Realistic Pastel Drawing for Beginners

1. 1.1 Pastel Trailer: hi there. Today I'm going to teach you how to draw a simple image from a photograph using chalk Pastel. My name is Diane. I've been teaching art for 11 years and making art most of my life. This is the image we're going to draw today. Beautiful golden pair on a red background and it's gonna be delicious. I hope you enjoy it. So the skills you're gonna pick up today are drawing a simple image from a photograph, applying and manipulating chalk pastel and creating different textures and shock. Pest. Still think class is meant for people who have never drawn using accurate measuring methods who have drawn FREEHAND and wanted to learn how to draw more accurately. And if you've ever been frustrated with chalk pastel, this is a great class for you. It's not meant for people who have experience with chalk pastel or for artists who want more of a challenge. 2. 1.2 Prep intro: So to prepare your space, you want to be somewhere where you don't mind getting dusty because we're going to be blowing some pastel dust into the air and might land on some surfaces around you. You wanna have a nice hard surface to draw in a drawing table or just a dining room table or a desk, preferably You want to have your picture taped to a board like that so that you can be mobile with it. But if you don't have something like that, you can just take it to the table and you want to have your your reference photo downloaded and printed onto a nice sheet of preferably photograph paper so that the colors really pop and you don't want to do your picture in a sketchbook because the sketchbook is kind of spongy. You wanna have a nice hard surface. Okay, so I'd like to get you into the proper mind set to prepare for the class. Just be in the space of taking your time and getting your marks the way you'd like them to be. Your measuring and getting your drawing the way you'd like it to be before you proceed into the color because we want toe establish a good foundation with our drawing before we move into coloring, you'll to be just that much happier with the product at the very end. 3. 1.3 Prep materials: So now we're gonna talk about which materials you're gonna need for this class. First and foremost, you need a pencil for drilling. I'm using a slightly darker pencil so that my lines show up well in the camera. But you can just use a regular number two pencil, and you're also going to need pastels. Two most important things pencil and pastel. So I happen to have a set of new pastel. This is the brand name, and I'm showing you this because each of these pastels has a unique number on it to indicate the color. So if you happen to have the same brand ideo, I'm gonna tell you which numbers I'm using so you can pick out the same colors which will correspond to what we're gonna do to create that pair. If you happen to have a different brand name, that's completely fine. Just pick out the colors that seem most similar to what I'm using here, and I'll make sure to describe each color as I go. So you're also going to need a paper piece of paper with a frame drawn on it the same size as your pair reference photo, which is eight inches by eight inches, and you need a drawing board or table something flat and hard to tape your paper to. I haven't taped to this cord, and you're gonna need your reference photo printed out. You'll also need something to dump your extra Dustin, because pastel does create a lot of dust. And even though you want to be somewhere in your home or office or wherever, that you don't mind getting dusty unless you're outside. You do want to be able to dump the extra dust into something, so I just have the lid of my new pastel box I'm going to use for that. And lastly, you need a blending stump, which is this very pointy, tightly, tightly rolled piece of paper that we use for blending and rubbing the pastels in areas that are too delicate for our fingers to blend in. And we'll talk about blending when we get to the coloring part and optional, but recommended is just have a rag nearby, or if you don't mind wiping your hands on your pants, that's fine, too. But you will get really dusty and kind of dirty, so you want to have something to wipe your fingers on as your drawing so that your colors don't mix together where you don't want them to, and that's it. 4. 1.4 Pastel Flaws: So sometimes I'm glad this king of sometimes you'll get a pass still with kind of a shiny edge, which doesn't take to the paper very well. So you have to press really hard in a scratch area in order to get it to show up. And it's still really not taking. Let me try the top end. Yeah, that's not working very well. Let me try the other side. I'm not sure why that is. It's a flaw in the material. I suppose I've come across that many times. Let me try another piece of the same color. Just not really working out. We try the third piece since I broke it into three pieces the last time. Yeah, that's not working. So that may happen to you If it does pick another color, something similar that you can use in lieu of it. I'm going to just use this darker one, which I was going to use any way too dark and that this lighter one was just the first layer. But this one should show up better. There we go, much better 5. 2.1 Composition Intro: So in this first section, we're gonna learn how to measure accurately both distances and angles so that we get an appropriate representation of the pair and we're also going to put down our basic line drawing for the pair. 6. 2.2 Measuring: So now we're going to talk about composition, placement and size. First thing you wanna have is your photograph, your reference photo parallel to your drawing. I have this metal lip on the edge of my table that's keeping these two parallel. But if you don't have something like that, you could just take your photo in place on the table or surface you're using. And now I'm going to show you how to measure using your pencil as your tool. So I've got this scrap piece of paper was kind of a fake and john it for a frame just to show you how we're gonna go about this. So since your photograph and our frame are the same size, we can measure using this as our reference, we don't have to scale up or down. So, for example, the first thing I'm gonna do is see how tall this first background shape is To do that. I'm gonna lay my pencil on the page and put the tip of the pencil right against the bottom edge. And then I'm gonna mark the top edge of that shape with the tip of my some nail or my son and then you want to be able to pick the pencil up in this position so you don't want a market like that. For example, you want to be ableto toe hold it in a position, you can pick it up. So you're gonna pick up your pencil moving over to your page, and we already know where the bottom into the pages. So I'm gonna line my pencil up with that and mark where the top images with my other finger and then make a mark. So now I know that that's the same height as this. Now that we've explain that and practiced on a separate sheet of paper, we're going to do it on the real paper. And I'm gonna walk you through how to draw this drawing on your riel frame. So we're going to do exactly what we just did the first time pencil on the edge of the paper, thumbnail at the top, or some to be the some. Move it over, make a mark, and I'm gonna do the same thing for the other side, which is shorter. You'll get over, make a mark. It's always a good idea to double check your measurements because we are not perfect. And if you're drawing is not have to be perfect. It just has to be pleasing to you. So another thing I'm going to do is measure a different space. That confirms that that measurement is correct and it is so that's fine. But honestly, it's a background line. If it was a little bit lower or higher, it wouldn't make any difference. So this is just an exercise in being accurate. Now we're going to connect with just kind of a loose line. It doesn't You don't want it to be perfectly straight because of