Procreate Essentials: The Black and White Pencil Technique

1. Presentation: Welcome to my new class "Procreate Essentials: the Black and White Pencil Technique". In this course, we'll delve into the power of using two basic but incredibly effective tools, a black and a white pencil. This combination offers some incredible possibilities and by learning to apply them effectively, you may be able to master a tremendous technique that will let you produce magnificent works of art. Hi, my name is Maurizio De Angelis and I'm a professional illustrator working for the film and publishing industry, with a background in traditional oil painting, drawing and scientific illustration. Our focus for this class will be the black-capped chickadee, a tiny songbird found throughout Canada and North America. Before we begin painting our feathered friend, we'll explore how the great masters used black and white colours to make studies for their masterpieces. We'll also cover some preparatory exercises to familiarise ourselves with pencil techniques, including generating shades, producing gradients and using cross-hatching effects. Using the black and white pencil will follow a specific workflow to build up the shades, starting from the undercoat and gradually increasing the level of details until we achieve a naturalistic illustration, typical of this kind. Finally, our class project will give you the creative freedom to explore the techniques covered in this class by incorporating black and white colours into your artwork, and I can't wait to see your pieces published in the class channel. Ok, ready, let's get started! 2. A Bit of History: This class will focus on these lovely black cap chickadee, which is a tiny songbird that lives in the Woodlands, pods and suburban areas throughout Canada and North America. One of the most distinguishing features of black cat chicken is, is that peculiar core, which is used for communication and territory establishment. These adorable young birds are characterized by the black cap and be white cheeks and great wings and back. But before diving into the lessons, Let's go back in time and then examine the work of the great masters of the past and how they use the black and white color. These amazing drawings demonstrate the use of a pencil dealing with only one color, the one coming from the pencil. For Eastern's consider this magnificent drawing by Giovanni Bellini and Italian Renaissance painter from paddler near Venice. The artist used the pencil to define the shapes, the volumes, and the shadows of the subjects, leaving the bright areas and colored because the paper is used as a bright tone. Another example is this paddy by Antonio, she's ready, which demonstrated that all shades up provided by a single color. Although the concept remains the same, we can modify the color and opt for a sanguine, as in the case of unbranded sad, or at a famous islands here. But what happens if we introduce a white color into the mix? Something truly unique, if not magical. Let's take a look. Now at other Vinci created this study were only two colors, black and white. Or contemplate this work by other actuators, which depicts two hands joined in prayer, was her beauty. What the most prominent French neoclassical artist, Jacques-Louis David, who did the study for Lusaka mandatory pass. So we can see that by using only two colors and considering their fat calories coming from the paper, we can create something breathtaking. By the way, if you like these kind of tone papers, you can download them for free going to this link, which is mostly to the angeles.com forward slash courses. So that was a bit of history that can support our journey into this class. In the next lesson, we're going to do a couple of small exercises in order to stretch our muscles and get ready to begin. 3. Pencil Exercise: So before we get started on our acuity birth, we want to undertake a few minor exercises to familiarize ourselves with a couple of pencil techniques that we'll be using. In general, there are two methods for generating shades with pencils. The first is about lying and degree of pressure, and then releasing it in order to produce a gradient. Therefore, use more pressure in darker regions and less pressure in lighter places. It's important to vary the pressure and build up the shading by adding layers of pencil strokes when using this technique. The second technique is called crosshatching, which involves drawing several overlapping lines in various direction. The technique involves applying consistent pressure to a series of parallel lines, a specific angle. While we created the initial layer of lines will need to change the angle slightly and add a second layer of lines that cross over the first that we change the angle again, head keep adding layers of lines until you achieve the desired value and picture. So these are the two primary ways for drawing with pencils is the a, B, Cs. Or if you compare sketch into playing the piano, these techniques I equivalent to the scales and it's essential that you learn it otherwise, how could you play? Another quick exercise is to draw a little line starting with some pressure that is gradually eased at the end. This is excellent for making hair, grass or anything else that will require, such as treatment, like the subject of our class. So try them out. And just to put things into perspective, when I was 14 years old, I ended in an art school in Rome. And I was super excited, ready to recreate some kind of Agile Michelangelo masterpieces. But for the first four months and every beat