Shading Masters: The Ultimate Drawing Course for Artists

1. Pencils - Part 1: Hey, everybody, this is Kevin Cramer. And today we are covering the some of the basic essential things that you're gonna need really? To be successful in any of your art endeavors in today. We're gonna be covering in this video the most basic items that you really, really need to have a good understanding of before you can even jump into how light works or how ah, shading what kind of techniques you need to do before you can even learn any of that. You really need to master your tools and know what's available to you before you can even start doing those things. So why I learned the pencils. They're, I guess, said they're going to be the main instruments that you use to create all of your work. And that's, you know, that's the first thing you pick up. You need to have something you can rely on something you know will work and something that you know how to use and, you know, with without that available, it is really hard to choose the right thing for the for your job at the time. And, you know, certain brands are a little bit of higher quality than others. Some you just don't really want to even waste your time with. So, you know, we really wanted We're just gonna cover what it is that you really need to know about pencils, which ones? To pick which ones you can overlook and kind of just get a nice general understanding of what is really out there for you to pick from. I know if you've ever been knowing art store, you you see aisles and piles of pencils, all different hardness is colors and different brands. And today we're gonna go ahead and distill all of that down into just the basic bare essentials of what you need to be successful with shading. And it's gonna give you a model of how to go about picking your tools. So with let's go ahead and get started And, um, I hope do you hope you enjoy this one and I really had a lot of fun making it. So first off, we have pencils, the different brands out there as you walk down the aisles. Like I said, there's so many different brands of pencils there on all kind of different. They look different. There's all these different options for you. And there's really only ah, you know, hand cool that you want to look at. There's some that just aren't quite artists quality some of their student quality, which is fine, especially when you're starting out. But a lot of them are gonna be closer to, ah, like kids, toys, not toys. But you know what I mean? Like crayons and things like that, it's gonna be more. There is definitely a jump in quality. And if you have quality tools when you're learning, you can go even higher quality, and you won't really see the difference If you use non quality products when you're learning, you're really going to struggle with getting the exact thing you want. And when you upgrade to those more expensive products, whether they're just a dollar, a few cents, you're really going to see the difference in where all that money went. So as far as quality products go with art, it really is. The price really does reflect the quality in this in this realm. So if you Congar oh, with any of the ones you see on the screen, the Derwin Prisma color generals there often, um, the generals are going to be a green color pencil. There's Stadler and Sanford. If you pick one of those, you can't go wrong with, uh, with the quality that you're gonna find in those besides that, it's really just how the feeling your hand there's gonna be round pencils or is octagon pencils and the round pencils conjugate a little slippery. Those there gonna be a little harder to handle sometimes, especially if you're can. They can kind of wear down your hand a little bit, but the octagon pencils air a really great for learning tool. So if you pick any of these brands, look for the ones that have the edges on them that you can actually grab onto the round Pencils are probably tired. You had a little bit more so So there's all these different types of pencils. Which one? Which is all these far masses? Hardness is which ones to choose and which ones are necessary to really get the look that I'm going for, what you're really you're going to see that there's graphite. Obviously, there's more graphite pencils you'll find and pretty much anything else. If you walk down any aisles, you go on any kind of art store online. You'll see the graphite pencil is the main tool for drawing, and it's gonna come in sticks. It's gonna come in just like a general A to B or a number two pencil like you would see in school. And if you really want, you can get him in chunks, which is is exactly like it sounds. It's a chunk of graphite, which is really great for covering a large amount of area quickly. And the hardness is our gonna pretty much be the largest of all of the categories that you're gonna have choices from. You're gonna range from technical pencils, which are gonna be on that nine h is going harder lead, and they're gonna go always so that softer side, which is the nine b, which is really, really dark, soft, smooth, easily to blend. And as you see going forward through these videos, you're gonna see me referencing some of these pencils because they are, ah, lot easier to use For some cases. Next up is charcoal. And if you've ever seen all of these little, uh, these little twig burnt twig things that you see in the stores And you're like, What is that? And why are they so skinny? What's the difference between all of these? The skinny ones that are on the left side. If you look at the presentation, it's gonna be those air, vine and willow. And those air basically just burnt trees. Really? It's twigs putting account and, you know, heated up until they're just charcoal. So that's gonna there just kind of look like twigs. And they produce a really soft ah, unique texture. Honestly. And those air really only gonna come in a softer medium hardness as well. But those air really great for giving a good contrast of soft, and they can almost create a specific texture on demand. If you if you study the texture that you need and you can really get used to these, you can just pick this up and go straight on to the paper with it and almost achieve the exact textures you want, like denim, a gravel or something. Anything that's kind of a rough type of fabric is gonna be great for these. And now the compressed There, they're gonna be like it sounds compressed. And would case air basically gonna be in the same kind of realm. The compressed charcoal is a tighter um you can sharpen them a lot easier. There gonna be a little more a sturdy and the charcoal pencils. They're gonna be the same way. You can even sharpen. I'm just like a regular pencil. Ah, you do with all of your pencils, though in general, you want to make sure you take care of them and don't drop him because there's nothing more frustrating than trying to sharpen a pencil with a broken lead inside. It just crumbles every time or the point will fall off. And that can really, really get you frustrated. So the charcoal pencils are really great for that dark, dark colors the jet blacks that you can't quite get with the graphite cause the graphite is so reflective. And if you combine those, you can really achieve some awesome awesome juxtapositions. And, uh, you know a lot of different textures with just those two pencils alone, just those two types of pencils and up next we have the mechanical pencil, which I am not a huge user of Ah, they are very, very good for mechanical type drawings. Obviously, um, there they produce a very sharp, clean line, which is really great. If you want a specific aesthetic, they Ah, they're very sharp all the time. Obviously, it's hard there. They're always on a fine tip point and those are refillable and you can find them. So they're kind of economical In that respect, they're gonna use less pencil whenever you just click, click in the back of it or just extending the lead instead of trying to sharpen a pencil and kind of you. You kind of wasting a lot of the graphite and part of the pencil when you're using the traditional pencils. So if you're kind of looking for an economical pencil, a mechanical pencil can really, really fill that gap. Ah, the only thing with those is you will kind of find that there is a A general ah, gap into what their hardness is air gonna be available. So generally you'll find that a to B to four age is gonna be the max. Um, with with the mechanical pencils, you'll usually find you might find a little bit softer, but those air really gonna be the most widely available. Whenever you look for the mechanical pencil leads and you know those were really the mechanicals are really great for getting in the detail. And, you know, just keeping those points shock is, is another just a benefit that can really kind of where its toll on a regular pencil the next pencil up that I have used since high school, I I was introduced to it in high school. It's a super. It's actually called jet black, and I believe Onley prisma color is the company that makes an ebony pencil. As far as I know, I've only seen it from them, and it's a wood case pencil, and it's a very It's an interesting pencil. It is graphite, but it is a It is super black. So I I've used those for covering large amounts of just really dark shadows, blacks and even just color. And in page of paper, the Onley downfall to the ebony pencil is that the more you lay it down on the paper, the shiny er it is, It just reflects so much light back at you. So if you need a jet black and I've used, I've recently just switched to this myself is ah, I will use charcoal. I I combined the graphite with the charcoal now, and the charcoal gets you a jet black, and it's non reflective because the particles air just a little bit there, just a little bit bigger and they don't reflect. The light is as well. So ebony pencil is great. It's if you want a really Jet black, I would kind of shy away from it, especially if you are trying to scan it or take a photograph of it. Charcoal obviously is gonna be a little messier with some things you have to watch your fingers, but the the ebony pencil will be good for some testing, but I would not recommend it anymore. I can't recommend it anymore for jet blacks unless you are looking to create something that may be really, uh, maybe an object on the paper that has a very dark, a reflective surface than that type of pencil would be perfect. However, if you just looking for a dark shadow, go with the charcoal on those because those will those will give you a better, um, a better outcome every time. Next, we have carbon pencils, which are actually a really interesting pencil that I, um, came across not that long ago, and it is exactly like a regular pencil. It looks just like a regular pencil. It is, however, very a shifty type of medium, as you can only layer it certain ways. So if you're using graphite and you have a carbon pencil, which if you can find one, you'll be able to see this on your own. They are very hard to layer. The carbon pencil has to be put down first, pretty much before any other kind of graphite layers, because it just does not mix well with any other layers that I've found. It's almost like a wax coating. You can't go over it at all. It just it can get super black, black. It's a carbon pencil, so it's almost like a graphite itself. However, it is super jet black, like charcoal. So in those respected has those two characteristics that a really great. However, you have two very you have to be very careful on how you are using him for layering purposes and those air gonna come in, you know, hard, medium and soft. Not generally gonna give you a number. They're not going to really be in a nine hr nine b spectrum. They're usually gonna be either hard, medium or soft and those air, like I said, really good for Jet Black Sa's. Well, they they're basically they take all that. The ebony pencil and charcoal pencil do very well, but it is very temperamental on the way that you lay room. So as all of these, what we're going to be using in this course is the graphite and charcoal pencils and maybe the mechanical pencil. But really, they're gonna focus. We're gonna be focusing on graphite and charcoal. All the other ones are nice, and I wanted to give you a good overview of what they are. So you know, when you're walking through the aisles, you can say, Oh, well, I know what that pencil is. I know what these do, and you can know kind of a general idea of what the benefits are of each one before you go and actually just pick up some graphite pencils or charcoal. So I hope that gave you a good idea of what what the how to break down what you're seeing in the stores and what you really need and what the benefits are of each 2. Sharpeners: Obviously, if you're gonna be, ah, gonna be buying all these pencils Sharpeners are gonna be on the list is well and generally they'll come in a pack if you buy. Ah, any kind of pack of pencils. If you buy like a little kit, they'll generally come with a ah, maybe a piece of sandpaper, sandpaper block or a just a regular metal pencil sharpener or even a plastic one. And all of them are really, really great. They all work fine. Um, if you you can easily get caught up in some things, though, and on electric pencil sharpener, I have one and I can't say that I ever use it, really. But it does create more of a consistent tip on the pencil if you are using a regular pencil . So if you do have the money to get an electric one, they have some that plug in the wall. They have some that run on batteries. You can even use one that you would find at school. You know, they're great toe have not necessary, but they do consistently produce. Ah, fine round tip of appointing tip on the end of the pencil a little easier than the other handheld methods. The other one that I use Momo's consistently or pretty much all the time, and it's really just one that came with. Like I said, like a pack of pencils that I've already had and they're perfect, They're good, they're a cheap option and they create around tip just like the electric one. And they're just little metal ones you can get him with, Ah, two blades for different sized pencils or you just get a little small, one that has, like, a little grip on it. Both of them work fine, the other one that I use a lot, um, that I've seen a lot. It's usually one that use finding in ah, grade schools is a plastic one, and I've used a plastic when some of the kids obviously even come with their ah plastic version of the metal one. And those work great as well. It's really just the blade that if you can, you can switch out the blades as well, too. So any of these they all worked great. You can even use a knife. Ah, an exacto knife. Those air going to be ah, little harder to master to get a great, really good tip on there, and it's very easy to just break the tip off of your pencil. Ah, I trust me. I've done it plenty times, and it's really more like a whittle. You're wiggling the point off or you're wiggling the point to a chiseled tip or ah, around tip, and it's a little more of an advanced method. So what I would really recommend is if you can spring for the electric, it will be easier in the long run for you. What I use is the metal. It's super cheap, easy creates a great point every time, and I can just sharpen it into an old mug. Or that's really what I sharpen all my ah shavings into an old mug just to throw him away. And I can actually see how much I'm sharpening or where you can get a plastic one. Those really are. Ah, the plastic equivalent is perfect. Sandpaper is okay, but it's really not gonna serve you as well as the other ones. Those air really more used for sharpening Ah, lot softer tools like any racer or pastels or just softer medium in general. The metal plastic or electric all their great. You know, Just go ahead, get a medal or a plastic one. Right now, that's all you really need. So now you already know what the best brands of pencils are and the different types available and the uses. So all you have to do is just go to the local store. You can go online or go to a hobby shop. All of these pencils air. Usually you can even go to an office supply store. All of these things are usually available on all of them. You can get packed, you can buy them all together. No usually come with a sharpener, and you know it's important to know what your options are, so you don't get stuck for years or months or whatever, using one specific thing. That might not be the best quality, and it might actually be hampering what you're doing. So those options are really what you want to look for. You don't really need anything more than that, and most of the times they'll come in kits with all of these things included already. So what do you do now? Visit a local art shop. Like I said, go to your local art shop and pick up a pencil set. You can probably pull out the ones that are single servings you can play around with. Um, like I said, there's a hexagon. There's around pencils. I would suggest getting the hexagon or Octagon cited pencils. The there are they will give you, Ah, better grip overall. And it'll be less fatiguing on your hand to actually grab those cause you'll have something you can actually get a grip on. If you pick up a pencil set like that, they will. Like I said, most times come with an eraser pencil sharpener, even at little sanding block. And they might even come with some charcoal pencils. So go around. See your options. Really, all you need is a six pack, a six pack of pencils that will usually, like I said, come with all of those. Make sure you're looking from those brands that I mentioned, and you really can't go wrong. You don't have to have a super expensive set. Like I said, just get a pack of six and like, it'll usually come with all those other tools that you need and always just go just keep it simple. The the hardest thing for most people is to just see all these options, all these options and then and not make a decision at all. So what you want to do is make you already know. I just you Now you know everything that you need to know about picking out your pencils. Just go get a pack of six graphite pencils. And if you can find one that comes with a pencil eraser Ah, sharpener, metal or plastic and, you know, get ready to get drawing. This is Kevin for shading Masters. I hope you enjoyed this video. Keep it simple, and I'll see you in the next one. 3. Erasers: Hey, everybody, this is Kevin Kramer, founder of Shading Masters. And welcome back to the second video. Uh, you've already covered a good bit on the pencils and sharpeners and what to really look for . And in this video, we're gonna cover erasers and blending tools. And if you've ever I just saw any racer as, ah, just that. Something to remove a mess up. You're going to really start to think again once we go through this. It's really if you really If if that's the only way you seen an eraser, you're really doing yourself. Ah, ah, ah, Huge disservice. And I'm gonna show you exactly why today in this video. So why, What is it about the erasers and blending tools? Though they are gonna be second to pencils, thes air, the most used tools that I have in my box they are the only things generally that I use for shading. You master these and that your textures and you're lighting create themselves. The tools themselves will create all of these things for you with such limited effort, it's nine and funny. And once you realize how to use them, which ones you need, you're gonna your entire repertoire is gonna just go to that next level just by using some of these tools and techniques shouldn't even need to use them all. Eventually, once you do pick them up, you're gonna have the gamut of availability to you. You will be able to create any texture, any lighting condition, and you'll be able to do it simply and you'll know exactly what you need and what tool to grab to get the look that you're looking for and I get the amount of depth well, just exploded will go through the roof on what you're able to actually create once you get a good feel and have, ah, just some of these tools and some of them are even around the house. You don't even need to buy them most cases. So this is gonna be one of the the most fun aspects of drawing in my opinion, and I cause it really it lets you play around with tools and it really gets you all of those things that you are probably struggling with right now that you can't quite get with a pencil or you don't know how to get these air where all those fun gadgets and tools come in. So the key points in this are gonna be They're the top tools that I use for getting all my blending and shading done. And why again, like you don't need a super expensive materials. Like I said, most of these around the house. Ah, lot of them you can make. And they're really simple to use once you know what they are. So and, you know, I guess that before an eraser is more than just a mark remover, you can use it just as much as a pencil and some of them they're all gonna be great. Some you don't even need. If you just want a shade with your pencil, you're more than fine to do that. These tools, however, are gonna take those shading tips and techniques and explode them through the roof to the next level to get those realism that realistic tones that was grade Ian's that you might just be having a rough time trying to achieve. And you don't know exactly how these tools were gonna be the things to do that for you, and they'll do them almost automatically for you. So let's get in. So erasers. As you can see, there are a lot of erasers again. If you go to any art store, you will see just a barrage of erasers and all these different tools and pencils, and I'm gonna really narrow down what you need. Here there's a kneaded eraser, a plastic whitey racer electric, a cliquey racer and an art gummy racer. Out of all of these, I'll tell you right now, the only ones that I use consistently are the needed and the white plastic eraser, which is also vinyl. If you want to get into that, the electric eraser, the Clicky Racer and the art gum erasers are gonna be specialty items. You don't need them right now. I almost never used any of the bottom three. I just wanted to give you a good overview of I know what you're seeing out there. I know it's on the shelves, and if you buy a pack of erasers you're gonna General, you're going to get some of these, whether you like it or not. Usually you'll get the art gumming racer, which you don't You don't have you. I don't even use the art gum erasers those air specifically those air specifically for a race and pencil from inked lines, which, if you're getting into animation or comic book things like that aren't gonna racer. Probably gonna be a little higher up on your list, then an electric eraser or clicky racer. Ah, even maybe a kneaded eraser. But as far as I'm concerned, if you're going through this course and you want to know all the major tips on how to get great shading and textures, I'm gonna show you how to do. All of those and erasers are a big. They play a huge role in what I do and what ah, what you're able to achieve with them. So with the kneaded eraser, you can create amazing effects. It's super pliable. You can bend it, tear it apart, rip it up, and you can get into little crevices, and you can just use it as a blotter. You just pick up little hints of graphite charcoal. You can do whatever you want with it. Basically, it is really an all purpose eraser in my book, and it's really the most used as well. Second from that is the white plastic a race are often called a finally racer. It's an all purpose eraser. It's just like the one you used in school, and it is great for erasing large areas really quickly. Ah, you have to be careful. You don't go too hard or you will rip through paper. But the's are gonna be just your standard general, all purpose eraser that you can only afford. I would go with the white plastic eraser out of all of these, as it is really just a good, solid general eraser. Next would be the needed, and after that, it really is a toss up. Because the electric eraser is, it's Actually, it's a little. It's a little cumbersome in your hand. It's not a it's not the size of a pencil. It's not really even a general is not generally even. Ah, very ergonomic design. You think they would make him a little more ergonomic? Some of them plug into the wall. Some of them run on batteries. I actually have one. It runs on batteries, and I have to say I not a huge fan of the electric eraser. What it does is it spins really fast, and you kind of draw the lines or things that you want using it. And if you are not super careful, you can really Ah, you can. You can really tear through a piece of paper easily with it as well. And it also it's It doesn't really pick up a lot of graphite at once. So if you use it in a heavily graph heavily, heavily layered area, you're gonna have a lot of frustration. It's really just gonna smear. It's gonna really just smear the graphite or whatever that medium is, and it's really not gonna lift it, because in itself is using ah white plastic vinyl eraser in it. But they're smaller, and it's very it's just smearing it in circles. So if you really need an electric razor, you can go ahead and spend the money off. You just have the money to blow on it. You can go ahead and get one. I wouldn't recommend it for right now unless you're using very, very light graphite work. Then it would come in handy. But if if you want to get those really realistic shaded tones and things like that, you're gonna have deeper layers. And generally that electric eraser is not going to cut through him very well. Ah, next is that is a click eraser. And again it's just another variation of the white plastic eraser, and it just comes in a stick. Just It's almost like the mechanical version of the eraser. So if you have a mechanical pencil, you have a click eraser. They're almost in the same group. As far as I'm concerned, they work great. They worked really good, but there for light work that is not heavily shaded. So I would not put my money into a cliquey racer, either. They're great for those light, airy effects and erasing light lines. But when it comes down to getting all the marks off your paper or trying to get some things done, the Clicky Racer again, I find, is almost exactly like the electric, and it just really smears heavy, shaded areas. So again, if you can see, that's just another derivative of the white plastic eraser in which, why I really just go with the white plastic or the needed. Now the art gum is fairly, fairly new, and in my book I've never actually used it. As you can see, it's like I said, earlier. It is mainly used for a reason. Pencil from ink lines. And if you're it's more of a professional type of eraser, more for those illustrators or comic book draw artists and things like that where you're maybe sketching out the drawing, inking it, and then you need to erase those other lines. And I've done some work like that. I've never actually really used the art gum because the white, like I said, the white plastic and immediately racer always worked really good. Ah, and the art coming racer is crumbling. It will break apart very easily. So as you can see those again, if you have to get if for this course anyway, the top erasures that I recommend would be first, the white plastic second kneaded eraser, and after that, it really is a toss up. If you want to test, you could get a three pack and you'll get the gamut of all of these erasers. You'll get a ah kneaded eraser, a white plastic and an art gum. You contest them all out, see how they work, and I think you'll find that the white plastic is gonna be the most versatile of all of them. And then second is gonna be that kneaded eraser 4. Blending Tools: so moving on, um, blending tools again. These are all the things I used to create those super realistic portrait. As you can see, most of these products are already found in the home. There's a rag, a Q tip, and we have the blending stumps, Which on the right, those are gonna be pretty art specific. You're gonna have to probably go to. You're gonna have to go to an art store to find some blending stumps and the torta Leon's, which you can make your own torch. Ilyan and I have a download resource that will teach you exactly how to make that for free . Out of regular paper, you even need to go buy those. The blending stumps, however, do come in larger sizes and they're almost like they're almost like pencils in themselves. But they just pick up the graphite and spread it around. And those air really great, those air all purpose. Like I said, all purpose, they're great for large areas when you have the larger ones and those air really what? I used to get my skin tones and to smooth out all of my Grady INTs and the best part about him is, the more you use them, the more you can just pick them up because they already are carrying the graphite and you can just draw with them directly on the paper. It's, ah, there really awesome in that way. And the tort Ilyan is exactly the same, except it's just gonna be usually made out of paper, and you can roll them and make them yourself. There gonna be a little smaller? They're generally going to be used for fine details and smaller areas, but they were just a Z Good is the blending stumps in? In some cases, they are a blending stump for all intensive purposes. After that, almost everything else can be found in your house. Already there's paper towels, a felt pad, maybe and a shammy. And I've Onley recently invested in a shammy from Ah, the or the art store. And to tell you the truth, I don't even use it. I used the paper towels. I just bought one to see what it was all about, and it's really not