this is cloth, and it's kind of it undulates its man made. So we've got our background line. Now we're going, Teoh, establish the pair. So first thing we're gonna do is make a mark for the outside edges of the pair on each side . So I'm gonna measure from the side of the page to the edge of the pair at the smallest place, and I'm guessing it's definitely closer to the top than the bottom of the page. I'm guessing that's about right here, make a mark. I mean, do the same thing on the other side ignoring the stem for right now. We'll add that later. So the closest edges looks like about right here. I'm gonna move it over, tilt my pencil down and make a mark. In this case, I don't need my other finger because my lead happens to be right where I need to make a mark. So I just tilt down and make him work that way. That's fine, too. Same thing for the top and same thing for the very bottom edge. And I'm guessing that's a little further back than this one. So that'll be about right there. And then I'm gonna do the same thing for this just because it's a different part of the object and that will help to guide me when I'm drawing the actual shape. So now I have the outside parameters. Oh, you know what another good place to do. It is where you see a corner. So there's a corner right there. So I'm going to make a mark, and that corners air precise places which are really helpful when you're measuring because you can go out at both ways. So I'm going to see how far away it is from the edge to Oh, I got lucky. Okay, so now you can kind of see where the pair is going to be, And then the last thing we're gonna do is measure angles. Angle measuring is different than distance. Measuring all this. All of this measuring. We've just done this distance measuring for angle measuring. You use your pencil to determine which direction things are pointing. So, for example, I'm going to put my pencil right through the center of the pair, and it's just as a sort of by sector. So you want to think of it as the pencil is the mirror and these two sides mirror each other as closely as possible and then keeping your elbow straight. You're going to move your pencil. Just let it kind of hover over to your picture and I mean it. Plant it. What? Where it looks like it's about bisecting the pair. I'm gonna move my hands so I can see it. I feel like I need to move it down a little bit in order to truly bisect it. So I'm gonna guess right here, and I'm gonna make a couple little lines. I'm making my lines longer, so I can differentiate between the distance measuring and the angle, and then I'm going to go back and double check angle angle lines air specifically more difficult to get the distance line. So those you always do want a double check cause it's a matter of really keeping your arms straight and steady. And if you've had any caffeine, that's difficult to dio. We also have breath and a heartbeat, which throws it off sometimes. So it's always good thing to double check. So now that we have that, I'm just going to draw a line connecting them so that I have the basic idea of where the pair is pointing at this point, I want to reiterate that it's really important that you're measuring is accurate again. It doesn't have to be exactly like the photo, but it does have to please you. You have to feel good about this, So if you feel like oh, I'm just eyeballing it and making marks and get on with it, let's draw the pair, take the time now to just take a breath and really do the measuring in a way that feels complete and satisfying to you because this is your foundation. This is the backbone of your drawing. So you want this to be really nice, and the more you take the time to establish what feels really nice right now, the better your drawing will be in the end. And that goes for every step of the drawing. Don't convince yourself that it's good enough and you'll fix it later. Really, really Take the time to fix it now. 7. 2.3 Drawing: So now we're going to start with the drawing of the pair. The big secret to drawing well is looking mawr, the reference than it's a drawing. So you want to really keep your eyes on what you're copying. The tendency is to look at the pair really quick and then spend all your time with your eyes here. But what we don't really get is that our brains don't know what we're seeing. If we're not looking at it, it it draws what we think we saw, which is usually not what's actually there. So the more you can look back and forth between the reference and you're drawing and keep your eyes completely on the reference at for a few seconds at a time, the better this will come out, and it is a skill that's acquired with practice. So the more you can practice it, the better it'll. It may feel a little awkward at first. So first I'd like you to just look at the reference photo and feel the weight and the presence of the object. The pair is pretty rich colors sitting on this really beautiful red, luxurious looking cloth. The parent self looks plenty ripe and juicy. It's probably kind of heavy. How would it taste? How does it smell? Think about all those things As you're drawing, it'll inform your piece really beautifully, and then we're gonna just start with the basic pear shape. So from my dots, I'm just going to draw. Don't worry about all the little undulations in the surface at this point. We can just go back and adjust that later. For the time being, I just like you to draw. And again make sure your eyes were going back and forth between your reference photo and you're drawing as you go. Don't worry about this. Little dip here will add that later. So because you have these measuring marks, it's fairly straightforward. Process and go back and just erase any mistakes. And we're totally done with the angle lines. You can race that, too. That was just to help get your shape pointing in the right direction. Now we'll go back and we'll add some little undulations in the surface. So here I noticed, for example, it seems a little pointy, a little bit round or right there than what I gave it pretty flat on the back. Got a couple flat spots up here. There's a little bit of a point right there and again. It doesn't have to be exact, but you do want it to be convincingly a naturally shaped object, which is not gonna be a perfect sphere. So you want to add these little bits of abnormality? Makes it unique. Sorry. So your original lines as you go, actually, that I made that a little too flat around that off here. We've got a little bit of a point, and then we can add this little David where the stem is. So that's gonna dip down something like that. And then the back of the pair is gonna come up over it. And then there's a little bit of a bump here, which I alluded to in my original drawing. But I'm going to just add to it a tiny bit. And now we're going to add the stem. So for the stem weaken, just measure the length Either pencil took on the tip or at the beginning, It doesn't matter whichever is most comfortable for you. Pencil tip on the tip of the stem. Some nail the base or vice. Ever toe, move it over and make a mark where you think it goes. And I say where you think Because we haven't measured the Anglia. We only know the length. So now I'm going to measure the angle from the very bottom to the very top and see which direction that's pointing. Move it over. See if I did that about right. It looks like I made it a little high in order for it to be ableto hit that crevice there. So I'm gonna move it down a bit. And as it happens, it ended up right on my angle, lying for my pair, even though it's pointing in a slightly different direction and my base will be right here . So that's the angle line of your pair because it's so short. I'm not gonna bother drawing the line. We can just draw the shape. And for that I'm gonna measure how wide it is. Even though it's very small. Just to be more accurate and the top will be there, I can see that the bottom is right in that little crevice. So, yeah, that works out just fine. And then the top looks like it might be