Transcripts
1. Introduction: It is possible to create some really beautiful
and detailed drawings with colored pencils. But it can feel a
bit overwhelming creating this level of detail. I want to show you
today that actually, if you follow a certain
series of steps, it's easier than
you would expect. My name's Gemma Chambers, and I've been making online
art tutorials since 2020. I've helped tens of thousands of people improve their art. But today, I specifically want
to focus on fine details. I want to show you
how it's possible to create really
detailed drawings. So I will go through all of the materials
that you'll need, as well as the core
basic technique. And then I'll show you how
to apply that technique to this very sweet drawing of
some mice. Let's get started.
2. Class Project - Drawing a Mouse: Now for the class projects, we will be drawing these
mice on some barley. These are absolutely adorable. They are such a sweet subject. Now, beyond that, there is a few other reasons
that I selected these. First up, the mice themselves
are really detailed. They've got details on the face. They've got a huge
amount of fur detail and all of the fine details of
their feet, for example. Also the barley is another
area that is hugely detailed. And we'll need to build up all of the shapes here as well. So it's going to
be a really lovely subject to practice with. Now, I will show
you everything that you needs to create
this drawing, including how to
make this sketch. But if you want
to use my sketch, I have included some in
the class resources, both a light sketch for if you want to print
it directly onto the drawing paper and a dark sketch outline for
if you want to trace. Once you've finish your drawing, please do upload it into
the class projects. I would love to see
what you've done. Now, let's talk about the
materials that you'll need.
3. The Materials You'll Need to Draw with Coloured Pencils: Talk about the
materials that you need to draw any colored
pencil drawing, but particularly thinking
about fine details. And the most obvious
material that you'll need first is a set of
colored pencils. Now, generally speaking,
I create drawings with both polychromos and Prisma
colour colored pencils. These are both sets of
professional colored pencils. But you don't need professional
pencils like these. You can absolutely create beautiful drawings with
something cheaper like Crayola. Generally speaking,
for fine detail, I lean more towards using polychromos simply because
they have a firmer lead, so they hold a point for longer. You can definitely
use any set of pencils to create drawings with fine details like this one. But I do tend to steer more towards polychroms because it
is that little bit easier. Whichever set of
pencils you use, I do generally think
it's easier to draw with a slightly larger set. So I usually say to draw
with at least a set of 30, just so there's more colors to select what I always think is more important than the
actual colored pencils is the paper you're
going to draw on. Now, the main
method for creating any picture with colored pencils is a process called layering. This is where you build up the pencil in a series
of light layers, and that essentially allows
you to mix colors together. In order to do this, we need a paper that's able
to take all of those layers and all of that colored I like using something
called Bristol Board, particularly a smooth
bristle board. This is quite a thick paper. It's thick like hard. If you try using something like printer paper
or sketch paper, it's just not going
to be able to build up all of the pencil. Now, next up, a particularly
important material, especially for fine details, is a pencil sharpener. As I mentioned, in order to
add in all of the details, we do need to have a really
sharp point on the pencil. So we need a sharpener that
can create that sharp point. I have a hand crank
pencil sharpener. I particularly like that I can change the blade
when it gets blunt. Doesn't hugely matter the specific pencil
sharpener that you have, as long as it does
create that sharp point. Now, the next material
that you'll need is actually not something
you'll be able to buy. It's something you need to make. This is a set of
colour swatches. So for every set of colored
pencils that I own, I have created a
set of swatches. What I do is create
a grid on the paper, and I then for each
and every color, go from as light as I
can to as dark as I can, and then I label it. And that shows me what each of these colors actually
looks like on the paper. The specific paper
that I'm going to draw often people try and select colors and
look at the colors based on the color of the
lead or of the barrel. And that isn't generally
very accurate. This way, you can
see exactly what these colors actually look like. Now, it is quite time
consuming to make swatches, but it's not something that
needs doing very frequently. In fact, for all of the
swatches that I own, they are at least 5-years-old. Now, the final material
that you'll need is some way to look
at a reference photo. Because we're drawing
realistically and something with a
huge amount of detail, it is going to be so much easier to do this with
a reference photo. So we'll talk about selecting a reference photo in a second. What you need is some way
to look at that reference. So I like looking
at it on my iPad. I particularly like that I can zoom in to see all
of the details. But you don't need
an iPad to do this. You can always print out the
reference photo instead. So those are the main
materials that we need. Let's talk about selecting
a reference photo.
4. Selecting a Reference Photo: I mentioned, for every
drawing that I create, I always work from
a reference photo. I find this is the best way
to create a really lovely, detailed and realistic drawing. But we need to make
sure that we select the right kind of
reference photo. So let's go through
the main things that I am looking
for in a reference. Now, the number one, most
important thing I'm looking for is a really good
amount of contrast. I need a reference photo that
has a really good amount of light colors and mid tone colors plus dark colors as well. If I have a reference photo
with only light and midtone, it's never going to turn into a particularly
interesting drawing. Now, I'm also
particularly looking for a reference photo with a
good amount of detail. Because I want to be able
to draw these details, I'm not going to be able to draw them if I can't see them. So I want to be able
to see on animals, for example, the
direction of their fur. Or all of the small intricate
details on a plant. If I can't see that, I
won't be able to draw it. I don't want to be working
from a blurry photo. Finally, I want a reference
photo from a good angle. Generally speaking, I find that all subjects of any
kind look best head on. So animals I find look best with a photo taken
from eye level, and even objects like
food, for example, look better head on either head on looking at it or maybe looking
straight down. Usually, if something's at
a bit of a funny angle, it looks okay in a photo, but it doesn't translate
as well to a drawing. So those are the
main things that I'm always looking for in
a reference photo. Let's have a think about
the main techniques I use in every single drawing.
5. The Core Techniques: Let's have a think about
the main techniques I use in all of my
detailed drawings. I mentioned when
we were looking at the materials about a
process called layering. This is the backbone to every colored pencil
drawing that I create. So rather than pressing
really hard with the pencil, what we want to do is build up the pictures in a
series of light layers. This allows me to gradually
build up colors and textures, and it creates a much more
realistic and softer picture. So throughout the whole process, I talk about light pressure and building up
the pencil light. There's a few things that
I do to help me with this. Firstly, generally speaking,
you'll see me holding the pencil much further
back than you might expect. If I hold the pencil back here, it literally stops me from
being able to press too hard. And certainly, for the
first part of a drawing, this is absolutely key. If I need to add
in details and be really precise about
where the pencils going, I do need to hold the pencil
much closer to the tip. But even for a drawing where we're looking at
creating details, you'll see that that happens much later on in the process. I've also spoken briefly about creating a sharp
point with the pencil. This is so important for again, every step of the process. I find that the
pencil goes down far more consistently
when it is sharp, and again, you have
much more control over it when it's
got a good point. Finally, I talk a lot about
creating circular motion. Generally speaking,
at the very start of the drawing process, I don't need to add any details. I want to just
block in the color. And I always want to do this
as smoothly as possible. So rather than scribbling back
and forth with the pencil, if I work in a light series
of circle or oval motions, again, the pencil goes down
much more consistently. It is well worth
practicing this. Again, it is key to creating
colored pencil drawings. So those are the main techniques
that you need to know. Let's create our sketch outline.
6. Creating Sketch Outlines: Now before I get started putting the colored pencil
down on the paper, I first want to create
my sketch outlines. I want to have the main
shapes marked in so that I have a good idea on
where everything needs to go. And to do this, I like using something called
the grid method. This is where I draw a
grid on my drawing paper, and I add a grid to
my reference photo, and I just draw what's in
each individual square. So what this does is it stops me from making
assumptions about what's it's often easy to think if you're drawing an apple that the apple is
going to be round. But if you actually look at the shapes, it isn't generally. Now, if I'm drawing
something very simple, I can use much
larger grid lines, and if I'm drawing a
very complicated object, I can create a
much smaller grid. Once I've drawn in
all of the sketch, I can then erase that grid. It's worth noting that on the sketches you
see me make here, I'm pressing quite firmly. That is literally so that you
can see it on the camera. What you actually want to do for your drawings is to press
really lightly when building up the grid and
for the sketch itself because you don't
want it to be showing through at the end
of the drawing. You want that sketch so
light you can barely see it. Now, remember, if you want
to use my sketch outlines, they are in the class resources. Let's take a minute
to have a look at the reference photo
before we get started.
7. Studying the Reference Photo: Before I get started
with any drawing, I like to take a minute to have a good look at the
reference photo. This shows me the
main things that we're going to need to bear in mind throughout the drawing. So let's do that now, and you'll see a bit
more what I mean. So let's start off by
looking at the mice. And there are three mice here. Now, it's made a little
bit easier because all of these mice have
very similar coloring. So we're going to be using similar colors on
each of the mice. Now, in terms of the
colors I can see, generally speaking, the mice are brown on top with a white chest. It's worth noting, though, that the white chest on all
of them isn't really white. This area here is very dark gray or in some areas
towards the edge black. It's also a dark gray under
the mouth around here. It's the same on these
other two as well. It's very dark under here and dark in many places on
the front of this mouse. It's got a lighter area up
the middle, but generally, it's pretty dark down this side and down
the left as well. Now, one of the things that
I think particularly stands out about the mice is the hair. So their fur, has brown kind
of base background notes, but there's some very
prominent darker hair, which I would say,
on the most part, is what is making up the
texture of the mice. A lot of this hair is
more like a dark, gray, brown, or even black
in some instances. And they have very
prominent black whiskers, as well, I'm noticing
on all of them. So I'm going to want
to take my time to build up all of
that fur texture, but also those underlying
more brown colors. I'm noticing that
around their noses, there's some areas that are kind of pinky red fur
like around here, around here and around here
and on this mouse, as well. So it's not all consistently
the same colour. Looking at the plants, I'm noticing that this has
quite a few colors within it. There is some
lighter green areas that look pretty much yellow. Certainly a very yellowy
green like around here. There's some areas of
very light kind of white. There's also some blue in the lighter areas on
here, all around here. You can see there's a huge
amount of quite a bright blue. And then some of the
darker areas are more like black in between here and a very dark
green, as well. So those are the main things that I'm noticing to begin with. Let's get started
with the drawing.
