Realistic Colored Pencil Drawings: An Introduction for Beginners

1. Introduction: It is possible to create some absolutely stunning, highly detailed drawings with colored pencils, but it can feel a bit overwhelming if you've never drawn with them before. I want to show you today that actually, if you follow a certain series of steps and you learn the methods of drawing with colored pencils, it's not as difficult as you might expect. My name's Gemma Chambers, and I've been making online art tutorials since 2020. I've helped tens of thousands of people improve their art on my YouTube channel. But today, I want to be a bit more specific and take it back to the basics. I want to create an in depth guide to colored pencils, kind of an introduction to them. I will cover all of the materials that you need to draw with colored pencils, as well as all of the most important techniques. And then go through how to select a reference photo, which is so important if you're wanting to create realistic drawings and the general full process that I use for every colored pencil drawing. We can then work through that process to draw this fun and vibrant sushi. Let's get started. 2. Class Project - Drawing Sushi: For the class project, we will be drawing this sushi. This is such a fun little project to create. Not only is it going to be interesting to learn how to add in the details, also how to build up the more vibrant colors, particularly towards the center. Now I will go through the full process of this drawing, including how to make the sketch. If you want to use my sketch, I have included that in the class resources. Both a lighter sketch if you want to print the sketch directly onto your paper and a darker sketch if you want to trace. Also included details of all of the specific colors that I use in my drawing with some little color swatches to help you find the closest match in your set. When you finish your drawing, please do uplad it into the class projects. I would love to see what you've done. Let's talk about the materials you need. 3. Materials You'll Need to Draw with Colored Pencils: Let's go through the materials you'll need to not only draw the sushi, but also anything with colored pencils. And the most obvious material that you'll need first is a set of colored pencils. Now, I generally use either polychromos or prisma color colored pencils. These are both professional colored pencils, but you don't need pencils as fancy as these. In actuality, you can create some amazing pictures with some cheaper pencils like Crayola. The most important thing is to have a set of at least 36. Generally speaking, it's going to be easier to draw with a larger variety of pencils. It doesn't mean that you can't draw with smaller sets. It's just easier when you've got more colors to choose. Now, what's actually more important, in my opinion, than the pencils is the paper that you're drawing on. I see so frequently people trying to create colored pencil drawings on sketch paper or printer paper, some really cheap thin paper. It's not going to be possible to build up the pencil in the way that we will need to on these types of papers. What I like drawing on is something called Bristol specifically, a smooth bristol board. This is a much thicker paper. It's almost like a card, and it enables me to build up that pencil. I always say, if you only want to invest in one thing, invest in the paper rather than the pencils, you will create better drawings this way. Now, the next material you'll need is a pencil sharpener. Now, I have a hand crank pencil sharpener. I particularly like that I can change the blade when it gets blunt. But you don't need a pencil sharpener as big as this. Anything that creates a really nice and sharp point on the pencils will be fine. Next up, if you'll be creating your own sketch, you will need a graphite pencil, ruler, and an eraser, and we'll cover a bit later how we're going to use those. The next material that you'll need specifically for this sushi is something called a jelly roll pen. This is a white gel pen that goes really nicely over the top of colored pencils. It is absolutely amazing for adding in some really small highlights. Something to note about colored pencils is that if you try and put a white pencil over the top of darker colors, it's not going to come across as bright white. So that's what we need the jelly roll pen for to create this. It's not something that I use in every single colored pencil drawings, but I use it reasonably often, and I have used it in the sushi. Next material you'll need is actually not something you can buy. It's something you're going to need to make. This is a set of swatches, and I'll cover in the next section exactly what this is and why we need it. Finally, you'll need some way of looking at a reference photo. For every single drawing that I create, I always work from a reference. I find this is the best way to create really realistic drawings, and I need some way of looking at that reference. So I like working on my iPad. I particularly like that I can zoom in to see all of the details, but you don't need to be using an iPad. You can always print out the reference photo. So those are all of the materials that you'll need to draw with colored pencils. Let's talk about these swatches a little bit further because they are so important. 4. Creating Color Swatches: One of the most important materials I use in all of my colored pencil drawings is a set of color swatches. I briefly touched on this when we were talking about the materials. Now, one of the hardest things about drawing with colored pencils is often perceived to be selecting the colors, and that is what this is helping with. I want to see what every color in my set actually looks like on the paper, specifically the type of paper that I'm going to be drawing on. I frequently find relying on the barrel of the pencil or the lead is just not very accurate. Want a way that I can look at my colors and compare them to the reference photo and my drawing to see which color I need to add in. In order to make these, what I need to do is draw out a grid on a sheet of my drawing paper. I then take every color in the set and go from as light as I can make each color to as dark as I can make each color, and then I label it. And once I've got all of that mapped out, that kind of works as a key. Now, this is quite a time consuming process to make the color swatches, but it's not something that needs doing very frequently. In fact, this set that I've got here I made at least five years ago. I have these watches. You will hear me frequently comparing them to the reference photo. And as we're talking through drawing the sushi and we're looking for the next color we need to add, this is what I'm comparing to. Next up, let's talk about the basic techniques you need to draw anything with colored pencils. 5. The Key Basic Techniques: Let's talk about the most fundamental techniques that I use in every colored pencil drawing. And the most important technique is something called layering. In order to work with colored pencils, we don't want to be just putting loads of really hard pencil down on the paper. That's going to create a very flat and scribbly look. Instead, what we want to do is gradually builds up the color in a series of light layers. Essentially enables us to mix the colors together to create a series of gradients and smooth edges, which is so important when you're drawing realistically. This is why it's so important that we get the right kind of paper. Now, the keyword with these layers is that they need to be light layers. So putting down the pencil really lightly is so important. And there's a few things I do to help me with this. First up, I hold the pencil much further back than you might expect. Rather than holding it really close to the tip, I generally hold it about halfway down the barrel. And what this does is literally stops me from being able to press too hard. It is possible to press lightly when holding the pencil close to the tip, but it just needs a lot more pencil control. Next up, I want to be always making sure I'm working with a sharp pencil. Because we want to put this pencil down lightly, it's going to be much easier to do that when the pencils sharp, it's also going to go down in a much smoother and more consistent way. Look at what a massive difference it makes working with a blunt pencil versus a sharp pencil. You'll find that I frequently sharpen my pencils throughout a drawing. Finally, when building up all of these light layers, I also want to be generally working as smoothly as possible. We want to add down various almost washes of color, and I don't want them to look really scratchy. So you'll hear me refer a lot to circular motions, rather than just scribbling back and forth with the pencil, if we work in a series of small circular or oval motions, and the pencil goes down in a much smoother and more consistent way. So it's well worth practicing this as well. Now, those are the absolute fundamental techniques that you need to know to draw with colored pencils. Let's talk about the full process I use in every drawing. 6. The Process: Now, no matter what I'm drawing with colored pencils, I always follow the same process, the same overall series of steps. So let's go through that process now, and hopefully it'll all make a lot more sense when we start working through that process for the sushi. Now, the first thing that I always want to do is select a reference photo. This is such an important process. If you choose the wrong reference photo, the drawing is never going to look amazing. There are a few things that I'm looking for in a reference. First up, I want it to be really nice and clear. I don't want to be trying to work from a blurry photo. It's not going to be possible for me to add in all of the detail if I can't see it. Next up, I want to select a reference photo that has amazing contrast. I want a good amount of lights, darks, and mid tones, and that's going to enable me to build up a much more vibrant drawing. Finally, I want to make sure that I've got a reference photo that is from the right angle. If we take sushi, for example, it looks best if you draw sushi from a kind of head on view. If you try and draw sushi from a funny angle like this, sometimes it looks okay in a photo, but it doesn't tend to translate as well to a drawing. So you want to select reference photos like this rather than like this. I've selected my reference photo, what I then want to do is take a minute to study it. Now, this seems like an odd step, but it is so important. I'm looking for all of the main colors, any obscure colors that I can see, maybe any funny shapes, anything that I'm going to want to bear in mind when I'm drawing. I think it just helps to take a minute to look at what we're drawing before we get started. This will all make a lot more sense when we do it for the sushi. Next up, what I then want to do is create a sketch. I want to get some really nice and most importantly, very light lines on the paper, generally mapping in all of the proportions. Now, to do this, I like using something called the grid method. This is where I draw a grid on my reference photo and a grid on my drawing paper, and I only draw what's in each individual square. So rather than trying to map out the shapes of sushi, for example, I'm only drawing a series of lines and shapes, and the whole thing becomes much more accurate. Once I've drawn everything out, I can then erase the grid lines, and I'm left with a nice clear from here, I can start adding in the colors. I like to work generally over the whole drawing to begin with. So as a general rule, I like to work from the lighter colors towards the darker colors to begin with. So I can select the lightest color that I can see in each area of the drawing, and this is where those color swatches come in so helpful. Looking for the lightest color I can see within the rice, for example, and finding the closest match to that color in my swatches. And I can then using some nice smooth coverage of the pencil really lightly blocking that color. I want to do that for every single section until I've got all of those very lightest shapes marked in. And I can then start gradually mapping in the key shapes in each of those areas with gradually darker pencils. When I get to the darkest color, I should have everything roughly mapped. From here, when I've got my bearings on where everything needs to go, I can then focus on one section at a time. So focus, for example, on the middle of the sushi, still generally working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors again, but just really focus on making everything more vibrant, making it a closer match to the reference. I can then do the same on all of the other sections of the drawing, working one section at a time. I think it's easier to work in small sections rather than constantly looking at the drawing as a whole. It feels a bit less overwhelming. Once I brightened everything up, I can then think about adding in the final details. I'm generally working back down through the colors here, so working from the darker colors towards the lighter colors and brightening up anything that needs it, adding in any final details. I'll add in the jelly roll pen if I'm using it. Generally finish off the drawing. So that's the process that I always use for all of my drawings. Let's start working through. 