a little bit sicker. Is it? Yeah, it is a little bit thicker. So I'm going to just make a couple marks up here, so I know how wide to go and again, that's being very precise. You can fly ball something like that because it's so tiny. So now we're just gonna go straight up and then curve over at the end, and I feel like I need to start curving a little sooner here. Only a race that, and I feel like I made this a little too straight. Something occur that in a tiny bit as well. And Leslie, now that we have the pair mostly drawn, we're going to add drapery folds, which there's really only one there. So we're gonna have the drapery fold. Don't worry about measuring this unless you want to. You can be very precise and accurate. Measure the length of that or the distance from the side of the page and the angle. You can do all those things, but drapery folders so easily interpreted that you can just highball that just make a line where it looks like it needs to be. That's all you really need. Just a guideline So now let me make that a little darker. So, um, again, you don't need to make a darker I'm making it dark so that you can see it on the camera, but you actually want your lines fairly light. Lastly, I'm going to erase lines we don't need anymore this line going through the pair. Get rid of that a little bit better the angle line, and I suggest making a photocopy of your line drilling for backup, just in case you get into the color and you don't feel happy with it, and you want to try again. It's nice to have one you can trace onto a new sheet of paper, and it's also just kind of psychologically freeing. If you have any trepidation about adding pastel to your picture, it might help you feel a little more comfortable because you know you always have a backup 8. 3.1 Color Intro: So the next thing we're going to do is add color, which is the rich and creamy part. You're gonna love this. We're going to start with the background with the reds and the darks, and we're gonna move on to the payer and add the yellows and the shadows and all the yummy texture on the skin. 9. 3.2 Blending Techniques: Now we're gonna talk about putting in your colors. First, we're just going to talk about how to apply the pastel and how to blend them to make different colors. So we're going to start with the background. Um, we'll start with the red because it's lighter than the dark, brownish color back there. It's better. Usually toe lay down lighter colors first, because if you put the dark colors first, they'll have a tendency to blend into the lighter colors and make it seem a little bit muddy. So for the red, I'm going to use these two reds, and they're very similar. But because this is a realistic photograph, we wanna have some variety, even though it may not be particularly identifiable to the human eye. It's gonna make a difference in terms of the believability of this being a realistic image . If you use one color for the whole thing, intends to look kind of cut out or cartoony, so to apply the past. Still, all you have to do is color, and you want to press hard enough to where you don't see any white showing through in certain circumstances. When we're trying to make the color really bright like this. You want to press that hard? If you're trying to blend colors, there's other situations where you might color lighter so that you can blend it into another color. But for the purposes of this clause, we're gonna color like this. So press hard enough to where you get the color showing really solid. Try not to break them. They will break. You can see I've broken several of mine. But if you're pressing so hard that they're breaking, it's probably a little bit too hard and the to blend the color. I'm gonna put a little bit of orange over the top of one area, and I'm not pressing hard now. I'm pressing about like that because I want the red to stay dominant and I'm just put a little bit of orange over, and I'm gonna use one finger and rub to blend them together, and you can probably not see much differentiation there. But like I said, it's gonna be a more sophisticated piece. If you have those different colors, you're gonna end up with some dust, which you're welcome to blow off if you want, or you can just dump them to a little receptacle or on a paper towel or a little of both. Another thing I would like to show you is how to keep your edges sharp versus blended. You can see here when I've lended it made my edge riel fuzzy, and that's going to help you in situations like this, where you have a blended edge. But in situations like this, where you want Thea very sharp what you're gonna do, Let's say, Hey, this is the edge of your parents. You're gonna take the corner a corner of your pastel. Just find a sharp corner somewhere and get it right on that pencil line and go slowly color right up next to it and then color out from it with the same amount of pressure. What you don't want is to have a hard outline like that and then color lightly so that it looks like it's outlined with red. And then when you blend, you're going to use the very edge of your finger and go right up next to that pair at pencil line and blend, and you can see the edge stays beautifully. Shark That way 10. 3.3 Background 1: and we can start coloring. So I'm gonna take the main red color and start putting in my values just like I just showed you with that that would right up against the pair. It's a good idea to go along the edge first and then sort of color out from it versus the other way around, because that kind of protects the color from getting into the pair too much the top edge. Although I want to keep the integrity of the sharp edge of actually getting into the background a little bit on purpose because that dark color is so dark that it's going toe overlap the red. So it's actually a good thing if you get a little bit into the background, because what you don't want is a little bit of your paper showing through between the two colors because you were so precise with that edge, you want them to over left. So we're gonna just color in all this background. Um, I would like for you to make sure in color right over your pencil line so that it goes outside your frame a little bit and that the reason for that is when you frame it. You want to be able to not see any paper in the frame either. So you're mad or your frame will overlap those edges. And you just want to err on the side of having past still go outside versus having paper on the inside. You can see here that I accidentally went into the stem. Don't worry about it. If you accidentally get into the shape, it doesn't race knots. Not entirely. But it'll erase enough to where it won't matter, cause you're gonna put other colors in there. Anyway, Even if you got dark red into the light yellow, it may show through a little bit in your final product, but it's gonna make a beautiful, reflective sort of quality. We may end up adding a little bit of red into the yellow anyway, on purpose. So I mean, I just keep going here with red all the way around, getting right up next to the edge as I go. So some common points of frustration I'd like to mention as you're doing this are going too fast. So you want to take the time, especially around sharp edges, to be very careful. Emphasize, don't fall into coloring like this, where you're going very quickly in large strokes, really slow down and covered thoroughly. Another common point of frustration is using too little pressure, and then when you blend, your color just kind of fades out, or too much pressure to where you burn through your pastels really quickly because you've you've just created a lot of unnecessary dust. So just try to find that even middle ground, where your creating some dust, but only for the purpose of getting her color really solid. And another point of frustration is edge edges not being sharp enough or blurry enough, which we've already discussed. But when you're blending, you just want to go even slower than when you were coloring, so that you really keep those