8. Mark in the Base Layers on the Mice: Think it's going to
be easiest to break this drawing down into sections. So we're going to start off
by just drawing the mice. And then later on
in the drawing, we can think about drawing
all of the barley as we go. So what I want to do is block in the main
colors on the mice, working from the lightest colors towards the darkest colors. So I'm not going
to worry about any of the fur texture right now. All I want to do is get my bearings on what's
going to go where. I want to look for
the lightest color I can see within the mice. And I would say
the lightest color is this light gray on the eye, the light gray that
I can generally see all around here
and underneath here. And there's also a similar
kind of light gray around on the ears on this mouse and
all over the front on now, as usual, I want to compare
the reference photo to my colour swatches and look for the closest match to
this lightest color. So I would say the closest match is a very light cold gray. So I've only got two
cold grays in my set. I want to use the lighter
one cold gray too. And I am literally going
to block this color on every area that
is that light gray. In terms of how I'm
putting the pencil down, you'll notice that I am working generally in
circular motions. So I don't want to be
making any sort of texture, as I said, I'm not worrying
about building up that fur. I just want to block the pencil
in as smoothly as I can. By working in these
little circular motions, that is the best way to do this. That will put down
the smoothest colour. I also do want to be pressing
really nice and lightly. I don't want to be pressing
hard with the pencil. Now, generally speaking,
to press lightly, I would hold the
pencil further back. But these mice are actually
really, very small. I'm not working with
a large animal here. So I want to be very precise about where
the pencil's going. So I am still pressing lightly, but I'm holding the pencil closer to the tip than
I normally would, and that just gives
me more control over where the pencil goes. You can see I'm working through here using my sketch lines to just add this in literally anywhere that I can
see this color. I'm not expecting the
area to be perfect. For this whole chapter, just want to be putting
something down and getting a bit of an idea on
where everything will go. Even areas like the
top of the back here, I can see a little
hint of this gray, so I will add that
gray along here, and I want to be
adding the gray on the little area of
white fur that's here. And also all down the tail. So I can add some of this color nice and smoothly to
the top of the back, really looking at my sketch
lines and making sure that I don't go over any of the
plant that's there as well. I want to try and avoid
that, if possible. So I can block in
that light area down the bottom of the
mouse, as I mentioned, and then I'm going to go along my sketch lines and mark
in this gray on the tail. So, again, this doesn't
need to be perfect. I just want to be using my sketch lines to work out
where this color needs to go. That's all I'm going to do
for these top two mice. Let's move on to
the bottom mouse. So you'll see that
on all of them, I'm just going over
the eyes because there is this very small
and light glint on the eye. I want to put down some sort of base layer on that eye
with a lighter gray. So I'm adding this
in over the eyes. I'm also going over the top of the head where it
is a lot lighter. And then I can start going over the nose area of the mouse. Over all of the front chest of the mouth going in between where the stems
of the plant are. So you really don't expect
it to be looking amazing. At this point. You
can see I am just marking things in
reasonably roughly, really. So let's go over the
paw here as well, because I will need
to mark that in, too, and go down the right hand side on the other side of the stem. And then at this point, I'm generally happy with
that lightest color. What I want to do from here is gradually work towards
the darker colors. So I now want to
be thinking about adding the next darkest colour. Looking at the
reference photo, again, I would say the next
darkest color from here is this subtle little
pink, quite earthy pink. Around the nose of the mouse, I can see it around here, on the pores as well,
and on the tail. And you can see it on all
three of their faces. So I'm going to use
the coral pencil. This is kind of earthy pink. It's not one of the
brighter pinks, and I want to use this
pencil to just roughly mark in where these pink
sections need to be. So you can see I've gone
roughly over the nose. I've also gone over the cheek and a little bit
higher because that pink does kind of carry
then I want to be going over the first paw here. So this is all made a
lot easier because I have some pretty nice
and clear sketch lines. So I can go over all of the
pores for this mouse and then start going over the pink for the nose for this
next mouse, too. Now, once again, I am pressing
really nice and lightly. You'll see I'm still working
in circular motions, and I'm still holding the pencil reasonably close to the tip, even though I'm pressing
lightly so that I can once again really control
where this pencils going. Let's go over that tail over
where I added the gray, make it a little bit more
of a kind of pinky gray, particularly on the right side, and then I can go over
this paw before moving on. So I add a small amount to the nose area on this
mouse down here, too, and then go over the pores for this
mouse down the bottom. So I think it's important
to note how odd and rough it looks at this
point, and that is okay. That is what we are expecting at this point of the drawing. Let's add a small amount
of pink onto the tail. And then I once
again want to think about the next darkest color. So now I want to be
adding something to the bulk of the brown
fur of the mice. So here I'm using the
raw umber pencil. This is kind of yellowish brown, and I'm going to press so, very, very lightly, particularly
around the eye where it is so much lighter
on all of the mice. And I'm going to
block this colour in everywhere where I can
see a hint of brown. So I think that this is the main underlying brown
colour on the mice. Can use this to slightly go over the edges of the pink section to blend that a little
bit better into the rest of the mouse's face. I'm going to go all the way
around the top of the head. Slightly marking in
the ear that's here. I don't really have that mapped
in clearly at the moment. I don't need to add a
huge amount of brown to that ear area because it's a slightly more
gray ear, I would. Then once I'm happy
with the head, I can add some of this brown
over the body as well. So I am being very
careful where I go up against the
edge of the plant. I don't want to be adding
some of this brown where later I'm going to be needing to add a reasonably vibrant green. So you can see me
going along where my sketch lines are
marking an outline first and then shading up to that
outline just so that I'm really clear on where
the edge is here. And that's going to help
me later when I'm trying to get my bearings with some
of this fur texture as well. I've got the edge of that
plant nice and clearly marked. Let's mark in the edge
of the mouse along here, and again, shade
up to that point. So I think it's easiest
to mark in the edge of a section with
a nice clean line and then shade up to that point. I think it's a much easier way rather than not marking
that out first. And then I'll shade
in all of this area. And our first mouse is sort starting to look a
little bit like a mouse. It's certainly looking a bit better than before
we added the brown. So I'll add a little
bit of this brown down the bottom as well around here, just going over that gray. And then I'll move on
to the next mouse. So again, I want to
very clearly mark in the edge of the plant
going all along here, and it's so much easier to do this with a nice
and sharp pencil. I always think it's important, even when blocking in an area like this to work
with a sharp pencil, the pencil just
goes down much more clearly and
consistently this way. Let's add circular motions all around the mouse's face as well, I'm just blocking in this
color all around here, slightly going over the gray where I added it
in for the ears, just blending up to that. And whilst I'm here,
I'm just going to slightly mark in the
edges of the nose. So just the edges of
this section where that kind of yellowy brown is a little bit more prominent, I want to mark this
in a bit clearer. To do this, I'm not
pressing harder. What I want to do
is go over the area more times to build up
more of this color. So you can see this
is helping me to start defining some
of the shapes. So let's move on to the
final mouse down the bottom, and this one has a lot
less of this brown. The bottom mouse is mostly
made up of white fur. So let's block in
this mouse's face. Now, you may notice
on all of the mice that they don't have very
crisp edges to their fur. It's a lot more kind of
fuzzy and feathered. But I'm not worrying
about adding in that very feathery
edge texture yet. In this whole chapter,
I just want to block in the key colors
rather than building up any texture even at the edge. So I'll add a little bit
on this right hand side, too, where there's just
the odd hint of brown. Particularly, you'll see
down the bottom here. There's a brown area here and a little brown section
here and here. And it's also a lot more
brown on the right hand side. So let's just add these
areas in nice and lightly, too, and then once again, I can move on to the
next darkest colour. From here, the next darkest
color I want to focus on is a darker version of
the lighter cold gray. So as I mentioned
at the beginning when we were looking at
the reference photo, on a lot of the white
areas on the mice, the fur isn't really white. It's actually a very dark gray. So let's start marking
in where some of those darker patches need
to go with this pencil. This is the darker gray out of my two cold grays in my set, and it's going to add
more shape to these mice. So let's have a look at this first mouse at the top and the gray
sections that can be seen along I'm
starting off marking in this kind of gray
triangle down the bottom. There's a lighter line going
through here and along here. So I want to focus on
building up the gray down here and on this area
under here, too. And then you'll also see
on the back of this mouse, it's a very dark gray around
here and around here, but it's a bit lighter
towards the middle. Once again, I'm not worrying about building up
any of the texture. I just want to be blocking
in these darker patches, once again, using
circular motions, and you can see I've marked in that kind of gray
triangular shape, and now I'm adding in this
area under the chin, too. I'm also going to add some
of this color to the ear. Which I would say the ear is far more gray than other
areas of the mouth. Whilst I've got this
color, I'm also going to add some of it to the
very top of the head, which also has a gray tone. So I want to generally
start building up some of the darker patches on the
brown sections of the mice, too, and it is bit by bit going to give these
mice some shape. And then we can move on to this area down the bottom, too. So I can't stress enough. It is a slow process gradually building up