any better than a paper towel in my book. And then the paper towels and the felt pads. Those can have very specific assed faras, creating textures. Now those can create various different textures. But in general, a paper towel. We'll get the job done, and when I use a paper towel a za long as as with all of these blending tools whenever I'm creating a skin tone, if you use a circular pattern, it will create an irregular shape that is very organic, and it makes a wonderful skin tone that is just very rich, and it looks very organic. It has really great textures in it fell pad you can use with charcoal. If you use the felt pad with charcoal, you can really get some amazing effects and textures with that, which we'll see in some later modules. With all of these in effects, I'm gonna use all of these you'll see going on. I just want to give you. Like I said in this first model, it really is a lot of tools. I'm trying to condense them for you into really the basics of what you need to get here. I don't want you to get overwhelmed all of these different tools out there, and as you can see a lot of these, you can just you can go into your bathroom or your kitchen and get most of these avail. In there, they work just as fine. And I can tell you right now whether you have a super realistic picture that was made with thousands of dollars worth of tools materials, for you have a super realistic picture made with kitchen utensils and bathroom products. As long as they look super realistic and they look how you want, then that's all that matters. You don't need to worry about getting all these super expensive tools and spending hundreds of dollars and all of this money on things you don't need. So I hope that gives you hope. That gives you a little bit perspective on picking these things out and just kind of deciphering through the aisles and of aisles of tools whenever you go into your art stores or your hottie stores or anything like that, cause a lot of them are just derivatives of the basic tools that you need, and that's all they really are. So going forward, if you can see I have paintbrush and Q tip the Q tip. You confined its for your just just like the little ear swabs you can find in your bathroom or at any drugstore. Really, For super cheap, you can get hundreds, 500 for $3 or whatever in their super disposable, and you can use them for fine details instead of getting those torta Leon's as whatever you want to use or those final details. As long as you can move graphite or move charcoal around the paper in a blended area or smooth, blended way, you can use it to make art. As long as you can make a mark on the paper with it, you can use it just so I hope again that gets that. I need all these expensive tools to make all this great artwork and have it be worth quality. The amount of money spent on your tools does not necessarily give any more worth to the final outcome of your picture, so I hope that I hope that solidified it a little more for you and honestly, on Lee. I don't even really use the paintbrush, but I know it's available for I know a lot of people do use it for atmospheric effects and light blending, especially with charcoal, since it's a little easier. Mostly, all I use the paintbrush for is wiping away eraser crumbs just so I don't put any extra oil on my papers from my hands. So that's really all I use for those. So that is it. I hope again that gives you a really good broad idea of what you really need, what you confined in your house and just play around with in what you don't need at all. So now you know, there you go, which are must haves and which your nice toe have and which are expense where why expensive is not always better. And you know how an eraser is a drawing tool, not just a mark remover. You can do so much with an eraser if you just use it to remove marks. You're really doing yourself and your your end product that just just adjust service by not truly understanding and utilizing what's available for erasers and what you can do with him . So what? What to do now? Go to the art store, go online just like every other video pick up Ah, three pack of erasure set. They'll usually come with that white plastic and needed or gum eraser all in one. Uh, I even have one of my desk right now. It waas less than $3 for all of those that's us currency. And that will get you set up with exactly the erases that you need. You don't need anything else more than those right now and then, You know, you just go buy a roll of paper towels if you don't. And that's really all that you need. For those, you can use paper towels, toilet paper, Q tips, all the things found in your bathroom already, and then go ahead, download making your own blending stumps guide and create a blending stump. Or, you know, if you don't wanna have to do that if you don't really feel like going into and ah, making your own blending stumps, go buy a pack at the art store as well you can again. You can find all of these in the supplies list. Listed in the resource is they have a list of all of the tools that you need and links to where you can find them and, ah, actually a link to ah yelp, which will help you find your local art store or somewhere that you know, sells these type of products for you to go purchase. And like I said, the blending you can make your own blending stumps out of paper. You will be limited on the thickness and rigidity of them, however, so you may want to just go buy a pack of those blending stump. They're super cheap. They come in all different sizes from you know, some that you can hold in your hand full fisted, some that are Q tip size, and you can get the blending stumps in just a cheap bundle there at the art stores. They don't cost much at all, and you'll have all the things you need. So get a pack a three pack of erasers by a roll of paper towels. If you don't have any number one things I use for skin tones and go either by a pack of blending stumps or use the guy toe, having the resource is and just make one yourself in and you're basically making one of those blending tortelli ins. So go ahead, do that and, you know, always, always, always keep it simple. This is Kevin Cramer. I hope it's see you in the next video, and I hope that this really gave you a good understanding of really what you need, What you don't. The next section is really gonna I think, really gonna give you some major insights off how to effectively shade and get things done the way that you know, you can do the way that I know you could do. And the way that you know, the way you know, you should do the way. You know, that level of achievement with any tool takes practice. But, you know, knowing how to do something so that you can practice it and knowing that you can do something. But not having the information available are two totally different things. And I hope that I can give you enough information to where you feel confident that you can , You know, when you're practicing that you're doing it the right way. So again, go out there, make sure you have all the right tools that I've given here to you and just, you know, have fun and remember, always keep it simple. 5. Paper - Part 1: Hi, everybody. This is Kevin Cramer for drawing and coloring dot com, and this is shading masters on. This is a video on choosing paper now. Paper is not one of those sexiest items you probably think about when you're drawing or creating any of your pictures portrait sor landscapes. But it really does make all the difference. If you pick a quality paper and the right paper for the job and it's it's what you work on , it is. Everything that you do is on some kind of surface, and that surface is usually paper, and the paper will directly affect how the end product is depicted, Whether it's rough, smooth or whatever. It'll create a lot of the textures just through the paper itself. So if you can choose the right paper for the work, then half the battle is already done. You're not fighting with the paper to get the look that you want, and you've already matched it with your outcome that you're looking for. So the key points to take away from this one is not. All paper is created equal. There are a lot of different types of paper. Some, like I said, it suited for better or other jobs than what you might think, and cheaper is better in the in the beginning. But as you go on and you get more skill and your build your confidence, you're gonna want to increase the quality of your paper just because it it does, it does affect the outcome. And as far as saving and archiving your work, you're gonna wanna have the more higher quality paper just in respect for storage and, you know, just framing or archiving it. Just keeping it. It'll just stay a quality paper longer. And like I said before, the right paper can just make things easier on you. You can create the textures easier. You can get the outcome you're looking for. And so the outcome here is gonna really help you decipher the mountain of types of paper that you see just like every all the other videos. Whenever you go toe art stores, I know it is just overwhelming to see. It's basically a it looks like a department store of tools for you to choose from from paints the pencils to paper, too, Ah, gold leaf and everything else. It's just sometimes it can really just overwhelm you And can I can really kind of just take away your momentum. If you have an idea, you want to go in and then you go Ah, and you don't know what to do. You don't know what to pick to get the outcome that you're looking for with the ideas that are in your head. So this whole module, if you you need to really go through and get an idea for all of the different types of tools that you have and I think of laser focused down to what exactly it is you need and what is just superfluous, what you don't need and what is just extra tools that air fancy gadgets that you can get later on and play with if you really want to. So that's the aim here. Paper is going to be as critical as the pencil or even the shading tools or anything else that you're using it can. It'll it'll enhance all the qualities of those things. All of all the pencils and all those other tools you're using and really just bring out their qualities even more so. And it will really highlight what you're able to do with those other tools. They really accent each other. So paper there's different types of paper. There's really when you go into the store, you're really just going to see you're going to see all these different types of paper, all these names and brands and all of this. What you really just need to know about paper is it comes in three types, and it could really even be narrowed down to just the two types. But you're gonna have hot press, cold press and illustration board. And what those are is hot press is going to be a smooth surface. Those are gonna be perfect for creating all of smooth, clean, crisp design work. Then you have the cold press, which is rough. It's gonna be great for textures, and you can even smooth out. Some of the rough stuff is, well, it get cold. Press usually has a little more tooth to it, but really depends on the the the brand that you're using and illustration board is gonna be generally smoother. Overall, it's not really too rough. The uses for all of these are like I said, the hot pressed paper is gonna be clean and create fine lines, anything that you want to look a super smooth, vibrant or just kind of reflective, almost like a like a photograph. If you want to draw super realistic portrait, go with the hot press. If you wanna have something that's got a little more interest, maybe looks a little funkier. Go with the cold press because if there is the cold press paper will bring out its own characteristics. It will be a part of the piece that you're making. It will have just a more of a rough, jagged, finished, and you can create textures with it very well. And if you combine that with the other tools for blending and shading and all their pencils could really achieve some great effects a lot easier, then if you were using a hot press paper, so it really depends on what you're looking to do in the outcome that's gonna determine what paper you choose. An illustration board is gonna be really just good for all purpose stuff, and it's got a rigid. It's a thick, rigid board, so it's it's still paper mounted to a board, but it's got It's a stiffness and it. It really holds up a lot better than paper in most cases and to to that effect, what I use a lot is Matt board, which is acid free. A lot of the times, most of the times which you want to get. And here we go again. Um, all of these papers are going to be acid free, and if they're not, you really don't want to get him. It's really acid free is gonna be archival quality. It's not gonna yellow. It's not gonna turn the papers, not gonna turn yellow over time. And that's really what that acid free mark means. It doesn't turn yellow, and it's archival quality and anything went. Whether you're drawing or you're framing, you always want to use acid free paper acid free everything as far as your your paper or stationary or anything that you're using that you want it to be acid freed. So it prevents that yellowing that you see from old time or old paper that's been sitting. There you go those air three that you're going to see everywhere. You might have some variations, but they're all gonna be hot. Press cold press and it really depends on the brand. If you go look and see, the different brands will have different versions of hot press cold press, and you'll get to see over time as you use them. Which one you really kind of lean towards, which one can create the things and textures that you find more appealing as far as someone else. See, I can tell you what all of these, what ones I use and I use hot press and I use cold press an illustration. But I use all of these, but I think mawr of what is the outcome that I'm trying to get with the image. Do I want the paper to really show through? Or do I want the image that I'm creating to be the main highlight, and that should be the main judge of what kind of paper you're choosing. 6. Paper - Part 2: So once you see all these different papers and all these other things, you you might hear the term ah, 100% rag or 100 for full rag. And you kind of What does that mean in tight in terms of paper? What is what is rag have to do with anything for paper? And it's why is it super expensive? The full rag papers generally gonna b'more expensive. And there's a reason for that. It's cotton or linen. It's usually gonna be a mixture of both, and it's it's instead of just wood or paper pulp and the ones that are just wood and paper Pope are going to be the ones that are the ones that turn yellow. They're gonna be the cheaper papers which were perfect and great for practicing and getting all those, um, you know, getting all of those rough sketches done and just really kind of working through ideas. You don't want to go with the high, super expensive paper when you're just testing in practicing, that's completely unnecessary. But the more you build your skills, just like everything else, you're gonna want to increase the quality of the tools you're using because you'll, you'll get better results. It's like choosing a cheap entry level car or going to the Mercedes Benz dealership and picking the top of the line car there. It's It's a very different quality of craftsmanship for each of the different products. And when you get there and when you use them, that's really the only time that you'll see. Wow, this is a lot better than what I've been using, or I can definitely see where the money went with this one. So it's just higher quality. Keep that in mind and resist yellowing, Just like we said. Mostly you'll see these in the sketchbooks is they'll have vellum or Bristol and that really all you need to know about that is those equal quality. That's all you need to know. You see those, Okay, It's a quality paper that goes back into history of using animal skins and all these other things which were higher quality and things like that. All you need to know is if you see vellum or bristol its quality. There you go. Now, the other thing that you want to consider when you're choosing paper anyway, the higher quality papers will have they All of these will be marked on the paper, um, trays, like when you go to choose the paper that pick out your different papers, you'll see these and you'll see each one. What that paperweight means, is it. It just means the thickness of the paper. It's how thick is that paper going to be whenever I if, like if you pick it up, it's a Is it like a postcard? Is it like a piece of notebook paper? That's what the weight of the paper means. It's usually expressed in grams per square meter or pounds. So if you have a £60 paper or 89 graham those air Really what you wanna lean for? You don't wanna go any lower than that, because the quality of the paper is just gonna have no integrity, and it really it won't be able to hold up to the amount of shading and pencil marks that you're gonna be imposing on it. And 60 or above is mostly what you'll find in your sketchbooks anyway. For an example, photo paper is 250 grams. Copy paper is 75 grams and then a heavy fine art paperboard is 385 grams. So if you can, you can kind of see how those are going to go. Ah, really Good art paper is gonna be around 200 or so, maybe to 25 1 80 £180. And those are gonna be solid papers. They're gonna usually be like a watercolor paper, which can stand all of the wetness and all of these things, and it won't buckle. That's really what you're getting the paper poundage for the paperweight. The higher the paperweight, the less it'll buckle and the more you can experiment with it. That's really what the paperweight allows you to do. All of these different types and all of these different types of paper. What brands do we need to just go look for and pick out so I can just narrow it down When I go there? There's all these stacks of paper. Which one do I need to go and get arches? Strathmore, Kansan. Those are gonna be the top three brands that you're you'll you'll see and sketchbooks and you'll see with single sheets of paper, just like what you see on the screen. Those are gonna be the top trusted everywhere, as far as I know, and you'll see them everywhere. Those air quality, handcrafted papers There, in every sketchbook, they all make sketchbooks. You can go pick one of those out. You want to make sure you get one that's at least 100 pages arm or all of these make quality paper brands. Some of them even have the little, like a little imprint of their their stamp of their name, and it will have the information of the paper on it. You can. It'll tell it, you will tell you right on the front of it. So you can either use the front or the back or crop that off, and usually the front will be a little rougher on all of these. The frontal be rougher just by the nature of the paper being made. So in itself, you kind of have a double sided. You have a makeshift hot and cold type of type of paper with each paper piece of paper you get, whether it's hot or cold press. So if you get a cold press piece of paper, you have the rough side on the others on one side. If you flip it over, it's gonna be smoother. Just by the process that the paper has made, you'll have two options. So if you're if you're not sure which one to get, Just go with the cold press and you'll. If you go in the stores and fill him, you're gonna want to really feel these. You don't want to buy the paper online. You really want to get a feel of how these you know how they feel in your hand before and just get a good idea of what they look like because not all paper looks the same. And it's good and as, ah, as good and his quality Aziz are inconsistencies do occur, and a lot of them So you wanna. They all have a little bit different. If you really have a specific idea, a specific idea, then you want to go hand picked that paper out so you stick with those top three brands. You'll be perfect and you'll be ready to go. That's really all that you need to know about papers. You know the difference between the hot and the cold press. You know, the top three brands look for what full rag means it means quality. And you know what? Why more expensive is not always better. But you know, as faras when you're practicing. But in the long run, the more you build up your skills, you want to use the more expensive papers for your final piece is not your practice runs and all you really need is a sketchbook to start and those air super cheap. You just want to make sure you get at least you know, ah, 50 or 100 page more sketchbook before you. You know, just so you're gonna have something that practice with. So what do you do now? Now that you know all of this, you know, hot a narrow down the paper, you know exactly the look for go by go by a spiral bound sketchbook 100 pages or more. I recommend the spiral bound mawr. So because it's easier to flip pages, you don't get that crease in the middle. That limits what you can draw. A lot of them are perforated, so you could just rip out the pages if you need. If you want to scan it, you can scan it into the computer or, you know, do whatever you want to do with it, and you know it, Really? They're just easier to use, in my opinion. So I mean, you can get a mole skin that was all worked great. But the mole skins are gonna be more expensive, all of the other, and they're not. They're not going to contain those papers that I just talked about So you can find a spiral bound sketchbook by any of those three brands and they'll all of equality. And it there really just more versatile in my in my opinion, go visit your art store, browse the paper section and really get a feel for what is available out there. Once you have an idea of what's available, you can see the final outcome better, because you know what you can use to achieve it. So if you have a piece of paper that's rough and the idea in your head is, I have, uh an image that has concrete and all of these other things is a portrait. And I wanted to be rough, and I wanted to just kind of be funky, and I wanted to be a sketchy type of, um, sketchy type of of peace. You know exactly what papers and what tools are available to you. Now you will. You congest go. I need this this in this and go to the art store and look like a pro and look exactly like you know what you're getting, because now you do. You know exactly what to get. So there you go. Keep it simple. Always keep it simple and just go out there, pick up the sketchbook, visit your store, get an idea for what's available as far as the paper. And that's really all you need to know about paper. You know everything that you need to know to narrow down your focus again and pick out the best top quality products that you need and just everything else to the wayside. Use the reference sheet for the supplies list. It will help you find the store, or you can go online if you really are unavailable. If you really don't have any places, you can go. Use what I told you. Pick out one of those brands. You'll be all set. This is Kevin. Go out there, keep it simple, and I'll see you in the next video. 7. Extras: so extras. Tape tape is one of those extras that just comes in handy whenever you're doing anything as forest crafts or artwork goes in, the tape that I use is the Blue Painter's tape. Sometimes I use masking tape. You just want to make sure that it's a low tack type of tape so it doesn't ruin the paper when you pull it off or just stick, and you want to be able to leave it on for a little way a little bit and not ruin the surface. That's really the main key with that is so you don't ruin the surface that you're working on and putting all this time into. You just wanted to have low tack, and you can pull it off their specific artist tape as well, which is super low. Tack, works perfectly. It can be on the more expensive side, so you want to have to weigh your options on that. But as Faras tape goes, it's good for blocking off areas that you need a clean Crips crisp line when you're doing a lot of maybe shading or it's really all I use it for now is for framing my artwork and putting in attaching the artwork to the mats on the back. So tape not a necessity at this point. Maybe along the way, when you actually have something that you want a frame or your, you think it's quality enough to frame it, and by the end of the scores you should. And I believe you really will have something that you're proud enough to frame and you because you're this. I'm gonna cover every single thing that you need to go through. So keep the tape in mind because you're gonna have something that you're gonna frame very soon. But at this point, it's not a necessity. It's extra. Next up is a ruler. I mean, usually most people have a ruler already. There's Onley of two things that I would really keep in mind whenever I'm using or choosing a ruler is there are two types of rulers that I use the most. There's really only two types of rulers that I use it all. There's a metal ruler and a clear plastic ruler. Each serve its own purpose. Usually my metal ruler is longer. It's gonna be 18 inches or longer, and I even have a yardstick, which is all metal thes smaller. One has a cork backing, which prohibits, or it slows down at least sliding. So when you are using it, it doesn't move around. When you're trying to draw a straight line, it actually gives it some tax. So those are with the metal ones or four. Whenever I'm doing longer straight lines, it gives me a nice, steady, solid line that I can use to draw with. The clear plastic one is. I think that benefit is pretty obvious there. It's clear, so you can see through it. So if you have a tight space, you can put it down and then you can still see the other lines. And you can match up and draw perspectives of buildings or, you know, kind of maybe just frame up your artwork before so you have, ah, general idea of what you want to draw, and it really helps with connecting lines and things that are a little invisible when they're covered up with the metal one or another type of eraser. What I don't use is those solid plastic ones. Those or wouldn't one. A wooden one would have worked good, but the I Usually I really only use a metal or a clear plastic. They're both very durable and they're both super super useful. Last again is gonna go along with the, um, the end product of what you're doing, what you're working towards, and that is a fixative. And what the fix it it does, is it? It kind of has it in the name. Honestly, it fixes the work so it kind it holds it, it protects it, and it makes it gives it a coding and attacked toe where it doesn't move in, which is really, really good whenever you're using charcoal, because it will prevent smearing or smudging. Or especially if you worked on something forever and then you spray it, it'll it'll keep it there. You can use it and there's actually workable. Fix it IBS, which will allow you to spray it, and then you can still work on top of it. It's not a sealed image. It doesn't seal the work. There are some that are final clear coat, glossy or matte nick. Finish and seal the work, and you can't really draw or add any more graphite or texture On top of it. I only work with the workable fixative, and that has worked for me for a long time now. So if you do want to get a fixative so you can really work things out or you just worried about smudging, and if you're storing a lot of work and you have a lot of charcoal and a lot of charcoal work, then you're going to really want to look into workable fixative zor any kind of a mat fixative or clear fixative just so you can make sure they don't smudge once you're done with them. Because there's nothing worse than having something ruined just because if you had no no way to store it correctly, as faras fix it is go again. There's also another caution. Ah, a word of caution here is before you spray any of these because they're all in an aerosol can. Before you attempt to put any of these on your work, spray them on a test piece of paper with some kind of graphite or something that you've already worked on for testing purposes or just practice in general because you really want to see how that fixative is gonna affect the final image I've even tested before. This is why you need to be a little cautious when using. These is I've even sprayed test images, gotten the whale and saw that it worked. It looked fine. And then when I went to go, use the when I went to put it on the final image. After I spent all of these hours of work, I went to spray it, and then the final outcome. It was completely different from what I had originally, and it changed the way that whole image looked. So you kind of want to be aware of what you're doing with the workable Fix it if there's some. There's two kind of schools of thought on that of people that just don't use them at all. And some people that do. All I'm saying is, if you do choose to use them, make sure that you fully tested it and you know exactly how to get the effect, because it's basically spray painting your work, and you want to make sure that you're getting exactly the look you want and you're not just gonna accidentally ruin all of those hours. You stuck and put into those so that is really it. That's how that's all that. You need to really set up a good, solid work space and get it going to be the most productive area in your house. That's all you really need. It's the easiest way to store all your tools. You know how to do that. Now all you need is a cheap box, something that you can keep them dry. And you want a dedic. You just really want a dedicated area. Now you also know the type of lighting I have given