edges nice and sharp for, as the case may be here, which we'll talk about later blurry. So I'm taking a minute to blend this just because I want to see what the color looks like when I blend it, it'll pull off a little bit and become not quite as bright typically, and I I'm pretty happy with that, but I may go back and later some more later Um, but at this point, I'm going to switch to a different red. The more the raspberry color because right here it gets just There's a tiny little switch where there is just a little bit more purple in the color pink. So I'm going to start doing this and I'm going right into the red that I just color because I don't actually want that change to be detectable and keep going along the edge of the pair. Now you can see I'm coloring right into the shadow because I want read to be the base color for my shadow. Later, we're gonna layer over that with some darker colors. But for right now it can all just be read, which is pretty straightforward. And it's kind of a nice way to Dio has still, for the very first time, if you've never done it before, I'm going to go up into the top edge here, keeping my head very sharp right next to my pair, and you can really outline the whole thing first if you want, or you can come back and do it in sections the way I'm doing it. It doesn't really matter as long as you keep the past, though outside the pair, but get it right up next to the edge. And as you can see, the pencil lines do show through. So you don't have to worry about losing your lines. You would if we were using a darker color. But for these reds, it's very obvious. So you can also see I'm using t get a large area of using the wider side of the pastel and not using the corner like that. I'm using the big side so that my coloring goes a little faster, especially on these large areas that I really just want to get it filled in quickly. So now I have a lot of dust, so I'm gonna dump it in my dust box. Oh, and this brings up another point so you might see little lines of red dust that fell down my pair. That's also completely fine. It's just gonna add to the reflective red in the pair later. It doesn't really matter, but if it bothers you, you can erase it out with your pencil eraser. Uh, as you're erasing Noticed. My hand is not touching the paper, and I'm doing here because I don't want to smear the pastel had put on. So in order to protect your paper throughout the drawing either a race like the way I'm erasing and color the way I'm coloring without your hand on. Or you can use a piece of scratch paper and put your hand on that so that you're not smearing the color you just put on and very little transfers to the back side of the paper . If you do that for research crumbs, you can just blow off the dust. Um, some of them may stick, and if they do, you can wipe them. But be careful to wipe your fingers off before you go in and white theory search room so that you don't. It's an unwanted color toe into areas that you don't want it there, and then I'm gonna go back and use one finger and blend, and in the larger is I could blend pretty aggressively. But when I get to those edges, I'm gonna be very slow and deliberate. OK, so that's our first couple of colors. Now we're gonna go back and adjust. So for the darker area of red, I'm gonna add a little bit of purple. Actually, the first thing I'm gonna do since this pencil line is showing through much more than I wanted to. I'm going to go in and erase it and see, obviously I'm taking some color off with me. No big deal. I could just put it back. And now my pencil line doesn't show nearly as much, which is exactly what I want. 11. 3.4 Background 2: So we're going to start with purple to darken the folds on the fabric. Much better now. I've drawn kind of a shape or random shape, but you'll notice the direction of this cloth. It kind of goes up and over this way. So now that I've got the basic color in, I mean a color in that direction to start creating the visual illusion of a ruffle in that same direction, and I'm going to do the same color for the shadow. This is called the cast Shadow, and it's called that because the light is shining on this surface and casting a shadow off to the left. So I'm gonna just Aibel, Lillian shape of this shadow. It's thinner as it goes towards the front and kind of disappears right under the pair there . And then I'm gonna color solid thistles, our first layer of color on the shadow, and it ends up about halfway up the pair, so about right there and then goes off the page and because it's heading off the page in a horizontal direction. I mean a mostly color horizontal, but first I'm going to get right up next to the edge of the pair with the edge of my pastel the same way I did with the red and then color horizontally to try to protect the pair from getting this color into it. But of course, if you do, you can erase it. It's a very forgiving medium past still. So there we go. That's our first layer and choosing to blow the dust instead of dumping in the box and I'm gonna blend and I'm on the edge here now, I'm not using the edge my finger because I want that to be kind of blurry, and I want the top edge to be even blurrier. So I'm gonna blend in little tiny circles to get that had you really soft, and then it disappears into the cast shadow. I want this bottom edge to stay sharp, so I'm gonna use my finger even though I know that's gonna get some into the pair because my finger is too big. Um, I'm just gonna keep that edge really short, and I'm gonna erase the purple that accidentally got inside the pair there. But here I have a bigger area so I can use the edge of my finger to go right up next to it without getting any into the pair. So now I'm gonna raise again. I'm not putting my hand down on the paper and I'm pointing the tip of my eraser right at the edge, perpendicular to the edge, which makes it very easy to get rid of unwanted color. And now we'll just keep layering. So I want my red here to be a little bit richer, a little bit more robust. So I'm going to add some of the original red, which I used over here in some areas. I'm not gonna put it here because that is actually a lighter area than the rest. But I'm gonna put it in most other places right into that dark red over the top, and again, I'm coloring in the direction of that lump. You can see it's starting to kind of look lump like and really, really deep over here getting ads and richness. And then over here, the top corner. It's quite great. And I'm just gonna add a little bit more right here, even if that's kind of where we left off with the the break grid and the bright red is number by the way. 3 36 p. And the raspberry red is 206 speed. You got a lot of dust, so I'm gonna dump it in my dust box and blend. 12. 3.5 Background 3: All right, So now I'm feeling like I've got my reds where they want them to be, and I'm going to start darkening, um, the shadows more So just to introduce a little bit of color theory when you want to add something really, really dark to a picture instead of using black, which tends to death and things, you want to use the complement of the main color. So here I've got red compliment is just a fancy word for opposite. So if you look at a color wheel, we have red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and red and green or directly opposite each other on the color wheel. So green is reds complement. And this is where we're gonna put some green in order to make it darker. And so we're gonna use this dark forest green and right away. It may feel a little threatening, like wow and putting this green in here. That's ugly. But, um, have have face. It's going to resolve when you blend and likely at a little bit more red on the top. It's kind of a little bit of feels like a little bit of magic for for me. So I'm coloring very lightly with the green. I don't want the shadowed, actually. Look green, which is why I'm doing that blow off the dust. And then I'm gonna blend, keeping that edge really sharp again. I went into the pair because