Unleash Your Charcoal Drawing Potential Part III | How to Draw a Marlin

1. Introduction: Hey, guys. Welcome back to another class. My name's Braden Messer. I am an artist, an author, a YouTuber. And today, I'm going to be the one that teaches you how to draw. So this is part three of a three part series that I've made where I'm taking you through, and I'm showing you how you can go about unleashing your charcoal drawing potential. The way I'm going to be doing that is teaching you the three layered method, which is a unique charcoal drawing approach that I've developed myself over just many years of drawing. This method is outlined very nicely in my new book, drawing the portrait, step by step lessons for mastering classic techniques for beginners. Yes, it's a portrait book, but it breaks down the three layered method in detail from definitions on through some of the most intricate applications. So if that's something that you would find interesting, I will provide a link to the book and description of the class. This one, we are heading to the ocean, and I'm going to show you how you can use the three layered method to draw a Marlin. The Marlin is one of the coolest fish in the ocean, so I figured, hey, let's draw it. Now, what to expect. In this class, I'm going to be showing you how we begin to draw the contour lines of our marlin. Once we have the contour lines established, I'm then going to show you how we can use soft charcoal with brushes and smudgers to lay down the foundation of our drawing. Once we have the foundation, I'm then going to show you how we can continue to use medium charcoal and blending layer on layer of soft charcoal to give us some darker tones and really lower those values in specific places where they need to be. And then I'm going to show you how we can use medium and hard charcoal pencils for line work and detail work. And once we tie all those things together, I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised at how well your Marlin looks on your paper. So that's pretty much what to expect. Now, I will say this is Skillshare. So make sure that you are following along and you upload your project. And then once you've uploaded your project, make sure that you leave your review of the class. This way, I can actually feature your project in my monthly newsletter, which goes out the first half of every single month. So this is a great opportunity for you to not only get your name out there, but your art as well amongst your peers. Now, I know that the three layered method can be intimidating. There's a lot to it, and I understand that. So what I would recommend just for your own sanity is go through the class and just watch it once, right? Don't try to draw along with me, watch it, absorb it, feel it, hear it. And just try to really embody it. Then the second time you watch the class, that is when I want you to follow along with me and draw true drawing because you're going to just understand a lot more about what it is that you're doing versus trying to nail it right off the bat. So before we jump into the class, I just wanted to inform you that I have gone through and updated my one on one tutoring sessions. So now, rather than just 130 minute session per month, you get 4 hours worth of one on one drawing experience with me where I can share my screen. We can draw animals, we can draw portraits, whatever you will. So be sure to check that out at the top of my homepage here on Skillshare. All right. That's it. That's all. And hope to see you in class. 2. Draw your Contour Lines: Okay. So for this one, we're going to be using just a normal graphite pencil. We're also going to be using a battery operated eraser from artisan, as well as a Pentel click eraser and a mono zero eraser. We're also going to be using a soft, a medium, and a hard rated charcoal pencil. As well as a couple of different smudges here, number seven and number one and a 3/16. We're also going to be using scratch beefs paper with some soft charcoal that I've graded into the top of an old candle lid here. We can check our tone onto the paper before we actually apply it to the drawing. And we're also going to be using a couple of brushes. The gold one is number six, and the black one is a elf brush from my wife's makeup kit. Alright, here we are. So we have our reference image in the corner of our Marlin here. And with any drawing, we want to start with what they call the basic shape, right? Shape and drawing, if we're being true to definition is only ever two dimensional, right? Drawings, holistically speaking, are only ever going to be two dimensional. And what separates your normal artist from great artists is the great artists are able to convey that illusion of that third dimension through certain tricks with their pencils. But what we're doing here is as I'm looking at the reference photo, I'm trying to identify what that basic shape is. So when you are looking at your reference photo, what you want to do is you don't want to busy yourself with the details of the drawing. Details come later. You only want to focus on the shape. So here what I'm doing is I'm marking the top of the fin here. I'm going to go all the way to the top. Bear in mind that in this step, we are using an extremely light pressure control. Okay? We don't want to press hard because if we press too hard, then the graphite is going to be pressed into the paper and not only that, but we'll do what they call indent the paper to where even if you erase and lift all of the graphite off the paper, the paper is going to be scratched. And that's what you don't want. So just make sure that you use a nice light pressure control so that you avoid that. The right about here is where it looks like there's the gill of the fish. And then somewhere right about here is where that next fin is going to be something like that. One of the things that you want to keep in the back of your mind as you're drawing out the shape of your drawing initially is that you want to understand that you can always erase bits and pieces of it, as you progress