something, obviously, but I've got this template for you that you can trace and I'd recommend that you do trace it if you can, just so that you can, like I said, put all your focus into the shading and it'll speed things up a little bit. If you can't print this off, which is what you need to do, if you want to trace it, then I will draw it with you using the grid. It's probably just going to take you an extra 15 or 20 minutes, but it's still a good way for you to practice patience, which is also what this class is about. So if you did want to trace this, don't worry about tracing the grid lines. There's some very fine grid lines on here. But you're going to put it underneath your page like this and then you're going to hold that up against a window might be a little bit awkward just for a while, so that the light is shining through the back of it, and then you'll be able to see those darker lines, and you can trace around the square, trace around all of the individual leaves and things as well. Now, it's really important that you keep your tracing very, very light. You may be tempted to push hard because you're going around the line, you can see it. It's nice and clear for you shining through the back of that page. But as light as you can, using a two H pencil and we'll talk a little bit about why that needs to be light in the next video. So the next video is going to be drawing this out using the grid. If you can't print this out, then you're going to follow along with me. We're going to use a ruler and we're going to grid out this drawing and get our light lines in that way. Skip that video if you're going to do the tracing. So go ahead and do the tracing now and then move on to the video after the next one. 4. Drawing With A Grid: Assuming you can't print this out and trace it, we're going to go ahead and draw it out with a grid. So you're going to need a ruler for this. And each one of these grids is about 1.5 ", each one of these squares in the grid. You can do it whatever size you want, but this is a good size. It's about the size of my hand. It's not going to take too long to do all the shading that we want to in there. If we go too much smaller than these little details in here, they're already quite fiddly. They're going to become even more fiddly. So 1.5 " per square would be good and we've got three squares across and three squares up. You're just going to grab your ruler, decide whereabouts it's going to fit on your page. So three times 1.5 would be 4.5, so it's going to go from the side to the side at 4.5 " and I'm going to mark off 1.5 ". I'm going to mark off 3 ", and then I should have three markers, even distance apart. I know this is going to be difficult to see. I'll go a little bit darker with this pencil, but keep yours as light as you can, and then I'm going to draw a line across there. And then when we come down the side, we want to try and get it parallel with the line of our page, the edge of our page. If it gets a bit crooked, it's not a big deal, but ideally we have it as straight as possible because when it does become crooked, what we're putting into that grid then becomes distorted as well. Not a huge deal for this subject. So it's 4.5, mark off 1.5, mark off three, draw a line down there as well. If you had a set square, the triangle one, the triangle ruler that would be useful here because then you can line part of it up with one edge of your page. It's just easier to see the right angles then and you can check the right angles of your grid as well. So 4.5, we're going to match this up here try and get an even distance between the ruler and the bottom of your page. I'm just running my eye across there and making sure it's all about the same. You're going to mark zero, going to mark 1.5 and we're going to mark three. Draw a line across there. Then we're coming up the other side here and hopefully those line up on a nice straight line. We're going to mark our 1.5 and our three. Then it's just a matter of joining up these lines on the opposite sides. Keep these lines grid lines really light, definitely lighter than mine. Two H pencil remember. I'm using about an HB. But that's just so that you can see what I'm doing. So now we've got these grid lines, and we're going to start filling it in with what we've got here. So we've got the photograph just here, and then I've got my grid here. And it's now just a matter of filling in each one of these squares with what we can see in that photograph. Now, some people like to work square to square, and you could do that. Maybe you could start in this one here and find the corner of that leaf and then come around and draw the line above it. And then we can see how this line here comes up and joins up about here at the top of the square. We've got another little line. And then we've got one that's going to just cut across this corner here and then continue into the next one. That's a really valid way to work. I'm going to actually start in the middle and just get the middle in there first because for me, that's the most important part. The center of the drawing is where we're going to look, and it is quite fiddly. So once we get that done, everything else is going to be a little bit easier to fill in. It's just zoom in and have a look at the middle here and I've tried to fit it all in that center square when I set this up. But what we could do is actually add another grid over top of that center square just to see what exactly is happening in there. If you've got this on another screen, you could do this as well. If we think about the halfway point there and maybe about there, here and here. Then we can draw another grid over there. Now, I know that's probably not terribly helpful because it does make things a little bit more difficult to see, but just to demonstrate how I'm looking at this, you can do it without drawing the grid, but you're still thinking about how the center square is divided up into four. What is right at the center? Or what is slightly to the left of the center. I can see that there's that longish petal. It's mostly in this bottom quarter here. Once we get a couple of these shapes in, they're going to be placeholders and they're going to make everything else a little bit easier. So I'm just drawing in this little shape here that I can see. It's got a little triangle bit on the top as well. Do your best with this in the area. Like I said before, if things are a little bit out of place, it's not a big deal. Now we've got this shape that comes up. It's got a little bit of an edge to it, and then almost like a triangle shape. Then we're coming down into this quarter here. We're not coming below halfway of that quarter, but just a little bit above that. It actually lines up with the bottom of this here. Once we've got a couple of things in, we can start to figure out, well, how does this part, this line that comes across? How does that fit with that first shape that we put in there? Do your best each time, think about well, how far across is it coming? Does it come halfway across? Does it come more than halfway across or less than halfway across? Then when we're coming down, how far down does it come? Does it come halfway down the square here? Does it come a little bit lower than halfway? How close is it to the edge? Again when we come in here, does it come to halfway above halfway? It's about the center, maybe slightly above the center. If you're struggling, you might want to just watch for a little bit and then have a go on your own, where you can really study the image. I'll put it up on screen at the end of this video as well. You can study the image and really relate each square in that image to each square in your drawing. I'm still using this first one here that I did as my placeholder. Now I can see what comes out from that. We've got this one that comes around and curves up. We've got one that leans along the side of it, and this is where it gets a little bit tricky. We're going across the center line here. Maybe even put a point up there where it comes to. What I'm looking for is a line that comes up. And then it joins into this other line that's coming over top of it. It's almost like a very shallow S shape. It's going to join up to this one. Every time I add something, I'm thinking about how does it fit with something else? Also, as you're doing this, you're also trying to keep your lines nice and light. Use a two H pencil and that means you can only go so dark for a start. Now I'm looking at let's go on this side. Looking at this one here. Where is this going to join up to? Let's put this petal in then we've got a marker for where this one coming down is going to join up to. I'm going back to my center, back to this one, which I started with. Looking at that shape that comes across the top, it's almost horizontal, down comes across to about maybe the center that square down a little bit. Something like that. Then this line, this side of it is going to join up down here with this one here. It's got a bit of a curve on it. Hopefully everything is fitting together. If it's a little bit out, say this one came a bit more straight down, that's okay or maybe it had to curve a bit more in to meet this corner, that's okay as well. Now I can see where this petal here or this leaf comes down to curves around, joins up to this one, if we're going to add on this next petal now, we can put a little mark here right in the center of this edge of the square and come in