my finger was too big there, but I'm gonna erase it out. So just the blending. You can see it looks less green already and more shadow like, which is exactly what we want. I have lost a little bit of my pencil line here because that color was so dark. So I'm sort of inventing the edge of the pair again. Not exactly sure where it is, but that will be good enough. And then it's does well when they put a little bit of green in here, too. But again, very lightly blending over the top and this bottom edge blurry top ege, even blurrier so tiny little circles and then until it disappears and just going to sort of rub it into the tip there. And then I'm gonna put some more red over, and the red is gonna serve to both. Blend it and make it look a little bit less green. So just with some stroke, something like this or using the wide side of the pastel and not pressing very hard going in the direction of the cloth fold and then all run robin circles and same thing here. I'm coloring pretty deliberately here because I want to keep that edge sharp. Those against the pair and the bottom of the cast shadow it. And I'm not being particularly thorough because at this point there is so much color believable in here is that just putting a few strokes on it and blending it will be adequate blend again. Okay, now you can see inside the shadow. There's some darker areas and some lighter areas, so I'm going to use the really dark green. The one was a little bit of blue in it to intensify the dark in those really dark areas. And also, if you look right underneath a pair, that's that's one of the darkest places there is. I'm really gonna push that right where the pair touches the claws. There's always gonna be your darkest shadow, where an object touches the ground, and then from there it blends out into a lighter shadows. There's a little bit back here kind of closer to the end, closer to the back, and then I'm going to use the very edge of my finger to blend that really dark line into the rest of the shadow and just continue running. 13. 3.6 Background 4: So now I've got that That dark line blended. I'm gonna go back and just the Justin things. So for the lighter area, on top of this bump, I'm going to use the orange and you can barely see it. But that's what you want. You don't want it to be super obvious. And I'm just putting some sick lines, pressing about that hard, going over the top edge of the bump and then blending in the direction of the bump little circles to blend the orange into the brown. And then down here, I want the red to show a little bit. I wanted to show a little bit darker, so I'm going to use the where that 3 24 p and very lightly put in some strokes just to indicate a tiny bit of shadow right there. And rather than use my finger to blend, I'm gonna try using the red to blend and you can see it's dirty. So I want to rub it off on the scratch paper, and I'm doing that because I wanted to be so subtle that it just isn't really detectable. When you look at this picture, you don't want to notice that shadow. You want to notice the pair, so I mean a blend. I could go a little bit further with that. You can see. Also, I'm using the outside edges of my paper is kind of a test sheet. You can absolutely do that cause this is all scrap anyway. Or you can just have a separate sheet of paper totally up to you. More little of both. Try that again. A little bit more blow off the dust. There we go. So I'm pretty happy with the red right now. I don't think it actually looks that great, but it's the first step in many, and the pair is going to take the show at the end of it. So if you feel the same way I do, don't worry about it. This is a process, and you're on your first step. So we're gonna call that good and move on. Now we're going to the background, which is almost a solid color. But you can see tiny little variations in the photograph. And we want tiny little variations in ours, too, just for the sake of variety. So it's not a solid block of color, so This is where we're mostly going to use this dark, bluish green color again. If you don't have new pastels, you can use a dark green, dark blue and a little bit of black or dark brown, and it doesn't have to match that color exactly. It's perfectly fine to invent your own cocktail of colors. For this one. It is very dark, so I'm not pressing very hard because I want to be able to out other colors into it and have them register a little bit. And if I were to press really hard and get this really dark, they probably wouldn't show up very well. So I'm just putting a very kind of medium coat on the whole thing right up next to vetted. You're the red, overlapped a little bit, and then I can go a little stronger. That created quite a bit of dust. Don't dump that my dust box blow off the excess and I'm gonna blend just to see what that did. And it's that's a nice color. I like that. It's a little bit bumpy, but that will go away when we add the other colors, so it's kind of a brownish color, so I'm gonna add some red to it read being the opposite of green. And it will also be a really nice reflection of the red in the bottom part, which it aren't. You really do want those reflections to show up really well in New York from respective objects. So something that's placed next to something else should almost always, unless you're trying to break the rule reflects the color of the thing next to it. Okay, we're gonna blend that, and it's not quite as dark as I'd like it. So I'm gonna go back, was a little more green. And I'm also not gonna color completely solid the way I did the first time. Don't that dust? And actually, this time I'm going to use the forest green because my color is turning a little bit purple because I had a very bluish green and red, blue and red make purple. So this green, the to 98 p is more of a yellowy green, and that will be more of a direct complement to the red. And but I'm not gonna put it in solid. I'm gonna put in patches because I want some variation in the background. You are welcome to do it solid. If you want four do patches or whatever you'd like. This is your picture, but I'm just coloring some areas very randomly, not picking anything in particular for any particular reason. Dump the dust, blow up the extra and blend again. And even though I colored patches, I don't want the patches to be distinct or hearted, so I'm just blending it altogether, and that is closer to the color I want. 14. 4.1 Pear: so we'll start with the basic CO. The main color for the pair, which is the 2 57 p. Or for those of you who are not using new pastels kind of a yellowy orange. Just try to find something that matches your photo really well, and we'll color in the entire pair, including shadow and highlight. So get right up to the edge real sharp, even into your background. A little bit is good. You don't want to have any paper showing and what's happening here. See how I'm getting right up to the edge of the green is blending a little into the yellow . That is actually a desirable saying, because it makes your edge is a really smooth and creamy looking, and it gets the reflection of that bringing into the pair, which is talked about before. Who do you want to have that reflective quality from one object to the next in your picture ? So I'm outlining the whole thing first. But as I said before, you could outline a little bit and then start coloring. It's up to you. The other great thing about using a pair for a subject is pairs have speckled skin. So if you have any a little flaws, any lines showing through from your pencil a specks of dust from your background that got blended into the yellow that are irascible, you can always camouflage them later by making them look like the speckles on the pair skin . And we'll talk about that at the end. So now having a color pretty fast because I've outlined, so I don't really need to be careful anymore. I just want to get this colored in. Then you can go any which way you want. I'm gonna go right through the middle and cut over here to the bottom, getting using a wide side of the past. Still his next. Okay, that's good. Dump the dust, blow off the excess and wipe off my fingers. I've just been using red and black. I want to make sure it's really clean and then blend. It's it doesn't blend quite as well as I would like it, too, but we are gonna be layering with other yellows and four albums and purples and such. So it'll be fine now. The basic form shadow right here. We'll do that with the purple. Like I talked about before, so we're not gonna press hard. We're just going to put the approximate shape. Don't worry about making it exact something like that. Let getting lighter as I go to the right. So I'm gonna start dark, not super dark, just darker, where it's darkest, which is right there and color right up to the edge. And then as I go for the left, I'm going to get for excuse me to the right. I'm gonna get lighter and lighter and lighter and then go back and blend So you're gonna rub the purple into the purple here. But don't worry about keeping this edge sharp because it's not sharp. It's blended there so you can get a little messy with it, thinking with pastel downs. 