the color of these mice. But what's good about
doing it this way is if we need to tweak any of the shapes or
any of the colors, we can do that bit by bit. It kind of builds up gradually. Also going to add some of
this gray down the tail, particularly down the right
hand side of the tail, and I can also slightly tweak the shape of that
tail if I need to. So I think actually,
it needs to come a little bit more to
the right here. And then I can move on
to this next mouse. So let's look at
the last two mice. And here I'm seeing this very prominent gray patch under here. It's a very thin gray line on the left and a pretty
thick patch on the right. This mouse down the bottom, there is a lot
more gray built up on either side of
this central patch. It's much lighter
towards the middle. In fact, you can see
the subtle shadow created from this
stem along here. It's really quite a dark gray, particularly in this
bottom left area. Let's build up some of this
pencil along here as well. You'll see that I am still
generally pressing lightly, but I'm still also holding the pencil very
close to the tip. Once again, I want to be really precise about where
this pencil is going. And from here, we can move on
to the next darkest pencil. So we're just gradually
working through here. I will just make sure
I'm trying to draw in those toes on the pores
as clearly as possible. And then I'm moving on
now to a very dark brown. So this is the walnut brown. This is the darkest
brown in my set. And I want to be using this over a lot of the darker areas. So once again, particularly
over the top of the head, I also want to be building
up a lot of this brown down the right hand side on the
head of this first mouse. So working around the ear, and I also want to be working around the paw that's
in this top section, which I do already
have marked in. I just want to make it marked in a little bit more clearly. So you can see that that has refined all of the shapes
that were already here. And now from here as we move on to darker colors and
build up more of the color, if I need to tweak that, it's a bit easier to see what
I've already got marked in. I also want to be
building up some more of this dark brown down the
bottom of this mouse here. You can see what a dark brown it is between these two mice. I need to really build
up a lot of that brown and in a second
black through here. And on the top of this second
mouse, the top of its head, I don't really have
anything marked in here at the moment because it
does need to be so dark, so I can get that all marked in with this dark brown pencil. Think the key to
drawing anything, but particularly with
little animals like this is to not try and draw
mice, for example. It's much easier to just
look at the shapes that are actually on the reference photo and try and draw what we see. So I can almost draw
these two mice at the top as kind of one object
because they do touch, they are right up
next to each other. If I just draw this as
a series of shapes, we will end up with
something much more realistic rather than
if I try and draw mice, I will likely end up making
assumptions about what I'm just blocking in the shapes
and areas that I can see, working around what I've
already got marked in. And then it will end up in the end looking like
a realistic mouse. So it's add a dark line around the edge on the left, as well. And then I'll also go around
some of the areas here, too. And just before I move on, going to mark in some of the more prominent
areas of fur here. So because some of these
lines are so prominent, let's just mark in where
those lines need to be. I don't want to draw in
all of the fur texture, but I do want to be marking
in the darker areas. And then I can move on to shading this area
down the bottom, which does, again, need
to be a lot darker. Once I'm happy with
the mice at the top, I can move on to adding the darker areas on the
mouse down the bottom. So my general rule is to add this color to anywhere that
is this color or darker. So I want to be adding
this color around the edge of the
face of the mouse, and all around the
top of the head, it's all pretty
dark around here. Now, I think it's going to
get a lot easier and make a lot more sense
in a short while when I've added in the eyes. I think it's quite
tricky to work out what is going where when I haven't at this point drawn
in those eyes. I say, I'm just
looking at this as if it's a series
of random shapes, and we will be building
up so much more on this as we go and as
we work through this. So if I just fill in these
last few areas at the bottom, that need to be a
little bit darker. So particularly
towards the edges where the mouse is
against those stems. I then from here,
want to move on to the darkest pencil
that I'll be using. That is the black pencil. So before we move
on to adding in the darker areas with
all of the black, what I'm going to
do is really take my time first to
mark in the eyes. Now, as I mentioned before, there is a light patch in
the middle of the eyes, so I want to make sure
that I work around that. And you can see that
I'm very slowly and carefully marking in the
outline of the eye first, following the sketch lines. And then I can start shading in once I've got that marked in. As I said a second
ago, it's going to become so much easier to work out what needs to go where once the eyes
are marked in. It's just going to
make more sense. I'm working from the top mouse
towards the bottom mouse, really looking at both the shape of the eyes that I've
added in my sketch, but also the shape of the
eyes on the reference. So note that the eyes
are not perfect circles, and also note that the glint on the eye isn't necessarily
in the center of the eye. So I'm working around
that central section. Let's do the same for this
mouse down the bottom. Now, I can always
tweak the shape of these eyes if I think it's
not looking quite right, but I want to
generally try and get this shape as accurate
as I can right now. Now, I think it's worth
noting that we're pretty zoomed in right
now on this drawing. I'm actually drawing
some pretty small mice when you see how small
they are next to my hand. And that's why it's
even more important to take our time when marking
in the eyes like this. Once I'm happy with the ice, I'm just going to go
along the edge of the shadowed areas
along here as well. So going over a lot of those brown sections
and just generally building this up to
any area that needs to be darker than the walnut brown. So particularly along this
patch between the mice and along the edge of
the plant here, too. So by the end of
this first chapter, what you should have is three
little mice all marked in. We're getting a little bit of an idea on what's going where, but they don't look very
realistic at this point, and they obviously
don't have any texture, but we can start to build
that up in the next section. But that is it for
this first chapter.
9. Add in the Details on the Mice: Now that I've got all of those underlying base colors
marked in, in this chapter, I want to start adding in
some of the fur texture and generally making these mice
look a bit more realistic. So what I want to do is work over each of these
mice one at a time, adding in a lot of
the same colors that are used in
the last chapter. So I'm starting off here with the darker of the 2
grays that I use. I've started with this
color because I feel like within all of the fur texture
on each of these mice, that gray is the lightest color I can see within the fur here. And what I can do is
start with this gray and gradually work my way
darker from here. Now, in terms of how
I'm using the pencil, you'll notice that I am
just lightly brushing my pencil against the paper to build up that
flicking motion. Now this is very much a process that we build
as we build the colors. So I'm starting off with this. It's the darker
gray that I have, but I would say it's a
reasonably light color because we're using it lightly. And then once I start adding some darker colors over the top, this fur texture will
gradually build up. Now, I'm just going
to quickly tweak the shape of the eye, I
think it's too small. And then I'll carry on
building up this fur texture. So there's a few
things that I am particularly thinking about
when building up fur texture. First being, I'm focusing on
the direction of the fur. So the fur doesn't all go
consistently in one direction. You'll see the fur
on top of the nose, here it is going more
straight upwards, and it starts heading towards
the back of the head here. Here it's heading
straight towards that paw and then underneath
the mouse under here, it's going straight down. So I particularly need to
be focusing on getting the direction of the fur marked in as
accurately as I can. Also particularly want to be focusing on the
length of the fur. So under the head under
here, there's longer hair. Generally, on this
mouse at the top, the longer fur is
towards the right, and then on the face
it's much shorter fur. So I need to be
making longer flicks for longer fur and shorter
flicks for shorter fur, whilst just really focusing on, as I say, the
direction of that fur. Now, all of this is
made so much easier if you make sure that you're
working with a sharp pencil. You're going to be able to
make some much softer and kind of more delicate flick
if it is a sharp pencil. Let's start working over
the back of the mouse, and I'm adding some
flicks along here. Now, I don't need to
be adding this gray necessarily over the whole
of the mouse's back. I only want to add this pencil where I
can see a bit of gray. So that's generally a lot of the same places that I
talked about before. So at the top of the back and on this little patch of white
fur down the bottom. And on this first mouse, I already think it's
looking a lot better. It's obviously not
looking rich enough, but you're getting a
bit of an idea already on how the fur texture is
going to change this mouse. Let's move on to the next
mouse here, and once again, I'm working with my
nice and sharp pencil making these little flicks
in the direction of the fur. So let's have a look at
the fur on this mouse. And here, the fur, I
feel like it's going in a much more kind of the way that you would
imagine it would go. So it's going straight
up along here. It's curving around towards the ears on both of these sides, and then on the
sides of the cheeks, it's going more
slightly downward. And underneath the mouse here, it looks like the fur
here is going down or a little bit to the left,
but generally down. So I'm following that direction
of the fur here as well. Now, something that I want to do around the edge of
the mouse here, I've got quite a sharp line where I've blocked
in the colors. You'll see that I'm making flicks around the edge
of this patch with this pencil to just kind of make that edge look
a bit more natural. We'll do that with a few
colors in a few areas to just try and soften and
feather out the edges, which will lead to a more
natural looking mouse. Doing the same around the top where there's this
very dark patch. I'm just adding flicks going
into the fur of the mouse, and it's just
softening that line. So I always like to start like I do when I'm doing
the base layers. I like to start with the fur with generally a