7. Studying the Reference Photo: Let's begin here by taking a minute to have a look at the reference photo. I want to be looking for the most obvious things that I want to bear in mind with the drawing. Let me show you what I mean. And I think to begin with, the most obvious bits are the huge amounts of little patches of light. So on the seaweed up here, for example, there's some huge patches of light, particularly around the top. But there's also little patches of light on the rice and some very bright patches on the filling of the sushi, as well. Going to want to think about adding in all of these little white patches probably towards the end. They're so small, I think it will be tricky to add them as we go. I'm also noticing on the seaweed wrap around here that there's some very subtle texture, particularly in this band here. It's not all solidly black, even when we get away from the very light patches at the top. And actually, the lines and the light patches here are kind of reddy brown. I guess it's a reflection from this sushi here, kind of an orange color, I'd say. And that same kind of orange is on the rice around the back along. Thinking about the rice. It looks at first, reasonably complicated, I would say. But actually, I think it's simpler than it first looks. It's really just a series of oval shapes in some reasonably random kind of configurations, I guess. But that's good because it means it doesn't all need to be absolutely perfect. Now, looking at each individual grain of rice, they tend to have some kind of light gray patches of light on them. There's very few that are very bright white like along here, and there's a couple down here. That's more of a light gray, though. The rice is much darker on this left hand side. Even though it's white rice, look how dark it is here versus how light it is because the lights kind of coming through the rice on this right hand side. You can see the rice around the middle is kind of edged by more seaweed here, and that creates a really good level of contrast around this central section, which is a mixture of greens, yellows, oranges, and pink. So we're going to want to really build up a lot of vibrancy in this area. And actually, something I haven't spoken about is the green on the top, all of these little I don't know what they are. Dots. I want to add these in, and some of them are quite dark, particularly along here, so I'm going to need to build up a reasonable amount of contrast. Really, only these few in the front are actually in focus, though the rest of this looks really quite blurry. So now we've had a look at the reference photo. Let's think about making this sketch. 8. Creating the Sketch Outlines: Now, as I mentioned when I was talking through the full process, to create this sketch, I want to use something called the grid method. So I have included in the class resources a grid on the sushi reference photo. I then want to work out how wide my squares need to be to create a similar number of squares on my drawing paper. It is worth noting that I am going to be using quite a dark pencil and pressing quite hard here, particularly because you won't be able to see it on the camera if I do it as lightly as I normally would. You want to be doing this much, much lighter than I am. You want to be pressing so lightly, and it will be much easier to erase at the end. So now I've drawn out a grid. Let me show you specifically what I'm seeing and what I'm doing. Going to start on the left and work my way towards the right. So let's start off by looking at this first square here. And what I want to do is be looking for where the lines on the edge of the sushi are crossing the lines of the square. So this line here, it's crossing this line along here, roughly halfway along, and down the bottom is just a little bit to the left of the corner. So let's mark where both of these are on the drawing paper. So a little left to the corner here and roughly the middle here. And then I'm going to join those lines together. Now, it isn't a perfectly smooth line. It's a little bit wonky, so I'm going to try and copy those shapes. And then I want to look at this line here, as well. So here, this is maybe third of the way, I would say, up the square. And this line here is crossing about a quarter of the way from the right. So let's mark in a third of the way up and in between that halfway point and the edge of the square. And again, I can join these lines together. So let's do the same for the next square. So we've already got these two markers marked in. Let's look at these two lines up here where they're crossing the edge of the box. So here we're a little bit to the left of the corner, and this line here is just a little bit to the right of halfway, I would say. Let's mark these two points in and join the lines together. And the same for this line. Here again, this line needs to be a little bit of a kind of wiggly line, and I'm just going to try and copy the same kind of wiggle and the same for this line here, and then I can join those points together. And that is literally all I'm going to do for every single one of these boxes. Just go through marking in where the lines cross the box and then join those lines together. Some areas are maybe a little bit more complicated. Like, for example, where I want to map in the shapes of the grains of rice, but I'm still using the process of working one square at a time. So here, for example, I'm going to mark in a few of the grains of rice shapes. So I'm looking at the grains within the box and just trying to get them mapped in. It's only really the few more prominent ones. Just try and get them mapped in pretty accurately as much as I can. Can't stress enough that they don't need to be perfect. I don't need everything to be exactly the same as the reference photo, but I can certainly use the grid lines and what I can see on that reference as a very good guide. Now, I always think if you are struggling with this, you can always make the grid on the paper smaller. It'll make it even easier to see where all of these shapes need to go. And we do expect it to be looking a little bit peculiar throughout the sketch. All we're really trying to do is just draw in the most prominent shapes within each square rather than making this look like sushi at the end of the sketch. You'll see them working from the left towards the right, and generally from the top to the bottom. You can actually do this in whatever order you want, it doesn't really matter. I just like working in this way. So once I've worked my way through every single square and I have a nice and clear sketch. All I then want to do is use an eraser to erase those lines. Now, as I mentioned, this will be far easier if you press lighter with the pencil. As you can see, I'm not really able to completely erase this, but hopefully this gives you a good idea of the process that I go through. Remember, this is actually how the sketch outlines should look at the end of this section. I've created this sketch, let's start working through the drawing. And we'll keep working through that process one step at a time. 9. Build up the Lightest Colors: I want to start off here by putting something down on the paper. Right now, we've got nothing. My goal for this first section is to build up the key shapes and colors, get something that we can be building upon. So what I want to be doing is looking for the lightest color I can see in each section. And let's start off by looking at the largest section. This is the rice. Lightest color I can see within the rice is this very light gray here. I'm deliberately avoiding these white patches. I'm not going to worry about that right now. I want to be finding the closest match to this light gray here or this gray. This maybe is a little bit lighter around here. Now, looking at the pencils in my set, I would say the closest match is the lightest cold gray. And in terms of how I'm putting the pencil down, the most important thing is that it wants to be putting it down nice and lightly. I don't want to be pressing really hard with the pencil because I'm going to need to build up a lot of layers here to really build up all of the colors within the sushi. To allow me to press nice and lightly to stop me from pressing too hard, you'll notice that I'm holding the pencil further back than you might expect. I'm not holding it really close to the tip, and this stops me from being able to press too hard. It gives me a lot more control over the pencil. It allows me to press lighter easier with the pencil. Start building up some of this color over the seaweed that's wrapping around the center of the sushi. And all of those light patches that I mentioned towards the top, these light patches around here. They're not really white, like you might expect. They are more of a cold gray. White is similar cold gray to what's on the rice. Going to use this as opportunity to kind of roughly mark in where these light patches are going to need to go. I don't want to just be blocking in the whole area because I don't want to go over those green dots at the top. So I'm going to use the sketch lines that I've already got here to work around those dots and generally build up a little bit of the color along the top. The most important thing here is that we don't need to be trying to get this perfect. As I said before, the goal here is to get something down on the paper, but it doesn't need to be perfect. Are going to be so many opportunities later as we build up all of the other shapes and all of the other colors to correct anything and add to all of this. I literally just want to be getting something down on the paper. Sweats have added in this gray all over the top, avoiding where those green patches are going to go. So you'll see I've mostly gone around the edge. I now want to block in this gray over everywhere where the rice is going to. Again, let's go through some of the things I'm doing to try and get this down nice and lightly and smoothly. So you'll see, as I mentioned, I'm holding the pencil about halfway down the barrel. But beyond that, I also want to be getting this down as smoothly as possible. There's not a huge amount of texture sort of within the rice. There's obviously all of the shapes. But the underlying color is a smooth color. So I just want to get some solid smooth color over the whole of the area. To help me with this, what I'm doing is working in kind of oval motions. You'll see that rather than just scribbling back and forth, I'm working in circular or oval motions, and this just helps the pencil go down in a much smoother way. Beyond that, it's going to go down again, more smoothly and more consistently with a sharp pencil. Now, I do frequently take my pencil away to sharpen so that I'm always working with a nice and sharp point. Let's work all the way around the outside everywhere where the rice is going to be, just to put something down in this area, and quite quickly, I have something to be working from. It's not looking amazing. Obviously, it doesn't really look like sushi, but that's fine. We're just going to work