15. 4.2 Blending Techniques: So at this point, I'm gonna pause with the coloring the parents. I want to show you a couple more techniques involving blending. So there's different kinds of blends on this pair. One is the one we've already talked about, which is keeping the edge really sharp, and another one is just blending in the open space. But here we have kind of specific quality where the blend sort of follows the round form of the pairs. So we want to make sure we're blending mostly in that way. So, for example, if I have some yellow on my pair and now I've just put my purple form shadow on there and I've blended it and gotten the edge the top edge a little bit soft. I'm gonna take that a little bit further and kind of pulled up into the pair. Few flicks first, that didn't really do anything. So I'm gonna press a little bit harder and we'll end up and down now notice I'm not doing this. I'm not making big wide strokes and planting my finger on the line, pressing kind of hard and just making tiny little up and down motions because I want that edge to be detectable. It's just a very soft edge, and it happens to blend in a kind of a specific direction. Well, we'll do that more later with different colors. But for right now, I'm gonna put a little bit more color on so you can see that better. So I'm almost not even moving my finger very much at all. I'm almost like planting it in, wiggling it in place and just moving it along the line to get that shadow the way I want it . Oh, the other thing I wanted to talk about is at this point, it may seem a little scary like it did, putting red into green, putting purple into yellow. But I want to encourage you to abandon your fear if you feel any fear or trepidation about it, Um, because that's your your fear may translate into your pair, so you really want to push your value range. Push the lights and darks really explore how dark that is compared to how vivid that yellow is compared to how bright that highlight is as an expression of fearlessness and vigor. This is going to be a lot of fun 16. 4.3 Pear Shading: and now we're going to do the stem, just the medium value of the stem, which is going to be this lighter brown. This is 3 33 p or for other pastel users is just kind of a yellowy orange EBrown, and you could just color that in really solid. This is sort of a placeholder for all the colors in your stem will go back and add shadows and highlights later. And that's lovely. Wooded stem texture. And because that's such a small shape, now we can use the blending stump and the first thing you want to do. If it's a used blending stuff, which mine is, is wife it off? It's all the color is not gonna come off, but what you want to do is just get the majority of it off so that when you when you use it to rub, it doesn't leave residual color on your color. The point of this pun intended is to be able to blend in areas where your finger feels too large. So it's just think of it as an extension of your finger, really pointy, tiny little finger that you can use to rub in blend areas better, more delicate. So now we're we've got the basic color on the pair basic form shot. And now we're gonna go back and add layers. So I'm gonna start by adding some bright yellow up here on the top edge, and that's gonna make the color seem really feel really rich. And as I'm coloring it, it's not really showing up very well. Not that we wanted to show up necessarily. But we do want some differentiation there for so another thing you can do with pastel, which is really fun, is if you're color seems to built up or the in this case, these colors are just really similar. These two yellows, you can erase an area you've already done. I'm gonna erase just this part right here because I want to put on pure light yellow and make that a little bit brighter than it would be if I was putting it over the orangy yellow , which, as you can see, it didn't work very well. Right there. There we go. Now I'm feeling happier without it's more of a sunshiny color, and that's really the only area the pair that you really see that light yellow, so I'm gonna not do that anymore. But I'm glad I did it in that one place, and I'm going right up to the edge mainly to get the darker yellow a little bit richer. Now I'm going to go back with the darker yellow and do a second coat over my entire pair going to switch sides here so I can start wearing down another side. I'm coloring the whole thing except for that light yellow. And I'm color right up next to the purple and even into the purple a little bit. So I remember how I was just showing you about the blending up with your finger. Now I'm doing it with the past. Still been to the yellow. So the pastels themselves could be blending tools as well. And I'm gonna dump the dust and you can see what just happened. There is. I created a little bit of a darker area, darker looking area right through the center here. This is the beginning of what's called the core shadow core. Like an apple core core shadow is the darkest shadow on an object, and it tends to run right next to the lighter area. and right next to what's called reflected light, which is this of red or area here. And you can see that really clearly that red reflection on the pair from the Met from the cloth and the core shadow it's not super detectable right here. But here you can see a patch of darker red and here you can certainly see it. And thats gonna make your object look a really three dimensional around. And you can just start to see a suggestion of it right there at the top edge of the form shadow. So now I'm going to start adding this lighter orange in some areas of the pair, which is to 12 p to get the color a little more accurate to the photo. So this is most everywhere. Don't worry about these bright highlights yet you concolor right over them. We will bring them out later. And at this point, I'm gonna kind of use the orange to define this Spiric ALS shape that really round bottom part of the pair by coloring some of the top ege and then over the rest of this yellow part through the center. But I'm gonna stop here because that you can kind of see an edge between the orange or yellow and the lighter yellow. And then I'm gonna try something. I'm not sure how well this is gonna work, but I'm gonna try to use the main yellow color as a blending tool rather than my finger, because my finger always takes off some color. Whereas if you use the pastels, your blending tool, it tends to enrich the color. And that's sort of working. It's leaving it a little bit speckled looking. I think I'll do both. I'm going to use both the past still as a blending tool. And then I'm gonna go back and love it, blow off the dust or dump it for both. And then I use my finger, and I'm starting to blend in the direction the pair skin is going. So here it's kind of, um, diagonal. And then here I'm gonna do circles to mimic the circular shape of the pair, and I'm going quickly cause I'm not getting right up next to the edge. There's so much color now that I don't need to be that precise, and I've already done that edge of 1,000,000 times three or four 17. 