just a little bit from there and you'll see that's where it curves up and around. Joins in here. And then we've got another like an S curve. So looking at the line that you're drawing in the photo or in the resource, and then you're trying to draw at the same time. So I keep flicking my eye. You can't see me, but I'm all the time looking back up to that as I draw this. So when it changes direction, I'm noticing it changing direction. I can draw the other side of that edge. If you just look at it and then try to draw it, we've got very short memories. We can't hold that in our mind. I'll sort of change and slip that memory of it. So we need to keep looking all the time, noticing, Okay, it's curving here, I'm going to curve as well. This is the most fiddly, this part in the center. We're just about there. Mine's not entirely correct over this side, but I'm not going to make a big deal out of it. I'm just going to think about this leaf here, comes to this side in the center again. Where does it join up to this weird one that's on its side, maybe about here so I can put a few points going to join up there. It's going to join up here. Something's going to hit this corner as well. Let's start with this top part of it, it's coming up, doesn't quite reach the top, comes down, touches that edge, comes down almost to the bottom comes up to that edge. Everything is connected in this drawing. This one here it's going to get wider as we come out. Come up the top there, and then we've just got this line here to add. It's got a little bit of a curve on the end down and then in. I think that's the whole center. The, the trickiest part. Oh, no, I've left a little bit out here. And these shapes that I've put in are just what I could kind of guestimate from what I could see in the photo when I traced it. So they may not be entirely accurate. I've simplified them a little bit. I'm just going to put in that little shape there. Maybe another little shape there and a little edge to this one. So even if you just get the one, two, three, bigger shapes of that very tight part in the center without all these little sub shapes, that would be fine. 5. Drawing With A Grid Continued: Done the hardest part. The rest is going to be a little bit easier. We're going to go about it the same way. Thinking about where things line up with the edges of these squares of the grid. I already did this little bit up the top here. Let's do this square, and I'm thinking about where this leaf joins onto this one. So I'm going to put a little mark there. I'd already put something at the top here, but when I go to match it up, it's not going to quite match, and that's why I like starting from the center and moving out rather than doing square by square. You can do square by square, but you might find that you're having to kind of adjust things or match up with what was already there rather than what you see. And if you want to get really accurate with it, then you'd actually draw more squares. So the same way we did with that center one. Each one of these could have another cross section through it. But, it takes a long time to do that, to rule them all out and then to draw it all and square by square. And I don't want to waste too much time doing that. So this one is done now. Let's move down to the square here. But as I move down to the square, I'm also thinking about the leaf that's in it. How does it fit into that square? It joins up here, curves around, touches that one, comes back around here. Touches this edge, maybe a little bit below the center, and that's going to come below this line. Another one mirroring that just underneath. So I'm going to stop talking a little bit, but I'll just tell you what I'm going to do for each square and then show you so you might want to watch what I do for each square and then just pause the video and then repeat it. So for this square here, I'm looking just at this leaf that curves around. This one. I'm looking at the lines that make it up and then just putting the part that goes into the square. So where does it touch the edges of that square touches there and there. And then it's going to touch in here about here. I might have to adjust something there. It's not quite right. Moving across this one up here is pretty simple in this one here. So we're just joining this one on to what's already in that center square, thinking about where it joins up. It's going to join up there. If you've got this on a screen, you might want to zoom in so that you can really isolate it. What are you looking at without being distracted by everything else. And actually, I should probably zoom in for you as well. I'm going to put this one in, look at where this one joins up to the edge of the square and then we're going to look at these points or that point there, where that line joins up to the top of the square. Moving down to the bottom center square. I've got this leaf here, which I haven't put in the ends of it, which join up here and here in this square. It's going to overlap a little bit over this cross section just here and come around. Then where does it join up with each side of the square. We've also got this line that's going to come almost straight through the centers on a slight angle. Anywhere they don't quite meet up, straighten those things out, maybe using an eraser if you need to. When I came across this line here, they didn't quite match up with what I had from the previous square. Over to the right side now we're just about done. There's the top right. Looking at where the petal is going to hit this edge of the square. It's not halfway. It's about here, two little dots there, another little dot up here and another dot along this one. Again, not quite halfway. He's halfway, it's just slightly above. Put in this part of the petal and then add in these other two lines. I we've got the center right square now. Should be pretty used to how to go about this, making your markers. Then as you draw them, keeping your eye on that line, flicking your eye back and forth the whole time. And finally, moving to the bottom right corner. Nice and easy, this one. You can also think about negative spaces when we do these. Look at the gaps that you've got. If any of the gaps that you've done so far look a little bit off, we can correct those. Remember putting in your markers. Nice and light. Even these little dots make them nice and light, and then joining things up. Do a quick assessment of your drawing and just flick your eye back and forth. Is there anything that looks really, really off? If the leaves are pointing in a slightly different direction or they're slightly different shape? It's not a big deal. What we do need to make sure we have is these edges. Anywhere we've got that double line around the edge, that's an area that's going to be white, you can see it there or light. It's quite important to mark those parts out. Flick your eye to some of the spaces, just to do a little bit of a check, maybe check the ones close to each one of these intersection points. The shape here is not too bad. The shape over here, the shape. What's happening in this shape and then over here. This one's a little bit more complicated because you've got a leaf that's going around that cross section in the center. Look I've missed out one line just here. 6. Erasing Unwanted Lines: Now we need to get rid of the grid lines. And we're going to keep the outside line, but this is where you have to be a little bit careful that you don't rub out anything that you need. You can lighten things up, so, especially if things are too dark, if you're rubbing over those lines that form the actual subject, that's okay, but just make sure you can still see something of them. We don't want to undo all of this. So I'm going to get rid of all of the grid lines, and maybe some of those dots, some of my dots are a little bit dark, so I just very gently rub over those without losing the line of the subject. If you do find this difficult, what you could do is just go square by square, rub out the edges of each square and then look again at the photo and just redraw in anything you might have lost of your subject. Remember to keep the lines light. 7. Why Is Shading Important?: Let's have a little bit of a talk about our subject here and also why shading and shading well is so very important. We're going to look at three kinds of shading. In this class, we're going to look at light shading, dark shading, and blended shading. Now, why is shading so important? Well, without shading, all we have is line. And when we look at the line drawing, there's nothing wrong with it. It is a nice illustration. We could use this as a drawing if we wanted to, but it's not realistic. It doesn't have the depth and the illusion of this here. What we're really trying to do with our drawing, if we're aiming for realism is we're trying to create that illusion. Of three D form that we can see clearly in the photo. We're trying to reproduce that on our page. Lines are really just our way of getting something on the paper. To get that effect of depth, it is all about shading. Even just have a look at what happens when I bring the lines up on top of this photograph. It doesn't look the same, obviously. We're putting dark lines there where there aren't dark lines in the photograph. The reason I'm showing you this is because beginners tend to outline things and I think it's a couple of reasons. I think one reason is it's what they can see clearly, they can see the shape. They put big dark outlines around things. I think the other reason is that they don't yet have an understanding of how shading creates that three D form and that depth. When you have a dark outline, in a light area, it flattens the form, it ruins the illusion. You could think of it as turning it into more like a cartoon. When we don't have those outlines, that's when the shading can really create three D form. That's what we're going to be focusing on today. Three types of shading, light dark and blended shading and also making sure we have those in the right place, making sure we don't have outlines around our shading. And that's why it's so important that this first tracing or sketch is really light. You should still be able to see it because we need something down there, but it shouldn't be any darker than those very light grays that you can see the shape here. It looks like it's white, but it's actually a really light gray, so we can get away with having a light line for our outlines. 