through this one step at a time. I want to keep working through the colors, and I now want to look for the lightest color in the next area. So I'm noticing around the filling of the sushi here, it's a lot of green. There's green on this piece here, around the edge here, and all over this piece, as well as the green spots on the top. Want to pick the closest green that I have in my set, and I would say that that is the earth green, yellowish. This is, as it says in the name, a slightly yellowy green, but it is a very natural looking color. Now, I would say that it's probably quite a bit darker than the color I ideally want to add here, but this is where we just need to be pressing nice and lightly. I don't want to put absolutely loads of the pencil down. I just want to put a light amount to create a really nice, light, earthy green color. I'm focusing on going around the edge of this first piece. Towards the center of the sushi, I think it gets a bit more yellow, so we'll add that in in a second, but I just want to build up the green areas. And in terms of how I'm putting this pencil down, you'll notice I'm doing it in very much the same way as I did for the gray a second ago. Now, actually, on this pencil of mine, it's quite a short pencil, but I still want to hold it nice and far back like I was before. So you'll see that I'm using a pencil extender here. This just screws onto the end of the pencil and makes it longer. It means that I can use my pencils for longer. They'll all last longer. See, I'm still working in circular motions as well, and I've still got a nice and sharp pencil. So let's just add the green in anywhere where I can see a hint of green that's literally all I want to do at the moment. So block in this whole piece of filling down the bottom and also go a little bit around the corner up here. Although it's not massively easy to see on camera at this point, I can still see my sketch lines. So I certainly have a good idea on where I'm needing to build up all of these shapes. Also use the same green to mark in the dots on the top of the sushi. And again, I can a little bit rely on my sketch lines for this. I have marked some of these spots in, but not all of them. But I'm also just trying to see where they all are in relation to each other. I don't feel I need to get all of the spots perfectly mapped. I am trying to get it within reason as close to the reference photo as possible and literally just adding some small little circular motions where all of these dots need to go is going to make life so much easier as I move on, particularly to some of the darker colors, as well as adding in some of the details because it's just all part of me getting my bearings, working out what needs to go where so that I can build up the color and vibrancy later. So you can see, as I'm getting towards the right, I kind of just need to block in some quite large areas. There's just some quite large patches of green. And again, it's not looking amazing, but that's fine. So let's now think about the lightest color in the next section. Looking at this pink part of the filling here. Now, the closest color I have to this area, I would say is the coral pencil. It's kind of the lightest earthy pink I've got. The rest of the pinks are much more I don't know, kind of cartoony. I want this to be a bit more salmon colored. I assume it's salmon. So let's mark in around the edge and then again, use these little circular motions to just try and put down the color as smoothly as possible. I will need to build up a lot more colors within this section and generally build up the vibrancy. But as I say, that's not the goal for right now. Right now, we just want to get something down and get all of this mapped. I add a little bit of this pink around the top, as well. There's another piece of filling up here. And then the center section is a much darker patch of filling. But it has kind of an underlying color of the pink. So I'm going to add it in now anyway, and we can build up the darker colors over the top. When I added in the green before, as I mentioned on particularly this piece here, towards the center of the filling is much more of a yellow color. So let's use this yellow. This is the closest yellow, again, that I can find in my set of pencils. I feel like I keep saying this, but it's kind of a more earthy yellow. All of the colors are reasonably natural colors. They're not on the most part, super vibrant. I can add in this yellow, slightly going over the green. I kind of want to blend these colors together. So I can go to the edge of the filling, but also over that green. And then finally, on this piece of filling down the bottom, this is more of an orangy color. It's not dissimilar, I guess, to the pink, but just has a much more vibrant orange tone to it. So actually, I am going to use quite a bright orange this time, rather than a more muted orange. As I say, I just want to be picking the closest match that I can in my set. See, I'm still holding the pencil quite far back. I'm still working in these circular motions, just to give me that base, all of the base layers that we can then build upon. So now I'm generally happy with a lot of the underlying colors. I obviously have nothing down at the moment on the very dark areas, particularly around the seaweed that's wrapping the sushi up, but we will add base layers in in the next chapter with some of the darker colors. My goal here is to work generally from the lighter colors towards the darker colours until everything is mapped in on the sushi. Actually, before we move on to some of the darker colors, I'm going to go back to the light gray that I used at the very beginning to begin marking in some of the shapes on the rice. So the rice is probably the most complicated part of this whole drawing. Because of the rice being made up of all of those kind of oval shapes, it feels more complicated than a lot of the seaweed around the edge, for example, it's just a more simple series of shapes to try and make the rice feel a little bit less complicated, so it's a bit less overwhelming. I'm actually going to use this light gray pencil to begin mapping in some of the more obvious shapes towards the middle. Now, it's again, hard to see on camera, but I can very lightly still see a lot of my sketch lines. So although it looks like I'm just adding in some circles, I am actually still following those sketch lines and just trying to make all of those marks that I added in with the sketch a bit more obvious. I wouldn't say that I'm pressing hard for this. I would say I'm pressing harder than I was to start with. I'm probably applying a medium pressure, and I'm literally going to go around adding in all of the very obvious oval shapes. So that's a mixture of going over the sketch lines for all of these ovals. I obviously didn't mark in every grain of rice when I created the sketch, but because I have some reference points within the rice, I can see where the different pieces of rice are in relation to each other. Can add in not only the sketch lines, but also some of the more obvious areas of rice around it. And by adding in these rice pieces roughly at this point with this very light gray, it means that later, if I feel like things aren't looking quite right, it'll be much easier to adjust that when I add a darker color over going to work around. I like working in quite a kind of methodical way. So I'm going to work around clockwise. I think it gets much simpler as we get towards the right. There's a lot less of these grains of rice that are visible. You can see all of this detail on the grains of rice all around here and around here. But when we get to this kind of third of the circle around here, you can really only see a few lines. There's not a huge amount of detail here at all. So I can map in those odd lines I can see around this right hand side, but as I say, there's not a huge amount more that I need to do at this point on this side. Again, when you really look at the rice that's here and all the shapes that make up these parts of the rice, you'll see that they're actually quite large in relation to the rest of the sushi. You imagine they're going to be really small grains of rice. But I guess this is quite a small piece of sushi. So again, it's not as complicated as it might appear because we're working with some quite big pieces, really. And actually, once we've initially marked things in, particularly after the next chapter as well, it's all going to get so much easier because it will be so clear where everything needs to go. But for this first chapter, I think it's best that we leave it here. In the next chapter, we can start going from the mid tone colors towards the dark colors and really build up and refine these shapes a bit better, but not build up all of the color yet. Alright, but that is it for this first chapter. 10. Build up the Midtone and Darkest Colors: Now I've built up all of the absolute lightest colors. Let's start moving on to the mid tones and some of the darker colors. So I'm actually going to keep using a cold gray, but this is the darker cold gray in my sets. I've only got two cold grays, and I want to start building up all of the shapes within the rice a bit clearer. So let's have a look at the back of the sushi here. Look at the rice around the back, it's much darker than you may initially expect here, particularly. It's lighter than the seaweed here, but not much lighter. There's a dark shadow along here, then it's dark through here along here. There's a particularly dark patch along here, and you can see more clearly the dark patches when you compare it to the light patches like here in here. I'm going to work up the back here, just roughly mapping in those shapes. As I always say, it doesn't have to be perfect. But I do want to try and get them mapped in reasonably similar to the reference photo. Now, once again, in terms of how I'm doing this, it's very similar to what I was doing in the first chapter. I'm still holding the pencil quite far back. Once again, I've moved my pencil extender onto this pencil so that I can comfortably hold it further back. I'm still working with a sharp pencil. And even though I'm building up all of the patches, all of the shapes over the sushi, I'm still working in circular motion. Actually, there's a lot less that needs adding in as I get up to the top. Here, it gets much lighter at the top. It's much darker at the bottom. So now let's use this same gray to go over all of the rice that I marked in with that lighter gray in the last chapter, make it more obvious, really start defining the shapes within the rice. Now, the most important thing about the rice that you need to remember is that it's no doubt much darker than you would expect. I think because it's white rice, we assume that it is going to be white. But actually, when you look at it, how dark some of the areas or most of the areas are around the rice. There's very few patches that are very white and light. Most of them are either a light gray, a mid gray or really very dark. So I find it easiest to be working one section at a time. I want to be looking at the oval shapes that I've already marked in. Focus on drawing the outlines on each of these oval shapes, and then I can shade around the edges of these lines to kind of smooth them out so that they don't look like I've just put a load of outlines. And generally on the grains of rice, they are lighter in the middle and darker around the edge around the outside. But I'm not necessarily assuming that I am looking at each of these grains of rice, and I'm focusing on drawing what I can see. So for these first grains of rice, I'm looking at drawing this here and this here. And then there's this very dark patch to the right hand side. So I've drawn the outline of here, the outline of here. I don't need to add a huge amount of shading onto the rice itself. Most of the shading needs to happen around the outside because it's so much darker. That said, the rice itself particularly here. And this whole grain aren't super light. So I do need to be adding a little bit of shading. I can then move on to the next grains of rice. And you can see I'm very much going over what I've already drawn in with that light gray pencil, and the light gray