you the exact lightbulbs to go get. You know exactly what to look for, and that is gonna be another integral part of the workspace. So what to do now? Designate a workspace with ample lighting? Go choose a workspace that might be hectic. You might have, ah, hope another family member. This everywhere you might have people. You don't really have a specific, dedicated large desk area. That's really just something that's like your artist's studio. You might not have that room, but even a lap desk that you can have and just packed the little pencil box or pencil pouch along with you. You have a mobile workspace and then you can go sit outside, which will give you the ample light so it's not limited to indoors. You can take thes outdoors. You can really designate a nice area. Maybe you go find a tree you can sit under outside. That's your workspace. You can do that every day. You're the only person that has that you can get away to that area. You really want to have a comfortable place. You can go. You can relax, so you're not stressed. You're not tense because that will come through when you're trying to practice. And it will make practicing a lot more difficult if you can't enjoy the area or you're distracted so again, you wanna have a solid surface to drawn and go get a storage box. You can use an old crayon box old tin box on old anything, as long as you can keep a dry. It has a class or its seals or not seals, but it has some kind of locking mechanism. So where it doesn't just fly out a zipper, anything so you can keep all of your pencils and all your tools and one location you're usually gonna have at least six pencils and eraser may be the ruler and some blending tools . So you want to have something that's gonna keep all of those in one area and be big enough to hold him all and you want to be able to move it around, Indication need to. So go get a storage box. Make sure you have a solid work surface. Go get go get a light from the store. You can go to any lighting store. I wouldn't recommend spending a whole bunch of, like, ah, whole bunch of money go get a cheap adjustable light. You can go to the art stores they have, um, there probably be a little more expensive than what you really need. But go get the light bulbs. CFL bulbs. You can usually get those at a ah home improvement store or even a department store, and those will really be the only light bulbs that I can recommend. Those are the only ones I use in my house, so I use those in every light fixture. I don't I don't. I have no tolerance for the other lightbulb colors anymore, So those are the ones I recommend. Those are the ones I use. And I can't recommend those that that color range highly, more highly enough. And, you know, that's really it. That is all you need to keep your work surface, to keep your work station and to build a work space for yourself that is gonna be productive and push all the distractions away and give you enough lighting and what you need to really succeed with this course and to expand on your own drawing and filled your own skills once you're done with this course. So there you go. I hope that gave you a good overview of what you really need again. Ah, that's what this whole first module is about is really just to cut down on all that superfluous stuff that you don't need any more. You see it? You can just say no. I don't need that any this, this and this and go get it and have a laser focus. And then you can come back and make sure and know that you have everything you need. So go ahead, get those things, get your workspace set up and always remember, keep it simple. This is Kevin. I'll see you in the next video, and I can't wait to get into the next Ah, next model with you guys. It's gonna be a lot of fun. 8. Choosing Your Workspace: All right. Welcome back, everybody. This is Kevin, creator and founder of drawing and coloring dot com and creator of shading Masters on. And today, this is a video about your workspace and those extra tools that you're going to encounter that you really need to finish and keep all your tools and all your drawings in the right spot and keep them preserved for future use. And, you know, just making sure your workspace is comfortable for you to use, so define your space. Whenever you have your your workspace, you want that workspace tells exactly what it does, what you do in that workspace. It usually has a very specific look. It gives you exactly. But you know, exactly, once you look at the worst workspace what it's used for, and that is really what I want you to do in this video and really, you know, designate your space. You want to get a designated space because it encourage you and encourages you to draw, encourage you to practice, and it really minimizes your distractions and and it can also. It can also be your little get away to, you know concentrate. Just erase the day and that is really the really why you want to have your own defined space for drawing and practicing and really giving yourself the chance to master this art. So the key points in this video are gonna be you need. Basically, you need to have a comfortable, productive area you can work in, and it needs to be lit very well. Lighting is everything in anything that you do that you need to be able to see clearly. You need enough lighting to see what you're doing, and we're also gonna cover those extra tools that can really help you stay organized and keep all of your things and one spot and keep your keep your work space neat and clean. So what are those tools? The obvious ones? Like I said, lighting in my book is key to having quality artwork. There's nothing worse than thinking that you have all of your shades and tones ingredients down. And when you get into a consistent writer light, you see that your darks really aren't as dark as you thought. They looked darker in the dark light, and you look your image looks awesome, but when you put it under a consistent light source. It falls a little short, so lighting is everything. What you need to do is just get all you really need is a an adjustable light. You can get it from, ah, cheap place. It doesn't matter where you get it from. I have a light for my Kia. It was only $15. It's like an angle pose. Ah, replica type of light. And it serves very well. I also have I have about two or 31 I've gotten from a vintage store was actually pretty cheap, but really just need on a light that is it. Can that lights up the entire area consistently, or that you can angle it to one side or the other. So you're not casting shadows on your drawing while you're drawing. And believe me, I've done a lot of research with home of the CFL bulbs and all the lighting and the best ones that I've found are gonna be from the 35 hundreds of 4200 que color temperature range back a few years ago when the CFL bulbs ah, compact fluorescent involves. If you don't know what the CFL means, I kind of went a little crazy, trying to figure out which one looked the most. Like a regular re normal g reveal light bulb, the one that I really liked and had. It just looked like natural light. So I kind of went on a little tangent. I tested Hall of Different Ones, and that small spectrum is the only ones that really gave me that natural, consistent light that wasn't tinted yellow too much or too blue. And those were the best performing lines. They're very neutral, their white light, and they're pretty much just like daylight. The ones that are actually named or branded as daylight usually are a little too blue for me. Those do not put out a consistent color there, almost medical. They're very sterile type of lighting, which doesn't doesn't necessarily give you the color that year they're looking for in normal lighting situations. It's a very blue light, so if you stick with the 35 k 3500 kate of 4200 K you're going to get a nice, consistent natural daylight type of light. So that's the lighting. Next up is your work surface. You wanna have a solid work surface that you can tilt or is at least flat. Ah, so you can really have something you can rest your hand on and make sure it's not shaking and moving around. So when you're trying to get those super detailed lines or a straight line or anything like that, you don't have to worry about a jagged, shaky line being created because your work surfaces and stable. When I was in high school, we used to have these huge big desk tables that were flat, and you could have two people drawing on him at once with huge pit pieces so it doesn't have to be tilted. Tilted is nice. Most of the work surfaces and lighting you can get online from relatively cheap now, and they have adjustable surfaces. Some of them might not be a solid as maybe a desk, but they're still gonna be solid enough for you to draw straight lines. They're not gonna be shaking or rickety as you're using them with your pencils. So you want to make sure that solid surface is there and lit very well. So that is number one. You can also get a lap type of desk, which they have in a lot of a lot of art stores, craft stores, even bookstores in some cases. Ah, they're just gonna like a lap desk and those air perfect for just setting on outside. And it gives you a nice solid surface as well. So the key here is really just something that's solid and not shaky, because when you're drawn a straight line, you want to build a draw, a straight line. The next thing that is key is really just the storage of your tools. What do you using? Where you keeping them? You want to keep them in a dry, a dry place. Obviously, you don't want to have your pencils in a wet, damp area where they can deteriorate and just break down and just really ruin the quality. And, ah, waste your money because you're spending good money on these tools. You want to make sure they're in a nice, dry place where you're taking care of them. When I first got started, I would go to the art stores. I wanna see the thes air just tackle box is they're just fishing tackle boxes for all intensive purposes. So if you have a tackle box you can. Or if you have a place where you know you can go get one for relatively cheap, go get a tackle box. It's gonna see the same exact type of box, and it may even be cheaper just because it's not branded with art, for it's not. It doesn't say it specifically for art, which sometimes storage is one of those things where the amount of money is not necessarily correlated with the quality. I don't have a tackle box. I don't actually do a lot of on location stuff. However, if I'm in a studio, I don't really need a tackle box anyway. And it's actually very cumbersome. What I use is just a like a like a grade school or, you know, a middle school, high school type of pencil box there called Space Savers. There are actually they have rivets in him. They're all plastic. They're not metal or anything like that, and you can actually stack them and they're color coded to so you could buy different colors. You may even middle find him at the dollar store or just like a corner store just, ah, a drug store. Anywhere there really cheap and they served the purpose perfectly fine. I keep all of my pencils, all my shading tools. I have three of them. I have a green one, a blue one in a clear one. And they hold all of my things. And I have them lined up on my desk to the right. They held everything. And if I really need to, Aiken stack them on top of each other and they work perfectly. They've served my purpose perfectly. You know, you can get a metal tin. You can also get a pencil pouch as well. Ah, you don't necessarily need a box. It's really the idea for the storage is to have a nice, clean, dry place where you can pack him away if you need to. And they're not just flailed all about when you're not using them. If you can find something like that, you can use an old box. You can use anything that will keep them in a safe place. They won't get smashed, dropped, cracked, and you can keep them dry. So if you have all of those, you have the lighting. You have a nice solid work space and you have something Where you can just put all your pencils away when you're done, then that's really all you need. The extras that I'm gonna say are kind of things you probably already have. But they're more along the lines of finished works type of deals you're not gonna be using them for, except for maybe one of them. You're not going to really be using them in your day to days things. 9. Expressing Form: Hey, everybody, Kevin here founder of Drawn in coloring dot com, creator of shading masters. In this video, we'll give you focusing on How do you go about expressing form in your drawings. The most important aspect of drawing anything and trying to give it form and depth is understanding how light works lights. What's going to determine how you draw everything in your image? So if you don't take the time to really learn how to draw lighting, you're going to struggle. When it comes to creating anything realistic. Or even when you try to draw cartoons, you won't just Pappas much, and you really want to understand why. So there's really there to basic principles to drawn effective lighting, which were outlined by Howard Pyle, one of America's top illustrators, and later refined further by Andrew Loomis, one of his students, who was also, um, phenomenal. So I mean, I can't really take all the credit for these, but I do have my slightly owned, simplified approach to, so they're really at their core just clear observations of nature, which you'll find to be true. The more you study, the more you studied on your own. So the 1st 1 Determine the placement and type of light. If you start an image off and you haven't determined the placement or the intensity of the light source, you're never really going to know how to add the correct shading. For realistic effect. You're just gonna blindly create shadows and textures and sides, and they'll have no relation to each other in value. A tone and the images is gonna fall apart. So the intensity of the lining goes hand in hand with the placement. If the light is high intensity than it will affect the tones differently than if it were like a diffused light. A good example of that would be the son and the sun shining down on an object on a clear day in the shadow will likely be very dark. If it's on a cloudy day, it's gonna be almost invisible to see that shadow. So that's relationship between shadows and life in general. The brighter the light, the dark of the shadow will be, and the lower and more diffused the light, the more the shadow is gonna appear like the tone that is in the light. So it's almost basically like that shadow is imperceptible, you can't even see it. So, as you see, the intensity and placement is gonna be really important on the structure. You don't just want to leave it up to chance. It'll give you the great place to start all your images and be what you used to determine how much shading you actually add to your pictures. So that's number one. Number two. The relationship of the value must be consistent. So what does that mean? Once you've determined light source, you'll need to make sure it's consistent with how the light is shining on other objects around it. So, basically, if you have the sunlight from a clear day being depicted on your image, you don't want to just draw other objects like they were on a cloudy day. With the fuse lighting the shadow won't match. The highlights won't be in the Craig relationship, so the lighting conditions must be consistent throughout the drawing. Otherwise, the entire image is just gonna fall apart. So if a light and shadow of an object has a certain relationship in your image, you no matter what type of lighting that you might change it to that object has to keep the relationship of tone that's also called local color, and we'll have another video about that in a little bit. You also want to make sure to keep him on the angle, the angle of the light source and relationship. The surface that is shining on Onley flat plains could be evenly lift. They're gonna be flattened, tone and value to and all around surfaces. They're gonna be drawn, ingratiated tones of half tone so you can see this when you draw sphere. For example, if you were standing behind a ball and the light source was in front of it, where you would expect the lighting to be most intense in the front, That's because the front is where the lighting is the most direct, and it's blocking the light from getting to the back of the ball where you are. So you see the dark, the shadow. So if the if you draw the entire ball in the same light as the front, it's not gonna have any depth of real form. That's the same mistake most people do when I draw faces. They draw large areas of skin tone, but they don't take into account the angle of the light that the face has it that it has many and and face has different values, and it is not hitting them all the same. And then they end up with those flat, lifeless values, and they don't reflect the show the surface accurately and they can't figure out why. So if you're one of how to create more realistic faces, or why you don't have those depth and realism and yours, even they have the proportions, right. That's why you don't have your not depicting the planes and values and this simple enough and consistent way. And it's not in proportion to nature. So those are the two key points to keep in mind when you're drawing and start any of your drawings. First, determine the placement and intensity of the lighting. Second, the lighting you choose has to be consistent with its shadows and maintain a consistent relationship with the rest of the objects around it, or it's just not gonna really it's not gonna feel really, either. You can't have clear daylight and diffused light hitting the same object from the same source life. It won't be let correctly, and it will create just a dull, lifeless image. Now, with those concepts in mind, the best thing to do is tow. Learn directly from nature. Get out of the house. Go observe the light around, see how things hit it. Go. How does it look around when you wrap around objects? What does it look like? How does the intensity changes? Source gets around the objects is further away. How did the shadows change for the different intensities alike? To get lighter, they get darker. Just go out to a coffee shop library anywhere. Just sit and watch how light interacts you learn Maurin five minutes. Doing that, just room looking and watching it, trying to fake it in your drawings. You won't learn anything doing so. Once you have a working fundamental knowledge, you'll be able on your way. You'll be creating masterpieces and you'll be far ahead of anyone else that's doing it. So I hope you get a lot of this video. Make sure you leave your comments and questions below and for the rest of the community, and I'll try to get to as quickly as I can. It also helps others going through the course to get their answers done and answers quickly made. So always, I hope again hope that served you hope you get a lot out of that, give you some good principles the work with and you know, as always remembered, always be learning and just keep it simple. 10. Parts of Light - Part 1: Hey, everybody. Kevin here found of drawing coloring dot com and creator of shading Masters. Welcome back in this video, we're gonna be going through the different parts that actually make up form and light. So let's go over to some key components. It would actually make up light and how we can simplify it to get the most impact in your images. So, as you know, all form is made up of light and shadow. The shadows themselves could be broken down even further into core cast shadows and how they're affected by a reflected light. So let's take a look at highlights first. At their simplest, they're gonna be the brightest point of any image obvious, right? They're also gonna depict the angle and intensity that the light is coming from. Maybe not so obvious. So second is the shadows. They, of course, will be the darkest areas. And contrary to what you might think, the shadow is actually pretty transparent. And I'll show you that in a little bit as well. That's especially true for the cash shadows. So you probably already know that when light hits an object, it throws a shadow onto a surface behind it wherever that life path is, where it's in that direct line, you're gonna have a shadow on the other side. That's exactly what the cash shadow is is the shadow that's created on another surface in the shape of the object that's being lift. So basically any shadow you see around you, the one of you on the ground, the ones buildings under your car, anything it has formed will create a cash shadow. It's gonna be everywhere. The one on me now they're really going to give you objects form and make him pop. If you Adam. So there's there's easy ways of dramas well, and I'll show those to you in just a little bit with you over to the desk and last is reflected light. Reflected light is a light that bounces off other objects and surfaces back into the shadows, and it can be confusing if you don't know about it or even notice him. But they're the lighting, their lighting, the shadow. And if you're not accounting for it, it can also be the reason why your images don't really have much depth. They actually they bring more depth into the shadows. So with those key elements in mind. Let's head over to the desk and I'll show you some examples. Okay? So as you can see, we have our little ninja guy here, and what I'm gonna do is just give you a few. Just a quick example of cash shadows and how they work and how they really have the intensity in the direction of the light really does effect the way that the shadow is depicted and how it's thrown onto other objects. So, as you can see here, he already has a little bit of a cash shadow. I have a nice soft light on him, and you can see how the shadow around him right here and even on my hand is very soft. It's a very soft shadow that you really can't, uh, you can't really see definite form in it. But once we turn off the light here and he goes under a spotlight, you can see how much sharper and harder the edges are for that cash shadow that's created there. And if I move it around, you can see how exactly you can see the light. You can see how exactly the light is affecting the way that that shadow is being thrown. Now it's about a 45 degree angle. I'd say right now, and if I raise it up higher, it obviously makes it a little shorter. It's closer down. It's more direct. It's more of a if you'll. I'll show you this in a little bit on the paper. But if you see that the angle of the light goes from here to here, it's always gonna be at the very top and straight back down, very top in the light path itself. So once you have the light sores, you can draw the cast shadows exactly how they need to be, and you'll have the lines you can. Almost, you can almost just draw them out, and you'll have the exact placement of where that cash shattered urns ago. Then all you need to determine is what your intensity is. And how close is the light if you can see here getting like a pretty cool little shot there . But that is the exact outline now, if we pull it back, it changes it slightly and gets it a little darker. But it really is dependent on the angle. If I bring it down low. His his shadow is gonna stretch. And then so you get those real kind of scary effects of him, like walking into a, uh, like a Halloween type of movie. So it really does depend on what the angle of the light is and the intensity of it, As you can see right here, if you want to make something, this this will alone. If you master the this, it will give you the ability to add drama and everything else that you can possibly think of to make the image dynamic right off of this one principle alone. 11. Parts of Light - Part 2: Okay, so here we go. As you can see, here we have the two were the three lights on the side. This is light one flight to light three, and we have our sphere here in the middle. Now, if you take a look like I was telling you, with the little ninja, the angle of this light, it goes like this. This is the way it shows. You can see the way that that shot the lights going to travel. It's gonna hit right here. This is really going to give you that core shadow wherever that light touches right here on this key point, these two key points, that is where the core of the shadow is going to start. So this is where the heaviest line is gonna be for your shadows. And that's assuming that you have a reflected light that's gonna come in the back here, which is usually the case in, uh, most drawings. Most most any lighting condition. You're gonna have that reflected light shining into the back, shining back here, creating that extra light area. But right here. This This is where this is where your highlights are. So if you start those ways you have this ban, you have this main band here, Then everything after this is a Grady ated tone. And then once you have the reflected light, it's gonna light in this area up Well, so if you conceive this, you don't even need to really use a blending stump or anything. You really want to get these core concepts down before you even start blending anything together. Because if you don't know where these shadows are beginning, then you really have no business blending anything together because you don't really know where those shadows are starting. So let's go with this. This is gonna be the key in when you're doing this again, you want to follow the contours of the ball or the sphere. You can even do it really rough. Just, however, that whatever that shape, you want to do it as as if you're following the contour of the three D ball on the page. So now if you see this, if you saw this in a planet escape like if it was in the if it was the moon, if you saw this as the moon and there was no reflected light in the dead of space, this will be the end line. And then that would be all that you see right here of the moon. But since we have our horizon line right here, this is where the ball is sitting. It's gonna have that reflected light coming off the back and which is gonna light this section up and make it actually have its own darker tone or lighter tone round. So you have this darker band, and then you the shadow is going to reach into that. And as long as you're going with with the roundness of the ball, you'll have a really a really solid shadow start to develop on your end. This one's a little more rough than how I would normally go about it. But for demonstration purposes, I think you think you get the point. I think you get the idea here that you you have an initial shadow, which is all. You have initial highlight on your image, which is always gonna be the starting point. And then the core shadow is gonna be wherever that light touches that image on the object, and then that's gonna start that core shadow. And if you have no reflected life, that core shadow be in all black. And then there you go. You can start, that's your shadow, and that's your life. But in most cases, you're gonna hand that reflected light, which is going to come off the back end. Enlighten this whole back area. You can even pull out of kneaded eraser if you want, but that is basically how you figure out the That's definitely how you figure out where to start your shadows, wherever the light. And that's why it makes. That's why the angle and intensity of the light is so important. Because without this, without these lines, you're not going to figure out where the where the cash shadow goes. You're not going to figure out what even start the core of the shadow, not not accurately enough with the way that nature works. That's definitely not gonna work the way that that nature works like I showed you with the Little Ninja as before and the angle of the light. It was a direct angle from the top of the object to the ground, and it went exactly with the angle that the light was being pointed directly at it. So that is how you figure out the highlights. The core for the hump is what they call it and the reflected light and then the cash shadows are gonna be the point where the light line you consume drawn this a lot darker for dramatic, so you can see it. That is gonna be the section of where this line meets with the horizon line. So that's it's always gonna be darkest right next to the object, and then it's gonna shed spread out. But that cast shadow will go and intersect at this at this point where the horizon line, Because you can see it's it's getting there. It's a little rough, and it's just a quick demonstration, but you can even use the side of your pencil. Get a little cleaner if you want, but that is Oh, really? You can see how you see how the death it gives it that extra depth once you draw on that cash shadow. So determining again, determining the angle of the light the way that the the perspective that the actual image is being drawn on, if we raise the horizon line up to here, obviously that would change the way you draw the cash shadow. But that's another drawing for this one. Specifically, this is the simplest way to get it. Did you can even do a ruler if you like. You can trace this line all the way back, so that's the point. Cash out of starts. That's the point. That's your core shadow. Then you get your darkest by the inside, right? But right closest to the sphere is gonna be the darkest section. And then you have your reflected light coming off of this surface here because all of this light's bouncing back here. So it's basically doing a little like that. So I hope that gave you a pretty solid understanding of the way that the light and intensity will really bring that depth to your images. And I hope that gave you a good understanding. And I hope it drove home the point that lighting in determining the lighting in your images is going to be key to how you draw anything. Whether it's a portrait of building a car plane, anything that you're drawing in a three D space, you're gonna want to choose and determine the lighting beforehand. Otherwise, It's just not gonna have that death. It's gonna turn into a big blob. If I didn't take into account the light source here and I just did all of this in shadow in the same tone. You can always go on, refine it. Obviously, it's looking okay, but if I get rid of this highlight, it changes the direction of the lining. Not only does it change the direction lining, it makes it a totally different image. So you need to really get a good understanding of the way in direction that you want your life to be hitting your object. Otherwise, you're gonna be looking around for answers, and you're really not going to know what they are because you haven't really mastered lighting. So hope that gave you some good some good solid foundation, some examples of what you really need to do, how to get it. And you know what? Just go download. Um, I have a download you can go into. The resource is you can practice with choosing the light and really just focusing on what angle you want it to be coming from and shave the sphere in that direction. The more you do that. You can do it on a regular book. You can go get that download. Download. It had six different spheres. Yuk unjust the terminal light get drawing and we have to find a book. And, you know, you just practice. The more you practice, the more you observe. Like just like a little ninja guy. The more you just look at the different things, the better you're gonna really, the better you're gonna graphs the concept and the better you're gonna get at drawing life . So this is Kevin. I hope you enjoyed this one. Always be learning and go out there and keep it simple. 