four months, we only drew lines, just lines. And that is the amount of time required to become familiar with a new techniques. We now ready to dive into the making of art black cap chickadee? Let's have a look at that. 4. Setting Up the Canvas: Okay, so the first thing we need to do is to download the reference image and the sketch that are included with this lesson. So let's import the drawing. If you go to the resources tab, you can find the document that we need to download. Click on the file, then click download, and wait until it's done. And after that you can launch Procreate. And once in the gallery, you can select import and navigate to the download folder. So now we're ready to begin. I'd like to thank Aaron J. Hill for taking this lovely photo and made it available for free on Pexels. So thank you Aaron. So let's get started. What do we have? We have the toned paper, which is this layer here, the photo reference of the bird, which is just a diesel of the main image, and the drawing. The first step is to choose the brush that we want. So if we go into the sketching library and search for the peppermint brush, we click on it. And once inside settings, we want to click on drawing pad and then reset all brush settings. And if we do so, the brush will be reset to its default settings, meaning that we are all having the same brush settings, so there will be no inconsistencies. Now we can switch to black, which is in the corner, and just make a few lines to check the size of the brush. So this is too big, and this is not something that we want. We want to reduce the size to around 15%, and I think it's fine. So now that we know that we're happy with 15%, well actually it's 14, but let me set this to 15. We can click on the plus sign in order to save the size. Okay, so we can undo that. Oops, one too many. Now we want to create a new layer and rename it into black pencil. And this is the way we set up our document. In the next lesson, we're going to officially start drawing our chickadee bird. Let's have a look at how 5. Black Pencil: Okay, so now we want to paint this dark area here and this dark area of the hair. So we're going to start from this. So with the peppermint brush selected, we will just simply start doing something like this. So you can see that the lines are parallel, then not very long. This is a juvenile chickadee, a young bird. And as a result, even the feathers are rather short. And you can assume that like young chicks, they cannot be is fairly pure. You can move this one a little bit like that. So you also want to always double-check. You select the correct layer. You take some time. I mean, we don't have to rush through the process. You can slightly change the direction of lines, kind of likely crossing each other as we did in the exercise. Now we want to go under the beak. You want to imagine there is some casts, shadows there. I'm applying some pressure on the screen as we practice in the exercise and trying to build up the shading and turn, both of which are very important. I don't even want to go into the white area is yet right now I just want to define these tiny feathers that pop out from the white portion. So this is what I want to do. As you can see, we have a few feathers, the spring out. We do that later. For now that we want to just establish the right shade and tone. You can see that is similar to the grass exercise in that it requires a lot of strokes and build up and takes time. It is perfectly acceptable to spend one day, two days, or three days on a drawing, because there is a t equal amount of time needed to produce something days convincing and appealing. And I believe this is nearly finished. We'll continue to polish this section later. Now we're going to do this. In order to do that, It's easier if we rotate the composition and we can probably move the foot reference to beat like around the same level, so it's easier. So we want to make sure we select the correct layer. And as you can see, the flow is traveling in this direction here. You see. So we want to preserve the current flow. I would start here. And first and foremost, I want to build a flow guideline. And if I do so, I feel more confident because I know I'm directing by the feathers will flow. You can see here at the top of the head, there's a curve that want to make sure to follow. As you can see, I'm essentially creating a fairly uniform undercoat. Only the feathers indicating the direction. The pressure against the glass is rather consistent here. Let me move that. We can probably put this on top of the drawing so he's getting clear. The area around the eye is really dark. We want to go to that type of blackness, but still following the floor, even if he's going to be really, really dark and you can't see the individual feathers. And this is because we want things to be consistent. And this is a very important aspect. And now it's really, really dark. But I want to imagine how the feathers would behave so that I can change the direction accordingly. So you can see that it's quite dark towards the lower part of the face and lighter at the top here. And we want to roughly replicate the same thing. I want to go back and add a bit more definition around the eye. I'm applying the degree of pressure. And here I want to go back and do it again. I really like this brush, I believe is really organic and is a great field to it, rather than on graphite, pencil is more like a colored oil-based pencil. Here I want to follow the shape. You can see that the rim here is brighter. Therefore, we want to keep the aspect