pencil was drawn in based on what I could see from the sketch. So, although it may seem like this is really tricky and I'm going into it, just kind of guessing, I very much have already built up a lot of these shapes. I spent a long time mapping them out on the sketch to try and get all of this quite clear as a template to make my life easier when we add in the pencil now. Once again, I can draw in the outline on this grain of rice up here, and you can see quite clearly here me going over the lines of the lighter gray and then shading around the outside. And I think it all looks pretty peculiar right now because really all I've got at the moment is the rice. We haven't really drawn in a huge amount of other things. Right now, it does look odd. But that's fine. As I said, the whole goal of these first two sections is to try and get my bearings to try and work out what needs to go where. Probably the most important thing out of all of this is to be working with a sharp pencil because that is going to make life so much easier. If you try and map in all of these shapes with a blunt pencil, it's going to be really hard to control where that pencils going. Now, as I said before in the last chapter, as we get around to this right hand side, there is a lot less detail around here. Really only need to draw in those few lines that again, I already mapped in with the previous pencil. So this straight line that's going down here, I want to fade that into the rice to the left of it and map in this line. But again, you can see I've already marked this in with that light gray. And then I can start working around the bottom where the rice again gets a bit clearer, and I can start marking this out one grain of rice at a time. Once again, mapping out the outline of the rice. And then once I'm happy, I've got those main shapes marked in. I can start shading some of the darker patches in between the rice. Now, I am going through this reasonably quickly. I'm not going through every single grain of rice. Because I think actually, if you use the sketch lines that you've created with the rice, it's not as tricky as you might expect. And as I keep saying, it doesn't need to be perfect. We just want to get these shapes initially down. So as I work up this left hand side, a lot of the left hand side actually needs to be very dark. There's the very clear oval shapes that I'm going over here, a lot of which I've already marked. Actually, this area around here in the bottom left, it's really quite dark, and I need to build up quite a lot of the pencil. There's not too much detail to be added here. But I can just build up the color in exactly the same way as I would before with circular motions. So now I've worked my way around the rice. As I said, I do think it looks a little bit odd at this point, but that's fine. Let's keep working from the mid tone colors gradually towards the darker colors. So I want to be thinking about the next darkest color that I can see. Actually, I'm focusing a lot now on the center, the filling again. Looking at this darker color down here, as well as this kind of triangular patch up here and this whole central section, this all, to me, looks like a kind of mid to dark, reddish brown. Now, I do have a reddish brown in my set. I would say that Bent Sienna is that kind of tone. So I'm going to use this pencil to lightly map in some of these shapes. So you can see me adding in that strip to the edge of the pink shape, and then let's map in the darker kind of triangular shape in the middle of this section. Actually, particularly towards the left hand side of this patch, it does get really, very dark. But we're going to add this color at this point, and we can always add darker pencil over the top of it. This is a great time to be able to really refine the shape of the central section. So I'm really looking at my reference photo as I am mapping in the shapes on the edge here, also using my sketch lines that I can still faintly see. To just work around here, map in the edge, and then I can shade in as we have done, nice and lightly with circular motion. You see, we're just blocking this in, trying to make it as smooth as possible. I don't expect it to be perfect. And then let's go through any other areas that have a little hint of this reddish brown. So I mentioned this triangular shape up the top here. Once again, I've marked in the edges of the shape, and then I am shading it in as smoothly and clearly as I can. And actually, I'm also going to add some of this reddish brown to some patches in between the rice. This little triangle here, this kind of square shape here, this shape here, all I would say, have a reddish brown tone to them rather than just being a dark gray. Now, I don't know if it's exactly this bunt sienna color, but it's the closest match that I've got to it right now, so I'm going to draw in these shapes with this color, and then I can always tweak it a little bit later. Now, this is all made a lot easier because I have already marked out a lot of those grains of rice shape, so I can kind of see where I expect these brown patches to. I'm also going to add a light layer of this burnt sienna on this left hand side here where the seaweed is. As I mentioned when we were looking at the reference photo to begin with, there's a kind of orangy, reddy brown along here in a slightly lighter patch, which I think is a reflection from the sushi next to it. So I'm going to put a light covering of this color in this patch, and then we can build up some of the shapes over the top of it. Alright, so I'm just going to go over a few other areas back over the middle. I think there's a bit more reddish brown here than I don't have anything to begin with. So let's just build up a little bit of the color here generally on this pink section of the filling. This is where we put the coral pencil and maybe a little bit over this area just on the left hand side. And actually, I think I'm also going to add a little bit on top of some of the rice. Here, this has a little bit of that same reddish brown tone here, and you can see it around here. So let's just add a really light covering, and we can always add this in further a bit later if it's not looking kind of strong enough. And then let's move on to the next darkest color. So I now want to be adding in a darker brown, particularly on this central point here. This is the walnut brown. It's the darkest brown that I have in my set, and I'm just going to add this to mostly the left hand side. So you can see how we're going from the lighter colors generally towards the darker colors, just mapping in all of the key shapes and colors. I always say, it doesn't need to be perfect. I just want to be really getting my bearings, building up all of these base layers. So there's a few areas within this section in the middle where I think it generally just needs to be a little bit darker. Usually, where one piece of the filling is meeting and up against the next piece. I'm also going to add some of this brown over the top, where I added that reddish brown a second ago, just to make it a little bit darker, a little bit richer. I'm also going to start filling in some of the patterns on the seaweed here. So right now, we don't really have any dark colors on the seaweed. We don't have a huge amount here at all. But as I mentioned, you can see in this area, it's actually quite light. It's that base layer of the burnt sienna, that reddish brown. And then it's got all of these darker lines and patches running through it like this. I want to be mapping in these darker lines. Don't actually have any of this marked in from my sketch. So I'm just going to try and follow the lines as closely as I can, but I don't expect it to be perfect. You'll see that I am still going about this in the same way. I'm still holding the pencil quite far back. I'm still working in these circular motions. I'm just kind of trying to build up the color in a series of strips to try and get it all mapped in reasonably accurate. I'm pretty happy with the walnut brown. There's actually not a huge amount of brown, I would say, on this sushi. For the whole remaining part of this chapter, I'm just going to focus now on using the black. So within the sushi, there is a lot of dark color. And actually, it's probably a very dark gray, but I don't have a very, very dark gray. So what I'm going to do is block in all of the dark gray and black areas with the black, but once again, pressing nice and lightly so that it's not going to be too dark. So, for example, I'm working from those patches that I added in with the walnut brown working up. There's a lot of light patches that we added the light cold gray to earlier, all of the light patches on the seaweed. I want to be working around those patches to fill in a light amount of the gray, as well as adding a reasonably defined line around the edge. So let's look at what's actually a very prominent and very dark line around the edge with the seaweed going with kind of vs into the rice. It's then very dark all around here, but there's a little lighter strip before it gets to the rest of the seaweed. So that's why I'm adding this darker line right around the edge of the seaweed and adding some extra shading further in. But there's a little bit of a line in between that we will tweak later. Add in some of these darker spots around the middle to top of the sushi. So you can see me just adding in all of these dots, and I'm looking at where they all are on the reference photo to try and get them mapped in correctly in relation to each other. So I find once you've got a few of the dots marked in, it gets much easier to work out where the rest of them need to. Let's add a little bit of shading around the bottom. It's actually reasonably dark down here, and then I want to just blend it into that brown that we added before. So just applying a solid block of this color down here nice and smoothly. And then I can start working my way around the top. So working around the edge of the seaweed up here, filling in all of those little kind of triangular shapes that are going down in between the rice. And this is all made ten times easier because that rice is pretty much mapped in already. So I find it easiest, again, to draw the outlines of the shapes and then shade it in once I know where that shape is going to be see that even on the areas that I will want to be a very dark black, I'm still not pressing hard at this point. I can add a lot more pressure later on once I'm sure that I've got everything in the right place. So let's go all the way along the top, and then I can start focusing on the dark seaweed towards the center. So again, it's a very similar thing. I want to be looking at the shapes that are within here, looking at what I've already mapped in with my sketch lines. And on the most part, I'm just going over these shapes and using circular motions to shade them. So I'm looking out for any darker patches in between the rice where I need to be adding some of the black. And I feel reasonably quickly the sushi comes together is starting to look more like sushi. You'll see that I'm once again working in quite a kind of methodical way and working around the center. Just looking for any patch that needs to be dark. And we can always tweak all of these colors and shapes as we go. Now, for this area on the right hand side, there's actually quite a large area of black along here. So once again, let's draw the nice and smooth outline. And then I want to be drawing in some of the shapes that I can see within this patch. Look how dark this whole section is, but there are some dark green shapes within here that for now, I'm just going to work around. So I draw in the outlines of where those shapes are going to go and then use circular motions to block the area in. Now, let's think about any other areas where I want to add in some of the black. So I'm particularly thinking on the left hand side here. We built up some of the walnut brown here, but I think it's not quite dark enough. Also just going to add a thin line around the edge of the sushi around here. I would say it is on the reference photo, but it's hard to tell because the sushi is on a black background. But I think it's going to make a lot more sense to the drawing if I do add in just a light line around the edge for the seaweed. So it's just a few other areas that I want to make a little bit darker for now. Just around the top here, for example, I think it's quite simple. If you take a minute to step back and look at the reference photo, really compare it to the drawing and think about we looks like it should be a bit darker. Hopefully, it'll be reasonably clear where to add in just a little bit more black. We will be able to add in more of the black later. This isn't the last time we're going to be using the black. I just want to try and get it reasonably accurate, get all of these areas in now, and that will make life much easier later. So by the time that you finish this second chapter, what you should have is a reasonably clear piece of sushi where all of the main shapes are marked in, but the colors don't look right. It doesn't look very realistic, and it's all very washed out. But that's okay. We can build it up further in the next chapter. 