12. Local Color: Hey, everybody. Kevin here, founder and creator of drawing and coloring dot com and creator of shading masters. I hope by now you've been getting a good idea how important it really is to your drawings that you incorporate lighting and think about it first. And when you really need to do it. Before you even ever put a pencil to the paper in this video, I'm gonna give you a few tips on how to find the local color and make sure all your drawing stay true to the objects. Correct values. Local color is one of those things that trips people up. They don't even really know it. It could easily throw off the values and shading if you aren't paying attention to. So how do you find the local color of your objects? The big question. Basically, local color is not really even important. You don't even need to really worry about that. What you do need to focus on, however, is the condition of the lighting in the environment that the subject is in. That's gonna be key Now. The local color can be brightened or darkened by light or the lack of light. So in other words, if you have. If you draw face with light skin, it could be dark light or even middle tones, depending on the type of lighting conditions and other objects around it. So the thing that you really want to focus on is the type of lighting conditions that the objects interacting with, not trying to find the actual bass tone of your object. You'll never find it anyway, you're saying worth your time. So, for example, if you're using black as the base for all your darkest areas of your image, you're already setting the tone of the entire picture by making black the local value for that particular objects, darkest areas. Everything that image now has the related there has to be related according to that value. So to keep the other values consistent, you have to make all of the darkest darks, that black tone and all your lightest lights, that same lightness to stay consistent. And I can lead to your images looking a lot like the same ones, and they're gonna be less dynamic overall. So, in essence, you can control the local color in any setting her image just by adjusting the type of lighting. I hope that made it a little clear for you. So here's another example that might help. Think of a red brick wall with a white poster on it. Okay, now think of that brick wall in black and white tones. Gray tones. The brics might be a dark grey, and the poster might be a light gray. But if you're if you were a shine a bright light on that wall, it would change the values for each object. But they would still keep the same tonal relationship between each other. One can't go up the more of a value than the other has to be the same relationship. The poster might be blown out into a complete white and lose some detail in the wall itself . Might go a few shades lighter, too, the keys to keep the relationship the same between the wall and the poster. No matter what type of lighting the light hitting your objects can only raise the values proportionately. Just remember that so the same thing would happen if you turn the lights off. You know the wall would get darker and so with the poster, but they would still both keep their tonal relationship. One thing can't go up without affecting the other. Remember as key when you're drawing those types of things, that'll make everything totally different. And that's where different tonal patterns and keys come into play, which we'll talk about in our next video. Those will really help you give a good starting point and a new way to really just think throughout all your images that will just give you a brand new way to go about. So now you know about local color and what really affects it. Go test it out for yourself. The more you observe light in real world conditions, the better off you'll be in. The more understanding you'll get of just the way things really work, I think we said nature is the best teacher. So drawing isn't just about knowing special techniques and tricks. If you're really serious, you really want to learn how to create awesome drawings. It takes practice, dedication and learning the fundamentals. They might not be the sexiest thing you think of, but when you're starting out, there really are the most important and you'll find that the further you go into your drawings, it's just it, really, It'll it'll show. It'll lack. It'll show you're lacking a lot more when you go through, so you know I can give you all the strategies and information and no, But unless you actively put in the work and learn from your own experiences, you'll never really master it. You'll never really master anything without hard work, so you only get better by doing so. I hope that helps simplify and give you a better understanding of how toe think about local color and why you really only need to focus on the lighting conditions to make your images pop. You know, you don't really need to think about how. What is the color of this one thing? It's How is the lighting affecting that one thing? So go out. Focus on learning and studying. Lighting and techniques and strategies will come with practice. You won't have to learn everything all at once. So that's it for this. Remember, always be learning. Go out there, observe nature and just keep it simple. 13. Lighting Patterns & Keys: Hey, everybody. Kevin here, founder of drawing and coloring dot com and creator of shading Masters in this video will be going over lighting patterns in the different types of keys that each of them can create . So the different types of keys of like and really change your image is completely. It could be the difference between a dark and a dreary image or a Brighton upbeat one. Or, you know, it could be a sunny day or on overcast one. Once you know how to manipulate them. They're really, really make your image is a lot more dynamic and, you know, really making puff. The lighting patterns that you choose can also change the entire focus of your image. You know you can direct the I two specific areas of your picture or even hide other ones. So how do you manipulate the key of your image? Basically, what you're manipulating is the relationships between the light and the shadows to get specific lighting patterns in your image, and that's especially useful when you're planning out the picture you know you can use. You can thumbnail out a bunch of different lighting scenarios and pick the best possible composition for that particular particular project you know in the thumbnails also help you ensure you have the strongest composition through every possible scenario being laid out in front of you. So when you manipulate the key, you are essentially manipulating the relationship between the middle tones and lights and the shadows to create the type of lighting condition that you really want. It's easy to see this if you build a scale from lightest to darkest and starting from the lightest at the top and create about 6 to 8 different values until you get the darkest you can create. You can also download an example from our resource is section. I've created one already for you. That work should give you a solid reference point to start with, as far as how much to manipulate the shadows and light and really what? That how that intensities differ. You can raise the values up or down on your scale to figure out how much you need to adjust the surrounding values, and you can also create your own scales based on the ones that gave for you and, you know, just observing light patterns in the different types of light intensities or really have their own shadow in relationships. And if you look that you'll see So what are the different keys? Look like? High key is when all of values lean towards the top of that light scale and all the lights and shadows are lighter and they often can look a little washed out. Middle key is gonna be a lot more balanced between the shadows, but through the shades, and they also look more like a properly exposed photo. Now, low key is gonna be closer to the bottom of the scale like it sounds. The values are gonna be a lot darker. Those are the three main value. You can alter them and manipulate them. However, you like to force whatever creative lighting condition that you can possibly come up with. And, you know, you can add more details of specific areas of highlight others, or just balance that the whole image in itself. The key of the image can really show you all the different possibilities available for a particular image. And like I said, you might be surprised how much better one looks versus another. Once you have a mall. Thumbnail our so Let's take a look at some of the examples. Can you guess what the type of image this 1st 1 is? If you said hi key and you're right the majority of the images leaning towards the lighter end of that spectrum and increase at high key effect. Most modern images these days a really high key. If you take, for example, Apple or Google's advertising or any of the major tech companies, all of them use that white background and increasing clean, crisp look. The set up I'm using right now is high key. It has a white background with very little shading in tone. Now this second shot we're looking at is a mid key notice. All this home's air sort of around the same values. They all fall towards the middle value, the images almost mostly subtle grays, and there aren't a lot of contrast ing values. They're basically evenly exposed, but they can make also for a flat image if you kind of use them a lot. And that's the last example we have. Here is a low key image Loki images can make for ah, really dramatic effect. They actually they generally have a lot of contrast, like the high key image but air gonna have, ah, much darker. They'll have more values and tones, sores, that doctor in that respect, like if you reverse the white background I have and made it black, you have a low key. So those are the three major patterns and keys of light. You can play around with them and use them to really create some awesome effects. Even change up your image is completely you can change. However, you want that image to look just like changing the key. If you really have a good concept and grasp of the lighting panels, you can create any image you want. Like I said, and thumbnail in amount will really help you get the best image that you can get so you can see which ones have the most impact you can really create. You can create whatever feeling that you're looking for a well, so what do you do now? Download that worksheet from the resource is section called Shading Scales. That'll give you two solid scales toe work with. Whenever you're trying to change your shadows and lighting times to get those different types of keys and also, have you determined how many shades higher or lower you actually need to go to achieve the desired effects? Two examples I have We're gonna be daylight in diffused lighting knows they're kind of really good, solid ones to choose from and remember the type of light. And really, what dictates all of this? So if you can focus on that, you'll learn what types of line and create the different types of keys and the lighting patterns. Learning how to manipulate the different keys of light can really be one of the most fun parts of learning light, since you concede e the results, you know instantly. But lighting can be a kind of a hard concept of graphs, and that's why so many people have trouble with shading their images. You know, it's one of the fundamental lessons that not that's not really taught, and it's it's really overlooked a lot more than it should be by learning by artists that have just started out and people had already been artists. The main thing they're missing is not what direction or technique to use, but the actual concepts and strategies behind why the shadows or highlights look a certain way. No. One, why something has done a certain way and knowing how are two totally different things. But if you know the why, it gets a lot easier to figure out that how to and, you know that's my aim. With this, this entire module, obviously, is to give you some solid strategies and how to put really to give you a solid, fundamental Why. Why are these things like this in to really answer the questions that you have, you know, been having trouble with in your shading? Because most of you out there don't really need more technique. You need the strategies and concepts of how the actual light works to create those shadows and textures you want. Once you have that, once you have that the tips and how to come a lot easier. So I really hope that helps frame up this this whole module and a lot of the things that you've seen here if you've been kind of struggling with it. So I know it's not one of the funnest thing sometimes, but they really are all related to the same thing. And that's how is the light interacting with your subjects. Everything else goes from there. So go download the shading scales. Pdf I mentioned from the resource is section in this site and practice creating the different types of keys, your lighting and, you know, always remember, be learning and just keep it simple. 14. Pencil Grips: Hey, everybody. Kevin here, founder of Drawing Color and dot com and creator of shading masters. In this video, we're gonna be going over pencil grips. Pencil grips are again one of those fundamental things that you probably don't think too much about. But like I've said before, the fundamentals are really what make you, uh, a better artist and a better just visualize er off what you can actually do and put down on your paper. So this is really gonna be best practices and techniques get you to where you can make all those different marks and achieve the best results for the work. An object that you're trying to get to you probably already know or seen most of these. And, you know, you probably even used a few of these joking leader to pick some artists, like maybe that little mark there. But they really do have deeper and more specific uses. And really, if you really want to know how to draw most effectively, that's really what you want to get to get. Really What? That's really what you need to know. To really draw effectively is how to use your tools is going back Teoh. Kind of the beginning of this course is learning your tools and how to make the marks with the specific, uh, tools that you have available to you. So with that, let's get over to the table and I'll give you a few demos. Okay, so let's get right into it. Now. There are gonna be five different pencil grips that you are gonna shuffled through throughout your drawing. You might realize you're using them or you might not, but they're generally gonna be five individual ones and the most the most used, I would say. And the one I use the most is the, you know, the standard. It's the one that you used to write with its. You have the middle finger, the four finger and the thumb all gripping towards the end and gives you a nice, solid grip. I kind of held it like this gives you a nice, solid grip. You can get a lot of detail in and leave you a lot of control, and you can really just work with it. However, you you know, it's it's your your normal pen writing grip, and that's a good, silent, all purpose grip and probably the one I use the most second is gonna be an underhand grip, which is, uh, it's more Hlinka. It's used mostly I would use it for shading or getting Maura gestural type of line, and you can see right there if you, um, have your pencil sharpened with a round tip or chiseled tip, it's going to give you a lot mawr versatility on the way that that line is gonna come across. So if you can, if you can just do it like that, you can see how it's. It'll start small, and then you can fan it out and really get control over the way the line is shaped with this pencil grip, and then it's really just know, just kind of grabbing it from the just like a cupful, most just like your grabbing it like this and then just pointed almost like a night like a stabbing count emotion. And that really is great for shading just like this, and that works. It works well with the brown pointed tip like this, like I showed you, like what most pencil sharpeners will give you, or if you do, do, um, or advanced a sharpening of your pencil with the Exacto knife or any kind of knife and get that chisel tip. It's really gonna show a lot more with this type of grip. Now the other one that I used is you can use it. It's more just, uh, just going back on the pencil with with your grip. It's basically taking the writing pencil grip and just putting it back here. And what that does is it gives you less control. And it's really good for random gestural marks as well. So it's It's almost like a modified. It gives you about the same amount of control, but you can use it a lot more for wispy or kind of on a lighter type of marks that you need to make kind of like a grass or any kind of anything. That is kind of just whisper like a blade of grass or hair or anything that needs a nice light kind of touch to it. This going back on here is really gonna be one of those pencil grips that you're gonna find yourself using because it's once you start using them, they're just gonna become more natural to you because you'll realize how much pressure is that you're putting on yourself here versus what you really are trying to get done here. Might not feel natural off to the office of the start, but once you start using them, what, you just move our hike your hand up and down the pencil. You're really going to get a feel For what, Uh, what grip you're gonna really go after to get that desired effect. And once you start using them them or use them, they're really, really going to start to shine because you'll get more control over him. That's another little bit of a modified, uh, grip on the back. I use a lot just to get its more of, ah, hold it to the sign. It's almost like you're like you're sewing and knitting type of, uh, hand movement, and it really gives you a lot of control for those solid shading or blending movements you need. And it makes him really soft and gestural, and it doesn't keep your drawing tight. That's what Really the key is with all of these. Gesture with all of these grips is to keep your drawings nice and loose, because once you start getting tight once I get tight there. That's really what uh, brings down a lot of people's pictures is they just start getting in the I know I've done it a lot of times before. When I was first drawing is you just get in there, you start drawing things and and it just makes the entire drawing too tight. You're drawing, you start drawing from the wrist, and that's you don't want to draw from the risk you wanna hold. Basically, you want to move all your movement from the elbow as much as you can. The more you could do that, the more control you'll have and the better the line Jubilee draw. Obviously, you can use this motion for rounder shapes, But whenever you drawn a line, if you're drawn any kind of lines, you want to use the elbow in most of these, if not all of these grips are gonna be perfect for a lot of that kind of elbow gestural type of drawing. Now the other type is it's gonna be basically the forefinger, which is it's just another modified version of the pencil drawing and, you know, really, all of these are modified versions of the standard pencil drawing hold like the pencil grip . If you learn how to write like this really close and tight up, that's gonna be good for, you know, getting some detail. But that's really not gonna be one of the main type of grips you're gonna you want to use for most of your drawing. And it really is limiting unless you're trying to get specific shapes like really nice tight shapes. But through the majority of the shapes and drawings you're gonna do, especially when you're starting the composition of a drawing, you're gonna get you gonna do a lot more rough type of work just to get those major shapes of your composition down and then you can switch to the other ones, get mawr. It just allows you to put more graph I and get the ideas down faster. As you can see, it's already. It allows you just the ability to put whatever marked down the most effectively that you need, and you can use it for quick marks. You can use it for quick circles, and if you want to get more detail, you can use the regular pencil group so Basically, what I would do is use this one for shading this modified kind of a hose grip, which is almost basically that classic artist script. If you never see anyone put their thumb up to do all that measuring and turning and all of those, uh, things that all those movements that most people make fun of artists for now, these days, those are all really just modified versions of the same thing. The classic artist grip is just really a modified version of going back on the pencil. You can hold it like this. That's really just for, you know, measuring and getting specific proportions down, which is a good grip toe hold. It's easy to go transition to from From this to this, it's almost natural to do that, and then you can switch it around for more smaller details. But those are gonna be the main grips that I used exclusively. I don't really use any other. I mean, there really aren't any other kind of grips that are necessary to create the specific types of marks that you're looking for. Besides that, a line circles you can create every single mark or shade with the modified back grip or the modify and version of the regular standard writing pencil grip. So I hope that give you a nice kind of a general idea of what I'm using whenever I'm shading versus when I'm going in for detail, which, you know, it's pretty self explanatory sometimes, but you never know. And you know, you just want to make sure that you're using the best marks and, uh, giving yourself the best opportunity to really excel and get the things down quickly and effectively in the best manner that you can. Because once you get your ideas, the faster you get your ideas down on to the paper, the better off you'll be in the better compositions that you'll be able to come up with, because you'll be able to constantly get him down as quickly as they're coming through. So I hope that gave you a nice, solid overview and, uh, go ahead, test these out. Just, you know, go ahead, do some quick shading, find some detailed drawings you can look through. The reference of images I have in the resource is section on the site for some, you know, some quick images to test it out with and, you know, just go have fun getting lose. I just don't. This is really an exercise to, uh, just keep your your images from getting too tight. So dropping the elbow, use this wide back, use the back grip, and then use the modified pencil grips and just work to keep your drawings nice and loose. Don't get in there. And I want to make everything so super tight. That's where you're gonna go downhill. And that's really where you're gonna start to fail. And you're really gonna start to get frustrated if you do that. So again. Go ahead, test these out. Tell me what you think. Let me know if one works better for you or not in. I'll see you guys in the next video. 15. Doodling: Hi, everybody. Kevin Cramer, here founder of Drawn in Color and dot com and creative shading Masters. And in this video, I wanted to give you just a little bit more of, uh, some more practice of really just kind of opening up your your you know, your wrist and your just getting all the lines and get more flowing and more confident with what you're actually doing. And I actually have found that this helps with creativity as well. And I used to do this a lot with one of my friends in high school where we would just draw a just a random crazy shape on the paper. And then we either try toe, turn that into something, or I would just give this. I would give this to him. He would take it, try to draw something crazy and make something really cool out of it. Then he would pass it back with another shape, just whatever he came up with. And then we just keep going back and forth, and it really opens up your your your visual I because you can see the outline and contours and then you start to think of different ways to turn that into things like maybe an animal or something like that. But in this video, I wanted to really focus on, um Now, this is a technique I found in, uh, it's a A book by Bert Dots and called Drawing With Imagination. I didn't even know this book existed until a little bit ago, but it actually is, um, basically the same principle that we used to do years ago. And one thing that they do in there is they do this shaped like this, But then once they get that, then they doom or structured and fill it in, filling in the shape and that really, that can help you with gaining control of the pencil, getting more confidence. And I, um I thought I would just kind of show you what that's like in here. And just so you can go practice that at home because it really opens it up, You know, you could just draw crazy shapes and then just go play around with him. So in this one, you know, you can do just any kind of pattern you want. You can detach lines, just kind of go crazy with it and maybe split it up a little bit. But, you know, you just get riel kind of just structure it as best you can. And this is really just practice. You can do circles, or you can kind of what they call it in. The book is actually doodling and New Delhi and what they do, obviously, is the doodle and then you noodle to make it a little more detailed and a little more effective. But it really find that this really actually helps when, uh, you know, you could just create. Like I said, it opens up your creativity. If you get more confidence with the pencil, you can get more things and ideas down out of your head. It helps you just kind of release those inhibitions that you might be holding back that you don't want to mess up on. And I really, uh, you know, I find that it's it's it's really just, like can be a fun game if for nothing else. And I'm all about learning and having fun. So if you are really afraid of messing up your drawing or you kind of intimidated by even getting started, just draw crazy shape on the paper and then pass it to a friend or have someone draw crazy shape or pass a tube and then just go. You know, do whatever you want with it. You can shade it, give a detailed. You can create little universes out of these things, and it really can be a pretty fun, fun time. So I hope that helps with any kind of, you know, if you have any kind of stress or anxiety about getting started or you, you know, if you're kind of not wanting to mess up your drawing because you're trying to still learn , I would definitely recommend using this technique is really effective. It's fun and it's creative, and it opens up your mind to different things. So well, I hope that, uh, hope that really helps. And if you have any questions or comments leaving below and always remember, just keep it simple. 