4.4 Pear Core Shadow: Okay, so now I've got even more layers of color on there, and we're going to do some more work in the shadow area. So first I'm gonna add my red, and at first it's going to seem a little bit to rid. But then I'm gonna dark in the core shadow, and it's going to really, really bring that to life. So I'm pressing pretty hard with my red going right along the edge in keeping it sharp. And I'm in a color a little bit more vigorously up into the shadow itself, not all the way to the top. And then I'm gonna rub keeping that edge sharp. And I am rubbing up carefully against this edge because I didn't have any red in here before. So the red stands out a lot, which means I do want to blend that edge carefully so that I have read all the way to the bottom. And then as I get closer to the top of the form shadow and going to be a little bit more careful, blend in circles, do those pull up type strokes into the pair. And I'm also going to refine this shape here a little bit. I feel like it's gotten to flatware, is here we go up and then dipped down. So here, I'm gonna put in a little bit more red coming up a little bit higher to really get that shape back. Here we go, and I'm gonna dab it that a little bit, kind of flicking it up into the pair. Now, the brightest red I see is right here. So I'm gonna go back and put another coat right there. And now we're gonna dark in the core shadow. Uh, excuse me with the purple, we're in yellow now, so we need purple. So I'm gonna go back and do what I did before the first time when we put the basic shadow down. But now I'm going to really push the values. I'm gonna go really dark right here and lightening up as I get lower and lower and lower. So I'm just not pressing is hard. You put a little bit more blow off the dust and blend, getting that edge really sharp, blending down into the red. And on this topic here, I'm just gonna dab at it a little bit and then I'm gonna put a little bit right here, which is where that other area is. That's pretty dark, although this one's redder. And so I'm not pressing as hard as I did right there. And I'm gonna blend that down into the red, keeping the top edge a little bit sharper than here. And then there seems to be some down at the bottom edge. I've got a shiny part right there I got to get rid of. So I'm just gonna color a little bit more on the scratch paper to expose a new a new side to the past. Still, it's not working so well. Let me try the other piece. That's better. And I'll blend that into the red. Okay, so now I'm feeling pretty happy with the shadows and basic media moves and lights. But I am gonna go back and push this a little bit harder. I'm going to try some green because I do want this to reflect the background. If you look at them, they're fairly similar colors. But first, before it commit to it on my paper, I'm gonna try some in a swatch of purple down here and see if at color works that's pretty good. I'm going to see if the little yellow or green is better match. So I'm gonna hold this up to here, and it looks like the blue one is gonna work a little bit better, especially from trying to match that background a little bit more. So now this is looks like this is the only place I'll use this color on the pair itself. And I'm just coloring that triangle and then blending it down, down, down until it stops blending out and on the top, I'm gonna do tiny little strokes using the very edge of my finger. You can use the front edge if you want. If that's a little awkward, you can use the side, whatever is best for you, but trying to keep this the integrity of this edge a little bit sharp, you can see that kind of blended out into the yellow there. It sort of does it right there. But I definitely want to get rid of that fingerprints. I'm just gonna do about it a little bit 18. 5.1 Finishing Touches Intro: so now that we've gotten the basic drawing done and on all the basic coloring and we're going to add finishing touches which involved going back and fixing areas that look a little rough, a little undone, I'm adding highlight, adding textures, adding a stem the extra shadow for the stem and signing or peace. 19. 5.2 Stem Details: So now we're going to do the stem details and shadows and highlights. So for that you can use a dark brown. This one is 3 53 D. It's just kind of a standard dark brown, a little bit of a burnt brown color. So not warm but cool, meaning it doesn't have a lot of orange in it. It has more of what kind of, ah grayish tone to it. And I'm using the very corner of the pastel to get right down to the bottom edge. And I'm gonna just color solid where I see the color, not worrying about the texture of the stem. Right now, just blocking in are putting in big blocks of the color where you see it blow off the dust . Then over there we're gonna use the light color again. But find a corner of it and pull some lines of the light right through those darks. And that's what's going to create those. That kind of woody look is just but make sure you're using a very sharp corner blow off the dust, and then we can do the same thing with the dark brown again. You find a sharp corner temple in some other lines. The other thing I want to do is create a little bit of a shadow with the very base of the stem. So it's has some separation from the pair, so I'm just underlining it and then dabbing it up into the sim. And finally we can add a little bit of, uh, this one is to 76 p. It's basically just a nawf way like an ivory color. And I'm just gonna put a few little light lines to suggestions of highlights in there. And that's it for the stem. You think it would take more time, But that was actually pretty fast right here. I'm noticing I missed some red getting right up next to the pair, so I'm gonna take this opportunity to go right up next to it. Hoops. I got a little inside, but that's OK in a race is and right at the bottom edge here. It was to be extremely thorough and right up next to the stem. And then we have the cast shadow for the stone there. So for that, I'm just going to go straight to the dark, the yellow your forest green color, and it looks like it starts closer to the cast shadow than it does to the stem. So on the parrot starts about right there. If you want to draw a light pencil line, that's fine. You can or you could just eyeball it. Shadows bend and contort in very odd ways. So even if it's not 100% exactly like that, it's going to be relatively believable. If you're looking at, it's going in approximately the right direction and starting and ending where it should. So it ends up pretty close to the stem itself groups. That might be a little too close, but I can raise it, and it pretty much mimics the shape of the stem. Then I should have made a little curve. You're right here, so I'm gonna add some curves at the top, and then I will raise some curve out of the bottom in a minute. So here I'm going to go in in a race and I'm erasing a little more than I need to so I can just color back into it with the red. And I made this a little bit too long, too, so I'm gonna Reese out a bit of the tip and just looking back and forth, that looks about right. So now use the red to blur to fill in these areas again that I raised and into blood the green. So I'm trying to be very careful not to blend the soften the edges of the green with the red, but just a color it back in. And now I'm going to go into the green and color, trying to keep the integrity of those edges very, very sharp all the way to the edge of the pair blowing off the dust as you go. I'm just gonna touch that because there's a crumb. 20. 