11. Build up the Color in the Center of the Sushi: This chapter, I just want to focus on brightening up the center, the filling of the sushi, and then we can start adding to the rest of it later. But right now, the center here is looking way too muted. We don't really have any vibrancy of color. So let's start working through here kind of one piece at a time. I want to be constantly thinking about the most obvious color that's missing. So initially, the most obvious color that's missing on this piece here is the green. We did add the green in the first chapter. But it's looking way too muted now, particularly in comparison to some of the black around it, for example. So I'm going to use that same green that I used in the very first chapter. This is the Earth green yellowish. And I'm just going to build up a bit more of this color, particularly around the edge of this piece of filling. Once again, you'll notice that I'm doing this in exactly the same way as I did before. I'm working in circular motions. I'm holding the pencil quite far back. You'll see I've once again got a pencil extender on this pencil, and I've got a really nice and sharp pencil to help this go down nice and consistently. What we're going to do is every step of this chapter, we're going to add some color in, and then we're going to take a minute to think about the most obvious color that's missing then and then keep doing that for every color we add. So now we have a little bit more color on that green section. I want to brighten up this pink kind of salmon area here. Going to once again use this coral pencil. This is the same color that I used again in the first chapter, and I'm just going to build up more of this color over this section here. Although we had some of this color here, it was just looking a little bit too muted, and I want to add more. And already, I think that's looking a little bit better, but still thinking about this piece of, I think, salmon here, it's not looking rich enough. I don't actually think the coral pencil can be bright enough for what I want this area to be. Let's use the Venetian red. This is not dissimilar to the coral pencil, but it's just a richer color. And I'm going to use this anywhere that I think needs to be a bit darker. So I'm particularly looking along here, all of this section in here, as well as this line coming up here. And generally, there's a lot of kind of stripes of texture along this section. The lighter areas, I think, look right as the coral, but the darker areas I think need adding in with that Venetian red. So you can see, I'm going to go over this whole dark section here with this color to brighten it up. Then I can also start adding this color in on a few other areas. So, generally speaking, the bottom half of this salmon is a lot darker than the top. And as I mentioned, the tops kind of got those stripes, almost. So I start building up this color around the top of this area still with these circular motions to try and get this as smooth as possible. I can kind of do some horizontal kind of oval shapes to get those lines marked in. Now, it's worth mentioning that on this area, I would say that there's quite a few patches of light, but we will be adding those in later on. I'm not going to worry about that right now. So let's keep building up the areas bit by bit. You'll see that I just keep going over the same parts. Because I want to gradually build up the color, I don't want to just put it down really harshly. Throughout all of this, I'm always pressing lightly and always working in those circles. You can see most of what I've built up is towards the bottom and on generally this right hand side. Now, once again, I would say, for every color that I add in, it makes the next color more obvious that's missing. So from here, comparing my drawing to my reference photo, the most obvious color that's missing is that this area isn't orange enough. We added this same orange in again, right at the very beginning with a really, really light layer of the pencil. I want to add more of that color. Let's once again use circular motions to build up a little bit more of this color and just increase the vibrancy of this patch. Now, as a very rough general rule in this chapter, I want to be again, working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors. So I'm starting off by focusing on brightening up all of these lighter areas and the midtones. And then as we work our way towards the end of this chapter, we will end up with the black pencil to really define those darkest areas. Again, still working through a lot of the colors that I added right at the very beginning, I now want to brighten up this piece here and add some more of the same yellow I added before. And then, actually, that shows me that the green isn't looking green enough. It's not bright enough. So I'm going to use a different green to what I was using earlier. This is the pine green. It's quite a rich green, a much darker green than the earth green, yellowish. And I'm once again going to use this green nice and lightly around the edge of this area. Not necessarily an absolutely perfect match for this section, but I think it is much closer than the other green. And when I built some other colors over the top of it, I think I can get it to be a closer color. I do, however, think this green is a much closer match to the filling around this right hand side. And actually, on the most part, I want to block in this color all around this right hand side. So going over these little sections here around the black, and I want to go over this whole bottom piece. This bottom piece is darker on this right hand side, darker on the left, but lighter through the middle. That's what I want to be trying to build up with my pencil and building up more of the pencil on this right hand side to begin with and fading it into the lighter area in the middle. So just building up a little bit of color into that middle section. And then I can do the same on the left hand side. Build up a decent amount of the color all over the left and gently fade it into the middle. I also build up some of this green around this section too. So we're already looking much more vibrant, but it's not quite enough. So let's keep building up these colors. Now, on this piece of green here, I actually want to make it more of a yellowy green, so I can just add some of that yellow over the top that we used before. And actually, I'm going to add some of this yellow on the bottom of the orange section too to make it a little bit more of a orangy yellowy orange rather than just an orange. Can see how just adding a little bit of the yellow on top of the green, it completely changes the color. It's always amazing to me what a massive difference a tiny amount of pencil can make. So let's keep working from those lighter colors towards the darker colors, and the main color now that I think we need to add is more of a reddish brown. This again is a color that we have used before. We have built up this color in this area. I just want to add more. I would say I'm beginning to use sort of light to medium pressure. I'm not pressing hard, but I'm not pressing as lightly as I have done. And let's also add some of this color around the edge of the orange section. This is going to help make it look a little bit more three D, like there's a shadow on the orange and the green section of filling is in front. Let's build up this pencil in a few different places anywhere where I want it to be kind of a dark orange or a dark pink. I think it works really well for both. So, for example, you can see it's a little bit darker around here. It's obviously much darker where we've added it around here. You can also see some of this reddish brown around this area, a lot of it in this section, and all around the top. Look how brown, kind of reddy brown this area really is. Try to build that color all around the top of this pink section. That even though I am now pressing a bit firmer than I was, I am still working in circular motions. You'll notice that I'm holding the pencil closer to the tip, though. I'm not holding it really close to the back anymore, just because I do want to start pressing a bit firmer to build up some more of the color. And as I said, it's not possible to press hard, or it's very difficult to press hard if you hold it far. Just building up this color bit by bit on this salmon colored area. And I think, as I've said before, for every color I add, it makes it clear the next color that's missing. So I'm going to use a raw umber pencil now. This is kind of a light brown, but I would think if it as a yellowish brown. I think it matches very well the kind of brown that I can see in this corner here. And generally, there's this kind of triangular shape here. All along here, it's quite a dark as I say, yellowish brown, all along. Still avoiding all of these white patches. So let's start adding in some of this color to add a bit more contrast to this section. We want to be bit by bit adding some contrast because that's what's going to give the whole drawing shapes. So you can see I'm drawing in some of the shapes that I can see within this section. So there's kind of some I mentioned the darker triangular section towards the bottom. There's some lighter patches and darker patches. As I always say, you don't need to get it absolutely perfect. I'm just trying to focus on this section and focus on trying to get the shapes that I can see roughly mapped. Think it's easiest to not think about drawing filling of sushi. What we're focusing on drawing is just a series of colors and shapes. And if we follow what we can see on the reference photo, it will end up looking like sushi. So, I'm happy with this piece on the left hand side, this greenish piece, let's add a little bit more of this color to the orange section as well. Just add a little bit more contrast here as well. It's not as dark of a color as the bunt sienna, but it does still add a certain amount of richness to this section. Once I'm happy with this color, let's keep thinking about the next obvious color that's missing whilst also working from these lighter colors towards the darker colors. I'm actually now going to use the walnut brown pencil. Again, this is the darkest brown that I have in my set, and I want to be going over any area that I think needs to be darker. I'm going to go back over this corner that I mentioned a second ago. I think it's not looking dark enough at the moment. I'm also going to go all over the green sections with this brown. See that it still shows through as green. This is just kind of turning it into a very dark green that I think is a better match to the reference photo. And I'm going to work my way around the whole of this section, thinking about anywhere that needs to be made a bit darker. Some areas obviously need to be a lot darker, and we will be adding the black to those areas. But anywhere that just needs to be a little bit richer. So, for example, on a lot of this dark patch in the middle, it's just looking too light right now. I want to build up a decent amount of color all over this right hand side, and generally build up a bit more of this brown over the right here as well. Dark areas are starting to look a bit better now. Let's think