reasonably light color. I don't want to go in
with really light, the lightest cold gray, simply because when you add that in with
flicking motions, it's going to look
so very light. But if I do start with a pencil that isn't
particularly dark, means that I can try and get all of the fur marked in in
the right direction, but if something's not
looking quite right, again, it'll be reasonably simple to adjust it with
a darker pencil. So's work around the bottom
of this mouse as well, adding a few flicks down here, and then I can have a look
at the mouse at the bottom. So let's take a quick
minute to have a look at the direction and length of the fur on this mouse, as well. But I do think the top mice
look much better already. For this little
mouse, I feel like the face looks
reasonably simple. It's generally going up and
out like the mouse above. On the front of the mouse here, the fur again,
generally, I would say, it's going downwards
or around here, it looks like it's going a bit more in this kind of direction. Around here, it's
going along this way, and then it's going down like this and down like
this at the bottom. And you can see some fur going in this direction
along the edge. It's a little bit
out of focus here, but you can still generally
see the direction of the fur. Building up all of
this fur texture is very much the bulk of this chapter and a very
time consuming process. But as I say, it is where these mice all will
come together. So let's add light flicking motions over the
front of this mouse. The fur on the white patch here is actually
reasonably long fur. I would say the only
area of short fur on this mouse down here is
maybe around the mouth, but I think that the fur texture around that section
is reasonably subtle. Just going to tidy up
the paw around here, make the toes a little
bit more prominent. And then I'm generally happy
with that first color. What I now want to do is work through the next few
colors on the fur, building up that fur
texture, once again, generally working from
the lighter colors towards the darker colors. So I'm using, as I said before, a lot of the same colors that are used for the base layers. So here I'm using the raw umber. Once again want to be adding
flicking motions onto the fur going in the
direction of that fur. So you can see I've just added
a little bit on the face, and then I'm also going to add some of this same
texture on the back. Now, I do think that this is all made so much easier now because most of the direction of the fur has already
been added in. So I really just have to follow, unless I'm tweaking
the direction, follow the fur texture that I've already put
in at this point. Just quickly look at the reference photo to see where this color
needs building up. I can see very prominent raw
amber around the edge of the face and this
whole right side of the face on this mouse, as well as over a
lot of the back. It's got a lot of that same
kind of yellowy brown tone. I can also see a lot
of this color around the nose of the
mouse around here, around the top around here. Really only in a few places
on this mouse around, particularly the
nose on the face here and around the bottom here. So once again, I'm
focusing on using a really nice and sharp pencil
to build up that texture. And then let's do the
same around this mouse. So adding in all of
these flicky motions onto the face to just gradually build up
that fair texture. Adding this fur texture and
building it up like this will bit by bit lead to
quite scratchy looking mice. But we can then smooth that out and stop the scratchiness
a bit later on. For now, I just want to be focusing on building
up the texture. I think it's also
worth remembering that these mice are also
actually very small. I really zoomed in here. We're building up
all of this texture. It's not taking as long as it otherwise might because
they're such small mice, but it does mean that I need
to be pretty careful with making sure that the texture
is really nice and light. I don't want to make
really big and thick, sort of chunky marks. So let's keep working from the lighter colors towards
the darker colors. And I'm moving on now to
the burnt sienna pencil. So this is kind of mid
tone reddish brown, and I once again want to be
adding this colour to it. Anywhere I can see some fur of this kind of darker,
reddish brown. Not a huge amount of this
color that I want to add, but I just need to add a little
bit to warm up the mice, but also add that little bit of extra depth for more brown. But on the most part, it's
around those noses where, as I mentioned,
they have more of a reddish tone and
around the bottom. Because there's not
actually a huge amount of brown fur on these mice from the position
that they're in, it means that there's
not loads to build up. And actually, there was quite a lot of the gray to build up because the gray is
on the white areas and on the brown area. Is much less to do where I'm
just building up the brown. So let's move on now to
the next darkest color, and this is the walnut brown. This is my darkest
brown in my set. And here I am going to need to build up quite a bit
more of this color. So I want to be putting
this anywhere on the mice where it does
need to be darker. So I'm particularly looking
at the top of the face. Generally, around
this whole section where there's all
of this dark fur. I'm going to build that up for
now with the walnut brown. And I want to be adding quite
a lot of dark brown around this area because
it is so much in shadow and around the
bottom around here. In fact, I've mentioned before the very prominent
dark brown marks on the back of this mouse. I really need to be building up a lot of dark brown around here. Look at how much is showing through in and amongst
those lighter browns. And it's at this
point, I think it is starting to look scratchy, like I mentioned,
but that's okay. It will all come
together later on. We just need to keep
building up this texture, working from those lighter colors towards the
darker colour. Let's go over this
mouse here as well, and I really want to
focus on smoothing out the edges to this mouse
at the top of the head, but also building
up a good amount of this dark brown
over the middle. So let's also make
flicking motions around the edge of
this mouse here. Let's also add a few
flicking motions on the darker areas on this white patch of
fur on this mouse. And then I can start
building up some of those darker areas of fur I mentioned on the
back here as well. So I'm happy with these two
little mice at the top. Let's just add a bit of this dark brown along
the tail as well, and then I can move on to
this mouse down the bottom. So I need to build up
a reasonable amount of this color around the
edge of this mouse. So all around here, look how dark this mouse is and a little bit
down the middle. I want to build up flicking
motions and generally get a really nice and soft edge
to the top of this mouse. I'm adding those little
flicking motions around this edge here, and then I can once again
start working down the mouse. So generally speaking,
you'll notice on all of these little mice. I like starting at the top or starting on the left and
working towards the right. I think it's easiest to work in a reasonably organized way. Now, I am being
very careful with these flicking motions not to go over the stems
around this mouse. I want to have really clean
lines around the edge. Add a little bit down the
bottom down here as well. And then once I'm
happy with this color, I'm happy that I've built
up a lot of this texture. I can then move on to
the darkest color, which is the black. So once again, making
flicking motions, I now only want to go over
those absolute darkest areas. So generally defining the shape of the ear a little bit better, and you can see I'm
still doing that with little flicking
motions, as well. There's not a huge amount
that defines the ear. It's mostly a few lines around the edge and the fact that
it's a different colour. I can start adding
some very light flicking motions on
the rest of the mouth. So anywhere where there's
very dark gray fur, the dark gray that I've got, the cold gray fur, it isn't quite dark enough to make this kind of gray stroke. So what I want to be
doing is working really, really lightly with
the black pencil, and that is building up that
kind of texture correctly. As I go through all of these animals with
the black pencil, I'm also going to make some of the eyes a little bit darker because I think they're
all looking a little bit too light and a
little bit too gray. And on most of the eyes, I do want them to
be extremely dark. Although I'm being
very careful not to go over the light patch on the eye. I can start going over
the very dark area between these two mice. So I'm still adding
flicking motions, flicking into the lighter areas so that we get a nice soft edge. But if there is an
area where it looks more like it needs to be
a solid block of black, you'll see that I
am also adding in the pencil with a little bit
of kind of circular motions, too to just add that color
in a bit more prominently. So I'm adding flicking
motions around the very edge and then using some light circular
motions to just block the color in a little bit better and a little
bit more consistently. I'll build on this a lot later. I'll talk about
that in a second. So Let's go around the
top of the head on here, and then I'll build up
the black on the eye a bit better and generally
refine the shape. Some of the eyes, I think,
are looking a little bit too small and should be made
a little bit bigger. But I don't want to do too much. I don't want to impact the
whole look of the face. Let's add some light flicks. Again, anywhere where there
is that darker gray color. So particularly down the
center of this mouse's face. And you can see
just a little bit. I do think changes the color
of that fur quite a bit. Once again, I want to be adding those flicks around the edge. And I'll just tweak some of the fur texture on this
mouse up here as well. Now I'm pretty happy with
all of this fur texture, but as I said, I think the whole thing is
looking way too scratchy. So what I now want
to do is once again use the same colors that
I've already been using, but I now want to
smooth everything out. So at this point, I want to be working in circular motions, adding a light
layer of the color, similar to what I did
with the base layers, and it still keeps
the fur texture. You can still see the
fur that I've built up, but it just smooths it out and makes it a bit
less scratchy. Starting off here with
the walnut brown pencil, that's that very dark brown. I'm just going to add a little bit of this color
over the whole of the mouse. Now, I am mostly focusing
on the contrast now. So I want to be looking at if an area needs to
be made a bit darker, and I can build some
of this pencil up over this area if I think
it does need to be darker. You can see that just
adding a small amount of this color I do think
makes a huge difference. Let's do the same on
the back around here. I want to be looking for
those darker colors. Now, I often think that it helps to kind of squint when you're looking at
the reference photo and the drawing when doing this because it helps
you to see where those darker patches
need to be and where we do need to