5.3 Refining Edges: So now we'll go back to the background and do any finishing touches and then come forward to the parent Do finishing touches, including highlights on the speckled texture on the skin. So right here, I can see a little bit of paper showing through. So I'm gonna go back with my background color and come into the pair a little bit just to cover that up, being very careful, cause I don't wanna have to try to erase dark greenish blue out of yellow, blow off the dust and then use one finger, the very edge of it to soften into the background. And really, I could have used any of the background colors for this since it's so dark, it won't won't show. And the line underneath the pair, which I had done earlier, seems a little bit too thin and isolated to me. No. So I'm gonna put some more of this dark, bluish green right next to it so that it appears to blend more. And what I'm doing is using the corner of the pastel right up next to the pair. But I'm also allowing the rest of the pastel toe lay down so onto the paper just lightly. So it has this sort of effect or have a very sharp top edge, but a little bit of a blend from there. So when I go back to rub it, it'll appear as a gradual switch from dark to lighter and then rubbing it, using the very sight of my finger. And if that accidentally your cash out to go into the red a little bit more, you could just erase it out. And you can just look around and see anything else you'd like to dio. So I'd like to add more shadow right next to my pair here because I wanted to pop out more from the background, and I feel like that's too similar. The values are too similar. So add a little more dark blend and pull out to the left so it has that horizontal nous to it. Still in doing that accidentally got a little bit inside the pair there, so I'm gonna get my read back and kind of force it out by coloring over it. I could also a race and put the color back in, but im did that. I used the red on purpose because I wanted again that reflection of the green to be part of the red reflection in the parents. And then here there's a little bit of a shadow. But first I need to get rid of that pencil line a little bit. So I'm gonna erase into it so my pencil and gets lighter and put a little bit of orange next to it first as a base. And then I'm actually going to use a little bit of the stem color this brown. Since it's right next to the stem, it'll make a nice, reflective quality, and it'll sort of just transition gradually into that little dip. So I'm using the very corner, the pastel on just flicking my wrist out, and then I'll use the main color of the pair again to go back and not only blood in those oranges and browns, but also to fill in the color that I raced. I also have a pencil lines showing right here, which you could leave as part of the image, or you could get rid of it. If it bothers you, I'm gonna show you how to get rid of it so you can if you choose and there's a little bit of a measuring marks still showing right there. Get rid of that. So you just erase them and then color color's back in or you may like, enjoy the quality of the pencils. Going through kind of speaks to the process of the art, so you can leave it there if you want. Super the red back, you know, put the yellow back. 21. 5.4 Skin texture: So now we can do the speckles on the skin. If you prefer not to Just skip this part. It's up to you. I'm going to do a little test down here first. So if this is my skin color, you want to see which color or colors would be appropriate. I believe this Brown will work really well. Groups that would help if I use the clean finger to one that I'm glad I did that on my scratch paper before the pair. Yeah, that should work. Fine, because they're very subtle. You don't want him to show up. Really? Well, may seem a little scary at first, but just go crazy. So just dab very, very lightly. None of this No, no harsh marks, just kind of almost dropping the past still on its corner so that you get teeny little thoughts and do practice this on your scratch paper before you get started until you're comfortable with it. And then you can go on to your pair. And you know what? If you make a mistake, it doesn't race or it even rubs out like, Oh, I don't like that thought there, so I just rub it out. They're very forgiving. And you don't want him to be that obvious. So you don't press that hard? Kind of sounds like someone is very insistently knocking at the door. So once you have amount of dots you like, you can stop and just blow up any excess does. Don't worry about blending at this point. And now we're gonna put on your brightest highlights, which, in my opinion, is one of the most fun things to do also. So first, I'm going to try to put it on without erasing and see if it gets bright enough. So what I'm doing is just coloring in the approximate area. I see one of the brightest highlights, and I'm gonna try erasing a little bit. I feel like I can get brighter than that. So I'm going to just erase that whole thing I just did. And try putting the color over that same spot again. Don't worry about trying to make your highlight look like the same shape or amount of detail is the one in the reference. All you're doing is putting making an approximation. Yeah, that looks nice. So I'm gonna erase out where it want my highlights first, and I'm just doing the very approximate shape and size and placement. And then I'm going to have the light and a little bit of detail, not just blocks of light blow off the dust. So I'm using a corner of the past. Still, I mean a color in various directions, some up and down little circles, kind of Debs just to get a variety, and that will just make it look like a translation of a highlight. So you don't want to just color in the block solid, in other words, cause it'll look like a block of solid car you want it to be, have a little bit more variation and then down here. So I'm mostly dabbing around the edges so that it kind of creates a diffused look. And then when you're happy with that, you can choose if you would like to sign your picture. So the signature you can do lots of things. You can use a pencil and just write your name. You can use the corner of a pastel. You can do your initials in the year. You can write just your first name for your first and last name or your whole name, the date, Whatever you'd like. My suggestion is to keep it simple and small, Um, and put it in one of the bottom two corners. You also want it to be subtle. So in this case, I'm not going to use a pencil because I feel like that will stand out too much. Instead, I'm going to use Let me try the brown. That's pretty dark about the purple. That's a little better. I'm putting it over the reds watch to see how it shows up. So I'm gonna find a sharp corner of the past still, And I'm just gonna write my first name. No. And that'll be it. Oops. I missed part of the loop of my day either. Here we go and we're done. 22. 5.5 Spray fixative: so the last thing you can do, which I recommend doing it's not necessary. But it will help preserve the integrity of your picture because pastel dust does come off after a while is to coat it with spray fixative. I have this matte finish spray fixative, but there's several different kinds. You could bite in our story like the map, because it doesn't have any sort of sheen on it. You want to just hold it about 12 inches from your picture. Actually test first in a different direction just to make sure there's no splatters or it's not clogged, and then hold it about 12 inches and just spray and little circles. So that's sort of the fallout of the spray hits the picture. You don't want to get closer than that, because it'll leave direct wet spots on your picture. 23. 6.1 Recap: So just to recap today we learned how to draw a simple image from of cocoa. We did this lovely pair on the red background. We learned how to apply and manipulate chalk pastel to create different textures like cloth . We did shadows. We did hard edges, soft edges, different ways of blending. We had a texture to the skin with the little dots. Made it look shiny with the highlights. Did some wouldn't like texture in this town. And we had a great time. I did, I hope.