which is essential for the achievement of our lovely chickadee. So you can see that I'm modeling this area here. There's a bit of a dark strip. So that's what we want to do now. Again, I want to define the correct format for these darker element. Towards the end, we've defined the perimeter with some individual feathers popping out from the main body, from the main silhouette head. This is something we can do later on. For the time being. We want to make sure that we represent the fact that these bird is named Black kept, which is correct because of the dark mass of black feathers that form the head. So we'll keep this process going on for a while until we get to the correct shade. And if you get tired, you can take a break. It's perfectly normal to become exhausted, especially if we don't practice this activity very often. Since this is tough work for our hens. In each surely stretch and train some hand muscles and get used to it. As similar to how when you go to the gym for the first style and it was sold the next day with Alyssa amount of activity, it becomes the usual. So it's the same for drawing and painting. Often can get into a desired effect. You can see that I change the angle slightly, which is what occurs in real life. You wouldn't have all of these feathers exactly aligned. Going to retain the outward. Grab these and move it. You might want to deselect these, otherwise you get a beat too crazy. So you can do snapping and then de-select this function here so you can move it freely me. So let's put the photo here, re-select our layer. And then we want to work around this area. And then you can see that the Fed is C. I go everywhere, in every direction and they have very short. And to reflect this aspect, we can do these. So you can see that I make a large number of very small strokes, fairly short ones. And here they would move towards the upside, concentrating and nesting near the peak. It doesn't have to be an exact reproduction of the image. Our purpose is to learn the method, not to recopy the photo. So we have complete freedom. Now that everything is mostly finished, I'm probably going to want to come back here and paint upside down. And when we paint the white hair, everything will make sense. Now, just to make things clear up, Let's do Elizabeth, these pebbles. We can do this. You want to the Press at the start of the stroke and then let go. You see you only want to break the uniformity some strokes or lighter, or the strokes are stronger. Or you want to produce something like this, which looks natural and fair. So I want to reinforce this area at some shorter strokes, some longer and taper off some of them. Now, we want to do the same thing for these feathers here. So press and release. Press and release. You want to slightly change the direction of the feathers. This could be enough. In the next lesson, we're going to paint the beak and the eye. 6. Black Pencil - The Beak & Eye: Okay, Now we want to do the big. In order to do so, we want to create a new layer. We can rename it into beak. I want to place the photo reference closer. Select the correct layer, has switched to the peppermint brush. So you can see that the newer portion is black. They some darkness behind the feathers. And there's also some shade and reflection on the very top. Now we're going to start from the lower part, and I'm going to apply a very small pressure in order to achieve some fungi. These, if you've very gentle and keep adding strokes, you can really generate some shading. It's really very little tiny pressure. You also want to leave the edge of the upper beak unpainted so we can concentrate a little more on that later on. Again, you want to keep it as soft as possible as you don't want to press too hard. You can change the direction slightly. You can tell depends slightly. If you do this, you're going to get these spot. If you do this, you're going to get this. Obviously this is a bit extreme, but if you tilt the pan a little bit, you can get something like this. So that's what we want to do for this area of the big, we want to tell the pens lightly. It can be a bit tricky, but we here to learn. Now I can move the reference, select the beak layer, select the brush tool, and then keep painting. I want to reinforce and define this value is more but rather the important feature of our chickadee. And now we can move to the eye. So once again, I can reposition the reference picture. I'll create a new layer and rename it into I d I is the same story with the big let me put this one on top of everything and move it just around there so we can match the level of details. You select the layer again. You can see that the lower part is rather dark. There's some reflections, some whitish elements that we can do later. First of all, these are very black ring all around it. Here. We're going to do that because it would be easier to identify the eye shape once d, f, g is defined. These are very dark green, very intense. Now I want to improve the definition of d I, by cleaning up the perimeter, being careful not to make the two circular, as is now a perfect circle, as you can see. Realistic illustration, it's soul about the details, especially focusing on all the many aspects, the various bits and components and understanding out things work. So going down to explore nature and the beauty behind it is a beautiful journey. And I'm completely fascinated by all natural phenomena. Right? So we can some sort of eyelashes. There are tilting depends like I want to avail Lisa on Mount of color around the ring. So you use very minimal