through the drawing. Don't think by any means that this part of the drawing is finite or absolute because it is not. Okay? That's why we have erasers and three different types, in fact, so that we can fix any proportion errors that we might draw ourselves into on this step. But then here we got the bottom of the tail back of the tail here. But nice and light, that's the big thing. And if you want to give a certain line another go, like what I just did here for the back, you can do that. And I'll show you how we can go in with our eraser and we can basically repurpose lines and make sure that our proportions are a little bit more accurate to the reference image. But then right here, we got a little fishy that's tagging along with the marlin here. And so we're just going to do a basic outline of that fish. Again, we are not worried about detail work in this step, not yet. Detail work comes many steps later when we are retrieving high values with our erasers and we are using our hard charcoals. Okay. But then here what I'm doing is if you look at the reference photo in this basic area is we have basically the stripes of the Marlin. And so what I like to do is wherever there's contrast, right? Black against white or lower values, immediately against higher values, I like to call that out in this step. So what I like to do is basically what you're seeing here. I like to take my graphite and I like to designate where those lower value areas are going to be. And this will be nice for us moving forward when we bring the charcoal into the composition because we'll know exactly where we can start to put the charcoal down to build up those lower values, right, those darker spots in the drawing. I have found that outlining those major contrasts in this step of the drawing definitely helps me when it comes to knowing exactly where I need to put that charcoal onto the paper. Because when it comes to drawing theory, and I speak to this a lot when it comes to retrieving high values. With high values, there's basically two different approaches that you can use. One, I use all the time. That's what I call retrieving high values. And that is essentially where you go in with an eraser where you've already laid down charcoal or graphite, and it has a lower value, and you swipe the paper and you lift that graphite or that charcoal off of the paper, and you essentially retrieve a higher value. Well, what I'm doing here is the exact opposite of that. It's the other avenue that you can take where it's called saving a high value. That is the exact opposite of retrieving. Basically, that is where you don't lay any charcoal onto the paper. And effectively, what you're doing is you are saving that higher value to where you don't have to use eraser work, um to retrieve the high value. But it's up to you. It's up to you. If you don't want to do this, if you don't want to outline the stripes of your fish, you don't have to. This is just everything that I speak to and everything that I do works for me, but just because it works for me, that doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you, right? Every artist is different, and just because an artist's approach is different doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong. It just works for them. But in this step, you know, building and drawing out the shape step, this is for you. Okay? You can add as much detail or as little detail as you want. But see, I hear what I'm doing. Remember how I said that this step wasn't absolute? Well, this is exactly why. You can go in with your mono zero eraser now. You can erase those lines where maybe your proportion wasn't to your liking, right? You know, if you've tuned into a lot of my other tutorials, you already know that I actually don't like to call those mistakes. What I like to call those are adjustments, right? You're making an adjustment so that you can be better off moving forward. And that's all this is, right? This is just an adjustment. That's all this is. We're just making an adjustment so that our drawing will be better for it. And we can do that. We can do that. There's no set rules in drawing. There are only flows and processes that are subjective to the user, and some work better than others depending on what the end goal is, right? What it is that you are trying to accomplish. But what we're doing here I'm just looking at the reference photo, and I'm just trying to establish, where that jaw is, where that eye is, again, this is not absolute. If I need to go back in, I need to make an adjustment, once I get to the head, then that's what we'll do. Most of the time, whenever you approach a drawing such as this, especially with charcoal because it's so messy, trust me, there's a reason why I wear a drawing glove, right? It's to keep the oils from my hand off of the paper because charcoal loves to latch on to the oil from your hand, the residue, right? It's left onto the paper. And then here I got my Pentk liquor eraser and I'm just kind of blasting all of this runaway graphite from the outlining process, right? Trust me, the cleaner you keep your drawing as you're going through the process, the nicer it will look end. 3. Draw the Dorsal Fin: Okay, well, that's good enough for me as far as the basic shape is concerned. So now I'm going to take my scratch piece of paper, and I got my candle cover here that I flipped upside down, and I grinded a whole bunch of soft charcoal into it, okay? And I'm gonna take my number seven smudge, I'm just going to roll it around, get a nice base of charcoal on there. I'm gonna check my tone, and we're just going to, very lightly start applying a base layer of charcoal, okay? Now, for those of you that have been following the videos for a while now, you already know this, but for those of you who have not, maybe this is your first tutorial, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to explain the differences between soft medium and heart charcoals and why we use them the way that we do, in regards to the three layered method, okay? But basically what this is, I'm using