8. Value Scale Exercise: Okay when it comes to light shading and dark shading, it's all about comparison. We saw that this area here is a really light gray. The shading next to it has to be the same number of steps away in our drawing as in the photograph. What we'll do now is we'll just create a really simple shaded scale here of one to five. You might have done this in the learn to draw course or some of my other classes as well, but just for reference so that we can look at that photo and go, that's about a number one value, number two, number three, number four or number five value. I'm just going to create a very simple another grid here. And try and divide it up into five. We usually start with putting the center one in, but you can extend each side if you need to or make it shorter. They don't have to be perfectly even size squares. We're going to have one end as number one, one end a number five. You can choose which end I think I'll. Let's make this one number one. So this is going to be very, very light. This one's going to be number five, it's going to be very dark. Number three is going to be a middle gray. Then when we talk about light shading or dark shading, we're thinking about the light shading as being on the left side of middle gray and the dark shading as being on the right side of middle gray. I'm going to start with middle gray first. I'd use a two B pencil just very lightly. Maybe even an HB if you've got one, I didn't include that in the list. But we're aiming for something that is not too dark, not too light. It's just a middle gray. When I look at the photograph, I'm looking at maybe something like this here. I've taken it from about there. You can see against the white, it looks quite dark, but this area and here's a middle gray. I'm just building that square with a couple of layers. These don't need to be tidy, but they do need to be as even as you can. When you're shading, this is a good practice when we get onto our drawing, you can hold your pencil a little bit further back, move it back and forward. Keep the pressure really light. We're not pushing down hard like this. You're working this way, it's hard to control the pressure or you have a very hard pressure. You're working this way, we're resting the pencil and then we can just push a little bit more with our thumb if we need a bit more pressure or we can ease up really easily. It's hard to ease up when you're shading like this. So this middle gray, this one I'm going to do as light as I possibly can, just barely touching the paper with my pencil. Might be a bit hard to see this one on the video. For this one, I'm aiming for maybe this value here. It's coming out from the edge of that leaf there. You can see it's a very light gray. Maybe it looks like it's white until you look at the edge of the page, which is pure white. Then in between these two, I'm going to try and shade something that sits directly in between them. So starting with a value that's the same as number one and then going back in another direction. You can see mine's of messy, but overall it is one flat value. Doesn't change too much. The one at this end is going to be our darkest value. So we're looking at in the photograph, maybe this value here. And you can see that that is pretty much black. So any of those very dark areas that are in the crevices, those are going to be as dark as we can get them. So I'm going to start with a six B for this one. I'm not going to push really hard because it's hard to keep your pressure even. I'm going to shade a base layer both directions. And then I'm going to layer it up. Pushing maybe just a little bit harder this time, but not so hard that you're going to be ruining the paper and scribbling and denting the paper. We want to allow the graphite to layer up. So it might look still a little bit gray on your screen because I've got a bit of light shining on it here. I'm just going to go ahead with another six B. This one's a different brand of pencil and you might be able to see the difference. It's softer. I just means I get a darker value. It's probably a comparison with an eight B in that other brand. So brands are just like that. Some are lighter, some are darker, some are softer, some are harder. In here, I'm aiming for something between my number three and my number five. I'm going to use a two B pencil for this one. I'm not spending a whole lot of time on this. It's just to have something there to remind ourselves or to reference when we go through the shading of this one here. What are we actually looking at when we look at the value? Would it be a one or two, or three or four or five? This darker gray, we're looking at in the photograph or looking at probably this area. It's not black, but it is quite dark and it's going to create a little bit of the fold or the bend in these leaves here as they come down towards the inside. Putting a little bit of six B over this one, as well. Check that you have five distinct values one, two, three, four, and five. You should be able to see a clear difference between each one. If you need to, you can go through and just adjust them a little bit. Maybe my middle needs to be just slightly darker to make it a little bit more different from my number two. But keeping in mind that if you go too dark, then you're going to have to change the ones on the other side of it, as well. So if I went too dark with this, I'm going to have to make this one even darker. As long as you've got a definitive step between each one of those values, you can squint at it as well. When you squint. If any of them blend into each other too much, you can't see them clearly, then that probably means you've got two that are a little bit too close together or too similar. 9. About Light, Dark And Depth: Before we start, I just want to touch on one more thing about creating that illusion using light and dark. Have a think now about what's actually happening with that drawing. Why are the light areas light? Why are the dark areas dark? Sometimes it comes down to color and I've got this picture in color as well. It's a bluey green. Maybe some of those more purply blues are actually dark marks on the foliage, but a lot of the darker areas are where this shadow being cast anywhere there is shadow being cast, anywhere there is a dark value, it creates the illusion that there is depth, something is moving away from us. Something else is coming towards us. The light areas, you can see the ends of the petals are light or the ends of the foliage, those edges, they are coming towards us. The dark areas are receding to the depth of the drawing or the photograph. They create the illusion of those crevices, at least they do when we put them down as shading. That's what's happening. The light parts are coming forward. Or they are the parts of the subject that are emerging towards us and getting hit by light. The dark parts are the parts of the subject that are receding away from us and they're getting obscured by other shapes that are casting shadows. I hope that makes some sense. We could think about the dark areas as crevices and we could think about the light areas as say the tops of hills where the sun is hitting them, something like that, just to get your head around why the darks and the lights work to create this illusion when we're using shading on a white piece of paper. 