pressure here. Now it's starting to define what's going on within the eye. As you can see, the lower area is quite black, but in the upper part of the eye, we can see some reflections. So we start by establishing the boundary between the two pounds. That's when it's blocking off some reflection. An important consideration is that eyeballs up always wet, whether they belong to animals or human beings, they are way. And as a result of this, they react to light extremely differently than skin or in this case feathers. In fact, you can see that there are several reflections. And this is what makes a nice, fascinating and attractive. I want to add another tiny layer of color to the upper region of the eyeball. And in fact, we can detect set and reflection that can be so in feathers. But that might be difficult to say for sure. And probably clean up a little bit around here. Then we're going to reinforce all of these areas. But for the time being, we want to just calibrate the amount of color. So you can see there's a very fine ring and mine is at the moment a bit thicker than that. I think it's fine. Again, it doesn't have to be an exact replica of the fighter. That's not our mission here. I think I'm quite pleased with the results. So in the next lesson, we're going to add a mid tone color. 7. Mid-Tone: Okay, now we'll focus on the meat tone color. So we can see that we have this meat tone color next to the white region. And these can be perceived as gray feathers. We're not going to pay in all the details related to the feathers, otherwise it gets too descriptive. We want to define this error first before doing the white area. So let's do that. We want to create a new layer and rename it into midtone. We can probably move this one here. It goes on top, but it doesn't matter because we want to focus on this area here. We can see that in the drawing we've got this line which defines the connection where the two kinds of feathers meet. We starting by adding this, we're not going to paint the entire there's you will take a few hours because these level of t that is rather complicated and time-consuming, we simply want to focus on the hat, but the principle remains the same. So in this class project, you can finish the bed or make your own, but do anything you want. But for this class we're just going to paint the hat. Another important aspect to remember is to keep an eye on the floor. As you can see, I'm turning the angle of my brush strokes to create a continuous flow for the fibers. We can say that we could stop about here. So all we need to do is to produce a nice and convincing transition which is essential in achieving an effective drawing. You might see that the band least wiser. But anyway, I want to put down some strokes and I start another pass. I can probably connect the meat tone to the black fibers. You can see that I'm not applying a lot of pressure. I just have to be consistent with a lot of patient. I'll be able to get the desired effect. We should not forget that creating a good drawing takes time, and that can be a few hours or few days. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's absolutely normal is true that today with the use of artificial intelligence playing around with problems like Meat, Joy and New Delhi. It's possible to generate images from text or better known as prompts for Eastern. See if you feed week journey with a prompt that sounds like acute chickadee bird sitting on a branch in the style of pencil drawing. The AI, artificial intelligence would come up with something like this. Sometimes the result are questionable because DAI is enabled to make a perfect interpretation of your thoughts. But some other times, the result assembly style. In a few years there would be significant changes in the field, but that should not discourage those who enjoy drawing as nothing can replace their personal experience. It's true that technology is advancing rapidly. Individuals are still free to pursue their passions. Personally, I found in both drawing and painting enjoyable. And I don't believe that technology can fully substitute for these activities, but it would be very interesting to see what the future holds in this regard. So we can see there's a bit of movement here. I believe I would like to go over the white area with the meet time. Specifically, I would like to apply a subtle transition by going over it with a light touch. Let's make a small password shift this effect. Let's move this lively to be on the way. Let's do this. Regarding the Fed is here, they appear to be short and turning slightly. I will have to handle this delicately, so they blends in seamlessly and nothing sends out to merge. If we hide the reference picture for a moment, we can try to visualize the feathers in our mind and imagined how they overlap and cast shadows or one another is likely that we can see create a cohesive image by following our mental image. And this is facilitated by the fact that we establish a flower. So we know roughly where the feathers would go. Okay, Now we want to do the same thing. Here. We want to go down following the curvature of the belly is also true that as I said before, this region would be filled in white. Are we really want a consistent look at undercoat where the white feathers will be painted on top. Just for reference, I want to darken this area here where the wind is located by increasing the shadow here, the image we'd make more sense and look more convincing, overall, unsatisfied with the current state of the image. So I can stop here with the mid-tone. In the next