my smudger. And I'm using the soft rated charcoal to get a nice base of charcoal onto the paper. One of the reasons why we use soft charcoal, as opposed to medium and hard charcoals is because soft charcoal has the least amount of binder in it from the manufacturing process, and it's because of that that it spreads across the paper very evenly, very nicely. Was opposed to medium charcoal, there is more binder in it, and with hard charcoal, you guessed it, there's more binder in it still. And because of that, when you start to mess with the ratios of binder to charcoal, right, as you progress further down the line in regards to adding more and more binder, that actually affects how the charcoal one not only acts on the pencil tip, but how it actually applies onto the paper. One of the things you'll find as you dabble with charcoal and especially if you use the three layered method is you'll start to understand that hard charcoal doesn't spread very good. On paper. The medium charcoal is a nice goldilocks, right? Like right here, what we're going to do is this is a medium charcoal, and I'm going to establish the top of this fin here, dorsal fin. And one of the reasons why I'm using a medium charcoal now instead of the soft charcoal that I just started laying base layers with is because it does have more binder in it, and because of that, I'm able to run really saturated lines and I do not have to worry about my pencil tips breaking. And while we're on the subject line work, okay? A lot of times, you have to take into consideration the quality of a line or rather the weight of a line, right? So like say, for example, right here, I'm going to take my medium charcoal, and I'm just basically highlighting the stripes on the back of this Marlin I'm designating and I'm really bringing out the boundary of that contrast between the low value of the stripe and the high values of the other stripes like right here on the belly, I'm going to pull and I'm just going to lift up. Right? Lift up as I conclude and what that does is I start to mess with the line quality of that line, right? Now, line quality by definition, for those of you that don't know is basically the thickness or the thinness of a line, okay? So when you start a line, you want to make sure that you're maintaining the same pressure and the same speed, right? Because, you know, if you start out slow and then you go fast or, you know, vice versa, that line quality is not going to be consistent throughout the line. And then, of course, one of the things that I like to do is as I conclude my line, I like to lift up because what that does is that thins out that line. And when you do that, you can show depth in a drawing, right? Like, you know, the tail, obviously, when you look at the reference photo is the farthest thing from the viewer's eye. And so as the artist, you can start to manipulate where your viewer's eye spends the most amount of time, you know, given the detail and, of course, selling that illusion of that third dimension, right? We talked about shape. We talked about how that was two dimensional. We talked about how a drawing in general is only ever going to be in two dimensional space, right? So it's your job as the artist to sell the viewer on that third dimension, right? Because it's an illusion. That's what it is. A really, really good drawing is just a simple illusion because it looks like your viewer can reach out and touch it, right? When, in fact, they cannot. Okay, so here, same thing. I'm just going to take my medium charcoal, and I'm establishing that nice saturated line on the top of the Marlins dorsal fin here. Okay? And getting back to lines now that we're doing another line, line weight is in tandem with line quality as far as you want to understand it, right? Line weeight is used to describe the strength of a line or how light or dark that line appears when it's on the paper. So that line that I just established has what I would call a nice mid line weight, and it has a nice middle of the road line quality about it, okay? It's not too thick, but it's also not too thin. Now here what we're doing is we're doing brush work, okay? And remember how I went in with the tail and I was using my number seven smudger with the soft charcoal to establish that base layer? Well, one of the reasons why I was using the smudger is because that was a very, very tight area, where with the dorsal fin now, I can get away with laying down that soft charcoal with my elf brush, right? Because it's a larger surface area. There's more room to work, if you will, right? And of course, where there's more room to work, you can move a lot quicker. But with the smudger and especially with the brush, you don't need to press hard. Okay? There's different brush techniques that I'll show you like this, for example. You can just start to pull straight down. I ran that charcoal along that line, and now I'm pulling down. And one of the reasons why I'm approaching the fin in this manner is because when you look at the reference image, the lowest values, right? The darkest spots on that fin are along the top of it, which is why I took my medium charcoal and I ran that nice line along the top. So now we're bringing and we're starting that base layer from that line, and we're bringing it down because this fin, we are not going to see another defined line on this fin until I establish where the spine of this fish is. Okay. Now, implied lines and defined lines. While we're on the subject, a defined line occurs when you continue a line without any break, okay? Like basically the line that's on the top of the dorsal fin here, the one that I'm taking my smudger and I'm running that soft charcoal right up to the line. All the way to the top of the dorsal fin, that's a defined line by definition. Then there's what they call implied lines, which are basically where if I was to take my smudger, let's say, and I was to run my charcoal up to the edge like I'm doing now, but I never established that defined line with my medium charcoal. I just stopped it at a nice cohesive