16. Hatching and Cross Hatching: everybody. Kevin here founder of drawn in coloring dot com and creator of shading Masters And welcome to this video. In today's video, we're gonna be going over hatching and cross hatching. Those are gonna be two fundamental things that you're gonna use a lot in all your work, whether you're doing blended shading or even just kind of doing some quick scribbles. So you want to really get on, uh, a really good idea when and how to use those because those are gonna be fundamentally the basis of all your shading. It's gonna be lines, But lines create tone in that tone creates all your shading. So what we're gonna cover and this one is how they would angles to use. And, you know, whether you use tight or loose, that really there's going to depict what? How much shading is actually just depicted in your image. Whether it's tight, it's gonna be darker or loose is gonna be showing a lot less of shaded area. It'll be in those lighted lighter, mid tone areas, depending on which way you want to depict the lighting. So closer equals darker, loose equals lighter, pretty easy. So in this video we're gonna go over a few examples of kind of how you can work through those which ones to use, how to do it, which angles they use. I know a lot of people have questions about that. So, um, I have ah download in the resource is section of this site. It's called hatching and cross hatching. Go ahead, download that. And then we're gonna get over to the table and I'll show you a few examples. Okay, So now if you haven't already, go ahead and print out the hatching and cross hatching. PDF from the resource is section and really just it's gonna give you just a good base of, you know, some shapes toe actually get started with with your shading, you don't really have to. It's more just a practice run. So a lot of a lot of ah, a lot of people have questions about what angles to use when they're shading different things and the circle in the square gonna basically build most of the shapes of anything that you're gonna shave. So I figured we go ahead and start with these and really kind of just give you an idea, and then we even go over to an image and show you how that correlates and, uh, really goes back and forth with the different types of shading that you can use so obviously hashing and cross hatching. Uh, what you want to really do is if you have your choice, it's one of the other not really one of the other, but you can have different. The different softness is a pencil, especially when you're doing the Hanshin and Cross Action can really make a difference with the way that your look is gonna have with the aesthetic the way that the lines even blend together. So if you're using in page B, which is a nice solid Ah, nice silent pencil. To start with, you might have a little Your lines are gonna be a lot tighter. They're gonna be cleaner, and you'll get a lot more definition in the actual strokes. If you use a softer pencil like a six B like I have here, those air really gonna start to blend your strokes together and you might even get a little messier towards the end. It's actually a better pencil for when you're trying to do those smooth tones with the blended shading, which will have another video on a little bit. So what I would recommend for this one is the first start out with the H B. And then you can play around with the softer pencils and see kind of how they fit into the way that your, uh whether you really kind of like the way the way that you're putting things down the way that they look and you'll you might find that the softer pencil works a little more a little better for you because you barely get the the shading down quicker. You'll have mawr of the dynamics you'll have mawr of actually the you know, they're the look that you're looking for. I know whenever I was using these, um, these harder leads and I was kind of trying to figure out how how are they getting those those lines? Those looks and it does have to do with the actual pencil tip. But it also has to do with the hardness, and the hardness of a pencil will really dictate how your shading is gonna look. So with this one, we're gonna first just since we're learning some of the basic stuff. We're just gonna start with the harder pencils. You can see exactly how the cross action and hatching really works. So with this one, if you've printed this out, uh, what do you really like to do is just kind of determine a light source, like like we learned before. That's key for all of these. So we have the light source here, then this is gonna most likely be the highlight. So what we want to do, And since this is a ball in this, you want to follow the curvature of the ball. So you wanna almost think of this as a three D ball and you can use straight lines. Or you can really you can use straight lines or you can curve the lines. It doesn't really matter. It's always It's really just how you want it to look for this one. I like to follow the contour of the ball, and it actually makes it for me. I like the way it looks. But for, um, if you look at old time print, uh, ads or anything like that, they're going to use the straight lines, and it actually has its own aesthetic, too, So it's really up to you. Choose which one you want. Practice. Go print things out. You can have this work, she proud as many as you want and just practice all day long with So with this one, I would really start with you know you can. It doesn't even have to be clean. You can just do this. If you really want, you can just go follow the line and get your baselines down with the contour. And then after that, it's really just a matter of filling it in. It's just drawing in the lines. So wherever you you're just overlapping line. That's what's creating all of the tone. And as soon as they start to kind of overlap, that's when you start to see the shading really come alive. So the more you overlapped, the darker the harder you push on him, the more you're going to see that tone come through. And, you know, like it said, closer lines equal, darker tones the lighter. You see if I leave him light. If I leave him spread apart, the lighter it's gonna show and it's gonna be more that highlight that we were looking for in the front, so you can almost looks like a T and T ball with the lines that go across it. And it's really up to you how much you want to shade it, how much you want to not shave it. And it's really all it is is just drawing the lines. You can follow the curve or, you know you don't have to. You can just draw a straight line. You can do whatever you want. Either one is right attaching. There's cross hatching, which is what it sounds like. It's gonna be mawr of August. We'll go to square, probably a little easier. Demonstrate that one. Get a nice light here. Now, the hatching is obviously gonna be like this. This is hatching, right? Just drawing lines. Cross hatching is like it sounds You're gonna be crossing the line and it doesn't matter what angle you put him on. As long as you can get the shading the tone where you want it and you can cross and double cross. You can cross em however you want. It's really just you can overlap. It doesn't really matter how many times you cross or go over across one of them. It will eventually create the tone, however you need it. As you can see, it's kind of it's almost like graphing and creating little triangles and that it just get closer and closer. It almost looks like a roller coaster, like a wooden roller coaster, but you can create as many and overlapping as many times as you want to create that tone. And as you can see, it's darker over here and it gets lighter over here, and these are just closer together. These air less, and that's really all there is to the hatching and cross hatching this. If you want to follow the contours, that's obviously going to show a little more death in three dimensional qualities. But you can. Like I said, you can use just straight lines. It works, Justus fine. So let's go over to an actual image, and I'll show you some examples of how you can kind of do both while you're doing while you're shading. Here we go. Sorry about the lines and my A picture here. My printer is running a little low and calibrated or something. I'm not sure, but we'll get it fixed eventually so in this face. This is obviously, um you know, it's one of those mid Qing photos and you can see most of the shading is over here. And whenever you're doing that, if you want more of a graphic style, you can really just do those straight lines. And this is honestly what I do. Whenever I am starting a bigger piece, I'll draw out these lines to give me kind of an area of initial shading. Get a darker pencil so you can see it a little better. Whenever I'm doing a bigger piece, I'll just mark out. I'll just draw these quick crap crosshatched lines to really kind of give me an idea so I can map out and see where the line of shading is. And it it helps with keeping track of him and really kind of just keeping the shadows and check and help me draw that line. So this is the dividing line. Obviously, if you just find it, then you can get all of your shading done almost immediately, so that you go have all this already in shaded line. And then these are the highlights over here. Now, if I wanted to shade this mawr. I could obviously follow the contours of my face here. Or I could just go straight down and do that tighter, where I need a darker and looser strokes where I needed looser. And it's really just a manner of crossing the lines until you get the desired depth and darkness that you're looking for. You know, if I wanted to, you know, if I wanted to give it mawr of a realistic look, you could follow that tone. You could follow the contour of the face, and it'll give you on pretty interesting looking itself. But that's assuming that you're following the lines of the face in their own right and have actually you're actually following the planes of the face. And again, you could just do you like cross hatching and you could switch it up. You don't have to go all in one direction. You don't have to keep them all looking the same in ah, a lot of print magazines. You'll see that they're all the same, but you don't have to do that necessarily. It's, however, you need to make the line to get the desired tone and shade that you're looking for. So in this one, it's obviously gonna be a little a little more rough because I'm going over an actual image . But I think you, uh, I think you can see that it's really just a matter of drawing the different lines and then seeing how close or lose they need to be to get the desired tone. When you step back, you should be able to see it, and I think you will when you play with that. So that's really all there is Teoh hatching and cross hatching. It's really not much more than just drawing lines and crossing the lines, and you can use them tight. You can use them lose. It's really up to you. You can use them all in one direction. You can follow the contours. You could just do straight lines. Those will give you that more graphic style that I told you, and it's again. It's really up to you. You're just gonna have to play around with it, see which one works for you. Which one gives you the best aesthetic that you're actually looking for and, you know, just kind of play around and get a feel for what you like. And what You don't like the softer pencils. They're going to give you more of a smoother type of match, and the harder pencils are going to give you a nice, cleaner line. So, like I said, go ahead, download the hatching and cross hatching. Pdf from the resource is section and, you know, choose whatever pencil. You know, you don't have to follow the contours. If you don't want, you can go use a straight line or follow the contours. It doesn't really matter. It's up to you. What a static you really like. And, you know, just remember, closer equals darker tone, looser lines equal, lighter tone and then just kind of play around with them. See what they look like. Step back and you'll really see the difference of how much the tighter tone and lucid tone looks. So always remember. Go ahead, keep it simple, always be learning, and I'll see you guys in the next video 17. Circles,Scribbles and Stippling: Hi, everybody. Kevin here, founder and creator of drawn in coloring dot com and creator of this course shading masters . In this video, we're gonna be going over circles, scribbles and stippling, and those are gonna be the top three things that really can open up your game of shading altogether. They give you a lot of different options and a lot of different effects which you might not normally be able to get to. And I you know, I use them throughout all of my drawings and some kind of way, and you really should start to come in and start incorporating them into yours. And once you dio, I think you'll really find that, you know, your images start to have a lot more depth. They have a lot more, uh, pop and they look a lot more dynamic. So let's get over to the table and I'll give you a few examples. All right, so in here we have circle scribbles and stippling and I have a few examples of each. If you look right here, there is going to be the circles. These are gonna be your scribbles, and stippling is basically just making different marks on everything. But let's go a little bit over each one circles is gonna be exactly how it sounds. And I actually found this technique a, um, a few years back, and it really is great for creating those realistic, uh, skin tones that you you might not be able to accomplish any other way and really, all I consists of in. By the way, whenever you're using a circle method, I would recommend a softer lead pencil, maybe an eight B or a six B or, uh, really, anything over anything, really over a four. B will be really good for creating those tones a lot easier, and it really goes with most of these shading techniques. The only one I would recommend that you, the harder fled for, is the hatching and cross hatching. Just because you, whenever you're drooling lines, you really want him. If you're using that technique, you really want to use that specifically to get that aesthetic with the line, so I would recommend for all of these other techniques. Use a softer lead. You'll be a lot. It'll go down a lot easier, and you'll have a lot less headache trying to fill in all those tones and actually get a darker tone to show up. So with circles, like I said, great for skin tones. And really all you're doing is just creating a regular pattern, just little square little swirlies all through overlapping each other until you finally get the tone. It's almost like again, like the cross hatching, the bigger or the left tone you show, the less I mean the bigger or the last area that you love. The tighter they are, the looser they are. Rather, the less shading it's gonna look like is there in the tighter and closer you get, the more dense and darker the shadow is gonna be. And this is like I said, these are really great for the skin tones, cause it gives it that irregular look. It's also good for hair or African American hair is really good for that. Um, it it really just gives it a nice organic feel organic look and you really can't get any other way, and I also I find myself shading a lot with this, more so than I ever did before. Once I found it, and it is because it creates a nice saw organic look and it really it really blends well together, and you can see right there it gives it a nice shaded tone. And once you use that for you, once you start using that for your skin, uh, your skin tones and other kind of, ah, you know, organic type of textures you're really gonna value that a lot more then just doing straight lines or kind of just scribbling which does actually bring us to the next one is right here . This is gonna be scribbling. Uh, this really this method is great for were kind of just captured ideas quickly or getting him down. And it's it's really mawr of, uh, concept. Art is really what I would use it for just because you don't really it's not really gonna be a finished piece. And as far as I'm concerned and you know, it's really just just kind of really just getting it down as fast as possible with just a few quick marks you could do. It's almost like it's almost like scribbling all over the paper just to get it. However you want it, and that's really that's really about it. There's nothing really much more to it obviously works a little better with circles. As you can see, you can do this and follow that contour and even get on a circle A highlight. And it's really just for like I said, quick, rough sketching concept art And just like anything else, the tighter you get, the more dense the shadow is gonna look. The looser, the lighter the shadow is gonna be. So there you go with those two, those air to solid ones and then that brings us to stippling, which you might see. You've probably seen the, um uh, Monet. Or I believe this morning where they have all those little dots all over the place and you can see each little mark that creates that image. That's basically what the stiffening does. And just like everything else, this one actually is a little more tedious to do than the other ones. Obviously, because you're making every single mark on the paper until that blended, or that tone is created. So this is a little more time consuming in. It works better if you use a softer lead to just because it's or something that makes a mawr prominent mark on the paper because it's very, very time consuming. And if you're doing a really big piece, I can take forever to do, and especially with your trying to get those darker tones so softer lead for this. It works a lot better, and that's really, um, I don't really find myself using that too much unless I'm looking specifically for that pointillism, uh, effect, which this is what basically that is. It's stippling pointillism. It's just making marks on the paper until the tone is completely created. And that's and that it has its It has its its place. I don't find that I use it very much. Um, I do have an example I'll show you about in just a second. I also have one for the scribbling. Um, I think I give you a pretty solid one for the circles, but let's go ahead and I'll show you one of the stippling real quick. All right, so here you go. Here's Ah, perfect example of stippling method. It's just pointillism, and all I did with this is just kind of sketch out the face first. Just so I have a rough guideline of what I was going to do, and I literally I took a pen and followed the lines just like this until the entire image was put together and it took. It. Took a while. It took a good a good while, but as you can see, it works just like everything else. The tighter you get right here, the darker the shading and the looser the lines. We're going to show the light or highlights. And really, with this, you can just use and just leave the highlights, the lightest lights, the color of the paper. Just work off of the paper for these types of things. You know, if you just work on the paper being the lightest light or the highlight in your picture, then you can really just kind of delve deep into the shadows and then work your way up to you. Get to the paper for the mid tones in the highlights. So if you start with the Dark's, use the paper as the highlight base, then put in your darks and then you can really start to see. Uh, you'll really you'll start to see where you need the mid tones in the doctor tones, because the paper itself will show it, and if you step back, you'll really start to see where where you're really missing the tone and where you need to add it. So I thought that would be a good example of, you know, the stippling method, because it it is a little time consuming. But I like, uh, figured I give you a good idea of what you can really accomplish with it if you really just sit down and work with it, because it it can create some awesome effects. But it is very time consuming, and this one is really it's. It's going to be using some hatching, but it's mostly that scribble technique is. You can see around the hair around the mouth of the beard area, and even in the shirt, it's really just super rough. Hair is all kind of just in a scribble method is very loose. It has a lot of energy, and that's really what the scribbling concave you. It's obviously it's got color that helps pop, but if you just kind of thes air just drawn with a pencil, not a pencil, but a pin well, they were drawn with a pencil and then over inked with a pen and you can see they're just rough, sketchy lines. And that's really what the scribbling conduce. It helps you get those. It helps you capture emotions very quickly. You can even get any kind of out gestures, and it really gives the image its own. It's only aesthetic in life with just the the way that the marks air put down on the papers . So that was a pretty solid example of scribbling. I want to give it to you and just kind of see that, you know, you can have a nice image and it's still gonna be rough and sketchy. But I wouldn't call this a finished product by any means. This is really just getting a rough idea or sketch down. All right, so they have it. Those are the circles, scribbles and stippling effect. And really, I hope that gave you a good overview of really what you can achieve. What you can do with, um and really what they bring to the table as faras, how your image is gonna look and just go ahead again. Download this worksheet. The from the resource is section. It's basically the same as the other shading ones. They just have a few extra tips on them to help. You really kind of grasp the different aspects of how to really get the best out of each one of them. And, um, you know, go out there, keep it simple and just keep having fun and learning. And, you know, just explore other images and use all of these different techniques. And just, you know, you can even, uh, use one technique for each image. Just keep the image the same and use each technique to shade it. And you'll really see how they can really change the entire picture just by changing the way that you're actually putting the pencil in the marks down in the paper. So again, I hope that gave you a silent overview. Hope that serves you and just go out there, keep it simple and keep learning. And I'll see you in the next video 18. Using Lines: Hey, everybody. Kevin Cramer, here founder of Drawn in coloring dot com. And in this video, I wanted to give you a few more examples of really how you can use the line than those techniques that have been showing you in the other videos. If you haven't had a chance to wash those that go back and watch, those is really gonna help you open up your your your arm and your You just get more control of your hand and the pencil and get a little more coordination with your drawings. But and this I wanted to give you a few more examples of how you can really take those concepts of the line squiggles and all the different ways, and really kind of, uh, put them into different textures and just see them, and how maybe kind of picture of other ways that you can use them. I don't know. I don't know if you can see how clear clearly how these are, but I'll go over again and you know, they're just like in the 1st 1 There's just regular lines you might want to use. Different softness is of pencil. What some of these different ones, they will give you different effects. But is the vertical which you know you can do for anything like in any kind of vertical shading really is gonna be where you want to use these says the horizontal ones. And that's again just like regular hatching lines that we normally used. Then you have you your crosshatch general crosshatch. And as you can see, if you're if you're looking at these and you can see them, the lighter lines, they give more precision, they look more precise and more detail in them. To use a softer lead is gonna give you mawr of a rougher, uh, rugged type of look. So I want to kind of That's why I'm kind of going over these two with it. So then you have the diagonal lines which are sloping left, and you know, you can use those for any, maybe a roof pitch or anything like that. Then you can take that same idea of the crosshatch bingo left and right with him. And again, you could use that for a fence or any kind of mesh or fabric, anything that would have any kind of mitt type of pattern and then you have. Obviously, you can do the same thing here with diagonals back and four, and then you can go and a vertical to them. And again, that's just gonna make more dense. You can really do some darker shading with this. It's it's mawr of just I'm just trying to give you an overview of the different types of cross hatching hatching that you could do in the way you can use line more effectively. You don't have to stick to just straight up and down lines are straight left or straight, right? You can really use them, however you see that you need to use them to get the most effect. Now. In this, we have a zigzag, which, you know you could use that for any kind of fun type of line that you want to make, and it really you could use it for grass or anything that you're drawn that needs that kind of pattern. It's like a Charlie Brown shared almost actually now. Then there's the diagonal when you could just use a side of your pencil, and that'll even give you a little more depth to the line. It's gonna give you a thicker line. And you, you know, you can use those for darker shadows or softer, um, types of maybe would or anything like that that needs a thicker soft line. Or, you know, it'll be really good if you use 60 or are softer lead for that. And then there's, you know, you can combine. All of these lines are just to give you all of these different ways to build up your textures. And I'm just trying to give you mawr of an idea of what you can really do with these. You're not stuck with just lines or circles or anything that that you can really just kind of go crazy and make whatever you need for the job. Then we have the, um, this is gonna be just, uh, just a side of the pencil zigzags like this. And if you do a lighter, if you do a lighter pencil like you see here and then you over with a darker that adds even more of them two year there we go. That adds even more depth to your drawings to because, you know, if you're thinking of perspective, things closer are gonna be mawr in a, um they're gonna be more detailed. They're gonna be darker as opposed to things that are further away. They're gonna get lighter as they go. So if you use a light pencil and you go dark on top of it, that can really add a lot of depth to your drawings, too. And then, you know you could do this. This is almost like, uh, like I showed you, stippling. If you use the side of your pencil again, you can really get some really cool effects. And then it doesn't have to just be long, straight lines or anything like that. You can do, you know, just short ones like this. There's do quick herringbone pattern zigzags crazy. You can really do anything that you can think of your not limited. And I think that's really what? The key idea that this video is No, just think outside the box, you don't have to draw and a lot of these you can use to get some realistic effects. And that's really what you're worried about. If you're worried about well, it doesn't look realistic. We're going to see the line. Well, this is really gonna help you open up your ideas and you get your I just get those ideas out of your head quicker to and then you can really transform those into the realistic drawings that you're seeing in your head or that you want to recreate. So all of these have a place you can really just use them. However you need. Teoh Teoh really get the most effect for your drawing, whether you're drawn realistically or, you know, if you're just trying to get that cartoon or even just a a regular type of drawing that doesn't necessarily realistic are cartoonish. So I hope that kind of gave you some or ideas of what you could really get done in your drawings and, you know, just a little bit more open in to the different ways you can use the line. So I hope that one help. If you have any comments or questions, leave him in the video, the comment section below and I'll see you guys in the next video. Always remember, keep it simple 19. Blended Shading and Lifting: Hey, everybody. Kevin here, founder of Drawn in color and dot com and creator of shading Masters and this video, we're gonna be going over blended shading and lifting. I know blended shaving is one of those things that everyone wants to be able to do. They have to get the most request for that one out of all the different types of shading. How do you get those smooth radiance all those tones And when Where do you start? How do you get them done In a nice, consistent, smooth way and just have a nicely blended in this video? We're gonna be covering all of that. And how do you really get all those different tones? All those medium tones and what are the best uses? You know, I use them a combination of blended tone, plus a lot of other different techniques that you've seen in some of these videos already. And they really all kind of culminated into the blended shading, which really just gives you all of those dynamic tones and different lighting patterns that you really give you that realistic, uh, effect that everyone is really looking for. So in this video, we're gonna go ahead and show you How do I get those? And if you haven't already, go ahead. Download Pdf it's gonna be called blended, shading and lifting. It's gonna be in the resource of section of this site and we'll get over to the table and I get started. Okay, So in this one, we're gonna be doing the blended shading and lifting, and again, you can go ahead, download this, pdf from the resource is section and just print it out. It has the same things that we've been using the circles and squares. I help you shade and get an idea of how to really lay these down. And in this one, this is probably the most sought after this is what most people are trying to get done with blended shading, getting nice, even Grady INTs and tones. And, you know, blended shading is really great for bass tones, and you can really get some awesome effects for skin, really just realistic tones, which a lot of people were trying to get. And that's really what the blended shading lends itself to. So whenever I'm doing the blended shading, I always gonna I always reach for a softer lead pencil like that. So you, before the softer pencil, just allows