10. Let's Start Shading: So that's enough of me trying to explain why this is happening. Hopefully, it's making some sense to you. We're going to go ahead and get into the practical application of that and we'll start from the left and move to the right. We could start at the center and normally I would start at the center. But it's just a little bit confusing in there, and I want us to get a bit of practice first. So we need our three pencils, two H, six B and B, and let's have a look at the top left. Now, what's happening in this leaf up here? What values have we got? We've probably got about three for the main value and then we've got some fours and some fives. Maybe on this edge here, maybe a two. We need to account for all of those values. The main thing is going to be a three, so I can just go ahead and start shading with a two B pencil and what I want to do is create a nice even value over that whole petal. Petal or leaf is probably some expert out there's going to watch this and say, they're not petals. I don't know what they are really. They're probably leave aren't if it's a succulent. Shading this whole leaf and again, using your pencil like we did when we're doing this one to get very light values, using it by holding it a little bit further back, just letting it rest, maybe even holding overhand. If that feels comfortable, the pencil goes underneath your hand. You can rest the base of your hand on the paper if you're doing that. If you're holding it this way, you'll be resting the side of your hand on the paper and just letting it move back and forward a little bit or just moving your fingers back and forward. Trying to find what works for you. I'm moving my hand a little bit. I'm rubbing the paper. As if I'm, you know, polishing the paper with my hand, not pushing too hard. We can do it in sections. So the trick here is to get an even layer. If we start by pushing too hard to begin with, we're going to get an uneven layer. We need to build it up gradually. And this is also the trick to being able to blend without having to use blending stumps, which is what I really like you to be able to do. This pencil, this two B is quite a hard pencil. You'll be able to see some of the marks showing through. That's okay. I'm going to do a few layers and I'm going to fill up some of those little white spaces. If you're coming back in the opposite direction, then just be a little bit more careful with that direction. Lines closer together. But ideally, if you're going to have any marks, they'll be moving outwards from the center so that they follow the natural rhythm of the subject. I'm going to do a couple more layers. I'm building it up to about number three. Do it in sections if you find that it's hard to move across the whole length of it without getting too scribble. We don't often have to sit down and focus on one thing for more than half an hour or so this drawing and this exercise is going to be really good for exercising patients. That's a really valuable skill to have. It's a necessary skill to have in drawing. We need to be able to work through the whole thing, not just do part of it and go, it doesn't look right. I'm going to give up because the full illusion of your drawing isn't achieved until right at the end when you finish and we have to not judge it in the middle stages or the ugly stages, I sometimes call them. This getting pretty close to three. Now I'm going to build up the darker values over top. This is where we're going to practice blending. Our shading. We've got this dark side here, and we want to blend it into the lighter part that we've already got down. We've also got this darker center line. We don't want it to be a hard edged line. Look how soft the edges are in the photograph. We want it to blend into that layer beneath. So I'm going to start at the dark part, and I'm going to switch to a six B pencil. If you feel like that's going to dark too soon or if you put something down, it's just like, it's completely black, then you might want to go upper grade, maybe a four B, Your two B might be soft enough that you can do this whole thing with your two B pencil. But I need to find a definite difference between these two. All I'm doing first is putting in a light layer of darker value where I want those darks to go. I'm putting in that center line, there's this dark shape around here. Then it comes up and around, it's dark against this edge. Dark against this edge. But. So now I've got my number three value. I've got my I'm getting close to a number four with this one. It's going to have to go to a number five right in here. But before I go to the number five, I'm going to work on blending these two, and I'm going to start in the area that I've shaded number four, and I'm just going to use small circles and very light pressure. So just resting your paper, and now it's all about controlling the pressure. We start off in the value that we were shading number four. And then as we move towards the lighter area, we need to lighten the pressure of our pencil as well. And you might take a few runs over the same area, making sure you change the pressure at the right time. So if I'm pushing to get a number four value here, and then I keep pushing that same pressure into the number three value, it's going to go darker. As I come towards the number three, I need to gradually decrease the pressure. So I between number three and number four, I'm using a pressure that is creating, say, a number 3.5 Let's see if you can think about it that way. Number four pressure moving into number three pressure, but in between there, there's going to be a number 3.5 pressure because that's what we're wanting to put in there to get these two to blend. So same thing coming through the center here. On either side of that, I'm going to move outwards. You can do it in little sections. You might be able to do the whole thing at once, lighten the pressure coming this way, lighten the pressure. Then from here to here, I still quite a hard line or divide. I'm going to use small circle, start in number four, move towards number three. It's just learning what kind of pressure you need to apply. It becomes very natural after a while. If you find that you're getting a dark line here and it's darker than number four, then you're pushing too hard. You might need to come back into your number four and darken that up and then blend that into this middle value. So from here, when you're fairly happy with your blends, doesn't need to be complete transition, but there should be a softness between your darks and your lights. Then you're going to bring in your my six B pencil. You're going to bring in your darkest pencil. This one is definitely not going to be dark enough. So I'm just bringing this other brand here. It's not very sharp. I should sharpen it. But for now, I'm going to start over top of what was my number four, put in an edge, and then same thing. Shading a number five, and then as I come towards number four, lessening the pressure through 4.5 to a four. And then we can do the same all the way around here. A lot of this drawing is about contrast, the light of this one stands out because it's got the dark behind it. That's a really important thing to notice. How do these two values compare to each other? We haven't put this one in yet, but it's going to be pretty close to white, and this one on the other side is pretty close to black. Start at the darkest area, starting with my six B in the darkest area and then allowing the pressure of the pencil to lessen, that's going to give me a lighter mark as I move into that number four that I had down there. Anywhere you end up with divides or lines, just very lightly work over those. If you're struggling at all, just go with the lightest pressure you can over that area where you need to blend. So light that you're barely touching the paper and you're just going to do that a few times. And then reassess. Do I have blend enough blend here? Now, I got to do a little bit more there. Do I have enough dark here? I got to darken that up, and then I need to blend here. Very very light pressure, reassess. Is it blended enough? I need a little bit more dark here. And my center definitely needs to go dark. So we're spending quite a bit of time on this one so that I can explain what I'm actually doing and hopefully in a way that you can also do that and then we'll get a little bit faster as we go through. I think that's pretty close. It's not as dark as the photograph, and I could go darker if I wanted to be really accurate with it. I think I'm going to leave it though, because I've got a nice sense of depth there already. I wonder if just here needs to go a bit darker. Is the only thing to create a bit more of that shadow. I'm going to go ahead and do this one behind these two behind quite quickly, and you do yours as well. Then we'll talk about this one here, which has got the light room on it, and it's going to then take us into the center. Once we've done the center, I'll probably speed up the rest of it because you should have a really good idea of how to do it by then and it's just going to be a matter of persevering and practicing and having that patience to apply the shading that you need to. 11. Working On The Left Side Leaves: You should already be starting to get a sense of the depth if you lean back from your drawing a little bit, see what's happening in here. Do you get a sense that this leaf here is starting to tuck underneath? It's got shadow cast on it. It's moving away from us into a deeper area of the subject. Do you have some nice transitions from your light shading to your dark shading? You got some areas of blended shading. Now, if you feel like it's not working, have a good look and ask yourself why? What is it that you need to change as we go forward into these other petals? Is it that you started too dark and you don't have a big enough difference between your light values and your dark values? You three and your five or your four and your five, even so this leaf here has a three, or four and five approximately. Maybe got a little bit of two or one on the edge, but I haven't put in that dark part yet to show it. These ones that I did quite quickly, I put down a layer and then I put down the darker layer and I've just left that area for the edge for the light edge. So the way this edge comes into being is having a dark edge on the other side of it. It's not completely white, so it can have a little bit of shading over it. These ones here are less important than what's going to be