break, right? That would be an implied line because you're basically ending that low value immediately against a higher value, but you're not really defining it, okay? That's implied. That is what, by definition, they call an implied line. Alright, enough about lines. But basically what I'm doing now is I'm taking my smudger, and one of the reasons why I switched it up from my brush to my smudger is that my smudger gives me more control over exactly where I'm bringing out those low values, okay? I move a little slower. True. But I maximize my control on exactly where I want that charcoal to go and exactly where I want those low values to be conveyed. Brushes, you move quicker, but you have a lot less control. Smudgers you move slower, but you have a lot more control. So it's a give and take, right? But a lot of times it's all about knowing when you need to basically gear down and really emphasize control. You will find too, that as you progress, through your drawing, the amount of control that you need in certain situations, especially when it comes to adding detail increases slowly, but surely until the very end of the drawing. When you're establishing base layers, you can use brush work, smudger work, you're going a mile a minute. But when you start to hone in on, say, the eyeball details in a fin, let's say, scratches, texture on skin, that's where you need to rein it in and you really need to have a hyper focus on a small area. So just be aware of that. But then just like this, I'm pulling the charcoal. This is all soft charcoal with the exception of the defined line, which was a medium charcoal. But also bear in mind, as I'm referring to my reference image so that I know exactly where to bring out those low values, I am using a very, very light pressure control. Throughout this entire process, never push hard. You should never have to push hard in any stage of the three layered method, whether you're using a brush, a smudger, whether you're running lines or bringing out detail work, never press hard. Let your tools do the work for you. 4. Build your Fin Values: Okay? So here what I'm doing is I'm taking my monozoaster, and I'm just kind of redefining exactly where that line is going to need to be run with my medium charcoal, okay? So here's my medium charcoal. And what I'm doing now is I'm looking at my reference image, and again, not pressing hard. But what I'm doing is now I'm bringing out the variation, right? This is where the different values within the greater value scale are able to be accentuated, okay? From complete black to complete white and then everything in between. This right here, this layering of medium charcoal on top of soft charcoal and then eventually hard charcoal for detailed work on top of the medium and the soft charcoal. This is where the drawing really starts to pop. This is where your viewer's eye goes, Wow, that looks brilliant. Brilliant in the sense that there's complete black to complete white and everything in between. In a lot of my other drawing tutorials, you'll hear me talk about how it is crucial that if you want a drawing that jumps off of the paper, if you want a drawing that really gets a viewer's eye to appreciate what is on the paper, then you need to understand this basic principle, especially when it comes to the monochromatic scale of black and white, okay? 'Cause think about it with charcoal, we don't have the luxury of color theory. We don't, we don't have pinks and purples and blues and reds and oranges. Like, no, no, no, it's black or it's white, and all the different values of gray in between that, right? So Okay. So now here what we're gonna do is I'm gonna run a define line, okay? Gonna start and notice. Keeping the same speed. And I'm just pushing pushing this line. Nice and steady. Nice and steady. And then I'm gonna lift up, as I conclude. Boom. Just like that. Okay. Then while we're here, I'm just gonna I'm going to go in and I'm going to continue to layer this fin. Again, not pressing hard. This is where I want to bring out those spines, you know, if you will, those spikes within the greater fin. And if it looks gritty, don't you worry about that because I'm going to show you another trick with the smudgers and our brush work where we blend the charcoal and we get a very nice gradation across our values, and we bring out a smoothness to it. Charcoal is funny that way because when you softly apply it, regardless of grade, it wants to rest onto the paper. It doesn't seed into the paper naturally. That's what smudges are for, and that's what brushes are for. Okay. And so when you're very soft with your application, it gives you a lot of versatility as far as do you want to push the charcoal into the paper and bring out some definitiveness or do you want to just hit it with a brush and kind of blend it across real softly, see? But here's the thing. When it comes to what I like to call targeted blending, you want to use your smudger. What this does is this maintains where you put that medium charcoal onto the paper. Thus, it brings out the fact that you wanted to put a lower value in that specific area. Then not only that, but if you want to go through and blend and do a nice gradation across all of those values once you've established where those low, medium and high values are with your smudger. You don't do that bit of it with a smudger. You do that with a brush. Most of the time, the number six brush, just a nice light blend and you have your gradation and it looks realistic, right? But then again, like here, for example, you can see the targeted blends that I'm able to produce with the smudger. I'm running my smudger right up against that defined line that I ran with my medium charcoal, yeah. Just like that. There we are. Wonderful. You can't do that with a brush. You know, you can blend stuff all day long. You can bring out gradation with a brush, and you can move quickly. But nine times out of ten, the smudgers again, moving slower but more control. Targeted blends. 