you to put the lead down a lot easier and a lot smoother than if you're using harder lead, for example. For example, if I have a to B pencil, it's it really, you know, have a to B pencil. I can do some circles and I can get the idea down. I can't even get a darker. And whenever I'm doing blended shading, I always start off with some form of the previous techniques I've been showing you. I'll do some, uh, circles, mostly to get a kind of a base tone, and then we'll even do some of those scribble techniques that I was showing you. And it really kind of helps to get a nice, solid base tone. But and as you can see, the softer leads they create a nice uh, you know, they creep the texture and the shading pretty well, but definitely not is distinct and clear as ah, harder lead can do watch when I take the eight B, and it just instantly creates that separation between the highlights and shadows, and it gives you that realistic tone almost instantly. you know, you have to try with a softer lead, so that's really what the softer lead does for you. It just gives you that that range of tone a lot easier and you don't have to work. It's hard to get it. He is already a lot better just with that one. A few seconds of shading so obviously blended shading. That's one way to do it. But I know mostly out there looking for you know how to use How do you get it? Super smooth and awesome and nice. And that's when the other tools that we've gone over mostly are gonna be the paper towel and the blending stones. Those are the two main things that I used all the time when I do any of my blended shading , which gets those super realistic tones. And whenever I do with a shading, I used the circular methods the circle method like I showed you in a previous video, and it just goes in little small circles, and that really creates all those super awesome tight ah, organic looking patterns in your drawings. So if you take this one, which was just laid down with the 80 pencil earlier. If I just take one of these blending stumps and get in there and just start smoothing out, it starts to really fill in all of those little mid tone areas that you might have not seen so well. And it gives you a nice, smooth, radiant and again you can just I'm going using these blending tools exactly like I was using the pencils and it creates the same effect. But it's a lot smoother and a lot nicer looking for those realistic tones, and obviously you have a bigger area. I'll go with bigger ones. But if I really have a big area, I'll take one of the I'll just take a normal paper towel. You can use a rag or you can even use toilet paper. Doesn't really matter as long as it stands up and doesn't leave little crumbs all over the place. This one's a little old you can see it starts to fall apart a little bit after a while, but if you just kind of point it, get it on, appointed in so you can have a little stability with it and then just kind of spread it around like that this is really going to give you more of that bass tone start with, especially when you're have a lot of graphite on the paper. This is going to give it a nice smooth. It gives it almost like a diffused soft base, and then you can even come back in with the pencil and add more depth. And that's how you start to filled all those different tones and values into your shading. And that's really when it starts to come alive and you'll really get to have a lot more fun when you start to see how does start to build. And it's really because once you have the bass tone, if you have a soft pencil, once you start doing these circles and patterns like that, it blends itself in there in the pencil line. The pencil, uh, the pencil marks themselves almost disappear. But one thing you do have to keep in mind when you're using the pay personal or anything like that, it's gonna pick up a lot more graphite, and that's why you get in that softer tone, so it's gonna make it a lot lighter. What you might want to do is do start with the softer lead, then move to the paper towel to get a nice, soft blended area. And then you can either go with more pencil to fill in the dark that were lifted. Or you can take out the blended stump and do the same circles that you were doing before and again. You got to remember that these air gonna make it, ah, lot softer. So if you're looking for some more pop, you can just go ahead and add that pencil mark in until you get those darker tones you're looking for. And if you're using the circles and you're using that harder lead or the softer lead, rather it's really gonna start to make those come out. And that's when the tone and shading creates itself. So that is blended shading. What I also used in combination with this is lifting, Really. All it is is getting the kneaded eraser for a regular white or black eraser. This one just happens to be black for pastels, but they're all there. They're all the same. You want a white one? There you go. They turn black anyway. So really, what you're doing with the lifting is your taking out the darker areas to bring in those highlights in those shadows. So if you lay down your bass tone with your, uh, with your paper towel or your splendid stump, then you can go in. You can mold these two exactly whatever shape you want. Then you go in and you can just pull out the highlight. What I like to do is kind of Dabord Twist and again, like circular motions, especially when I'm doing a lot of circular, um, a lot of circular type of planes. It really helps to get those in and make him really look nice and organic and layer when you just lift him out, you can lift out as many as you want, and these are really great when you're doing the spears, cause you can pull out these highlights and just pull amount is high or as many as you need , and then you can. It's almost just like basically, all lifting is doing is giving you added highlights and mawr dimension without evening without ever having to put more pencil down, you don't have to even worry about it. You can put down a bass tone and then just erase it to get all of your highlights of mid tones, and it's actually a really awesome way to work. I do it all the time. I do a combination of all of these in one image, and that's why it's important. Start with those fundamental marks because they all build up to these. And if you can see, that's still a little bit of circles in there. All of those marks in the beginning, build up to the blended shading and lifting, and they all work together to really create the images in the shading and tone that you're looking for. And you combine that with how light works and learning all the different angles and, uh, really studying how light is reflected and broken down into planes in blocked and all these other things. It really gives you a solid understanding in a really good way to capture light and put it down on the paper. So I hope that really gave you a solid understanding of how do you really do the blended shading? Because I know that's a really big one. With most people, they that they really are kind of just at a loss as to where to start with that. And honestly, if you haven't worked through all those other ones, I can understand why. And that's that really is a great way to get some realistic textures. You can get a lot of great effects, but you have to start from the beginning and build your way up to this blended shading and tones don't just kind of happen. They have basis, just like everything else. And once you learn them, you will be a lot better off your shading. In all your blended shading and realistic textures will just create themselves because you'll find yourself using them. All those other techniques skin conjunction with all of these other techniques together, and the blending will really just create itself. So I hope that didn't ramble on too much for you. But I thought I wanted to. You know, I'll even give you another example of, uh, you know, you can combine all of these. You can do some blended shading and cross hatching as well, and I'll give you an example right now. As you can see, there's some blended shading in here. It's not with it's not. It's not using one of these, but it is blended with a softer lead. It just kind of filled in nice and soft. I even used the Maura cross hatching type of lines in here and, as you can see in the hair, the hair and almost all of this image in straight lines. But the ways that it's used following the contours, it gives it that nice, rounded, organic look. And it really combines all of what I was talking about is it gives you the shading you could do cross hands, and it really depends on which one you want to use for the specific project you're working with. And, you know, really what? What are your effects and what are you trying to get out of it? So that would give you that quick example just to see and show you what you can really do with different types and how you can really combine them together. So again, I hope that served you hope you got a good idea of really what is possible with the different types and how they really work together. It is not just one or the other in no go ahead test, um, download the pdf again blending shading, blended shading and lifting and just kind of play around with it. Get a few images from the Resource is section. Go ahead, just go crazy with him. Just kind of get out your sketchbook and start playing around practicing with him, and you'll really start to see how you can work him into each other and play off of each other's different characteristics. So again, hope that served you and remember, always keep it simple and keep learning and just go out there and have fun. 20. Drawing Glass: everybody. Kevin here, founder of Drawn in color and dot com and creator of shading masters. In this video, we're gonna be talking about glass glasses. We're gonna be going over the texture and really, how to capture it down with the techniques and the tools that we've been going through in this whole course glasses is really one of those things that doesn't really have a structure. It's really built up of off of reflections and those air Really what you're depicting. So I figured in this video, we go ahead and ah, really kind of just give you a nice, uh, overview of really what we're looking at and just go through all the different steps of the process the strategy of really how to capture down, uh, the glass and the effect of really what you're doing. So, as you can see, I have the video sped up here to save some time. There's really no reason toe go through every little minute that we that I spent drawing. But as you can see, I started first. I start with the outline I actually, I'd like to do, um, I like to frame up my images with a nice box first beforehand, and then I just draw a light outline of the actual image and I get make sure that I get the you know, the key elements and lines down before I even start the shading. And then once I have all that down, that's when I go and start to fill in all of the base tones for the picture. And when I mean bass tones, I use them very like the middle value of the image. I don't go with the darkest and I don't go the lightest I find the middle tone and then I go and I create a solid base of that across the entire image, wherever those are. I leave all of the highlights as light as I can, and I I make the dark the shadows as dark as possible. But I'm really just trying to get a nice, solid base tone. And as you can see, I'm using all of different techniques. Ah, with swirls and it's Ah, the paper towels stumps, the blending stumps. And I'm really just capturing that middle bass tone of the picture, and you can download this image from the resource is section of the site. I have a few others. You can also go and check and practice out with. And as you can see, I have the rough based toned down and then I go, and that's when I start to add all those darker darks and shadows in there. And that's really when you start to see the image come alive and really start to pop. And as you can see here, I'm just going in, filling in all those little ah, those little details and highlights. And when you start to bring in those darker pencils and the values your that's really when the image starts to come alive. So when you're focusing on that, that's when you're going to go through the highlights. You can really start to depict and define the highlights more so using the darker values rather than actually trying to erase or get all the other ones out of the way. And that's really where the outlining process was in the beginning. The outlines really shaped the entire image beforehand and gave me the base of where all the shading and value was gonna go before even put down a pencil mark or a stroke. So as you can see here, I've already got the base tone. I've done some mawr defining with the darker pencils, and now I'm just going layer by layer, adding mawr and more shading as I go and getting gradually darker. I get a darker I get a softer pencil here. It's a six b pencil. It gives it that really nice dark punch that it's really lacking is gonna give it that contrast as you can see on the screen. And then that's really where all of that pop and definition comes from. It's not from the highlights per se, but it's really from adding the darks. Once you've had all that bass tone and the highlights to find, because once you do that, then it gives it that extra contrast that everything else was missing. And then once is once that's done, everything else is just kind of, Ah, fine detail and little subtleties of adding slightly darker shading and tone and kind of depicting those reflections like I told you in the beginning. So as you can see again right here, I'm just following the contours of what the glass would be and just going into finding a little more than reflections in the details, making him a little darker. As I've said before, you can always make your darker is darker and your lighters lighter than you would look. It'll make it pop. It'll give it more life, and you'll really see the difference in the end drawing. If you try toe, just define every single Brady ain't of tone and value. You're really gonna end up with a flat image, and that's what we're trying to avoid. So again, one of those lessons always go darker than you think, and lighter than you think with the other ones, and that'll give you a nice, clear defined shadow. So again, here we're going just filling in those reflections, adding a little more detail, defining a little more. So it's almost like if you have ever seen an image way back in the day on the Internet, where the image would load first, it would load a very blurry one, and then it would load another pass, and then it would get a little clearer, and then it would go another again and really start to define images. If you were downloading a picture of Tom cruise you'd see is big, blurry image. It would go down again, and then you finally see Oh, it's Tom Cruise after the fourth past. That's kind of with the whole process. Here is except you're just using it in layers of different tones. You're going with the outline, which is that blurry first step. Then you're giving it that bass tone, which you can kind of start to see what's coming through. And then you start to go in with a darker and define Mawr and Maura until you actually see the image come alive on the paper. And that's really when it starts to get exciting. So that's really all there is to capturing those types of images, especially glass, which doesn't really have its own shape. It's really just kind of reflections of everything else is around it. So if you could just really focus on the lights and the darks like we've been going through this entire course, you'll be in a lot better shape If you can just do that. Instead of trying to really draw outlines of things you want to do, Grady ated tones and capture him, and it will really come together All right. So some key tips to keep in mind whenever you do in any kind of drawing length, this is used the stumps to filling most of that value. They're going to really come together. When you do that, blend the smooth, this areas, using tissue and the paper towel, it's gonna make it a lot cohesive, more cohesive. Leave the highlights pure white and used immediately Racer to create the mid tones and highlights in those reflections. They're really they'll bring him out a lot more, and I look a lot more natural for you. So what do you do now? Right now? Go ahead. Download those images that I have, uh, the glass images in the resource is section and includes the one that you saw in this video and really just go and practice using the techniques and really get a feel for how all of those can come together and use them in the different scenarios. I have a little more of ah, technical one and the other one and, you know, always go out there, keep it simple and always be learning. And I'll see you guys in the next video 21. Drawing Water Droplets: Hey, everybody, Kevin here for drawing coloring dot com and shading masters. And in this video, we're gonna be drawing a water droplet and the again this is gonna be going with organic images and, uh, you know, just kind of tackling, seeing the strategy of what and how to attack these types of images. Now again, organic images. You don't have to focus on every line, and you can really manipulate a measure need You don't have to draw every single line you see. You really want to just collect the masses a tone and, uh, really just captured those as best as you can. Now, with anything you want to do that outline. First, you can focus on just the major lines and then draw the outlines of the shadows and the highlights. And make sure you use a light enough line to where those aren't gonna be hard to reraise or you're not gonna better really go over them throughout the rest of the drawing. So, in this one, um, water is kind of one of those tricky things that it is clear and it has sharp edges, but it's also very soft. So what? I started with on this one is I used a charcoal pencil. It's a to be charcoal pencil, and what I'm doing here is I'm filling in the darkest tones and new skin. See again that clear objects. They have hard lines, and they're very clean lines with the way that the light reflects and retracts off of those different shapes of the It's almost like a liquid glass, so you kind of have to think about it in that terms. So what I'm doing is I'm taking that jet black charcoal pencil and I'm going in and I'm filling in all of the darkest blacks and kind of trying to give it that Ah, filling in the darkest colors as darker than. Maybe I'm seeing them and leaving the lighter ones lighter than I'm seeing them. And that's really what gives the the water or even that glass type of texture that pop. It gives it that distinction that clear that clarity, and it really makes him look a lot mawr realistic and organic rather than filling in all the different tones with just a bunch of greedy INTs. So again, as you can see, I'm just going in filling in all those darkest darks that I see not trying to get every specific line, just trying to fill in those major tones. And I'm seeing because, you know, unless you're really trying to slavishly create the image that you're seeing, there's really no reason to do that. I mean, you're you are the artist. Try and keep that in mind. You can manipulate and leave out whatever you want to achieve the specific effect. Now I know when you're trying to do realistic portrait's especially faces or anything that you want to make sure you get the specifics down. But when it comes to these types of images, there's no set, look or image that they have toe where it's gonna be. Oh, that droplets at us place. It's more of a that. How organic does it actually look? How realistic does it look overall? So try and keep that in mind. Whenever you're going through any of these types of water clouds are, you know, anything that is liquid or fluid. So right now I have all of the darkest blacks, and I'm just going in with the blending stump and trying to, you know, soften him up a little bit and get in some of those greedy ated tones to really start to give it that that's softer look, because what the black does the kids that all of those soft, there's hard lines that gives it the structure. But then it's the lighter lines that come in and really soften it up and give it that that smooth, soft texture that you see with the water and those are really the two defining characteristics that you're trying to capture here anyway. So if you can get the hard lines down, do you want to make sure you keep those light the highlights as white as possible? And then just fill in the lighter shades of tone with the blending stump? And you'll be amazed at how realistic it actually looks with just the dark Blacks and the whites your even, really need all of the different Grady ins in between. So, like I was saying, leave all of your highlights as pure a white as you can, and if you have the blacks down 90% of your image will it'll look like it's almost done. It'll look like it's pretty much complete, and then it's really just going in and filling in little minor details and little bits of shading. Here, there, Teoh kind of really polish it and finish it off like I'm doing here. I'm kind of there's really no extra blacks in here in this particular image, some cottages going in with blending that extra charcoal around to fill in some of those darker ah tones in that that aren't exactly highlights. But they're not really darks. They're just kind of that middle tone, and you can see already it's almost it's almost already completed. It's really just a matter of going in and putting in slight little bits of detail, which I find if and you can see I'm using the It's gonna be a to B pencil. But it's that mechanical pencil, which always keeps that sharp tip. This one, you can get him in fatter or skinnier leads. This one is a little bit fatter, so it's a little softer, and it it really it gives you a nice a nice blending effect because it is that softer. But it's so crisp and clean that you can get in all of those different details. And if you've seen any if you see any different type of image that is like super realistic . Chances are they're using a mechanical pencil If you want more of a stylized, uh, you know, artistic, just impressionistic. Or you can see that it's an artistic drawing. A regular graphite pencil would case graphite pencil is really gonna be more of what you're looking for. On that, there's nothing wrong with either one. It's more of what is the end look, our aesthetic that you're trying to get at and that will really determine what type of pencil you want to use. So in here, I'm Ah, this is gonna be a seven b pencil. This is just going in and filling in all those little bit of darker areas that the charcoal pencils just a little bit too dark for and the graphite or the mechanical pencil is just a little too light for and it really it kind of gives it that. Let that third tone that is really kind of hard to just get in there and do with those other two. So I'm just going into kind of feeling defining a little bit more given knows little darker shapes and again like I said, the glass and water, the darker and heart of the lines, usually the cleaner and mawr, um, more realistic. It'll actually look, because those really do have hard lines as soft as they are. But they they those lines give them the structure of that. Just, you know, the way that the light hits it. It cuts through it so much that it's shows just like glass. So you gonna you really do have to have the structure built in and then fill in the softness after again. I'm just switching in and out of the mechanical and seven b to get a little bit more detail , and you know you'll find you'll go in and out of pencils. You don't need to use one pencil of the other. See, I just picked up the charcoal. Now I'm going back to the blending stump, and it's just a process of layering and layering and blending, filling it out, going in, putting a little more detail, seeing what's missing. You race in here and there and just perfecting the image and getting it until it's mawr and more polished. And so you're until you're really just happy with the end product. So don't ever think you have to stick with one pencil throughout the entire drawing and then go into another layer and then go into another process. You can go. You know you can go with any type of pencil throughout the any part of the drawing. You don't have to start with just charcoal, go through the charcoal, then go through the blending thing, go through the mechanical, then go through the other ones and then go through that. It helps to have sort of a condensing process as faras. How much detail you're adding as you go through. But whatever a pencil or whatever, ah, tool or device you're using, that really doesn't matter. You can go through it. However, you need to just make sure that year constantly refining and refining. You want to start from a blocky, blah G squared or, you know, just kind of a blocked out image and just clear it, clear it up and define it more and more as you get there. And that's really where it's that's it's really, um, you know, that was really a painting technique. As you start with a block in, and then you just refined the tones mawr and mawr until your images revealed. And that's really all of this is I mean, pin painting is more just an advanced version of drawing. It's just more toned manipulation and going in and different things. So a few key tips again filling all the blacks first with these, it'll really give you that. Contrast it with the pure whites and it'll almost build up that image before year, even done, and then go fill in of softer tones and erase and get all of the different other little medium tones. But really, that white in the dark contrast of just stark hard black lines and light white is gonna be what really brings and draws that image together. Everything else you know, I'm kind of I was already kind of done. I figured, how would go in and finish it up for you? Got the major splash done. But now I'm just kind of going in and filling in Thea a little bit of ripples. Really, I can not paying attention or really caring about the extra little details that are in there. It's whatever I wanted to add. So again you can you can manipulate thes however you want. You don't have to focus on creating every single line to pick the image, however you want it and you know less, the less the amount of detail is usually going to be, Ah, better when it comes to these sort of images, because you're not gonna be right up on him unless you want to do a chuck close type of direct reproduction. The more of the essence of the drawing that can get with those tones the better. Because when you step back, your eyes gonna build it up and make it look like it needs to look. You don't need to draw all those extra details. It's almost like a high def TV. Sometimes there's just too much detail, and it distracts, and it makes it look fake. The softer images are usually the ones that look more realistic that look more like film, and those are the ones that have mawr presence. It look better so you know what? What to do now. Go ahead, download those images from the resource is section and practice using the techniques in this video again, start with the blacks, go with the lights and remember, always be learning and keep it simple. 