about adding in that darkest color. So I'm going to move on now to the black. And actually, because we've mapped everything in so clearly, this is reasonably simple. For most of the black areas, I want it to be a really jet black because we're filling in the seaweed. I want it to be really popping. I am now going over all of the areas that I've previously marked in, so it's very clear where it does and doesn't need to go. I'm using a really nice and firm pressure. I don't want to be pressing lightly because I want this to look like a really solid black. I'm just going to work in the same way that I normally would working around the outside, really looking at the shapes that I can see around here and just generally getting this contrast really clearly marked in, so I can go over this kind of triangular shadow up the top up this is made so much easier because I've already marked it in with a softer pencil. I think it was actually the black I marked it in with, but I was pressing much lighter so it doesn't look as bright of a color. And if I need to slightly tweak the shape of an area, then I can do is very clear if I need to do that because of going over it with a softer pencil. Work all around this left hand side as well. You can see some areas I do need to press lighter. Like around the top of this area here, I don't actually want it to be really jet black in this area. I just want it to be darker than it is at the moment. Whereas in this central section, I do really want it to be very dark. Work around the bottom as well. You'll see that I'm filling in a lot of the shapes that you can see around this bottom. It's not all perfectly smooth around here. There's various black lines coming out from the edge, various bumps along here as well. And it's amazing how just adding in this black at this point, makes all of the rest of the colors pop so much more than they previously did. So in this area around the right hand side, I want to be once again going around those lighter areas that I mentioned before. Once I've joined up all of the black, I feel like I've marked in all of those darkest areas. What I now want to do is actually go back to the walnut brown and tone down some of the black areas. So I think often when you put black in, it obviously works around the outside of this section, but for a lot of the shadowed areas, I think it can look quite harsh if you leave the black on its own. I think dark brown looks better. But this walnut brown pencil, although it is the darkest brown in my set, it's not really that dark. I certainly feel I've got darker browns in other sets. So by adding this pencil over the top of the black, what I end up with is a much darker brown. It doesn't look as harsh as the black. Now that I've added in that black, I think it is also easier to see other areas where it needs to be darker. And I'm going to go around all of these shadowed areas just toning everything down. Once again, I think for every color that I add in, it makes the next color that's missing more obvious. And all of those colors that we added in at the beginning of this chapter, I now think look a little bit too muted. So for the last little bit of this section, let's go back to those same colors and brighten everything up one more time. So I'm going back to the Venetian red to brighten up, particularly this darker area here, adding this color over the top of the brown and it's also over the top of the black, it just makes it look a bit more like a dark red, similar to what I was saying about the brown. Go back over the orange section with the orange pencil and brighten this up again and go back over the green sections with the pine green, doing exactly the same as I did before, but we're just adding in more of the pencil. And actually, for the green sections, a lot of them, I think the pine green looks a little bit too harsh. So I'm just going to add the earth green yellowish, which I still think is very much a color in these sections. I'm going to add some of this color over the top. And again, you can see how it massively changes the color in this section. We're nearly at the end of this chapter now. I'm feeling much happier with how the filling is looking in this area. We will shortly be able to move on to brightening up all of the sushi around the edge. It doesn't mean that we're not going to come back to this section later once everything else is filled in, and it's a bit clearer what else needs adding. But for now, I think this is all looking much better. So let's brighten up this area a little bit more. I think actually the Venetian red in just this area isn't looking bright enough. So I can add in the deep scarlet red to really give it that extra little bit ness. This is one of the brightest reds I have in this set. And you can see what a difference that's making down here. It looks so much brighter. I'll add a tiny bit around the edge here. And actually, a little bit on the orange section on the shadows. Where I put that burnt sienna? I think adding a little bit of extra red is just helping it blend in better with the orange. Of the last colors I'm going to use in this section is going back to that coral pencil that we used at the beginning. Just to tone down some of the lighter areas along here, they're looking too light. So just a light covering of this color all over this salmon section and a little bit along the edge here. I can see a little hint in this area. Then actually, I'm going to add a tiny bit of cool gray. If you look particularly here, you can see a kind of bluey gray tone just around the edge of this section. I feel like it's quite subtle, but I can also see it, so I do want to draw it in. But then, by the end of this section, you should have the filling of the sushi now looking much closer to the reference photo. Let's focus on the rest of the drawing. 12. Brighten the Outside of the Sushi: Now we brightened up the center of the sushi, let's focus on brightening up and adding more contrast to the areas around the edge. And I'm going to start off by focusing again on the rice. I want to start here by thinking about, again, the most obvious color that's missing within the rice. So although the rice is primarily a couple of cold grays, when you look in some of the shadows like this shadow here, for example, and generally around here, has much more of a brown tone to it. You can see it particularly obviously in the dark patches here. But also, you can see it around here, for example, in this shadow. So use a brown to add a slight more earthy tone to these shadows, make it more brown rather than gray in some areas. So I'm going back to the walnut brown that we used a lot in the last chapter to add this in in any areas where I think it should have a bit more of a brown. Now you'll notice that I'm not necessarily using the pencil really harshly. I'm still pressing lightly. Similar to what we were doing in the very first chapter. Actually, I want to use a kind of softer amount of this brown. I don't want it to be the very dark brown that it can be if you press a bit firmer or build up more of the color. And I'm going to work my way around the rice, building up some of this brown. So building up some of the brown in this dark patch that I mentioned a second ago and generally go over any of the shadows that do have a hint of brown to them. So I'm once again starting in one area of the circle, and I'm going to work my way round. Now, this is so much easier than when we've worked on the rice before now, because all of the shapes are so clearly mapped out. So I'm just looking at each individual grain of rice, seeing if I think it needs a little hint of brown added to it and lightly adding that in if it does. Now, this is quite a time consuming process because I'm looking at each of these individual grains of rice rather than something a bit faster. We're not blocking in a solid area of color. But it's not too tricky because at least we do have that guide of what's already been mapped. See that I am holding the pencil not as far back as I have done at some points within this drawing. But I'm not holding it really close to the tip. I'm holding it a little bit further back. That's because I do want to have a decent amount of control over the pencil. But I also want to be still pressing lightly. As I say, it's not a color that I want to be putting absolutely loads on the paper. I want to just be adding a little hint of the on this left hand side, I do want to be building up a reasonable amount of the brown. As I mentioned, this shadow over the left is much darker than various other places on the rice. I'm just going to tidy up the line along the bottom, make this a little bit clearer and a little bit neater. And I'm generally working my way around, so I'm working my way around the top now. I'm going about this in a very similar way to how I did when I marked these shapes in initially. So you'll see that I'm first off drawing a clear line on where I want the shading to kind of end. Once I've added in that clear line, I can then shade down from that line to kind of blend it into the shape underneath. So very similar to what I was doing before. Do you remember, it's going to be ten times easier if you have a nice and sharp pencil to do this. I'm just going to add a little bit more down the bottom here. And then, actually, I think most of the rest of the rice doesn't really have this brown tone. On the most part, I can't see any of it along the bottom or on the right hand side. I still do want to up the contrast in these areas, but I would say the other rice patches that I need to add in are more of a gray color. Let's go back to that darker gray that we added in before to mark out all of these shapes initially. And I'm once again going to go over each piece of rice looking at where I need to add that extra shading. Now, once again, this is so very similar to what we did before. It just becomes easier to see where we need to add this shading as the areas around it, like the center of the sushi starts to look a bit more realistic. Once again, working over each of these grains of rice individually to look at where I need to add more of the shading. I always think it's important to really take note of the colors within, particularly things like rice, where we think of it as white, because actually, a lot of the rice is so very deep gray. In fact, look at some of these grains of rice down the bottom. They are really dark, almost black in some places. But I think it's easy to assume that it's going to be a bright white, and actually it's so much darker than you might imagine. Going along these areas on the bottom here, where we do want to have those few patches of much darker rice, let's build up the gray a little bit more in these areas, and we can always add a darker color in a second. In actuality, the only real darker kind of gray color that I have is the black pencil, so we can just lightly add some of the black in in a short while. But for now, I want to work my way around the rice, once again, going over all of these grains at the bottom. And I am very much looking at all of the lights and darks on each grain of rice. Noting that this grain of rice has kind of a line down the center and it's darker on the left and lighter on the right. It's darker along here. It's a little bit darker in this top left in this grain of rice and lighter on the right, and it's darker here and lighter over here. So I'm just noticing all of these light patches and dark patches and trying my best to replicate them where I can. Bit simpler up this right hand side. As I mentioned before, there's not a huge amount that needs adding up here. It's just a little bit of light shading, and there's the odd line in this section, too. And then I'll just darken down some of the rice grains at the top. Generally speaking, the grains at the very top are actually a lot lighter than on the rest of the sushi. Most of the light seems to be coming from the right hand side. Or the top. As I've got this gray pencil. Let's also add a little bit of extra shading on the rice at the back here. Again, I'm just going over what I already did right in that very first chapter to just make this a bit darker, looking at the shapes that are here, making them just a little bit