make the area darker. So if you are struggling,
that can help. So I'm going to go over the
whole of this mouse's face, generally make the
whole thing darker. And you can see how clearly you can still see that fur texture. It is just smoothing it out. I do the same, particularly
around the top of the head on this mouse here and a little bit under the face here as well. So I want to do that not
only with this walnut brown, but with most of the
colors I've already used until these mice are
looking more realistic. So I can now move on to
the burnt sienna and add this color in anywhere where I think we need a bit
more of a reddy brown. So that's generally around the
mouths of all of the mice. Well it's a little
bit along here. So I'm just adding some of
this color around that face. And then I can once again
move on to the next color. So I can add some of the
gray over the top, as well, this darker gray to any area that I think is looking
too light, I think, generally speaking, this gray is the main color in these mice. So I can add it both over
the brown section of there, but also over the white
section down the bottom. This whole area here needs to be so much darker than
it is at the moment. And then I can also add
this color over the back. I'm going to keep
working down the mice. So once again, looking
at the reference photo, thinking about where I need to make these mice a
little bit darker, and I can smooth
that out as I go. Now, once again, remember that I am very zoomed into these mice. It's all going to
look much better, much clearer when we're at more of a kind of normal
viewing distance, and also when some of the
plants are added in, as well. So let's build up the pencil on this mouse down the bottom, too, particularly
focusing on building up the pencil around
the top of the head. From here, I can think about adding in other
tweaks to the mice. So they're generally looking pretty good, I would
say, at the moment. I'm going to build up some of this color onto the
front of this mouse, particularly focusing on
either side of the white pat, where the shadows are
from those stems. Then I'm going to focus on using the black pencil to add in some of the
whiskers on the mice. We're back to adding
in a few more details. So when you look at
each of these mice, look how prominent
the whiskers are, and we don't have any of these whiskers marked
in at the moment. So once again, I want
to be looking at the direction of these whiskers. There's a prominent
one going upwards, then they start going more sideways and generally
curving down. On this mouse, they
are curving around or going straight up towards
the bottom of the eye, and the same on this side. They're all slightly
curved shapes. And generally speaking, they
are very small black lines. I want to be really lightly. Flicking my pencil
against the paper with a really nice and sharp pencil to just get some of these
whiskers marked in. Now, I don't necessarily want to add in every single
whisker that I can see on the reference
photo because I think because these
mice are so small, it will end up looking
like too much. For now, I'm just going to put the odd black hair on here, and maybe later I
can tweak this and add to this once I've drawn
in the rest of the picture. But this is very much all I think I should be doing for now. I'm just going to
tweak a few areas at the top of this
mouse, as well. I'll add some of the whiskers
to this mouse down here. So let's add in a few final
tweaks on these mice, so I'm going to use
the coral pencil that I used in the last chapter, that earthy pink to just
tweak the shape of the nose, particularly on this mouse, it's just not looking quite
right to me and generally adjust the color of the fur
on this mouse, as well. Once I'm happy with
the more pinky tone, I can tone it down with
the burnt sienna and just add a very small amount of this color over
these same areas. And then I can go back to that walnut brown
and just once again, try and add this into any area I think needs to be
made that little bit darker. So I'm particularly focusing
on the center of the face on this mouse and
generally on any of the darker patches on
this mouse at the top. So at this point, I have three mice that look
reasonably accurate. I would say they look
pretty realistic. They do still look a little bit kind of rough in some areas, but what I want to
do from here is draw the stems and
all of the plants. And then I can go
back to these mice, look at the picture more as
a whole and see if there's any other tweaks or adjustments I want
to make from there. I think, particularly because
these mice are so small, it's going to be easier to look at the picture as a whole
and see anything that needs to be added rather than keeping on
tweaking the mice like. So in the next chapter, we can focus on
adding in those stems and adding in the
tops of the plants.
10. Mark in the Barley: Now that I'm happy
with the mice for now, let's focus on putting
something down and generally getting our bearings on the pieces of I think
they're barley. So I want to start
off by looking for the lightest colour I can
see within these plants. And so I'm generally seeing the lightest color is
this kind of very, very light green around
here, around here. It's almost kind of a cartoony, yellowy green over the whole
of these pieces of barley. I'm going to block in all of these sections with the
light green pencil. This is slightly yellowy green. It's the lightest green that I would say I have in my set. Now, I'm being very careful as I go here to really look
at the sketch lines. I want to make sure that I keep this pencil within
those sketch lines. It's quite a fiddly
shape, really, with a lot of kind of dips
and details along here. So I want to make sure that
I'm only putting this color down where I'm going to be
building up all of this. In terms of how I'm putting
the pencil down, once again, I want to go through this in exactly the same way
as I normally would. So I want to be working in circular motions and pressing
really nice and lightly. Now, I'm not holding
the pencil far back like I usually would when
I try and press lightly, simply because I do
need to be really precise about where I'm
putting this pencil. But that just means
I need to have a bit more pencil control and really focusing on
pressing lightly. If you hold the
pencil further back, it just stops you from
being able to press hard. We can still press lightly, holding the pencil
closer to the tip. It just needs a bit
more kind of thought. All I want to do initially, I'm really only focusing on the kind of fluffy
areas of these plants. I'm not worrying about
the stems right now. I'm also not worrying
too much about the odd area on here that
has a slight blue tone. So I'm noticing that it's got quite a lot of
blue around here around here in quite a few
places along here as well. So I'm not worrying about
avoiding those blue areas. At the moment, I can just
add blue over the top. You see, I'm just working
through these one at a time, really looking at
my sketch lines to see where I need to
block in this color. And you will find this
whole process so much easier as usual if you're working with a
really sharp pencil. So with polychromos, they
don't wear down too fast. But still, I am
regularly sharpening, just to keep a really
nice and crisp point so that I have more
control over the pencil. At this point, I've
got something down over each of these
sections of barley. What I now want
to do is look for the next darkest pencil, and we're going to
gradually work from that lighter colour
towards the darker colors. Now, throughout the
whole of this chapter, all I really want to be doing is getting my bearings
on what's going where and marking in all of the shapes I can see
within this barley. I don't need to get the
colors marked in perfectly. All I'm focusing on
is getting the shapes marked in and getting a bit of an idea on where
everything needs to go. And it's going to
make my life so much easier in the next chapter. So the next darkest color I'm using here is the
earth green yellowish. This is a color that
you'll frequently see me using for kind of
greenery like this. I generally use this
color for plants. It's a really good
earthy green that I would say matches the next
darkest colors really well. What I want to do is really
look at each of these pieces of barley one at a time and just mark in the
lights and darks. I can still see my sketch lines. I can see where I've
marked everything in. I just want to start
making this clearer. So I'm starting on
this piece here, and I literally just want to mark in those prominent
shapes and lines. So you can see a dark
line along here. Dark line coming along here. There's also a bit of a wedge going along
here in a pointy shape. There's all of these lines
along the edge along here, and a zigzag shape
along here, too. So I kind of want to start
marking in those shapes. You can see I'm
really to begin with, marking in the outlines
of each of these shapes. Mark in the outline, if there's an area on the shape that
particularly needs to be a bit darker and is particularly obvious that
it needs to be darker, I will add that in,
but on the most part, I'm really focusing on adding in those darker lines that I
can see around the shapes. So let's have another look here, see what I'm seeing
further down. It's important to
note that you can use the other things around you
as a bit of a reference. I can mark in some of these
pointy shapes on the side, along here, along here, along here, and I can get an idea on where they need to go based on some of
the pointy shapes that's on this piece of barley. I can see that this
point goes and meets pretty much level with the top of this piece
of barley here. And I can see that this
point here is touching the edge in terms of shapes
of this piece of barley. It's really all I'm doing here. I'm heavily using my
sketch lines to work out the shapes I've already
marked in and how they relate to the other
shapes that are on the paper. I just want to get
on the most part, the sketch lines marked
over and made more clear. I am really looking at these sketch lines to try
and make sure that I can see where these shapes
are matching up from that reference photo and adding in a small
amount of shading if I think there is a
particularly dark patch. Once I'm happy with
that first section, I can move on to the next one. And I think it looks a little bit tricky and confusing
at this point. It is so important
to remember that I'm literally using those
sketch lines that I've already got marked in to try and follow the shapes
of these plants. I also think it's
really important to note that I am always, again, working with
a sharp pencil. It's so important
to keep the pencil sharp because you just have more control over
where it's going, particularly on
something like this, where we do need to
be really precise and accurate with where
the pencil is going. Would like to stress
that at this point, you do expect it to
look a little bit odd. It's obviously not
looking realistic. It's not looking like barley. But this is all part of
the process of me getting my bearings and working out
what's going to go where. So once I've worked
all the way to the bottom of this
piece of barley, I can start working
on the next one. Now, you'll see that,