22. Drawing Water: Hey, everybody, this is Kevin for drawing and coloring dot com and shading masters. In this video, we're gonna be focusing on drawing water. Water is one of those organic, uh, one of those organic things that is kind of it's hard to capture, in essence, but it's really it's not much different than drawing any kind of glass, a reflective surface and some of the things you want to keep in mind with. Those are just don't try to draw every single line and you don't really you don't really need to draw you can you can really manipulate him however you want. So in this video, I'm going to go ahead and show you a few, uh, some of the same strategies as show you. In all of these videos, they're gonna be basically the same approach for almost of these especially reflective surfaces, and especially with the outlining, um, in the beginning process, you always want to remember to use some of the just outline all of the major shapes in your image. First, all of your highlights all your mid tones and shadows just to give you a good general guideline and where you're gonna be actually adding this tone and valley. And then once you do that, what I do is just go in and kind of, um hatched the dark, darkest areas and just kind of build up that I'm basically going through in marking where all of those are gonna be So later on, when I go in with the Blendon stumps and any kind of other blending tools, I already have an idea and already have a little bit of graphite on the paper to work with . And you can see there's It really helps with adding more tone to the paper. So you're not just going And, uh so you have something really work with Like I said, So as you can see here Ah, I've already had an outline. I started to add a little bit more depth to it, and I'm really just going and filling in that base stone with all of my images like I do. I do step of outline and do the bass tone, and then I'll go in and I'll add those darker Ah, I'll go in and those darker values and really just kind of builds and builds upon itself. More and more until the final image is completed. And that's what you're going to see. And a lot of these videos is It's really like I've said in the first model. If you can get layers into your head as the main goal in a, um, object, objection, then all of your images are really just gonna go ahead and create themselves. So again here with the highlights, once you have them all done all the mid tones and darks laid down, then you can go ahead and erase the highlights. And you can even go into those mid tones in the darks and pull out of the little deep kind of areas of light that you might not have been able to actually draw on himself. But you could just lift him out using that eraser. So here we go again with the ah, again layer in and Mawr with darker shades, and then it really just again. It gives you something to work with, and I believe this is gonna be a six B or an eight b pencil, and it's really it has that soft lead in, the more the whenever you're doing a organic shapes or any kind of shading. The softer the lead, the easier it is gonna be for you to go ahead and blend those areas together. And it actually creates a softer tone on the paper because that led and the graphite is easier to put down, and it blends a lot easier as well. So as you can see here, I'm gonna go in using the the paper towel after I've done that. And that's just another way of softening up. Water has a specific property of just being very soft and but also sharp at the same time. And that's where the if you can really start to focus on how the light is hitting it. You don't have to draw every single line or every shape that you see in again. It's up to you to what you where they want to drawn focus on If you If you focus on the light and the direction it's coming in, then you can. You can really add the shadows and depth and sculpt the water however you want, and that's really key. Whenever you're drawing organic shapes is not to try and capture every single line, every single detail because it really it'll take forever. And in most cases it won't come out exactly how you want it anyway. So keep that in mind is just kind of capture the general essence of what your images, especially with those organic shapes. Now again, if you have some sharp, crisp lines, you want to go ahead and capture those. There's gonna be main main key lines. But as faras patterns and textures go, generally those aren't gonna be as, um as necessary to create exactly you. You'll get the idea behind what it really looks like, because if you just squint your eyes, you look at anything either with the water or wood grain or uh, hair or anything like that. If you squint your eyes, it will get rid of all that detail anyway. And if you could just capture what you're seeing when you have your eyes squinted, then your image will pretty much draw itself. And when you stand back, all of that detail somehow will already be built in you'll. It'll just build itself in with the way that your eyes seeing the image anyway. And that's, uh, that's really how you should approach any of these kind of organic images such as water or wood or hair or anything that you really just have a lot of. And it's just constantly moving and changing now. Rigid structure. Obviously, you want to capture those as cleanly as you can. But like I said, with water or anything, that's gonna be constantly moving or reshaping itself, It's not as critical to capture every single detail now in here. I'm just going through with the needed the race. I'm just lifting out some of those highlights, and I'm kind of I'm drawing some cleaner lines in there using it just to give it a little more structure because, like I said, it's almost like a glass, but it's very soft. It's like a softer glass that when you're capturing it, it's not gonna have a lot of sharp lines. But the sharp lines that you do draw in it are really gonna make it stand out and really give it that shape and texture. And if you've ever looked at water, it goes up on on a crest and then it goes down, so it's almost like a swooping motion. So when you actually when you're blending, if you conglomerate and in that general kind of direction of, um the way the water is flowing, you're you'll really start to build in that extra, um, tone and value anyway. And I'll actually give it a lot more movement in your drawing when you're when you're blending it with the contour of what that water would be doing and you can see here, I'm just going ahead, uh, just adding layers and layers. And now I'm pulling out some more of the highlights, and then I'm gonna go in and Atmore and it really it just keeps building and adding mawr and more depth. And that's really how you get those realistic tones and anything that you draw, sir. See right here. I've already gotten a lot of those bass tones. I've already added some more things and and is going with the darker pencil and coming, drawing in some more of those straighter mawr defined lines that are really gonna make those waves and those those crest and really stand out and give you that that little bit of structure that the water actually does have. And again, with all these drawings, don't be afraid to go to dark. That is One of the main problems that I had whenever I was drawing um in the beginning is I would have a perfect in faras. I was concerned it would look perfect. But there was just one thing that wasn't Ah wasn't there is there's something missing and it was really just the dark, dark tones don't beat you can't be afraid to mess up a perfect drawing if you have. If you think it's perfect, go darker. Go add the super darks and you'll really start to see how those will make the picture really come alive and give it that added contrast that it might have been missing that you just even, really, I think, to look for didn't even realize it was missing. If you can go as dark as possible, as you possibly can and then, uh, kind of work from there after you have already created all of your first rough tones and shading and gotten detail, if you go a step further and push the darks even darker, then you think they should be Your image really will start to pop and again right here. I've already done that. Now I'm just kind of kind of trying to mimic what water actually looks like. And then that's really all you're gonna do. So, uh, what to do now? Go ahead, download the water images I have in the resource is section and go ahead. Just practice some of the techniques in his video and remember, always be learning and keep it simple. 23. Drawing Skin - Part 1: but hey, everybody. Kevin here founder of drawing color dot com and creator of shading masters. In this video, we're gonna be tackling skin tone and different textures. And, uh, I wanted to actually give you a few examples of how you can actually over shade and really kind of go Ah, too far with your shading. As you'll see in this example, I I can I wanted to leave it up to you to see how easy it is just too over shade and kind of not, um, you know, kind of missed the wrong point if you're not really paying attention with how you're layering and how your shading so as you can see already have everything kind of outlined right here and just like with most of the other textures. Like I said, all I'm doing is first going in finding those key dark areas with that lending stone, filling him in, keeping a nice and light nice and smooth, just kind of giving me a bass tone, almost an under painting. If you of ever doing any kind of painting, it's just giving me a nice, solid work spot work surface to really start to layer in all male, the textures, and you can see him using it. Spin the circles a little circled motions on the cheek to kind of give it a little extra depth. And then I just keep going in a layer a little more and a little more and a little more just like an old uh, like I've said before, just like an old Internet graphic. How it would load in layers. It would go one layer until it was completely clear. And that's really what you're doing. All of these layers. You're really just building it up until you get a final, crisp, clean image. And all I'm doing right now is just layering all of that back. All that backing in. And then, as you can see with six B pencil, I go in and I start adding a little more detail, making a little darker, and it's really when you start to see it pop and come alive. And if you you can notice how I'm still even, I'm not strictly using soft blended edges. I'm actually using some ah, hatching lines and cross hatching, and then it's basically almost, um, like the Children's books where you have the painted line and you just add water. That's almost a same principle is what I'm working with here is I'm putting down the line and then I'll take the blending tools and I'll go in and I'll move that around and get that nice, blended, shaded area that I'm looking for. So right here. As you can see, I'm just kind of cleaning up the lines, kind of giving a little more definition. Filling in the dark's a little more on just so I can see. And if you see how that hair looks on the left, you're really going to see if you if you just keep going and you don't really pay attention , or you just let it kind of just go. You're going to see how that can change. And actually, how, um, one key thing that I switched to it changed my entire focus on how I shade all of my darks and, as you can see it like it. Like I said, Ah, a minute ago, I laid in all of those darks, all this crisp docks, and now I'm just going in and I'm blending them with the paper towel. Get them nice and smooth, creating more depth in those bass tones and just building them up, building him up until I finally get that nice, complex depth in the skin and all of the all the shading. If you really start from the base up and get that nice, smooth created tone and add your darks slowly and slowly and I kind of just be be aware that where the highlights are so you don't go too dark or cover them up. But then, once you have all of those down, it's gonna just create all those different layers and everything that you see that you wouldn't normally be able to do, which is one pass and again, Like I said, if you keep focused on the hair on the left side and then on the right side, I'm going to do a different technique, and it's gonna show you right here with Thea is ah, charcoal pencil. This is really what I switched to Teoh. Um, really get those darks and it really helps when you're looking at the image directly. It doesn't give you that reflective tone. If you were, you choose one of those softer leads and you can see as I use them, I use them for the pupils. I use them for the pupils. And I, um, any place that is really just kind of a dark jet Black is what I use the charcoal pencils for now. And as you can see most of the skin tones, I'm not going to use the charcoal for those. Even if I have a softer or, um, a softer pencil, it really it can get really too dark Unless there's a dark, dark shadow on the face. I'm not gonna use a charcoal pencil. I really just use it for those solid Ah, solid, deep darks that I need to get. And here, you see with the nostrils, fill in those dark shadows and it really gives it it. It really makes it pop and stand out and really gives it an extra layer of death. And you could see on the side of the face on the right side. I've outlined it with the charcoal pencil. Okay, I've also did it on the left, but you're going to see in a few moments where I use the six B to shade in the hair on the left side and is really it. It works fine. But as you can see, it's gonna be really reflective. And it's really almost gonna take away from the image. So any time you wanna have a super dark black, you don't really want to use the softer ledge you want If you want to use those softer leads for more Ah, you want to be just aware of the surface that you're going with. You want to make him that air. You want to use those for things that are gonna be more vibrant or more reflective or, you know, just have a little more life to him and you'll see right here in a few minutes. It really it takes. It really does take away from the overall image and depth, and it almost it really distracts from the image. So right now, I'm just kind of going in taking all those extra, um, marks that I made, smoothing them out again, building up that texture building and building and getting him a little darker filling in all the different lighting patterns. It's it's really just kind of blocking in all of the major shapes and patterns and then going in and refining and refining. It's very it's a very painterly technique, and you can see it's coming together pretty well and it looks pretty solid. But in a few minutes you're going to see how it can really, Um, if you really, if you don't really sure of the tools. And if you just keep shading and shaving it, you can easily over shade your subject and it will become flat and you can see in this one it It makes it one big, flat tone almost in some areas, and you want to just That's what I was saying in a lot of the other videos. If you constrict to keeping the whites the white ist the whites whiter than you would normally write, draw them in the blacks darker than you would normally draw them. Your image will have a lot more contrast and depth, and it will really look, it'll look a lot better than trying to fill in all of those different tones and shades ingredients. So at this point, the face it looks almost, um, it looks pretty good. It looks better than, um, it would a little further on here because it just kind of keeps re working and working, and you really have to learn where to stop your drawing. And as you can see here, like I mentioned the six B hair on the left, you can see how reflective that is, and it almost it distracts from the drawing itself. And once you lay down that you really can't go over it using any kind of graphite pencil, adjust the graphite. The pencil is just too smooth for any of the charcoal to be laid down, and you can see how it kind of speckles in. And if you look on the right side, it gives it a lot more depth and darker. It's richer and pops, and it really just it stands out a lot more than gives it a lot more depth. And here we go with the nose. Like I was mentioning before it. It can be really easy to over shade an area, so you want to make sure you try and use has, as few passes really assed possible, because once you start going over an area 67 even up to five times, it's really going to start to lose its depth and you're not gonna really be able to make it papa as much because you have so many different layers and they just start to blend together, and then they really become flat. Now, this one, it doesn't look, it doesn't look all that bad, but it could look a lot better if, like in earlier. If I would have, uh, I stopped on the nose and then kind of focused mawr on the lower half of the face. It would have looked a lot cleaner. So because when you start to add more layers, your image, it just kind of and I'm sure most of you already have it. You'll notice it just starts to get muddy, and everything kind of blends together, and it just doesn't look as good as you know it should. And that can really happen. Um, it can happen really quick if you're not paying attention. And again, this whole video sped up. This was a probably about a 40 minute video. Is trying to make it pretty quick for you to give you just some simple demonstrations of the techniques and kind of really, how, Aiken, How you can achieve some really good depth and really just kind of give you that again. The strategy of what? How do you approach the image itself? And what do you really looking for? To start and you can see there is the final image. It doesn't look bad, but and you can almost see like the graphite hasn't been so reflective. But on the right side, that image is just a lot mawr clear. It has more pop. It adds more depth to the face, and it all around just looks a lot better. So I just wanted to go ahead, give you a quick example with that of, you know, really how to approach the beginning and then give you and actually just give you some examples of, you know, really, how how you can go wrong. I know you've seen I know you've probably gone wrong with your images itself. Ah, few times here in the air and it's But it's really more of a lesson of just be cognisant, uh, you know, and just be aware of what you're actually doing. If you're Shea, if you find yourself gravitating a one area and you're constantly reworking it more and more just you know just kind of let it be done. Just let it sit and try to work on the whole image at once because if you really focus on one area of the image, it's gonna show and it's going to stand out and it's gonna look overworked. So if you take nothing else from this video, the key thing here is to work on the entire image at once. Not this one specific area or one specific aspect of the face or drawing, or any kind of skin tones or anything that you're drawing. You really want to capture the overall image and then add those different layers and then details towards the end. So again, I hope that gave you a pretty solid strategy on attempt and kind of, you know, just see where you can miscue and kind of see what tools give you the best. Um, you know, give you the best perspectives, layer options and, um, ideas to go with your next portrait and with your skin tones. So I hope you got a lot out of that one, and I'll see you guys in the next video 24. Drawing Skin - Part 2: Hey, everybody, Kevin here for shading masters. And in this video, we're gonna be talking about how to shade skin. If you saw the other video, I showed you some some areas away. You can really kind of just go overboard ago, go downhill really quickly if you're not really thinking about it. And and this one I really wanted to show you exactly. Ah, ah, well thought out, direct approach. And it's actually going to use a different type of shading in this video. So with that, as always, every drawing is going to start with the outline. You want to focus on all the major lines and draw all the shadows and highlights, get them all down. So you know exactly where they're gonna be before you even approach it and make sure you use light lines. Now, as you can see in this one, I have the all of the shadows and time and highlights already mapped out on the face. And I What I'm doing in this one is I'm using a charcoal pencil for all of the darkest darks in filling him in first. Usually I would use the mid tones, as you would see him most of the drawings and then add the different layers of dark and highlights and erase and going from that way. But with the nature of the charcoal pencils, they don't really allow for the graphite to work well with them unless there laid down first. Because the graphite is just to smooth and it doesn't really allow charcoal pencil to grip the paper, it just it doesn't mix very well. So if you put down the charcoal first, the graphite pencil will really add a lot more depth once it's over, laid with the graphite. So it's a really good mix. If you can start that way, it's not any harder than laying down the middle tones. You really just have to, uh, establish all the blacks as gonna be dark black and go from there. So here we go. I'm going through. I'm just filling in now. I'm using a six B pencil. I've got all the darkest darks in there, and now I'm just going in and I'm filling in those mid tones with the six B pencil, and that's really going to start to already define where the highlights in the shadows are in this one you condemn Fnet. We see that the light is coming from the right side of the face, so that makes it very easy to depict the form and shape of the face itself. And then once I had that down, as you can see, I'm gonna I blend it all in, and then that's what really builds up those middle tones. And that's what the charcoal, it blends a lot easier. So it's gonna be, Ah, you have to kind of watch yourself with that because it blends a lot darker than any other graphite pencil would. So you had to kind of be, um, aware of that whenever you're going in there. Otherwise you'll have a very dark area when you didn't really mean to do that. So in here I'm just kind of working with that charcoal blending and into the six b graphite , and it's kind of it's really given in a nice, smooth tone texture already, and I haven't even really done much at all. So now I'm just kind of going in, ah, blending, keeping building those Grady INTs. That's really what the face is gonna be about is building up smooth, uh, continuous Grady INTs and really defining where the shadows and the highlights are on that form. And as you can see already, the charcoal really does create a nice, smooth texture. And it blends very well with the graphite. It's just that layering process you have to be aware of. So now that I have that base tone established, I'm going in and I'm using. And I'm lifting up those highlights using the kneaded eraser, and I'm just lightly dabbing. I'm even, uh, twisting, is it? Twist it in. It'll create a nice It's almost combining that circle effect with the eraser, and it's lifting it in little circles, which really gives it a nice ah, organic look and feel, as you can see here. And the more you twisted and you can just it, Ah, it it doesn't really lift it evenly, which is really what you're after with that, and it twists all of the graphite and charcoal, and it blends it together in a way that does just impossible to do any other way besides this and using this method, if you can actually go in, pull out that reflected light from the shadows, which, if you've gone through section, section two on Learning Light. You'll know that reflected light can bounce back into the shadows, and that really gives it a lot more depth and realism, then just having a flat plane. So now I'm going ahead with the six B pencil again, just kind of filling in, cleaning up the lines, making them a little more Ah, a little more defined and just kind of going in and filling in all those little extra details. Now don't have that base toned down and again. All I'm doing is filling it in, blending it, feeling blending details, blending. I'm just constantly repeating that process, just going through every single pass layer and layer and layer until I finally get that image that I'm looking for. And if what I'm doing now is, you can see I'm just using. Once I have all of that bass tone established a to B pencil, really a dull to be pencil you wanna be. Whenever you're doing shading again, you want to make sure you use an adult pencil cause it'll blend all those tones together a lot easier for you, and I'll go on to the paper a lot smoother Ah, so right now I'm using the to be pencil, and I'm just going in really lightly filling in all those middle Grady intones. That didn't come through or got erased a little too much. And it's really starting to build that depth into the face and the skin, and you can use it to even define a little bit more. And it's really a great way to, um, it's a great way to get all of those extra little details that there's little nuances of light that shines through that you otherwise would be a little harder to get if you were just using one type of pencil or charcoal or even lifting, for that matter. And as you can see that all I'm doing right now, I basically have everything done. I'm just going and doing all of those finishing touches, having the racer lift, where it's a little too heavy going in with the to be given it that nice tone, blending it very well. And then it just filling in all those little extra details that little nuances of the skin and the light as they bounce off the face, you know, and that's really that's all there is to it, there's really not much more. Ah, but besides that, once you get the established tones, you kind of want to keep referencing back and forth just to make sure that you're in the same ah, areas of value as your darkest and your lightest. You want to keep that relationship the same, but throughout the entire images is constantly keep going back and forth to the darks and lights. Keep in the relationship looking, adjusting, looking and adjusting, and then just keep going through and creating those Grady INTs and layers in. Just make sure that that that consistency is there and you'll be perfectly fine. So again, with some key tips you circles to create those textures, blend the smooth using a tissue, and that kneaded eraser is really gonna come in handy for editing, editing or up lifting those those different textures and tones. And then again, I just repeat that over and over until the images. Ah, until I have a satisfied image. And that's really the key to getting that realism and keeping and getting all of those different nuances of depth and value and texture in there and there you go completed drawing, and it looks pretty pretty solid for, um just a quick sketch. So that's all you really needed to do in a again. I hope that ah gives you a good strategy and approach to really tackle your images, especially those skin tones which I know a lot of people look at and really want to get into drawing. So what you can do now is go ahead, download those face images in the resource is section and, you know, practice using those techniques that I showed you in this video, they always gonna be there. And, you know, they're always consistent. They don't really change and remember, always keep it simple and always be learning. 25. Drawing Fur: Hey, everybody, Kevin here for drawn in coloring dot com and creator of this shading masters course. And in this video we're gonna be tackling for for can be one of those intimidating things if you really don't know how to approach it. But again, like all other textures and items like that, it's really all gonna be boiled down to the simple basics. So obviously you want to start with that outline. You want to get all of major lines down, make sure you have all of the highlights and shadows outline before you even begin. And in this one for and hair, they're really have their own tone of their course and the very smooth and that really lends itself to the charcoal medium. Ah, very well. So in this one, we're gonna be using the charcoal pencil to really start to get all of those tones and bass tones in. And that is really going to give it a nice soft look. And it also gives it that course Look, that hair has, and a few key things here is you want to keep your tones very simple, 3 to 4 at most. And if you can do that, the better off your image. Jewel. It'll look just because it won't get really Flacco's charcoal. It blends very easily, and it is very easy to get a very flat tone with that. So what you're doing, what I'm doing here is I'm going in. I'm I'm shading blown, uh, putting in all those little bass tones toe Give me something that blend around with and then I'm just going in and filling in all of those bass tones on the shading on the for. And then once I have that down, it's really gonna It's gonna almost look like it's finished at that point. But that's just a starting point right now. We're just getting those bass tones down, filling them in. And, uh, when you're doing when you're making ah, shading with the with the blending stump, if you can kind of simulate the for like a whisker, just kind of flipping it out here and there it will really, ADM or texture and depth to the for a swell. So again you want to fill in those hair strands after you don't want to do any of the small , small, super details just yet before you get the bass tone, and once you do, then you can start adding in those little individual strands. Make sure you actually go with the flow of the hair. If the hair is going to the side of its curling or its tone. If it's twisted some type of way, you really want to use your the line toe. Almost follow that con, that contour of the line that the hair is creating and that will really start to give it that extra added depth and, um, really make it look like hair. So what I'm doing here again is I I drew in a few quick strands of hair, and now I'm just kind of blending them back in to create that nice depth and tone. And then I'm gonna go in. I'm gonna ADM. Or and I'm going to just keep layering it, just like we've been doing and in here if you do, if you keep a light touch you again, you have to be, um, you have to really be cautious with the charcoal pencil because it does blend very easily, and if you're not too careful, it will put some really dark marks on your paper before you even realize it. And then you you'll really be left with just trying to erase those and build up that tone. And that can really mess up your image really quick. One quick tip is you can actually just before you put the blending stump just just tested on a piece of paper next to you before you even touch anything. You don't wanna go ahead and ruin anything before you even tested out. If you're just. If you loaded it up with charcoal, it'll really put a dark mark on. Then it has the potential to really, really mess up your image so you can see right here. It's already started. It's almost It's almost complete at this point that charcoal really brings out the darks, and it gives it that separation. And when you add it with the six B pencil, it gives it that extra added depth. And at extra softness that you can go in, you can you can erase for slight highlights because the charcoal pencil is gonna be and charcoal pencil does tend to be a little easier to lift off the paper once it's been laid down. So if you have any really super smooth. A really delicate highlights of charcoal pencils really are forgiving in that respect. So right now everything is pretty much done. I'm going in. I'm filling in all of the little extras light hairs or little um, you know all those little strands that might have been overlooked with those bass tones, and I'm just going in and filling him in, and that's really it. For further. There's not much to it. There's You don't want to draw every single hair. Obviously, that goes without saying You want to kind of clump it into groups of tone. And the more you can do that, the more realistic it'll look. And again, if you can. If you just squint your eyes, you'll see that you barely see any hair or any individual hairs at all. And that is really what you're trying to capture when you're putting down all of these tones on the paper, the closer you can get to that squinted image and then with minimal detail, that is really when your images start to look super realistic. So right now, finishing up, adding those little details and this is gonna be done it had the little again, just kind of shade and used the blending stump to add those extra little hairs that might be here there. But that is it for sure, for shading for and hair that is a simple Is it one of the simpler things they do? Eso again? You want to shave those points and his fluffs of hair with the blending stump and erase for the lighter ones Use that he needed eraser. It really works well with the charcoal. So what to do now? Go ahead, download those for images from the resource is section and again practice using the techniques that I showed you here in. Always remember, keep it simple and always be learning. 