richer. And then I'm going to start focusing on the wrap around the sushi. So I'm going to lightly use this gray over any area that I don't want to be a really light gray. So most of the light patch on the top of this section is very light. Some are lighter than what I've got. I would say, actually, although we did put some of the lighter cold gray down on the light section here, it looks almost like it's just bare paper, so I just want to build up a little bit more color. Before we move on from this pencil, let's just add a little light shadow underneath. At the moment, the sushi is not sitting on anything, and I do want it to have a base. We can build that up a little bit more later. Let's now move on to the black pencil. As I mentioned, this is the only pencil that I've got really, that's a darker kind of gray than the cold gray. Going to use this pencil to make the shadowed areas a little bit darker and to really deepen down this wrap around here. Now, let's have a look at what's in this section. Right now, what we've got is really a very light gray. The bottom here, this is pretty much jet black. As we work up the seaweed here, there's all of these lines that we've drawn in previously and a more kind of reddy orangy tone. But the black line is a really strong black line all around the edge. So it's build up some of this black really get the contrast looking much better in this area. Now, I would say, because I need to build up a good amount of the black I want it to really stand out, I am using more like a medium pressure here rather than just pressing really light. Still build up the pencil by going over the areas multiple times, still with circular motions to try and make it nice and smooth. But if I press really lightly, it'll take me a very long time to build up all of the color. I want to work a little bit faster than that. Just get a decent amount of the pencil down. I'm not pressing full force because I'll end up with a slightly scratchy looking finished drawing. And I still potentially want to be adding other colors over the top of this as we go here. So you'll see I'm blocking in this area at the bottom, and then I'm also going over all of these lines that I've already marked in. So I know where all of these lines need to be going, all of these shapes on this area. Getting everything that's here more. I want it to be darker, I want it to be richer, and I want to be able to still build other colors over the top of it, though. But right now it is so far from dark enough. Again, it is still important to keep a nice and sharp pencil. You can see here that my pencil is nice and sharp. I do just find. Even when you're using a medium pressure, the pencil will go down more consistently with a sharp pencil. Obviously, with using the medium pressure, I do find that I need to sharpen the pencil more often. So it's worth bearing in mind that you do expect to need to do that. So it's work around the top, fill in this very dark line around the edge of the sushi. I'm also going to go over all of these black dots that I've already mapped in on the top of the sushi here. And already, I think that is looking much, much better. Let's just work around the rice again with the black pencil to add some extra shading on any areas where I think it needs to be a bit darker. I did start this down the bottom. I'm just going to work my way around here. There's not a huge amount that I need to be adding in. On just some of these particularly dark patches, like here, for example, I think on this section, around the edge, it really benefits from just being that little bit darker. Most part, I need to add some of this color towards the bottom. As I've mentioned, some of these grains of rice down the bottom are particularly dark. I don't necessarily want to be using medium pressure down the bottom here. I would say I'm pressing lightly, but just gradually building up some of this black. I'm also going to add a tiny bit of extra black along the back, not a huge amount. Then I think that's looking much better. Let's move on to the walnut brown again to start focusing on some of these green patches at the top. Now, these green patches at the moment, I have roughly marked in where they need to go, but they are very much all one solid color. There's no texture or detail added in. When we look at these one by one, you can see that we do need to add some shading. So, for example, on this end green dot, it's darker towards the bottom. There's kind of some dark brown on the bottom, particularly towards the right. The same here, it's a little bit darker towards the middle. It's a little bit darker on the bottom right again here. I'm just going to work through these one at a time, looking at each individual dot and where the shading is on each one. Look at all of the dark brown on these I have tried to get these dots marked in originally as accurately as I could. I didn't expect to get them looking perfect. And just working through them one at a time doesn't feel as difficult, it doesn't feel as overwhelming. And when it all comes together, it does end up looking like these dots on the top. Now, once again, don't worry about trying to get this all absolutely perfect. I'm just using the reference photo as kind of a guide to try and get these in the right place, but I'm not, as you can see, spending a huge amount of time trying to make it exactly the same. To start with, I can fill in all of the dots that I want to add with this walnut brown pencil, and then we can add a darker color where needed in a short while, as well as brightening up the green a little bit. Now, let's also use the walnut brown to add some lighter shading, particularly on the left hand side around here of the seaweed wrap around the middle. You'll see I'm using, again, a medium pressure like I did with the black pencil here, but I am still working in those circular motions. I certainly don't want to be pressing full force. Go over some of the lines that I've already marked in with this dark brown pencil, and then I can add a lighter color to add in the kind of orange glow that I mentioned I can see in this area where the reflection, I think, from the sushi next to this piece. So let's use the Venetian red to brighten up this and add that slightly orangy tint, going over kind of roughly all of this area and just adding a little bit of brightness. I'm also going to add a little bit along here. I can see a slight reflection on the rice, as well. Let's use the same green that we use to begin with at the top to go over the brown and the general shapes along the top here to brighten this up, make all of these little dots look a bit more obvious. Now, I do find for every color that I add, it gets a little bit closer to the finished drawing, and it also becomes a bit easier to see the next most obvious color that's missing. Goal by the end of this chapter isn't for the drawing to be finished. I just want it to be closer to the finished drawing, the finished reference photo. So now I think the edge of the dark patch around here is looking a bit too harsh. I want to blend it into the pretty much white above a bit better. So I'm going to go back to that light cold gray and just fade the dark areas and the light areas together a bit better. It's just giving it a little bit of extra kind of detail, I would say. And also add a little bit of this gray around the back here as well. Let's switch back to the black pencil, add any black dots over the green where the brown seems a little bit too light. If I want to make them a bit darker, I'll add a very light part of the black, generally, add a little bit of kind of final details along the top here. Then at this point, I'm generally happy with how the sushi is looking. I don't think it's finished, but I don't think it's 1 million miles away. I'm just going to for the rest of this chapter, tidy up along the bottom here. So using the black pencil, I'm just adding a nice crisp line along the bottom of the rice and then shading down lightly from that line to just give a nice neat and tidy finish under here. I will tweak this a little bit in the next chapter, but at least it gives something down the bottom here, so that the sushi looks like it is sitting on something. Just going to use the lighter cold gray, just go over the top of this, smooth it out a little bit. Again, I don't want it to be a really prominent shadow down here. I just want it to be like the sushi is set on something. Now, before I move on from this chapter, the last thing I want to do here is tidy up around the edge. So I've got some smudged areas that would benefit from being removed. Just using a putty eraser for this, but any eraser would work fine to just go around the edge and clean this up. So that is the bulk of the sushi drawn. What I can now do in the next chapter is add in the final details, brighten everything up and smooth everything out. But that is it for this section. 13. Add in the Final Details: Let's work our way over the sushi one final time, brighten everything up, smooth everything out and add in the final details. And I'm once again going to start off by focusing on the central section, and then we can move on to the rice and the outside of the sushi. So I want to be looking at the center and working through, once again, the most obvious color that's missing one color at a time. I will say now that in this chapter, we're going to kind of flip between a lot of colors reasonably quickly, particularly because there's so many colors in mostly this central section that we need to be working through and adding. So I'm starting with the yellow color that I added in a few times in this central section. I feel like on the bottom half of the orange area, it's more like a yellowy orange rather than just a bright orange. And you can see how just adding a medium pressure layer of this yellow is not only brightening up the area quite a lot, but it's also smoothing it out. So I'm happy with the yellow down the bottom, and I kind of faded it into the top section. I'm now going to switch back to that quite bright orange and just brighten up the area at the top. I feel like I can see way too many spots of light paper, and it's all still looking too light. It's amazing how many layers we've already added in of particularly this color, and it still looks really muted as we're building up all of the other colors. Once again, notice that I am still working in these circular or oval motions to try and get this as smooth as possible. But I'm not holding the pencil really far back like I have before. I'm still not holding it really close to the tip, but I'm holding it a little bit closer, just to try and get a little bit more control over where the pencil is going. Now, wait, I'm going to slightly go over that yellow section, too, just to try and blend these two colors together. Now, from here, I'm going to move on to the oral pencil, that pink that we used before. To first add a little bit of pink to the edge of this section along. It's looking way too light. And I've mentioned before, I can see a little hint along the edge here and generally along this right hand side. And then I'm going to switch back to that yellow to start focusing a bit more on this piece here. Now, we've added quite a lot of yellow into this section already, but I still don't think it's quite bright enough. So let's just add a very light layer again over this section. Just a very light covering, and I think it's brightening everything up, but also taking that slight patchiness away. It looks much better already. Let's use the raw umber pencil to add to the shading along the edge. I have already used this raw umber along the edge here. In fact, a lot of the colors that I'm using in this chapter are not going to be any different to what I've already used. I just need to add more of them. So I can use this pencil to darken down the left hand edge, but also add some of those kind of folds, I guess, they are in a little bit clearer. So I'm just lightly adding this into any area that needs to be generally darker because I kind of think of this pencil as a light yellowy brown, it's great for just adding shading into the yellow area. Let's think about anywhere else where we can see a hint of this color. I want to be adding a bit