lesson, we're going to the white pencil and everything would come to life. 8. White Pencil: Okay, so what do we have here? We've got the meat tongue, the eye, the beak, and the black pencil. Now we want to paint the white area of the bird so we can create a new layer and rename it into white pencil. We have the peppermint brush selected, and now we need to switch to white. On the new layer. We just want to try the brush. And this is exactly what we're looking for. This is the same brush size as the black pencil. We can undo that festival. We can probably define this area here. So you want to make sure you are on the correct layer. And very much live for the black pencil. We're going to do this. Then we start by applying the first code of white all the way down to the belly. And like previously, we want to gradually build up the shading is a kind of progressive treatment, but we can reinforce some specific areas. In my opinion, the combination of the tone paper, we both black and white pencils is beautiful and elegant. This is a rather classical music. They can produce some stunning results that stands out brilliantly. I'm applying a bit more pressure here as this area represents the chest. And this adds an interesting visual aspect of the overall look of the subject. I never had the chance to see a chickadee bird in person since they are mostly found in North America and in Canada and now even the UK. I'll have, I've been fortunate enough to visit North America a few times. During one of those troops had the opportunity to visit Yosemite Park, which will simply breathtaking. Despite the UK stunning scenery, which includes many would demand regions and a variety of bird species that live in North America is much more diverse in comparison to what we have here in Europe and the UK. Okay, now let's do this. I want to transition from an area to another one. Again is nearly over the black feathers because in fact they are physically over them. Towards the end of the class, we start refining our illustration using a smaller brush. Even though for the time being, I'm happy to describe the details in this manner. It is essential to concede that they're achieving realism in our illustrations requires time and practice is not feasible to expect to create a realistic illustration in just 30 min and to learn the technique in the same amount of time. So one doing here, I'm adding some white strokes or with a mid-tone we did before. Now it's time to paint the upper part. I want to start by establishing the flower so we can have a guideline. We can find that for our peace of mind. And once the flow is set, it's easier to keep consistent. The feathers appear to turns light via to conform to the wing shape. I want to establish the separation between black and white. Let's try and move this one a little bit closer or even a bit bigger. Now with some shoulder strokes then before we want to start the definition of this area, bein patient is essential as it takes time and it's important to appreciate the process. I'm trying to nest these brush strokes here. We need to consider the fact that the closer you get to the beak, the shorter strokes should be. This is an important aspect to take into account as we aim to achieve accuracy in our work. A scientific illustrators job is to the people in Asia in the most accurate and truthful way possible. The thousands of publications from their past in which scientific illustration was employed to visualize and categorize various elements such as shells, starfish, phone guy, minerals, birds, and virus, animal and species. Hundreds and hundreds of books have been produced over the centuries. Browsing through them is a fantastic way to get inspired. Normally, I believe that these artists are entirely unknown or forgotten. Nobody knows who they are yet. We have to believe that they spent an enormous amount of time creating this drawing. Something they could not have done a single day or single week by a months and months of a heart work. It's rather fascinating. I encourage you to go view these illustrators work because they really created silence what it is today, because everything originates from these early studies. And they'll week technology, the knowledge became better and better. But we must not forget the work that has previously been done. You can see a sort of I need under the eye and that's what we want to do. Warm to some short feathers here. And better define the boundary between the two areas. I also want to prolong the white feathers towards the back, near the wing. Feathers here start our extremely short, but gradually they get longer and longer and we will do replicate that. But we want to mimic that clumping sensation. Now, I want to slightly change the orientation of the brush strokes. Let's do the area close to the beak. I want to move the reference image next to it. So very short feathers, very young feathers also. I've continued with this kind of treatment all around in this mode, Harriet, the eyelid again, I want to add some very short strikes. And I think this is enough for what we want to do. In the next lesson, we're going to add the white color to the beak and the eye. 9. White Pencil - The Beak & Eye: Okay, so in this lesson we're going to paint the beak and the eye with a white pencil. Also create a new layer that we can rename into big white. We can see some lights here, and then a stronger reflection there. So let's move this one here. So it's just next to it. So we have to select the appropriate layer. And I will start slowly adding this color around here. I'm literally