happening in the middle. I haven't done them quite up to the value that they should be. This one should be a little bit darker, but I'm just going to leave it for now and I can always beef them up a little bit later if I want to. What is it that you need to change if things aren't working? If you're struggling with the blending, do you need to practice a little bit on another piece of paper, starting with one value, putting in another value, and then working between those two values with patience and changing the pressure of your pencil. Let's move on to this one and this one and this one. These three are quite important or this outer ring here is quite important because we can see the full leaf of each one, they're coming towards us. They have the white tips and then they also have that dark receding area where we're getting into the center of the succulent. We're going to start off exactly the same way, starting with a base layer of shading. I'm using two B pencil. The other thing to think about, if you're finding that you're not getting the effect you want, are you using the right pencils? If you're going too dark too soon, start with a lighter pencil, even though I've said two B, maybe you've got a very dark brand of pencil. If you're not going as dark as you want to, maybe it's like these ones here, they're quite a light brand of pencil. Maybe you need to go to a three B to start with. So I'm shading in all of this area here and I really want to shade the lightest value that's in there. What is this value here? Same as maybe this area and this one here, it's going to be around about three. Maybe a three, maybe going into a two in this area in here, but I'm going to treat it as a three. I tend to shade a little bit lighter than I expect usually. Anyway, by the time I get the blacks in, soon as you put the blacks in, everything else looks a lot lighter. Using that back and forth motion, polishing my paper with the back of my hand. Keeping my page in the same place or the same orientation so you don't get dizzy. But if you need more surface to rub your hand on, you could be turning your page around if you need that stability. I'm just going back over this whole area again, evening it out, tucking into some of those little areas that are white but shouldn't be white just with a little bit of small circular movement just to fill them in. Then once I fill them in, I can do another broad area Lift the outside area white. It can be a very light gray, barely touching the paper. Putting a little bit of something in there so it's not completely white. It would still work if you lift it white. So we've got our base layer. Now we're going to put in our darker layer. And because we've got a dark edge against the light edge here, we can go in with almost like an outline, so you can actually shade in an outline there just to make sure you keep the edge next to it nice and clean. Just remember use whatever pencil you want to actually switch to a four B pencil here. If you only have a two H, a two B, and a six B, they should get you really far those three pencils. That's what I usually recommend as the starting pencils. Because they give you this range here through to dark. I'm going to put in that dark area through the center. Using my pencil on its side. I should probably follow the direction. I'm not doing it very well here, but follow the direction across the leaf this time because it's almost as if there's veins coming out. Just the pattern in that dark area. Feels like it's moving out from the center across the leaf. And as we come around here, it's a dark edge, but it's very soft. Let's zoom in a little bit. Dark along here. Now, this part here and around in the edge is where we need to have some nice blended shading. It's darker than the rest of this number three. But it's only a small area and it blends in to the number three. And what this is going to do is it's going to create the sense that this light edge is curving up and over slightly because it's casting a bit of shadow onto this area here. So this is coming up. It's got a bit of height on it, and so it's casting some shadow. If we don't get that in there, then we don't get that effect if we don't get this light shadow in here. A little bit on the side as well. You can see it also defines the light area, makes the light area stand out. It's getting there now. The whole thing needs to be darker and then I need to blend it in. I'm just going to go over top again with my four B pencil. I think I underestimated how dark I'd need to go and how light these pencils are going to be that switching them up a little bit, depends a lot on your paper as well and how well the paper holds the graphite. A lot of variables. So take a good look at this value in here. What value should it be if you're looking at your scale? The moment, mine is a three. When I look at the photograph, it's definitely a four. Maybe it's even a five. It's a five when we get in here. So I need to darken this up. I don't want to just go hard out making it really really dark. I'm going to build it up in layers so that I can get that blended effect. So first, I've got, maybe a three already down there. I'm going to blend that into the layer that's underneath it on either side. Just soft soft shading around that dark area. Not creating a line but creating a blend. Then I'm going to build it up, so I'm going to do another dark layer in the center here. Fading it out as I come up. It's got quite a strong edge to it. I don't want that, so now I need to work into the edge, starting in the center but working my way out. The reason we don't just go around the edge, you can do that if you've got a lot of control, but usually you'll end up with just a line between this one and this one, then a line between this one and this one. If we start at the center and move out, then we are starting at the same value. Putting that down, finding the pressure, measuring the pressure, and then lessening the pressure as you come out. So you've got a starting point then. You're not just having to try and match. You're starting dark. It doesn't matter if you go a little bit darker because it's a dark area, and then you're lessening the pressure as you move out. Controlling the pressure from the dark point. What pressure do you need to get that dark and then lightning from that point or lessening the pressure from that point, it's only going to go lighter. It's getting there now. It's got a nice kind of blend on it. We put the start part in here. Same process, put it in, blend it into the layer underneath. We are aiming for accuracy here. I'm pushing things a little bit more than I would in the other classes. I want you to challenge yourself to match the values to the photograph and to have the patience to keep working on it until you get those values until you get those blends. I and to get that accuracy, we've got to have all these skills, but we've also got to keep looking. So every time I start a new layer of shading, I'm looking at the photograph again and I'm comparing it. I'm thinking, is it dark enough? Then as I move out to the area underneath it as I work on the blends, I'm looking at the photograph again. What can I see? Where does the blend stop? Where does it start on this other edge here? How far out does it come? There's no other way to do it except for looking at the photograph. It's getting there. It could go a bit darker. What I'm finding is my paper is feeling a little bit at capacity. There's a lot of graphite on there now. I'm having trouble layering it up. I might just come in later with my darkest pencil I've got, which I've got eight B somewhere, but the six B I might do that at the end if I need to. We've got this one in, make sure you've got that nice blend in the center, but also remember these edges here. I might go a little bit darker than mine now. Dark and then fades into the value beneath. That gives you that slight curve. If we're looking really closely, actually, can you see the difference? In this light area, there's actually two values in there. There's a very light edge right on the rim and then just beneath that is slightly darker. That's the back of it curving up. 12. Left Leaves Continued: Okay, moving on, let's do this one up here. Exactly the same process. You're probably going to get sick of this, but it's only way to improve and get better. Now, mine's a little bit crooked. I've lost a bit of this edge, so I'm just going to redraw it here and you can do that too if you feel like yours is not quite right. It'll still work even if you don't have the same shapes. Remember our process, thinking about the value, what value is it? It's about the same as this one. Most of them start off the same value. It's like a three shading that whole thing in with a nice even layer. If you're getting marks, then make sure the marks move in the direction of the leaf, the length of the leaf. But the more you practice this, you should be able to get a nice flat layer of shading without leaving a whole lot of lines. So I've gone one way, I'm I'm going over it the other way that's gonna build up a darker layer. Beef it out a little bit. Could even do one more. We haven't used the tissue, but you could use it. So if you're finding on these ones, you're not getting the effect that you want. You're not quite there with your coordination, your pressure. In this base layer, just give it a little bit of a smudge. Now, it's like you are brushing crumbs off