26. Big Alex - Case Study: Hi, everybody, and welcome to a shading Masters case study in today's It's going to be big Alex. Today's is really It's the first image I ever created. And it really is the kind of the trademark image that you see on all of the sites that I have. And it was really done with a lot of simple basic tools that really are available on your phone these days. And you can really get some extraordinary results if you just use the tools you have available to you today. So today's case study is gonna be that image. And like I said, I started with the very, very simple camera. It was the cannon power shot, a 5 20 It only shot four megapixels, and it had a four optical zoom. Nothing fancy about that one at all. Your iPhone shoots better video and pictures now, and the location that I shot it in was just a living room with a ceiling fan lighting. It didn't have professional lanes. I didn't have a spotlight or even a work lamp. It was just overhead lighting directly from above onto the subject against a blank wall. That's all I used for this. So as you can see, I had a few pictures that I took and I choose the top three that I could find. And obviously I chose the winner, which you see, and I did. All I did was I took that picture cropped id Teoh, a nice portrait type of image, and I kind of color corrected it just to see how it would look a little bit. I was playing with some images on that, and then I really just put it in black and white And that waas how that image was created, that simple, just an idea straightforward. Put it together and crop it and let just go ahead and print it out. The inspiration behind that type of image was actually from, uh, really one of my favorite artist, Chuck Close, who used simple type of everyday shot, nothing fancy, just like uh, either a photo I. D or driver's license picture. And then he really focused on the process, and that was kind of what I was doing. That kind of it's exactly what I was doing with these images here. So once I had my pictures, all I had to do is print them. So if you don't have a printer at home or if you have ah, if you have a really good friend or you can use it to. What I use, though, is Snapfish and I printed out to a 16 by 20 poster print, and it costs about $15 depending on um, when you're watching this video. But I get that and I get it in a nice, nice photographic paper and it really comes out nice. You get all the details, and then once I get that, I take that image and I put it on a sturdy surface, like a matte board or anything that really congee. Just keep that image in a nice, solid flat state, and then after that, the grid needs to be created, right? So you take a transparency paper, you can get it from any, um, you know any craft store or art store and you cut it to the outside. I just cut it to the outside of the piece of ah, photo, and I laid it on top and then I take that down. So I created the sandwich, basically of the matte board than the image taped on that, then the transparency paper taped on that and then it all taped down. And that is what the That's how the image was mounted onto that paper, and I still have it today. It's almost like a piece of artwork itself. And then that is what you draw the grid on top of you draw it on that transparency so you can, you know, you don't ruin the image underneath. And the grid, the grid is where it can get a little tricky, depending on the size of the image that you get. I chose the 16 by 20. It gets a little tricky with the matte board or the type of paper that I use. But if you stick to easy translatable numbers, you won't really have too much complications. But if you do, I would recommend that ah, calculator soup dot com. I found out to be a really good resource for translating those ratio numbers. So, like I said, once you have the grid, you want to, you know, if you would have all the transparency, don't you want to use a Sharpie so it doesn't write wipe off too easily? Sometimes it will just by the oil of your fingers if you're trying to keep your place on whether where you're drawing. But if you get one of the fine tips and then you go over it, using a ruler to make sure the lines are completely straight, it will stay on that pretty well. And you want to just use a letter in number system that's re usually what I found to be the easiest. You don't want to use numbers or 1122 or anything like that. That doesn't, uh, just make it more difficult for you to do. And then once you have that, it's really just a matter of transferring that graph to the bigger piece of paper or anything that you want to draw on and, you know, get started. That's just outline and do your outlines. And then, really, it is just a matter of filling in all of that with color, not color, but the shading and everything else and this particular image. It was my first image, and it took me quite some time. It took over 100 plus hours over a nine month period of just every day, or sometimes it would take some time off or, you know, a month or two are I. Didn't you kind of get a little overwhelmed or a little burn out just from drawing Every day gets a little a little tiring, especially when you have that such high detail. But once that was done, the rewards were well worth the effort. The contest that I entered where the art mount the and entered into the art buzz and art Artists magazine all media competition. Those were some of the key players in the competitions that I entered and really got the recognition into those and where I found those. And it's really one of the best Resource is on the Web for constantly updated competition listings is the artist network dot com slash competitions. That is where I pretty much found all of these, except for the artist Melt the Art mount. That was a local competition for a gallery showing and from start to finish. That is the story of the big Alex That, in a nutshell, is from modest, very small, cheap beginning shot in the living room with overhead lighting from a fan to ah high prestigious gallery and, uh, surrounded with thousands of dollars worth of other people's artwork in a high level competition. I don't think that's too bad of uh, too bad of a story. They're starting from the beginning, and it just it. No, it did take some work but consistency and working and when I could really paid off in the end, and I'll leave you with the transition from the beginning, all the way to the end from all of the process pictures. 27. Big Sofia - Case Study: Hi, everybody. And welcome to another case study. This is Kevin Cramer and for shading Masters. And today's case study is going to be on the piece I did named Sophia and Sofia is gonna be the second piece that I've, uh, I've ever done using the huge the gritting method on a larger scale. And it really there were a lot of challenges in it, mostly because of technical aspects and other things, more so than I originally had using my first piece called Big Alex, which most you probably know by this point. So I figured I would go through this one and give you some of the, uh, some of the tools of the trade and some of the obstacles I really encountered while going through this next this sophomore piece. So and you can see this was the starting image I had, and I'll give you how I got to that. So let's get started. So the tools that I used were a little there were there were upgrades from the 1st 1 I will say that the, um, the 1st 1 was used using a point and shoot in a in a living room with ceiling fan lighting against a blank white wall. And in this one, I know I had had some or premeditated ah intentions on this when it wasn't just a flying flying at the seat of the pants. Take a picture with some cool clothing on and I'll just draw it bigger. This one was in, Uh, you know, the inspiration for this room was a little like a said pre more, a little more meditated. I had some jazz and blues photos I saw in a restaurant, and there was a competition. I was coming up. I wanted to answer, and I want Teoh, you know, get into that. And I wanted to create again. I hadn't created anything and quite a long time. That first piece took a lot out of me, and then I kind of went into, Ah, a little bit of a color phase, so I hadn't drawn anything on a really large scale in black and white in a while. I don't wanted Teoh do Almost. It was actually the beginning of a new series of pictures called My Artist Friends that I'm still working on, and there's about five or six other pieces that I still have yet to draw. So this was the first of that series, and I really wanted to just draw them all using that same process. So yeah, like I said, that camera was upgraded for sure from the point and shoot that originally used with the big Alex piece. This one was a canon t three I. It shoots video. It takes amazing still photos. We used a 50 millimeter lens, which gives you that really nice depth of field, that shallow, ah, shallow depth of field where it's everything's clear in the front and everything else is thrown into a Blair behind it. And it was an 18 megapixel. It was definitely a step up from the 1st 1 which was only four megapixels. So this one really gives you the ability to blow it up, toe larger scales. And the camera was about $500. This was, you know, honestly, Thea, other point and shoot at the time was probably not much cheaper, so this was still, um, still kind of that range. But you know, a lot more fancy, a lot more fancy stuff going on in this shoot. And like I said, I didn't shoot it in the living room with a ceiling fan light and actually have you know, I make videos. So I have these new lighting kits that were, uh, you know, in my home studio now. So I had a little more set up And what I had a white backdrop at a lighting kit, and it's the same thing I use for all my videos, and you can see it here on the screen. And that was about $210. While it's still not that expensive for the amount of stuff I have, it was still, you know, it's still a stretch to have your own home studio. I understand, but I'm just giving you a nice idea of the step up, as from the original Big Alex, to go where, where I'm drawing now. And you know all of those stuff. All those things aren't really needed. And then you can see the images here. Ah, have a little more photographic quality there, a lot more distinct, a better lighting, and that that really constitutes from all of the upgraded equipment. You know, that's really as simple as that. But again, you don't really need that. As I showed in my first strong with the big Alex, that came out perfectly fine. And this one was really just using the tools I had. That was really it already had these. I didn't actually go out and buy these for this specifically, so you can use whatever lighting you want. You could use the work lamp and put one on the side against the white wall. It all works fine. So after I took all of those pictures, it took about probably 30 or 40 pictures. It's really easier with the DSLR because you can just snap, snap, snap a lot faster. And this was the winner. This was the one that had the most compositional, you know, flair. And I like the way it was Litton, like the gesture of the hands and everything. Really, Uh, the composition of this one was the best. Out of all the other ones that I got really depicted the the idea in my head, the best so again like I did with the big Alex, I use Snapfish to go ahead and print it on a poster size. They changed their sizes up on the posters from uh, I can't remember exactly what it was. I think the other one was 12 by 16 but they made him a little longer, so they're a little more skinny. So this one was a little more difficult to actually get the the printing right. But once I did that, I actually printed it to the aspect ratio that I wanted. And I left it with a little white far at the bottom to make it to fill in that gap. And then I just cut that off when I got the print in house. So I got to print it at the exact size I needed it. And then I just cut it to size. And like I said, Here's the prep work. I didn't the I just cut off the bottom. As you can see in the in the picture there, there's no there's no watch on the wrist anymore. I just cut it off completely. I cut about an inch and 1/2 off the bottom just to get the aspect ratio to meet the the end of paper that I was drawing on again, which was the matte board like I used with the big Alex piece, and I you know, I did the math and all of that as much as I could. But like, I'll show you in a little bit the I'll give you the website to where it really just makes the ratio calculations a lot easier. So the work surface again was the matte board that I originally used. It's the same exact type of white matte board. It's acid free works really great. That holds up very well to pencil, and you can erase a lot or at a lot of layers to it. And I just transferred those ratio of that print image to the mat board because it's about 20. It's about 36 by 40 which is slightly out of the ratio of blowing up my image. So I just basically took the numbers I got from my original print and transferred them on a larger scale to the math board. And then I just cut the matte board just to size, using exactly a knife in my yard stare and then you can see here. I'm just basically snapping off the edge to make it the right size, and that was that, Was it for the main the main piece of paper. So prepping the print, I I took a piece of that same matte board, took the image. I had mounted it to it, using some of tape. And then I just took some clear acid Tate or the Transparency Paper. You could get a role at any craft store, any kind of, ah art store. And then I just cut that the size on top, creating basically a sandwich to kind of like sealing it in sealing the image in there. And then I just taped it all down. So that created the mount and the image, and it got me, just like in the original, uh, the original Big Alex, which, if you look at any of the chuck closest work, which what I was mimicking in that one, and it's basically the same exact process. So the grid, like I said, if you decide on the size and the ratio before you ever get anything printed or transfer, it'll really do. It'll really streamline and make it a lot easier on you while you're doing it. And like I said, the calculator soup dot com has a really ah, really cool tool that just makes changing and, uh, multiplying and figuring out those ratios a lot more simpler instead of doing the math by hand. So transferring the grid, really? All I did was I took again. I took the size that his son at how many squares I wanted to do on the original print. And then I transferred that to the bigger piece of paper using the yardstick and my calculator, which was my phone, and I just drew them with an HB pencil and a Sharpie, which I started withdrawing. Ah, the grid started drawing the grid originally on the print on that transparency paper, and I started with the horizontal lines I financed a little easier. And on this one, I do want to make a little a little note here that with, if you can see on the top there, there's a slight little sliver of just the line because of the ratio, that is again, that goes back to not exactly having all of the math and everything correct, which is one of those things where if you're gonna do the grids, you want to keep it a simple as possible, so the simpler you can make all of your ratios, the easier it'll be to transfer them from piece to piece, and then it will keep you in line, and you can draw everything a lot easier as well. And one thing you want to keep in mind when you're doing the grid as well is to use fine line. That's why I use a fine tip Sharpie, because if you use a thick line, it's gonna show it's gonna take away some of the image and you're not going to go see it. So if you're transferring that image or you drawn a line to your bigger peas, you might leave out or can miss something because you're Linus so thick and you're kind of you're not drawing the full square instead of, uh, you know you're not drawn a full square that you have gritted. You're just you're missing some pieces because that Linus of thick so keep your lines as thin as possible, and the gritting always used letters and numbers. It's the simplest way to keep track, and you can go from a one Teoh to be, and it's a lot easier to to draw each square that way and just Like I said with the original, uh, chuck close inspired Big Alex piece, there's the same gritting technique. I just use a different color paper, uh, different color tape. So the tools for this all I did was use mechanical pencils, and I used a lot more of the softer leads because the bigger they are, the bigger your drawings are, the more you want to be able to lay down graphite faster and the softer leads help with that a lot. And I used the paper towels and this blending stumps to really fill in a lot of shading very quickly as well. So most of the detail was done with the mechanical pencils and more of the harder leads. And then the softer leads let me fill in all of the darker areas a lot quicker. And once I once I had all the greeting down, then it was really just time to do the outline. And what I do with the outline as I start on the major outlined shape. If I do it on on a white blank wall, then I'll start with the outline of the head or the any figure that I have in the image. And then I work my way in and I find that that helps keep everything, uh, clean. And you can really follow the edges and fill it in more. It doesn't. It doesn't allow for anything to be stretched or kind of off balance. It gives you more of a constraint when you're starting. And like I said, with these, you want to come and keep the lines as light as possible on this one. The lines are a little dark, but it's only because of the I knew going in that the lines around there were gonna be darker. So it didn't really matter to me as much because I knew they would be black or be filled in with a really dark or anything darker than I was drawing. So generally, when you're outlining, want to keep the lines as light as possible. But for this one, I kind of already knew that some of the lines I was wrong. We're gonna be lighter than what I was originally gonna end up with. So that was That was why I went a little darker with ease and then you can go. You can see there the camera is actually a lot darker lines, then the hair or anything else, the hairs a softer, you know, it's a little more amorphous. You don't want to draw stop hard edges. So that's kind of why I kept those softer and the, you know, the starting point. Like I said, I draw the background first. That's where I tend to start because it gives me a nice starting later gives me a nice starting value, and then I can kind of relate all the other tones off of that. So if I know how light the background is, and then I can start with the other tones, then I can really judge and evaluate as I go through. If I need to make the background a little lighter, a little darker or what I'm drawing in actual figure, I can kind of relate those tones and values against the background and see if they need to be darker or lighter in that respect. So that's why I dark. That's why I start with white background and if you're right handed, you want to start from the top left just so it reduces the amount of smearing or smudging and you always want to keep a piece of paper under your hand, just to be sure. But that'll help when you first start from smudging or kind of blending anything together, really ruining it because there's nothing worse than finding a bunch of your own handprints later down the line on a finished piece of your work. And if you're if you're left handed, want to start in the top right corner, too. So is you can see I just started doing the hair, which is a lot softer, and it was actually kind of out of focus. So that's kind of what you can see. That like that. And now some of the obstacles that I ran into were the lens. You know, whenever you're drawing anything, kind of like a any kind of inanimate objects, they're gonna be mawr structured and have a lot harder lines, which can really the, uh, kind of a technical thing you wanna keep in mind. It's gonna be a little harder. You might actually need to use some kind of templates or tools that you can really mimic those lines because, especially if you're doing realistic things, you want him to be as clean and spot on it's possible. And going into this camera, the lens itself is really curved. So you know. And it's hard Teoh kind of freehand, a curved line perfectly, which in this case, it wasn't even ah, perfect circle due to whatever the angle of the camera she was holding in at. But so there wasn't anything I could specifically lay down and just draw a circle, so it did kind of have to freehand it a little bit through the graph through the boxes. But even so, it's still is a difficult process to get those lines exactly right, even when you're drawn in by hand with your eye. And then the next thing was, not only was it a circle, but there was text on that curve. So text in itself is a whole another art form that if you really want to get into you have to study our I recommend you study it because there's just certain little aspects of drawing letters that if you don't know, then it can really affect the way that the the lettering looks and you might not know why. So I'll give you a little example. The circular pieces like the oh in the seas or anything like that, or any kind of with anything with a curve. Any letter with a curve. They generally go slightly above and slightly below the baseline that you're all the other letters air on, which you know is most of the time it's imperceptible, but if you look at him closely, you'll see that they do slightly go above that. And if you don't know that, you won't be able to draw that correctly and you won't know why those letters look smaller or just not quite right. And the other obstacle I had was, you know, the camera itself, the camera body as more text on it. And it has rigid lines. And generally when you drawn portrait, you don't need to bust out a ruler to draw the face or eyes or anything that so and I'm not really a huge fan of drawing rigid things just because it gets more technical work and it's really not as fun. But in this one, I wanted to do a little bit of a challenge, and, you know, I did a pretty good job, but I tried the free hand um and it really didn't work out too well. I had to use a ruler because, you know, it really is a super structured, an animate piece of plastic that you can't really just freehand and then have it look as structured and give it that depth and body that it really is gonna need to look realistic and and you can see here the name. I changed it from the original two toy simply because of some copyright issues that I didn't wanna have to deal with. And I'll get it in a little bit, uh, more definite a minute or two on that. But as you can see the text if you look at the oh, it goes slightly underneath and slightly above and that really, Like I said, text in itself can really be, ah, challenge to just get it right. Just because of the slightly It really is an art form in itself. So if you really want to do any kind of text, I would strongly recommend you get some calligraphy books or any kind of just text books, not textbooks, but drawing books on drawing text to really get ah, a little bit of a foundation of really how lettering is done and that'll make it a lot easier and make your letters look a lot better in the end. So again the lens, one of the obstacles that was with that were the lettering. Like I said, the lettering can really caused problems if you don't know how to draw that correctly. And what I did here is I took the letters and used basically an old graphic designers technique where you draw out the words on a straight line and then you cut them. You cut the cut, little angles out of them so you can manipulate it and turn it and move it on a curve. And then I just took the word. In this case, it was the optical and I took it, and I just put it over. I just put it along that curve on the one that I drew on the paper, and then I just kind of went over them, outlining them to impress them onto the paper. And then once they were on the paper, I just went over them again with my pencil, and it actually created a much better, more realistic, curved Don't curb tone but a curved, um, curved path for the text to go on and you can see it makes it a lot more realistic to So there was a little a little bit of a designer's trick there. But again, I guess if you want to do any kind of text or any, uh, technical aspects like that, you really want to have some kind of based knowledge on how to really draw text or any of these little tricks like that. So, like I said, that lens was probably about 5 to 6 inches in diameter and that really to find something. It wasn't exactly a circle, either, so it made a little more difficult. But, uh, you can you can generally find some things that air almost the size you need or just about decide you need. In this case, I did kind of have to free hand most of it, but for the inner small circles, I did have caps or tops or anything like that I could find, and I just use that as the edge for a lot of the inner circles, and it really helped a lot to give it that rigid structure that it needed instead of organic drawing hand Ah, loose hand drawing that I would have been able to do it wouldn't have had that seem realistic rigidity that it really needed for the camera to look realistic. So again with the camera, like I changed the name from it wasn't originally hold a camera, but I wanted to enter it in a competition, and I didn't really want to have to deal with any kind of copyright issues. So basically, I just took it and turned it to toy. And, you know, generally, if you're gonna do anything with a name on it like that, you're gonna have taken that into account those kind of issues with names of branded or copyrighted images. Because if you do that, most competitions won't allow you to, uh, benefit or profit off of that. So it has to be an original image without any kind of copyrighted material unless you have the permission of that person. But just to be safe. I just stayed away from that and changed the name to toy, and, you know, it makes it a lot easier. I don't have to worry about it, and it's an original. It makes it more original. Even though I did take the photo, I don't wanna have to worry about anything else like that. So that is really all of, you know, that's really the main obstacles that I had with this when it wasn't a traditional portrait because you mean the whole entire face is covered with that camera. But there are a lot more technical aspects to this one simply because of the rigidity of the camera circles that lettering the text. And like I said, if you don't really know how to do those two, well, you want to get a good base, check out some books on just calligraphy or writing or text and graphic design in general. And it will really help you with those MAWR technical aspects of your drawings to, especially if you're like me. You don't like to draw? Uh, you know, rigid figures. It just I like to do more organic type of things, like the face or portrait's eyes or anything else. Besides that, a lot of people have trouble with teeth, and I can kinda, um, attribute the rigidity of the camera almost to the amount of like the drawing teeth, which is, ah, hard, solid surface or needs to be straight lines or has to have a very kind of rigid type of look to it, which can also kind of pose some problems. So for me, this was really more of a challenge for um no, the text aspect, the sighs again because it was 30 by 40 and I cut that a little smaller and the circles because it really it's all of those air elements to, especially with the camera, bring in an added sophistication and technicality. That was really more of a challenge than just trying to face. So I'll leave you with the process pictures here. I hope that help give you a little bit, um, on idea of what to think through our how to think through your image or what did they even actually? Um, take into account whenever you're using any kind of products or anything in your images to , and I will leave you with the process pictures from beginning the start so you can see how it was built in kind of see the process of how it was drawn just for a little a little entertainment there. So I hope you got a lot out of this one and I'll see you guys next video