caressing the surface of the glass very gently. We can see the slide as shape here. And then we have this bright light, which is something we want to do. There's a slight curve here, almost like a hook shape. And then we can splash of light. We can probably reinforce some bits here, but generally speaking, that can be enough. We can possibly at some little nosing around the bottom, like if it was a reflected light, this is not in the reference image, but I feel inclined to do so. And I think this could be enough is quite convincing. Now, I can paint the eye with a white color and we also want to create a new layer and rename it into eye white. And very gently as we did for the beak, we want to define the ring surrounding the eye first, very delicately, very, very gently. You also want to break up the line a little bit. You don't want a continuous line, or you do want to adjust the pressure to concentrate a little more color in certain spots and not in others. As a result, the composition will have a sense of movement and dynamism. With the addition of the white-collar, everything makes sense that why it has these amazing power of bringing everything to life. Now here, this is where the strongest light is. So we can basically add some color around this area. You can see that it did this with only a few strokes. So it wasn't difficult. It's not even a lot of work. As I said before, you can see a sort of dotted line here is not continuous, so I want to do the same, but most importantly, I want to emphasize a bit more here. I believe this is enough. In the next lesson, we're going to add some details with white pencil. 10. White Pencil - Details: Okay, now what we want to do is to make this fair this here, we can re-select the white pencil layer as he can belong to that. I want to define to add some definition on the cap. Something similar to this. This is not necessarily in the reference image, but I think I want to treat the area in this manner. I'm just painting some highlights along some of the feathers. Then I wanted to go over the white feathers. So we've got something similar to this. I think I want to increase some bits here. As I previously said, I am is not to create a photo realistic depiction of the bird. Rather, we are specifically seeking a black and white pencil illustration. In my opinion, these approaches suitable for destroying and I consider it to be a good representation. We may consider adding small details here and there, but we should be mindful not to add too much as these areas intended to be the darkest. I'll have a few extra details, even if they're not present in the photograph. For instance, high hidden the photograph on purpose because I want to rely on my instincts and emotions. Nevertheless, it is crucial that we exercise control and not to go overboard with details. Overall, this could be an appropriate treatment for this area. And never forget that you are your own charge. Now we want to do the same thing that we did here, around here. So we can continue on the same layer. I just want to have a look at the reference to see what sort of description days. And you can see there's something going on here and not too much. And I think I want to carefully define the spot with some small nefarious popping out from the black members. And I want to do the same thing here. Just a tiny bit to Sadie. Something's going on. Since light is reflected in different directions, it can produce a variety of views. And gradients are job-based painters and illustrators is to notice and understand these variations. Before we can effectively portray what we see, we must first be able to recognize and comprehend what we see. Then I want to make these short strokes having small feathers with a thin their teeth, they taper off starting for thicker base. So I think we can do a little bit here. So we can imagine something's going on. There is not completely black, even if the father is fairly dark, but that's what we want to achieve to get a similar effect of the black part. I will do come here and add some more definition. I can hide the reference. Just a few final strokes for Houston's here that goes towards the belly. Want to play with the amount of pressure. But overall, I can say that I'm satisfied with the result. So in the next lesson, I'll show you a really handy approach for adding definition without a lot of effort. 11. Trick to add Definition: Okay, Now there is a technique that is not possible with traditional mediums, but it's common practice in the amazing world of digital painting, duplicating an existing layer. So if I choose the black cap, I can swipe left and select Duplicate. Now you can see the difference if I hide and show the layer. Because when it's visible in becomes more vivid and intense. If you think that is too much, may reduce the opacity of the mayor to a percentage that works for you. You may case can be around 50 per cent. He's not a huge difference, but more subtle, I would say. Then to merge two or more layers together, I can pinch them into one layer on. I can also do the same for the mid-tone layer. So I can swipe left and then duplicate key. And now you can see there is more work than what you actually did. Again, I can reduce the opacity slightly and then pinch the layers. This doesn't really work with the white feathers because if you duplicate the layer, the picture becomes a little too rough and you miss the delicacy of the white feathers. So I wouldn't use it in this case. As always, it all comes down to how you envision a picture, your particular taste and your sense of beauty. You works well with the black feathers, but not really with a white feathers. I can probably do the eye, so I'll duplicate the layer and probably reduce the opacity quiet B. So I can pinch them into one layer. That was a way to increase the contrast and the presence of your artwork. In the next lesson, we're going to refine our I work with a black pencil. 