the table. It's not pushing down hard and trying to move the graphite around because then you're just going to press it into the paper and it won't move. And also, you'll start to damage the paper, and things will get kind of gunked up in there. There'll be too much graphite in between the tooth of the paper. So just a very brief kind of rub to get rid of some of those lines. Look at the contrast between this dark area and this light rim. Again, this dark recess here in the light edge of this one in the center. So we can put in an outline there. It's going to match the dark shading that we put in. If you come around here, it's going to be a lighter outline because the shading is going to be lighter. But in here, it's going to be dark. On this side, it's going to be dark. Looking for the dark shapes, this side here is a bit darker. Probably actually the whole side of that leaf there. It's all a bit darker. We've got the darker in edge of the light part of the leaf. So it's quite hard to see, but there is just a little bit of shadow here. Try and identify that in the photo. I've exaggerated a little bit in my drawing. Just around here. And a little bit here, too. You know what to do now. Put in this dark layer. Then we work from the dark into the light adjusting the pressure of the pencil to blend it. This one here is a little bit different because it's quite a strong shape. This part of the petal is casting a shadow. It has a slightly soft edge, but it is more defined than say some of these other shadows. We want to put that in. Whatever we see, we want to put that in. Think about making this a little bit more defined. It might feel a little bit strange to start with because we're still in the initial stages. But once we get all of these in it's going to look natural. It's going to look like a stronger shadow cast by this one. Then have a look at that white rim there. Is there any difference in that? You can see the very edge of it is very light. Could still be a number one, number one value, a light gray, but then it's almost a number two as we come down a little bit along the back of it. Up here is a number two. Well, why not two? Same thing. I've got a bit too dark there. But it's the same thing. It's got a couple of values in it. Really subtle. Zoom in on the photograph, if you can and have a look at that. A little bit of a light value in there as well. And just to touch more of my darkest value. Put it in, blend it into the layer beneath. Now if you traced yours, you probably got more accurate shapes than I have my shapes are a little bit wonky because we drew them by hand using the grid. But you can still see even though this shape isn't quite right, there's still the sense that it's deep in there, that there's a recess. The shading will work even if your shapes are a little bit different. We're going to get this one in and let's get this one in as well. Do those quite quickly. This one here is pretty basic. Nice dark line there makes it easy to define the edge. You can see the dark line coming up just on the in edge of the rim of the petal. All of this is maybe maybe a two actually, it's quite light. To moving into a three. Then very dark down here. Think about the light shadow cast by the white edge. It's not a hard outline. It's just a shaded line. And think about the different values in the light area. It's a little bit lighter right at the top. Then we've just got to put this dark area and so this one's pretty quick and easy. Switch your pencils as you need to. It's got a bit of a shape to it, it comes down and then I think it's going across the center of the leaf where there's a bit of a curve. So changes direction and then it fades out. Again, that might be one that looks a little bit strange to start with because we don't have reference of the other petals to show what's casting the shadow, but try to follow the shapes that you see. Then we're going to do this one. Now, this is a good example of foreshortening or they're all foreshortened, really. But this one, I think, it's quite clear what's happening. It's easier to see the foreshortening. We know that this is quite long in reality. We know that it goes down deep into that sort of floral cluster. But when you look at it, if you look at the width compared to the height of it, it's much wider than it is tall, to create the sense of foreshortening, again, we need to really look carefully at the shading. We've got this darker shadow in here cast by the leaves that directly over top of that area. We've got this light area here where the surface of it is being hit by light, and we've got this area here where there's maybe some shadow being cast by the edge. The whole thing is going to be maybe a number two. The general value. We can think about? What is the main value? Without any light or shadow on it, what do you think it is? It's probably a two. You could shade this one coming towards the point of the leaf. I'm shading across. And then maybe shade the other direction. Let's zoom in a little bit more, see what's really happening in there, and we can use the dark to create the edge that petal above it. So shade your light layer, blend it with a tissue if you want to. I'm not going to with this one. And then shade your dark areas. Shade the shadow of the rim, if you can see it. There's a little bit here, definitely here, and then work on blending. There's a few things happening in there that look like maybe marks. I'm not sure if this one's a mark or it's maybe where the leaf tilts upwards a little bit more. Going to put that in, but it's nice and soft and maybe a little bit less exaggerated than it is in the photograph so that it's not going to stand out. I marked in my dark areas. Now I'm going in with my six B pencil and I'm going to put those on even darker and then I'm going to blend into the layer underneath all the time, flicking your eye at the photo, looking at the area that you're shading as you're shading. Remember, you can use this dark pencil too. Get a nice crisp edge on the petal above it. Draw in that line or shade in the edge, and then blend it. Now, have a look at what's happening here as this light area goes into that recess, it's a bit darker. It's maybe a number two or number three, and then it gets lighter as it comes out. Light areas in the shadow are going to be darker than light areas in the light, which makes sense. Putting in a very light layer here to bring out that white edge. I'm just going to leave the edge white for this one and then shade in underneath it. About a number two. Then we start to get that illusion happening. This is coming towards us. The rim of it is tilting upwards a little bit, casting a bit of shadow in here. Let's do a little bit of an assessment. Doesn't need to be darker anywhere. I think mine needs to be a bit darker on this side. Then we're going to move into the center. 13. Centre Leaves: We're getting through it. I'm going to do the center with you and maybe one or two of these other quite important leaves and then I'll leave the rest of it for you to do in your own time and I'll just show a time lapse of that. Have a think about how you're feeling about your drawing at the moment. Can you see some of that illusion starting to happen and that depth? Is there anything that you are still finding that you're having a real struggle with? Is it the blending? Is it going dark enough? Is it staying light enough in the light areas? And remember that this is still in the middle stages of the drawing. I'd say the ugly stages except we have done these almost to completion. Quite often when you're working a drawing up altogether, everything will just feel like it doesn't look like anything, but you're keeping the faith in the process and you're following what you can see in the photograph, putting that in your drawing and that's really important. That's what we're trying to do here is not get caught up in what we want it to look like at the end, but following what we can see, following what we're observing and using this as our guide. Using this as something concrete that we can compare that to what value is in the photograph, what does it match to that we know that we can shade. Let's move into this center area. It's a little bit fiddly. It's probably the most difficult part because it's quite difficult to see what's there. We need to just grab hold of whatever we can, what makes sense to you in that area. For me, I can see this light edge through here. I know it's dark on either side of that light edge of course also see this light edge here. I'm going to use those as markers. This light edge. And then this light edge is weird shape that we started with right at the very start of doing the drawing from the grid with me. I said, at some point, I've said that this is just an interpretation of what I could see to trace there. You may end up having to change these shapes a little bit to match what you can see. Maybe I need to change the shape here and check the shape here since these are going to be my placeholders. Then just have a look at this one and make sure you've got that with that light room drawn in. It's light room, and then it's got a shape on either side of it. We want to have that light edge because that's going to show us the part that's coming towards us the closest. Thinking about markers, I've got this one. I've got this one and then I've got that light edge this marker, and this light edge here. I'm going to shade in this dark