generally speaking, I am starting from the left and working my
way towards the right. It doesn't really matter what
order you mark these in. I think the key is to go
through it one at a time, and then you can kind of see
a bit clearer where you are. I think if you were to
try and flip between the pieces of barley rather than working at the
top down on each one, it would just be harder
to follow the shapes. So let's have a look at
this piece of barley here. And so I'm once again drawing in all of the prominent lines and generally kind of
outlining the shapes. So we've got a very
prominent line here, and then you can see there's this shape going around here. There's also this
prominent line along here, and you can see the
kind of outline of this shape and then this
little piece at the top. And then we've got this
sharp pointy shape here with extra shading
down the bottom here. There's also this sharp
shape pointing here. And then it's again got
shading down the bottom. There's a light
little patch here, and then it's darker
all around the edges of here and all around the
edges of here as well. And that's basically what I'm
going through and drawing. So now, this section
of the drawing, I would say, is very
time consuming. It's certainly not
a quick process starting to mark in
all these shapes, but hopefully because the
sketch outlines are so clear, it's not too tricky, particularly once
you kind of are following which area
you're on here. So I do find it helpful to zoom in on the
reference photo. So viewing my reference photo, I'm looking at it on my iPad, and I zoom in a bit closer
on areas like this because I find it helps me follow
better which section I'm on. Really, all of these
shapes look reasonably similar until you start
looking at them one at a time. It would be very easy to lose the section that
we're working on. It's a bit easier
as you get down towards the mouse's
face, for example, because it's easy
to see which piece is directly above
that mouse's face. But otherwise, I think it
just really helps to try and follow exactly what's
on the reference photo. So let's move on to
the next piece now. And I'm going to gradually
work from the top down here. Now, the top shapes on this one is a little
bit different. Because they're a
little bit more random. They're a bit less kind of pointy standard shapes
like on all of these. Here, there's one going
a bit out to the side, a pointy shape, but it's slightly different pointy
shape going out to the side. There's a pointy shape
here, along here. And then there's these
wedge shapes at the top. I think as long as you are always focusing on drawing
the shapes that you can see, rather than what you
maybe assume you can see, it'll all come together
pretty simply. That's my role really with drawing anything is
we don't want to be making assumptions and drawing what we imagine is
there from this barley. Especially once you've
drawn a certain amount of it and it's all been
pretty similar shapes. We still don't want
to assume that all of them are going to
be that same shape. If I draw what I see, it will all come together to look like an accurate
piece of barley. So let's start going through
these last few pieces now. I am going through
this reasonably quickly because it is so very much a case of going through this process for each piece
in exactly the same way. And once I've gone
through all of this, I think it gets a lot easier. So now we've got those
main shapes marked in. It's much easier to get an
idea on what's going where. What I now want to
do is once again work through the
next darkest color. We're working from the
lighter colors towards the darker colors to continually
map in these shapes. I want to add this pencil in anywhere that is this
color or darker. I'm looking at the lines that are going through here,
all through here. This actually probably needs to be darker than this green, but we can go over
that in a short while. I also want to go over any of the very prominent patches
like maybe this patch here, a few of the darker patches
up the top up here. But on the most part, I
want to focus on going over these lines running between
all of these shapes. You can see me going over where that very dark
line needs to be, and adding this in is once again going to make
life so much easier. It's going to be
easier to work out where all of these
shapes need to be. So once again, I
want to work with a really nice and sharp pencil. The pencil is going
to go down not only more consistently
if it's sharp, but also I'm going
to find it much easier to control where
the pencils going. I'm just working down here
one section at a time. So I'm taking my time to
really think about where this pencil needs to go in relation to what I've
already marked in. So I'm going all down this kind of central
line along here. And then I'm pretty happy
with that first piece. Let's work all along
the next line. So let's have a look
at this piece here. And on this piece, you can
see there's a few darker patches down the bottom
around here and around here. And it's dark around some
of these shapes along here. There's the odd dark
line that's going up. It hasn't got as clear line running down the middle
as this one did, but there are a
lot of dark lines, particularly down this
left hand side and a little bit along here
like this thick line. I want to be adding in
these dark lines all along and you'll see here I'm
working from the bottom up. It doesn't really matter if you work from the top down
or the bottom up, but generally speaking,
you'll see that I'm starting at one end and working
towards the other. I think it would be
really difficult to start in the middle. It will be harder to get our bearings on where
everything needs to go. So I'm particularly focusing on adding this pencil up that left hand side with the odd area that we need to
add on the right, as well. And then I can start going over this piece along here, too. On this piece, I would
say there's more kind of triangular shapes between
the main pieces here. So you can see these
kind of triangle shapes. They're a little bit
lighter in the middle. The triangles around here. There's a line
going around here, and then there's also
a triangular kind of shape here and around here, and it's pretty dark
around the edge around I can't stress
enough that the goal at the end of this
chapter isn't to have pieces of barley that
look perfectly realistic. It is really just having
these key shapes marked in so that we can focus more on the colors and the
shading after this. But we don't need
so much worry about the shapes and making
everything in the right place. I would say the darker areas on this next piece of barley here
is a little bit different. So there's a darker
patch around here. There's a line going up here. It's dark all along here, along here, around here. It's kind of framing
this cluster. And then it's also
dark around here. We've got dark lines coming up from almost like this
point here going up. And it's kind of sorted, I would say, into clumps. So there's a group of these prickly parts
here and here and here, and the dark areas are kind
of framing that, I guess. Can see I'm really not
needing to add a huge amount. We can certainly, as I say, build on this later. So let's go through the
last piece now, once again, working from the top
down at this point, and I'm once again
wanting to go over the absolute darkest
places on this piece. So once I'm happy with
this very dark green, what I then want
to do is gradually work towards the
next darkest colour. Now, I do think that there is a color darker than this one
that we will need to add in. But first, I
actually am going to add a very small
amount of the blue. So I mentioned
earlier when we were looking at the reference
photo that I can see a lot of blue on the tips and generally
around this barley. I think it's going to be much
easier to mark that in now, and it's going to help me again, work out what is going
to need to go where. We can move on to the
dark pencil in a second. So I've had a look at
my colour swatches, and I think the closest match that I have to the blue I can see on these pieces of barley
is the cobalt turquoise. This is, as it says,
a turquoise pencil. And what I'm going to do is
literally mark this pencil in anywhere where I can
see a little hint of blue. So I don't expect
this to be as bright as maybe I would like it to
be at the end of the drawing. What I want to do is put
something down on all of these blue areas so that I
know where they need to. I'm adding in some of this turquoise towards
the top up here. Then there's a
little bit on tip. There's quite a large
blue patch here, and I can use all of the shapes that I've
already marked in to work out where I think
these blue patches need to be. You can see, once again, I'm working in circular
motions here, and I'm pressing really
nice and lightly. Again, if I want to build
up a brighter blue, I can build that up
in the next chapter. I don't need to add a
really bright blue at this. Add some blue down the
edges of here as well. And then once I'm
happy with this blue, I can then move on to the
darkest pencil on this section. So in terms of the dark pencils that's within my set here, I've only really got the black pencil that
I'm using at this point, or the only other dark
pencil is the walnut brown. Firstly, it's not
that dark, but also, I don't think it's
dark enough for the darkest areas I can
see within the barley. So although I think sometimes black can look a
little bit harsh, I am going to use the black add in those
absolute darkest areas. But we can always go back
over this with some greens, for example, to kind
of tone it down. So once again, let's have a
look at the reference photo. I just want to look for where these darkest
areas are going to go. So for example, the line
along here along here, down around here, around here, around here. It's
particularly prominent. You can see the dark lines going along this section
all down here. I'm just going to build up a
small amount of this pencil. I don't need to be pressing
really hard with this pencil. I would say that I am using
light to medium pressure. More than anything,
I am focusing on trying to make this as
accurate as possible. If you're struggling to see where the darkest
areas need to go, I do find that it sometimes helps to almost squint
when looking at the reference photo
because that can show a bit better where these
darkest areas do need to go. It kind of stops you from
seeing all the details, and you can just focus
on the lights and darks. You can see it is looking
quite harsh, but that's okay. On the most part, I am
putting this pencil over where I put
that darker green. But this is where it's
good that we've marked in those darker green
areas because it becomes a bit clearer to
see where they need to go. And it means because
I've already marked it in with
the dark green, if something's looking
not quite right, I can adjust the shape
of it with the black. I'm not just going
straight in with the black without any
sort of guidance. By the end of this chapter, what you should have is
the barley marked in. It's not perfect. It's not looking hugely
realistic at this point, but we do have a good idea of
what needs to go where and something that can be built on much easier in
the next chapter. But that is it for this section.