12. Refining with Black: Okay, Now it's time for some detailing. What we want to do is to reduce the brush size to be about six per cent. Then we can save it. Let's check the brush. You can see this clearly in them before, which is exactly what we need for this task. So we can create a new layer and rename it into black details. With this smaller brush, we only want to define some little paths at definition here and there. And the quality will benefit from this process even if it's not absolutely obvious. But trust me, the detailing phase is stereo important? I want to change the orientation of the brush strokes as I want to ask some dynamism. So we can increase the detailing around the eye. Maybe some smaller feathers that are not following the flower trying to escape. I will also break up the silhouette of the bed by adding these verifying feathers. Want to Bethsaida find the cap, define the area around the big. Next we'll do the same with the white pencil, and we'll be able to complete our naturalistic illustration of the chickadee. So looking at this, I think that could be enough dealing with a black pencil. In the next lesson, we're going to do exactly the same, but with a white pencil. 13. Refining with White: Okay, Now we're going to refine our chickadee with the same brush settings. We can swap two y and create a new layer that we can rename into white details. And now we simply want to do the tips of the feathers. Also breaking up the silhouette with some feathers popping out. You may not be able to see it, but I'm absolutely adding color to the paper. Now what's more definition around the beak? Next, I want to add a coat of paint to soften the black feathers. I simply want to brighten up this region, giving the impression there's a mix of black and white feathers. And this could be enough. We can probably call our illustration done. In the last lesson, I'll teach you how to organize the layers and applying as managing effect. 14. Blending: Okay, As a last step, we want to add as much in effect and also tied up the layer stack. So in order to select the layers, we can swipe, right? And then we can select the layers. And then we group. You can close the group and rename it into illustration. We can probably delete the reference images at this point. Now you can duplicate, then tie group. You can flatten the layers into one. So basically if our high the group, I've got the entire illustration into one layer, or you can do is to swap to the blending tool, go down to charcoals, and then select carbon stick. So if you take the carbon Sick and reset all Brush Settings, you have some full like this. I want to reduce the scale of the grain and Lisa B. And then press down. Using these cannibalistic, we can reduce the brush size by around three per cent as much or blend. Well, we painted, we're going to lose all of the details and almost everything we've done. But that's the point of this phase, is to create a basis of blended colors on which the black and white pens who can seat. So let's hide the drawing as well. So I'll keep working on this constantly going with the flow since we want to maintain a consistent look. And then you can decide if you like it or not. It's a lethal of trial and error until you're satisfied with the outcome. And it's not uncommon to discard something because it's not convincing. When you've done with this, you can place the layer underneath our group. When you show its visibility, you can see the fields, the illustration a bit. It's not a massive difference, but it can help in some circumstances. While I normally do is to reduce the opacity of the blended layer, it could be neat way until you think it looks best. So I can reveal the drawing and change the name of this layer to undercoat. And that's all. The next lesson is the class project in which you can paint the complete bird using the approach shown so far or any other subject you like. 15. Class Project: Hello and welcome to our final lesson, which is all about the class project. For this project, you have the freedom to complete the adorable chickadee using the technique and workflows covered in this class, I'll create something entirely different, whether it's your beloved pet, your child, some beautiful flowers or anything else that holds a special meaning for you. The choice is yours. I'm excited to see how you incorporate black and white colors into your artwork. I encourage you to share your creations in the review sections of this class. Regardless of whether you are seasoned artist or a beginner, sharing your work is an excellent opportunity to appreciate each other's talent, provide feedback, and learn from each other. Feel free to connect to my other classes where you can download the drawings that I provide with the lessons such as flowers, a frog, mushrooms, as now, even a portrait or Sean didn't reveal. So let's get started and create something amazing. I hope you found this class informative and valuable in achieving your artistic goals. And keep in mind that learning is a continuous process and the knowledge and skills you gain from this class at just the beginning. Thank you for choosing to take this course, and I wish you all the best. Bye bye.