shape and this dark shape, all the dark shapes that I can see on either side of those light markers that I had. I'm using my two B pencil. Shading this one and I just got a little bit momentarily confused there just because it's so big on the screen and it's so small in my drawing. But this one here, I'm looking at this. Then I'm going to put in the darks. Dark here, dark along here. All I'm going to do at this stage is just put in those darks and then I'm just going to blend them. I can make everything a bit darker later on, but I just want to get that general effect of what's happening going from light to dark dark on the upper edge of that marker that I had there. Then underneath this marker, it's also dark. It's dark coming down the side of this marker that I had on the right. Shading in the dark shapes that you can see, even across here, it's dark. There's some things happening in the center to outline that petal there. I can put in a dark line. Then anywhere else, you can see a dark line, so I can see something dark coming up here. I'm going to put that in and then shade underneath this marker. It's quite dark, but it's going to fade into a lighter edge. I don't want to have a dark line right around the edge of this except where it's on that back petal there. That makes sense, there's a bit of shadow cast onto this back petal, but there is a light edge to this petal. I've got my dark under my marker, blending that into a lighter area. Et's do the other side of this market. It's a little bit dark at the top. I've got the light area. It's not black on the other side. It's more like a very dark gray. And then there's a little bit of black in here. You see how I'm just looking for values. I've got a four and then a five. Over here, underneath this first marker that I had, I've got a five and it fades into a four. On the inside of this marker, I've got a five and the inside of this marker, I've got a five value as well. Really picking out the values, ignoring what you actually see in there or what you think you see and drawing those shapes value. Then when we come in here, I'm going to do the same thing and it's a little bit hard to see, but I can see there's a light area there, so I'm just marking that out. I'm going to mark out a few other little light areas not exactly the same as the photo, but just something that I can then put some dark around. Looking at the photo as you do this but not being too worried about it being exact. So just getting an approximation of it, I left a couple of little sort of light parts in here. I picked out that light edge there because it looks like a very tiny leaf that's starting to open out. So if you can work your way through that, it's going to get easier again. You know, that's kind of the hard part. Try not to get caught up in what it looks like at the moment. We can reassess it at the end if it looks too strange. This marker that I had here, it is not white the whole way across. I'm going to make sure I have that change in value from maybe two to a three and then even to a four in there. I'm just going to emphasize some of my darks just a little bit more in here. Anywhere it's light, it stands out as really light. There's probably a dark side on the other side of it. Use that knowledge to find your dark areas. They're really dark black areas. Looks a little bit like a rose, doesn't it? Okay, let's move on to this one, and we'll do this one with this weird raised edge. And as well do this one as well since we've got that viewpoint there. So this one down here is pretty light. Especially at the top. I'm using a two H pencil. Just to give it a quick coat. You a tube pencil. Can you see where the center of that leaf changes direction. There's the vein or the stem of it coming up through the center. It's a bit darker on one side, and then there's a rim, and then it's darker on the other side of that. This one here, light gets a little bit darker. Remember, try not to make it look like a leaf. Just try to shade what you can see and think about what's on one side, what's on the other side. As I come down here, it's very dark on the other side of that. As I come around under here into the leaf that we've already done, very dark. As I come up this side also very dark, all of that helps to define this leaf. I'm going to do this strange one here. The key for this one is leaving that white edge. I just have to make mine a little bit bigger than it was. Is exaggerated a little bit. I'm going to have this white edge through here and the other side of it, I've got that lighter shape. Light shape on one side, light shape on the other side. It's pretty much all we have to do with that one because then the rest of it is defined by what is on these other leaves. I was just looking at how this one here felt a little bit blurred into everything else. I've noticed that what it needs is a darker value behind it coming up onto this one. I also just want to clean up that edge a little bit, a little bit bumpy and a little bit pointy. Okay. Let's do this one. Then I'll probably leave you for the rest of it. We'll have a look and see what it looks like. Same process, keeping that patients, shading everything in with a base layer first. I'm going to use a two B. It's about a number two up here. Moving into a number four, so it's quite a big difference there. Look at the shape of the shadow, the number four. It's quite a sharp edged shadow, that one? Then for the back of it here, I'm using my two H. A nice and light. Is building that up a little bit more so that I have the frontmost edge of the leaf as the very lightest part. Yeah, I'm just gonna put a bit of dark shading in behind that so I can start to see how it looks. So this is the leaf behind it. It's quite dark all the way around maybe number four, just to give that a nice clean edge. This leaf here, which we can't quite see in the photograph, and even this one coming down here, have a look at where they have light edges. They're in shadow, but they still have a light edge. So when we're working our way through these other petals, we're going to make sure with these other leaves, we're going to make sure we leave those light edges. They're both quite light, but they are in shadow. They're a bit darker than the rest of the rim. This one here is a good example. 14. Adding Contrast: What I'd like for you to do now is to work on the rest of these petals on your own. It's all the same process. It's about putting in that first layer, a general layer. It's usually a two or three and then adding in your darks and then blending, light, dark, and blending. What I'll do a little bit of now with you is just the finishing touches and I'll do them at the end as well, but just in case you want to go away and keep working on this on your own, the thing to do once you get to a finished stage, they say we've got everything finished is to make sure you've got the contrast where you want it. If I squint at that photograph and look for the darkest parts, there's some dark parts around the edges that I'll need to make sure I have in. But one really dark part that I can see, especially with it slightly cropped like this, this in here seems to stand out as being really dark. I definitely need to push that a little bit. Same process putting in your dark and then blending. In here is also really, really no, is that right? Just watch me get confused. Now that it's smaller on the screen, getting confused. Now that's right in here is also very, very dark and it defines the edge of that petal that's coming towards that leaf that's coming towards us. So I can put that in really strong. And if you watch my eyes, you'll see how I'm still looking. I'm never just drawing what I think is there or even just coloring in to make it darker. I am all the time flicking my eye back to it. Again, looking for the really dark darks. And here, I haven't done this whole life yet, but it's going to be very dark in there. Very dark just in here as well. That'll be your finishing touches to just balance things out. If anything looks too white as well, maybe this is a little bit too. That's pretty white in the photograph. But anything that's really standing out to you is just being blank white that might need to be pushed back a little bit. That'll be the last thing that you do at the end. Darker in here too, and prolonged here is quite a strong line of dark. But when I say it's a strong line, it's a line that's then blended into what's already there. That'll be what you do right at the end. I hope it goes well for you. You can watch the videos that I'm doing. I'll speed them up quite fast, and I'll put some tips in there as well just to remind you of what we're doing. If you want to watch before you finish your drawing. If you haven't had a break, go have a break now and then come back to it and have a look at it from a distance as well and see if you can see that illusion happening for you. You could spread this out over a few days if you wanted to. Now that you've got the idea and you've got that general process, you could do a little bit each day and just see how it comes together. 