11. Adjust the Contrast on the Barley: Now that I've got the very
basic shapes marked in, at this point, let's start
adding in a lot more detail. So I really want to try and get the shading looking
a bit more accurate. Now, I'll show you what I
mean going through here, but I am essentially using the darker earthy green pencil that I used in the last chapter to really make
everything darker and generally make the contrast
a little bit more accurate. So I'm looking at
every single shape I can see within each of
these little sections. And I'm really looking
at the light areas, the dark areas, and where I generally need to add a
bit more of the shading. So I'm starting off
on this piece of barley here and looking at
this first little piece, I'm literally working a
tiny piece at a time. I'm noticing that
it's a little bit darker in this
bottom right corner. There's a line along here, a line here and a line here. Then in this piece, it's got a kind of zigzag shape, which is darker, and it's a little bit darker down
the right hand side. Again, on this section here, I'm noticing how much darker the whole thing needs to be than the light green base
we've already got. I'm noticing that it's generally darker around this black
line through here, so I need to add
a lot of shading, particularly on this
right side around here. And there's all of these
lines at the top along here and it's generally darker towards the
bottom, as well. So I am literally going through here one little
section at a time, and I'm only trying
to focus on getting that one section
looking more accurate. So here I'm adding shading around that line
down the center, and I'm also adding
in where there's those darker lines at
the top of the section. Also refine any of the shapes that need refining as
I'm going along here. So if some of the
points on the edge around here aren't looking
quite sharp enough, I can tweak those and generally adjust the shape of each
shape if I feel I need to. Now, in order to
build up this color, I'm using a few different
pencil motions. So I'm using a kind of back and forth
motion for adding in some of those lines at
the top of the section where I need it to be
quite a dark line. I can then use circular motions if I generally want to add
a bit of light shading. So I'm just building
this up bit by bit. So let's look at
this next section and you can see that I
have outlined the area, and then I can add some shading. Let's have a look at
this little section. So this leaf here, it's again, much darker on the right side. Generally around the bottom, but lighter at the top. You can see on this
section that we've got some lines up
the top along here, and generally it's darker
around the bottom edges, and that these right hand shapes are so much darker
than on the left. What I want to do is end up with some areas that
look lighter like the lighter areas around here in order to make these
areas look lighter. Need to make sure that all
other areas are darker. So I'm really building
up a lot of shading on basically all areas that aren't going
to be really light, but I am looking at these
all one piece at a time. So this is where it was
so important to take our time mapping in all of the shapes in that last chapter, although it all looked a
little bit rough and ready, and we really only drew the outlines for each
of those shapes. It does make life so much easier at this
point because I can really have a good idea on how all of these
shapes are separated. As I keep saying, the
most important thing here is to work with a
really sharp pencil. I'm really taking my time to
add in all of these details, but it's important that I have a good control over where
I'm putting this pencil. I want to make sure that
I can really control the shading and the detailed little lines
that I need to add. Do you feel like
each of these pieces of barley are a
little bit different. This first piece that
we're shading in here, generally speaking,
all of the sections, the little segments are darker, generally towards the bottom, and darker towards
the right hand side. And they've all got those lines, the dark lines that I mentioned on feel like a lot
of the shapes on this next piece are a bit
more they're lighter, but they also have some
extra shading areas on them. So let's have a look
at this next section. So on here, firstly, I really need to be shading
in a good amount of color on this patch here that surrounds that dark line that I've
already got marked in. I can see the odd line along and a kind of zig zag shape
on this top shape. And I want to add some sort of mid tone shading around here and mark in
some of the lines. It's generally all very
light on this top section. More of the shading needs
to happen as we work down, and it's generally darker on this piece on the
left hand side. I want to be using the
dark pencil to mark in this sharp pointy section
a bit more obviously, but also add shading
around this patch all around here and add shading
around these areas. So you can see I want to be
adding in along this shape, all around this point, and around the edge
here around this point. And it is literally a case of looking at each of
these little pieces, these little shapes
one at a time. Just marking in the colors that I can see and the
shading that I can see. I'm only for now working with this one pencil
because I just want to get those lights and darks and the contrast
more accurate. And then we can tweak the actual color a little bit later. I think that this pencil is the prominent color that is on all of these
pieces of barley. But maybe we will need to add more possibly yellow tone as we go to just tweak
the color a bit. On this next piece of barley, let's have a look at
some of the general kind of shading along here as well. Again, I think that
the layout and the shapes on this one is
different to the previous two. So here I feel like we need slightly different
shading again. So I'm noticing that at the bottom of each
of these sections, it's pretty dark, so
we need to add a lot of shading on the bottoms
of each of these. But I'm also seeing
that there are some dark lines with
shading to the left. All on these segments
up this left side. I want to add in that dark line, shade to the left and
shade around here. Again, add in that dark line, shade in this left section. Leave the right
section much lighter, and that will start adding in these shines that
are up this side. I'm also seeing that generally, these areas on the right
hand side are darker, have a darker line up each side and have these little
points on the tops. And that towards the middle, we need to add in
this dark kind of zigzag at the top of
each of these sections. But once again, I'm looking
at these one at a time and just focusing on what I can see on each individual section. Now, I do feel
like the barley in this drawing is by far the
most time consuming part. The mice in comparison were, I think, quite a lot faster. But taking our time to add
in all of these details and all of these shapes will be worth it as we get
towards the end. Now, I also think it's
worth bearing in mind here. I do think it is looking
much more realistic, but I think it's not
looking Perfect. It looks a little bit kind
of cartoony at this point. The barley's not looking
super realistic, although it's looking better. I think it's worth
bearing in mind that we're quite zoomed
in here at this point. As with all things,
I think it doesn't look as realistic when
really zoomed in. But when we move on
to the next chapter and we're working a
bit more as a whole, I will zoom out, and we'll be looking further
away at this barley. And I think it'll end up making it look much more realistic. I'm working down this barley in exactly the same way as I
did on the previous two. I'm looking at each of these
little pieces one at a time to really think about where I need to add
in that shading. So I'm happy with
this little piece down the bottom down here, let's focus on this
last piece and just trying to get that contrast
a little bit more accurate. Then I want to think about if I need to slightly
adjust the color. We'll do a lot more of this in the next chapter,
but for now, I just want to see if
I can get this barley looking a little bit closer
to that reference photo. As I mentioned, I
think that it's all looking a bit too
dark green at the moment, and in the reference photo, I feel like we have a little
bit more of a yellow tone. All I'm going to do is use
the light cadmium yellow, which I think is a nice and
bright standard yellow, and I'm going to use this to
go over all of the barley. Don't want to go over
any area where I built up that blue in the last
chapter that Turquoise pencil. So I'm using the yellow
pencil with, I would say, a medium pressure to just block in over all of these
barley pieces. Now, look how much
just a small amount of this pencil really
changes the color and makes all of the green
so much brighter. So I'm happy with
that first piece, I'll move on to the next piece, and I'm literally just working my way down one piece at a time, building up the colour and
adding some of this yellow. And as I say, we will build on this a lot in the next chapter, generally tweak all of the colors and finish
the drawing off. So by the end of this chapter, what you should have is all of your pieces of barley
looking much better. They still need more tweaking and more
color adding to them, but it is much easier to see where
everything needs to go. And we'll be able to
focus on tweaking those colors and really brightening everything
up in the next chapter. But that is it for this chapter.
12. Add in the Stems and Final Tweeks: Now in this chapter,
let's finish off drawing the stems and generally brighten up and
finish the drawing. So to start with, I want
to focus on getting something marked in for the bottom half of
the stems here. I don't have anything
mapped in at this point. So what I want to
be looking for is the lightest color that I
can see within those stems. And actually, I'm going to
use here a gray pencil. Generally speaking, these
stems aren't really a gray, but what I want
to do is look for the closest match to
the lightest color. So I'm looking at the lightest
color on this stem here, for example, and I do think the closest match is
my lightest cold gray. I don't think it's a perfect
match, but as I say, I literally want to get the closest match that
I can to that color. So let's use the cold gray
pencil to mark in this stem. So I'm starting off by
very carefully going over my sketch lines for the
outline of this stem, and then I can shade
up to that line. So I always find it
easiest to draw in the edge of a shape and then shade up to that line
that I've added in. Let's also mark in the edge of the other side of the stem here. And remember, we will be adding lots of other
colors over this. So this is just the color
that I'm starting with. I actually think
the stems will need to be much more green than this. And in some areas will
need to be a lot darker. But as I say, I want to get the closest light colour down, and then I can build
on it from there. So once I'm happy
with the first stem, let's move on to the next stem, and this is a much thinner stem. I'm literally
following the lines from my sketch marking in either side of the stem and then lightly shading
between those lines. I'm slightly going
over the green at the very bottom of
the barley, as well, just to blend this in, and then I can go all
down this stem here. Going to do this for
each and every stem. I'm being very careful to avoid where this little
mouse's paws are. You can see adding
gray on the stem here. It's kind of blending
it into the front, the chest of the mouse,
but that's okay. We will smooth
that out as we go. And then let's do the same
for this last stem here. So now I can see where all
of these stems need to go. Let's try and make them a
closer match to that reference. So I'm going to add a small
amount of the light green. Now, as I say, I think
that the lightest areas on these stems are kind of gray
but more of a green gray. So I can add a small amount of this colour over the
top of the gray, and it's making it have
that slight green tone. Let's add that all along here. Very, very lightly. And
I'm particularly using this green because it's not only the lightest
green in my set, but I did use this green as the base colour on the
rest of the barley. So I think it'll all end up matching together
quite nicely. And then from here, I'm
going to start adding in some of the more
shadowed areas, some of the darker patches with this darker cold gray pencil. So I've got two cold
grays in my set. I'm just using the darker
of those two to mark in, as I say, those darker areas. So there's this really
prominent line going down the center of
this stem here. And then, generally speaking, there's quite a dark kind
of gray patch around here. There's also a dark
gray around here, a subtle gray down this right hand side,
and all down here. So this darker line, I just think it's
not perfectly gray, but it's closer to a kind of browny gray than
anything else I you can see me drawing in that line
down the center of this stem. So all down this line here, and then I can add a little
bit of shading around here. So you can see me adding in that little bit of extra shading near the mouse's face
and up the top up here. And then I can also add in that slightly crisper line
down the left side too. So I'm literally just looking at the shapes
I can see within the stem and trying to imitate that as best as