of shading on this area here and add some shading onto the pink section. I think this color also works well on the pink area to add a little bit of extra darkness here, too. So I'm just generally making the whole of the pink section look a little bit darker, building up the color a small amount. So once I'm generally happy with this raw umber, I can once again think about the next most obvious color that's missing from here. Actually, I'm going to use the Venetian red to brighten up the center along here. I can see too many light spots of the paper, and it's still just not looking rich enough red, I wouldn't say. So let's apply some firm pressure to brighten this up and block this area in. And as I say, for every color that I add in, I think it makes it clearer than next color that needs to be added. But before we think about that, let's just add some of this Venetian red over the top of where I put that raw umber. I want to make the top along here quite a bit darker. Also going to add some of this Venetian red on top of that orange just to tweak that. Now, I'm still working through a lot of the colors that I have already added to this section, so here I'm adding in the darker cold gray. I mentioned before that I can see quite a lot of this color on this patch here, on the pink filling. But a lot of what I've added in, I feel looks like it's got lost. So let's build up more of this color. I can start focusing on the green sections. So I'm again going to work through the greens that I've already built up. So starting off with the earth green yellowish, the lighter green. I'm just applying, again, a medium pressure on the darker areas because this is the lighter color between the two greens that I've used. Adding medium pressure to the darker areas, it doesn't so much change the color, but it does make the whole area look more solid. If I was to use the darker green and apply a medium pressure buildup along these areas, it wouldn't as good. It would end up being way too dark. Whereas you can see applying this color just to the darker areas. Here is just making it all look a lot more solid and blocked in. Let's also use this green to go over some of these green sections in and amongst the black along here. It kind of looks gray at the moment, but on the reference photo, it looks like it should be green. So let's fill these areas. I already think this is looking so much better. So let's once again think about the most obvious color that's missing. Actually, what I want to do now is use the white pencil to just kind of block in this pink area a bit better. Now, I could have used the coral pencil to smooth this out, but it would have made the area darker. Similar with the green. If I use the white pencil over the top a bit, it's maybe slightly lightening the area, but not massively. And it's just smoothing the whole section out. The most important thing on this middle area is that I do want it to be as smooth as possible. Also add the white to the lighter green section here. Again, you can just see it's just slightly smoothing out what's here. It's not looking as grainy. And I'll do the same to the green on this left hand side. So now, again, it makes the most obvious color that's missing more obvious at this point. So I now don't think this central section is looking quite dark enough. I don't want to use the black. I just want it to be a little bit darker, a little bit richer. So I'll go back to the walnut brown pencil, add some more of this color in. And you can see it's making a reasonably subtle difference. Can also use the same color to just make the edge of this a little bit darker. So let's make all around this right edge a bit darker, go over this area as well. And then I can add some of that same green we used earlier to just add a bit more of a green tinge around the edge of this yellow section. We added this green in right at the very beginning, and I feel like it's a little bit lost. I'm generally happy with the middle section, I would say. Let's focus a bit more on the rice area, any final tweaks that need adding to that section. So let's once again move back to that darker cold gray. And around the bottom here where it does need to be quite dark, I am once again just blocking this in. This whole area looks very scratchy. It looks very kind of patchy at the moment. Going to work through these grains of rice one more time in exactly the same way as I did in the last chapter, really looking at any areas where they need to be made darker. So, particularly around the edge where the rice is right next to the filling, it's quite light at the moment. I think it needs to be much darker, so I'm going to build up a decent amount of color here. And there's just so much shading really that needs adding to the rice, that I don't think it's a bad thing to go over it a few times. Now, I'm going to go through this reasonably quickly because it is exactly the same as we did in the last chapter and that we did a couple of chapters before. I'm just building up these same shapes a little bit further. So you can see me again going around the edge, defining the lines around each of the grains of rice and using circular motions to add to the shading on the rice. And I think the rice looks much more clear, much better. Whilst I've got this pencil, I'm also going to use it to apply some pretty firm pressure now over the black area here. Again, there's some white spots that I can see showing through all of the black, and I don't really want those white spots, but I don't necessarily need to make the whole area much darker by filling this in with the black. By going over with the gray, it's just going to tone down those white spots, but not change the overall color. Also go over this area towards the top, blend this out as well, and I'm just going to tidy up around the edge of some of these light patches and tidy up along the back one last time. And then let's also use the gray to go over the shadow, make this a little bit neater, a little bit darker, particularly along the front. And then I want it to fade out as we work our way along the back and kind of around the corner. Now, let's just add a little bit of a hint of color along here. Subtle, but things like this really do add to the drawing. You can see a little hint of kind of yellow, which I think is a reflection from this sushi here. I can see it in the drawings, so I should add it in. Just a nice and light layer with the yellow. And then let's switch back to the burnt sienna, that reddish brown to just once again go over some of these dark patches. I had already added the sienna brown into these patches right towards the beginning, but they all look a little bit muted now because of all the other colors that have been added on top. It's also used this color to just adjust the brown that we added before. In the last chapter, I added a hint of the walnut brown along the edge here. I'm going to make it a little bit more of a reddish brown with this color just very, very lightly, adding some of this color along, particularly closer to the wrap, because I think it does just have more of a browny kind of reddish brown color over here. You can see adding a really light layer makes a massive difference to the color of the rice. It makes a huge change. Let's move on to the light gray. Again, with firm pressure at this point, fill in all of the grains of rice unless there's a particularly light patch. I basically want to use this light gray to smooth out every gray patch. I feel like the rice where we've built up all of the grays, it still looks a little bit scratchy, and I want it to look a lot smoother. So you can see I'm just working over these one at a time, using, I would say a medium pressure, but still circular motions to just smooth everything out. And I think that looks much better. I'm also going to build up a reasonable amount of this gray along the edge here so that it's not as bright white around this area. And I feel like that's changed the rice to look much more natural, much smoother. Now, we're getting towards the end now. It's very nearly looking like a finished drawing. We're really starting to head into the final tweaks. Let's add this light gray along this area as well, because this is still rice, although it is a little bit out of focus. What I'm now going to do is use the jelly roll pen instead of using pencils. Now, this jelly roll pen is great for adding bright white areas back in, and there are a lot of them on this drawing. I want to be using the pen to add the very bright lines along here, but also all of the bright lines along this section as well, all along here. And there's some dots along here. Some of them are not as bright as others, so some of the white patches along here aren't as bright as this, for example, or this. Still want to be adding it in with the jelly roll pen, and we can always tone it down in a second. So you'll see, I'm just gently touching the pen against the paper to put a reasonably small amount down. I am trying to follow the reference photo to try and get these marks in as close as I can to the same place cause I think that is going to look the best. But the most important thing to remember when working with the jelly roll pen is that it is a pen with ink. So I'm working generally from the left towards the right and from the top towards the bottom to try and not get myself in a situation where my hand is going to smudge. I'm just going to work my way along the picture, adding in all of these bright lines. Now, as I say, the lines do look very bright at the moment, but that's okay. We can tone them down in a second. Now, I have really taken my time adding all of these areas in to try and get them in in pretty much the correct place. For the most part, I'm only using the jelly roll pen, except for in the few odd areas of the rice, mostly in this central section. Once I'm happy with all of the white jelly roll pen, what I now need to do is just leave it for 5 minutes to dry, and then I can add some pencil over the top of it to tone down that very bright white. So I'm going to use the yellow pencil to go over a lot of the white in this section on the left hand side. But I can also use the yellow to go over some of the areas on the orange, as well. You can see that that's just toning them down, making them look a lot less bright white, but you can still see them. Higher up where the light patches are kind of a bit darker. I can use the orange pencil to go over the top of these bright white areas. I think it looks so much better going over it with the pencil rather than leaving it white. It's so important, though, to make sure that it is completely dry before you do this. So let's use the green pencil to go over the green dots, tone those down. I just going to switch back to the yellow to just tweak some of these areas along the edge here and tone down these parts at the top. And then, actually, I'm going to use the white pencil. Even adding the white over the top, I find makes the white pen that we've added look a little bit less harsh. Just add in a last few tweaks blending these white areas out with this white pencil, and then that is the end of the drawing. 14. Summary: That is the end of the drawing. I hope that you've enjoyed this tutorial, and hopefully colored pencils aren't seeming as tricky as maybe they once were. It's worth remembering that for every drawing that I create, I'm always following this same process. It doesn't matter if it's an extremely simple basic drawing or something much more complicated. It's just the full process that I work through. Selecting a reference photo, studying that reference photo, creating the sketch outlines, and then building up initially the base layers, putting something down on the paper, working generally from the lighter colors towards the darker. Or working one section at a time to brighten everything up and begin adding in the details. Once I've worked through all of those sections, I can then add in the final details, any final tweaks and brighten everything up. Now, I hope that you've enjoyed this tutorial. Please do leave a review if you have. And don't forget to upload your drawings into the class projects. I would love to see them. Happy drawing, guys, and I'll see you in the next course.