15. Process Timelapse: [No Speech] 16. Using Blending Stumps (Optional): So I thought I'd just stop here and I've got a little bit more to do so you can see, but just talk about how you might want to use blending stumps if you want to give those a go. I hope you are finding some success with this drawing. It's really important to take a break when you're doing these long drawings, especially if you haven't done any for a while or ever. But it's a good indication of where your patience is at and also how cut out you are for doing long drawings. Maybe you need to work on this, work on the patients to just keep doing the same thing over and over again as we have done with each one of these leaves. It's a skill in itself that you can get better at. But in saying that, as I said before, you can take as many breaks as you want and come back and just work on this. You know, every now and again, it's quite nice to just settle down with a bit of drawing, just to chill out, maybe have some music on, and just work on one leaf at a time and then go do something else and then come back. What I wanted to talk about with the blending stumps is how you do need to have most of the work done. So I've got these leaves here, which I haven't finished yet. These ones here probably need to go a little bit darker, but that might just be me looking at the screen, as well. Like I said, I've got some lights hitting this paper and light always reflects off graphite. So it's a bit lighter on the screen than when I look at it in person. But getting back to these leaves, I've say this one and this one here. And if I do a little bit of shading on those, so say this one here, I put in my darks. I've got a bit of dark up there around the room. We've got this main area of dark. It's quite dark back here against this one. If I do that and then I just take it with my blending stump, you want to use quite a small one for this because they're small areas. Make sure they're clean as well before you start. It's good to rub them off on another piece of paper. But if I just go onto this and just start blending, I'm going to end up with something that is very smudgy. It's going to be gray. It's not going to be refined. It's got an approximation of what's in the drawing, but probably what will happen is you'll get to a point where you're smudging and you're trying to make it do something that it can actually do because all you're doing is relying on what's on the end of this and you're moving around and then it becomes a big gray mess. It's not actually too bad what I've got there. But the best thing to do is to get all that shading done first. Get your blends in there, get your light and your dark shading in there. Well, light and dark first, get it all up to the value that you want. See me flicking my eye back to the screen again, always looking at what I'm drawing. But if I get something that's close to what I what I want with my pencil and pretty much finished. Then I'm going to have a much better result with my blending stump because all the work is done and like I said at the very start, some people think of blending stumps as a quick way or almost shortcut to get a nice smooth look and get it looking realistic. It doesn't actually work that way. If I get all my shading in there first, then all I'm doing is just any small little edges that might be a bit too stark. I can blend those it's getting a bit rough this one. This is a better one. I can blend in anywhere where there's some lines that might be a little bit too strong. When you're doing this, you're starting there's two ways you can do it. You can start in the light area with a nice clean blending stump and work on the light areas and then work on the dark areas because you don't have much graphite on there from the light areas, or you can start from the dark areas, work your way out lessening the pressure the same way you would with a pencil. Start in the dark area, lessen the pressure. But then if you want to go into a light area, that's when you've got to clean it off. What I'm saying is if you're going to use blending stumps, don't jump ahead and think that it's going to get you there quicker just by starting with a blending stump when you've only got a few layers down there. You need to do the work with the pencils first. Sorry to say, but it's true. If you want a good result, and if you look around the Internet, you'll see plenty of drawings from beginners who are just smudging, whether it's with their finger or whether it's with this and you just get something that's gray and and lifeless and formless because you're losing all those nice definition, those steps between the values that we need to work hard to get. 17. Reviewing Your Drawing: The last thing I want to say before I leave you to it is to choose a few areas in your drawing that you can assess and just see what's happening. What I want you to really look at is the difference between light and dark sides or what's creating a light side is probably what I should say. If I look at this here, I choose one of the light or two of the light sides to really focus on. This one here, have I got the steps right between this light edge and what is actually creating that light edge? What's creating is the shading on either side of it. I think on this side, I need to go a little bit darker, don't overdo it, but just have a look and try to match the shading that you see in the photograph with one of your values and put it in there. On this side here, it needs to go darker as well. That might then lead to you having to redo the whole rest of the leaf behind it. But that relationship between the light edge and what's on either side of it is really going to guide you and help you figure out where you might need to make some corrections. So that's a good one I just there and that made a difference. I think still needs to go darker on the inside of the edge here, and I think that will mean having to darken up this whole leaf here. If I look at this step here, have I got enough? Probably not. I think it needs to be darker, needs to be stronger on the side compared to this light side. Side, I think is okay. But this side definitely needs to be darker. I don't know what's going on down here, something a little bit strange that I've skipped. Look at the light edges in the shadow. What's happening there. There's a light edge here, but it's in shadow, so it's quite dark. Then maybe there's a hint of a light edge on this one underneath, but it's got a bit of dark in between those two. Where else could I have a look in mine I might need a little bit of an adjustment. If I look at this light area here, what's happening on either side. I've got some dark here, which is good, but as I come through here, it probably gets a little bit too light. It's too similar. That tells me that all of this here needs to be darker. All going into this shadow area here, all under here needs to be darker in contrast with this edge right here. Even if your shapes aren't correct, don't worry about that. This one's definitely not correct. It's not exactly the same as a photograph. I can refine it a little bit, but part of that is just because of the way we draw it freehand. Even if your shapes aren't correct, have a look at those edges, those light edges, where they hit some dark, what's happening? How many steps should there be between them? Do you have enough steps? You should be a master at blending your shading now, but maybe also have a look at that. Lean back. Is there anywhere when you look at your drawing? That looks strange. It looks like there's a hard edge there, maybe here and my one. And then have a look at the photograph. Maybe that is there. It kind of is. If I look at the photograph, there's quite a strong edge there, but I could just vary it a little bit. I think there's a really good way to improve is to just pick out a couple of things to look at. A couple of areas in your own drawing. The things I suggest looking at are light edges, what's happening on either side of those and blended areas or areas that may not be blended. Do they need to be blended more? 18. Summary: One other thing that I didn't mention at the start is there are a few places where I have left some sections out of the tracing and of the grid drawing that we did. So you can include those in if you want to this section of the leaf that's starting to show up with this nice fade happening on the light edge, or you can just shade them in black, and it will still work shade in all of these areas just plain black as strong as you can get it. Maybe with a bit of a fade out, like in this one here, you can see it fades out a little bit. But you don't have to have those extra bits in there. I hope this class has given you a little bit more understanding of how you can create different values, lights, darks and blended values, and also why we need to get good at shading and why we need to be able to replicate these values from the photograph into our drawing. The reason is it's the value that creates the form. When we bring back this line drawing, you can see how it doesn't look right, but for some reason, when we go into our draw we're tempted to put that dark outline there even though it's not in the photograph. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with line drawings because there's plenty of amazing drawings out there that are line drawings and famous artists who work with just line. But if your aim is realism and observational drawing, and I think most people who come to my classes do have that goal in mind. They want to be able to draw something that they can see. The key to realism is shading. It's all about the shading. It's the only way you're going to be able to get that illusion of three D form on your white piece of paper. 19. Finishing Timelapse: [No Speech]