possible along here. So let's do the
same on this stem. Let's build up a
reasonable amount of this gray down this stem. As I say, I don't
think it's perfectly exactly this color in
the reference photo, but I do think that it
is kind of browny gray, so we'll be able to add a
brown over the top of this. For now I want to
be using this gray to mark in where those darker
areas will need to go. So let's have a look at
these last few stems. So I'm seeing here
that the shadow is mostly on the left hand
side on this stem, and I want to build up
that shadow all down here. You can see how it's that
kind of gray brown colour. Again, on the left hand
side of this stem, and quite a lot of this stem
is this same color again. So I'm going all down that left side on this stem and just generally marking out the
stems a little bit clearer. As I say, for the
first part here, this is all about getting my bearings on what
needs to go where. And then we'll be able
to tweak the colors and shapes more as we go
through this section. I'm happy I've got those
darker shadowed areas marked in on each
of these stems. I can now use a brown pencil to slightly tweak that color. So I'm using the raw umber
pencil to start with. This is a kind of yellowish
brown to go over the stem on any area that I think needs
to be a brighter brown. So I'm just going over
these stems one at a time, brightening them up and
tweaking the colour. It's amazing how much
the color of the stem can change from adding
this brown over the top. I think that the gray is a really good kind
of background color, but it needs to
be, as I've said, more of a kind of gray brown. Then once I'm happy
with the color here, I can move on to
the walnut brown. This is the darkest brown
that I have in my set to add this color to anywhere where I think we need more
of that brown tone. So I'm going to tweak the shape at the
bottom of the barley. So around here, there's
these few kind of bumps and shapes that I don't really have marked in particularly
clearly at the moment. Let's add a nice
and crisp line down the edge of this stem
and generally add a small amount of shading
with this brown over the whole of the stem to just make it more of
that brown color, and then I can move
on to the next stem. So I can slightly tidy up the
shape of the mouse's feet as I'm doing this and
just adjust that color. So you can see me tidying
up the shape of the paw here before I'm moving
on to the next stem. So I'm just working through
these one stem at a time. To try and get those
shadows in the right place. So this pencil is much
darker than the cold gray, but also slightly
tweak that color so it is more of
that brown gray. Actually, while I'm
here, I'll also tidy up any tails
that I need to. So this tail here
needs to be darker and it was just a
slightly incorrect shape. I'm just tweaking
it a little bit. And then at this point,
I'm pretty happy with the overall shapes on
the whole drawing. What I now want to do is
brighten everything up. At this point, I'm working through the drawing as a whole, rather than looking at individual sections like
I have done up until now, and I want to constantly
think about what needs adding to the drawing to make it look more like the reference. So to start with, I'm going
to focus on the mice. I think the mice right now
look a bit too washed out. So let's go over these, let's start off with
the black and I want to really focus on getting
the contrast on the mice, looking as close as I can. So I'm adding to the black around the
top of this mouse here. So between the two mice, I'm building up with
circular motion, some of this black, and I'm
also throughout all of this, adding a small amount of
black onto each of the eyes. So the eyes are the main dark
area that need building up. I'm not adding the black over the whole of the eyes,
though, when I do this. I'm only adding it to the
darkest spot on each eye. I'm adding I would say
a medium pressure, medium to firm pressure on any area that needs
to be jet black, so like around the
edge of this mouse. And you can see how building
up some of this pencil on that mouse has made a huge
difference to that contrast. So let's go over any other area that needs to be particularly
dark on the mice. So generally around the
base of this barley. And around the bottom
of this mouse. And I always think when it gets to this point
of the drawing, for every color that we add, it's going to make
the next color that needs adding
look more obvious. So I think it's important to
note that I'm really never working more than
on my current step. I'm not thinking more
ahead than that. So let's just add a little
bit of black around the mouse's feet here and
around the back section here. And then, actually, whilst
I've got this black pencil, let's focus generally on the contrast on
the whole drawing. So let's add black Going all up this central line, going over exactly the same
areas that I did before, I just think it needs more. It's just not dark
enough at this point. And I'm going to
work through all of the barley really looking at
where it needs to be darker. So this is so much
easier than it was when we built up the
black pencil before, simply because it's much
easier to see where it needs to go now that all of the other shading is
marked in more clearly. Let's go up the darker
areas on this as well. I'm just working one
piece at a time. Now, I am going through
this quite quickly because it is very much the same
process that I did before. You can see I am just building up that
contrast and adding to those darker sections so that they are looking dark enough. I think the main thing about this drawing at this point is it doesn't have
enough contrast, and it's stopping it from having the wow factor it should have. So now that I've got
the black marked in, let's keep working
on the contrast, but I'm moving on now to
the walnut brown pencil. So here I want to focus on building up the
darker areas on everywhere that
needs to be darker but not as dark as the black. So I'm going over, again, a lot of the same areas that I added before with the green, the chromium green,
opaque, that dark green. And you'll see here I'm
particularly focusing on adding this shading to the kind of overall shading rather
than specific pieces. So I'm not working through
this like I was before. Marking in every single
piece really precisely. What I'm doing is
kind of stepping back and looking more at
the barley as a whole. I'm seeing that generally
this first piece has a dark shadow generally
down that right side. So I'm generally making
that right side darker. And then on this
piece of barley, I'm noticing that
generally the bottoms of each of the main segments
needs to be darker. So I'm building up a small
amount of the pencil along. Let's now build up some of
this brown over the mice. So I want to be using this
brown to go over the black. To kind of tone down that black, make it a bit less harsh. But obviously, I want to keep
the darkness of that black. Let's also add a little bit of this over the top of
the mouse's head. I'm just generally wanting
to use this pencil to make some of the fur
a little bit darker. You'll see that I'm not
worrying about building up any of the fur texture
at this point. I'm literally just working
in circular motions over the mouse to tone
down those few area. Let's go around the front and left side of
this mouse's face, working in circular motions to generally make it
little bit darker. And I'm going to go over the
back of this mouse, too, before I can then start adding
more to the barley here. So so much of making
this drawing kind of pop is trying to get that
contrast looking right. If we can get the
contrast right, the whole drawing
will come together. I'm still working from
the left to the right, building up the walnut brown. And I want to add some of the walnut brown down the bottom. I'm reasonably happy at
this point with the stems, but I can tweak them a
little bit if necessary. And then let's move on
to the next pencil. So I'm generally working from the darker colors towards
the lighter colors here. I think because I particularly
feel this drawing looks a bit washed out or it did look washed out at the
beginning of this chapter, it's going to be
easier to build up that contrast if I
work in this way. So I'm using that
darker green here to first the darken this stem. But also, I'm going to
once again go over all of these little segments on
the barley one more time. Not in the same thorough
way that I did before. I'm much more tweaking these, going through them one
at a time and thinking about if I need to add a
little bit of the color. So it's a much shorter process
than what I did before, but I'm still working
through these one at a time to make them
that bit darker. Can go over the stem
at the bottom to make some areas here a little
bit more of a darker green if I think that the
grays and browns that I've already added should have a
bit more of a pop of green. And then once again, I can
look at building up more of this green to any area that I don't need
to be really dark, but I want it to have
maybe a bit more shape if it's looking like it's
not quite clear enough. So particularly around
the bottom of here, I think it's maybe looking a bit too light and a bit too unclear. And then I can move on
to the next section. So I'm still working
from the left towards the right in quite
a methodical way. Now let's once again, think about the
most obvious color that's missing from here. And just like before, I think that the
barley itself is still not looking a
yellow green enough. I think it's looking too light. So let's add more
of this yellow over all of the barley to really
make it much brighter. And add some of that lighter
green to any area where I just need to tidy up and maybe tone down the yellow
again a little bit. So I'm just flitting through
these colors one at a time, trying to tweak
the shapes until I think it's looking like
that reference photo. I think that the barley is
looking much better now. Let's take a second to
focus on the tails. The tails are pinky gray with
some pretty dark shading. So let's use the cold gray, the darker cold gray to tone down both of the tails that I can see
within this drawing. And then also use the black
to improve the shadow. And then now I'm happy
with the barley. I'm happy with the tails. Let's just focus one final
time on the mice themselves. So let's go back to the coral
pencil, the pink pencil. Just go over a few
areas of the mice, particularly the pores of the mice and generally
their nose areas. They're all looking a bit
pale now in comparison to all of the dark
colors that I built up. And let's go back to make the general brown sections
a bit more vibrant. So I'm going back to
the raw umber pencil. Just tidying up anywhere that shouldn't be a
very light color. So, generally speaking,
that is most areas, except for around the eyes, it seems to be more
like a light gray. And I'm working on
all three mice. I want to do the same on
each mouse so that we're generally ending up with hopefully some pretty
consistent colors. Then let's move on to the
darker gray pencil one more time to just make that area
around the eye a bit darker. So feel around here, it's more like a lighter gray and around this eye
and around here. So let's build up some of
this gray in these areas and also on the white
areas underneath. Let's go over the underside
of this mouse here, as well. And then let's start going over the face and chest
on this one, too. But just like I
was doing before, I'm not so much worrying about
the colors at this point, and I'm also not worrying about any of the
texture right now. What I'm really
trying to do is get that contrast on the mice
looking a bit more accurate, and then the whole rest of it, I feel, comes together. Let's add in a little bit of
the lighter gray as well, just to tone down some of the areas of feather and
maybe looking too light. Still with that same
circular motion, we will add a little bit
more texture in a second, but I really don't think
the mice need too much. And then let's just tone
down this area under here. So I want to add this
to any area that I don't want to be really bright. And then at this
point, let's add a small amount of texture. So I'm going back to
the black pencil. Just adding some
light little flicks. Particularly to the
top of the head here. I'm going to add some of the whiskers back
in one more time. I have added the
whiskers in before, but they've all got a
little bit kind of lost. I feel like they're looking
too light at this point. And let's add in
a small amount of texture on the top
of this mouse, too. But then with a
few final tweaks, that will be the
end of the drawing. So let's smooth out under
the chin one last time and tidy up the brightness
of the fur one final. I'm just going over this one last time, just
like I did before, smoothing it out
and brightening it up and on the back
along here, too. And then that is the
end of the drawing. I hope you enjoyed
this tutorial, and I look forward to
seeing you in the next.
13. Summary: That is the end of the drawing. I hope that you've enjoyed this tutorial and you
found it helpful to see how we go about building up details
with colored pencils. It's always a case of blocking in the main
underlying colors, adding in the details, and then brightening everything
up and smoothing it out. If you've enjoyed this class, please do leave a review
and don't forget to upload your drawings
into the class projects. Happy drawing, guys, and
I'll see you in the next.