5. Place your low Values on the Body: And then as promised, the number six, where we are. I'm just gonna kind of try to get a nice nice light blend here with this. I'm just checking it. More or less loading up my brush. I'll just pick up a little bit more. There we are. There we go. There we go. Brush work can be intimidating, especially if you've never drawn with brushes before, but just like anything, once you start through action, you learn what works and you learn what doesn't. But just like this, real smooth, real light. Just do a real light blend. Again, I want my charcoal to rest on top of the paper so I'm not pushing hard though even though this charcoal is being pulled across my high values. I know I mentioned that we were going to try to save these high values, but a lot of times, those of you that have been following how I draw for a while, you know that I love to retrieve my high values with my Monozya eraser, but I do understand high value theory. And so just because I speak to it doesn't necessarily mean that I want to practice it in this specific drawing. So just bear with me. But here, effectively, what I'm doing is this is just a base layer. That's all this is a nice base layer. And from here, what we can do is we can either build up lower values with our medium charcoal, whether we're doing that with the pencil or the smudger, or we can go back through with our monos or eraser and we can retrieve our high values. Okay. But that's also one of the reasons why we want to go nice and light with the brushwork because when we go to hit it with the eraser, we want to be able to lift that charcoal right off the paper and really retrieve a nice high value. If we press too hard, that value is not going to be nearly as high as it would be otherwise. So just keep that in mind. But then here what we're doing is we're establishing the low value. And then we're just gonna go to kind of pull this charcoal forward, right, right from the line. Gonna pull it forward. Nice light pulls a remember the way that the light is striking this marlin, we don't want to put too much charcoal on it, right? Less is more. With charcoal, less is always more cause remember, you can always add more charcoal. It's very difficult to take charcoal away. And if you put too much charcoal on the paper, even if you use a nice light pressure control, it can still be difficult. So keep that in mind. Okay. So now I think it's time that we start to bring out these stripes a bit. Okay. So when I'm looking at the reference photo, it's almost kind of blotchy, right? This first stripe here, this is how we're going to do this. It's nice and light, maybe a little smudge here, a smudge there. Again, one of the reasons why we're using the smudger is because I want that control, right? This would be very, very hard to do with a brush. I just want to establish these stripes like this. Light pressure control? Because I can just go over the stripe again and again and it'll just blend itself more and more and more and more. And then, of course, I can go in with my brushes at the end, and I can soften and lower the value and be a lot more precise about it. And I'll show you how to do that here in a bit. But then now that I have that line established, I can go in and more or less, what I'm doing is I'm just getting a very defined break between the low value and the high value of that first stripe right after the gill of the fish. And then you can just pull pull just like this. See this? You establish the line. And then once that line is established, you just pull left to right. Then here, what we can do is we can push can push our smudger this way a bit. Then here while we're here, let's just establish the the bottom of the fish's jaw here. But make no mistake about it. I'm not pushing hard. I know it looks like I am, but I'm not. There's no need. No need to press hard now with this technique. And one of the things you'll find, too, is as you vary pressure control from extremely, extremely light to, you know, maybe a little harder, but just just barely, right? You'll notice the differences in value that you're able to convey. And you can start to mess around with, you know, base texture and base layering with those different pressure controls as well. But then here what I'm doing is we are just going to establish that second low value stripe on the side of the marlin here. We want to be conscious of the direction and the flow of the fish's body, right? We just want to be aware of that. Yeah, there's some interesting facts. I didn't realize this, but I was doing some research, and apparently, there's differences between what they call sailfish, Marlins, and then swordfish. So a quick way that you can tell if what you're looking at is a sailfish is a sailfish can be recognized by the large dorsal fin. It actually looks like one big sail and it has accordion pleats, I guess, is what they call it. Then like a marlin, Marlins have a single dorsal fin that connects along the fish's back to a short soft looking ridge. So that's what we have here. Then a swordfish has a dorsal fin more like a shark, and it even extends far up. You, it looks kind kind of like a feather. So if you're ever in the ocean, Um, that's a quick way that you can kind of decipher what it is that you're looking at. But, yeah, just line after line after line here. Nice, medium pressure controls. And notice how I'm pushing. I'm pushing kind of left to right, left to right, but I'm never forgetting the flow of this fish. Because when you look at the reference photo, everything about the texture, right, everything about the shadows, everything goes from the front to the fish and follows the line of the body all the way to the tail, right? Nothing goes up and down. Everything goes left to right in regards to the shadows. And because we're working in the monochromatic scale, we need to pay attention to that, right? We need to pay attention to that. But then here what I'm doing is I'm just kind of establishing the shadows right at the low values that we see immediately under the smaller fish that's tagging along with our marlin and our reference photo. And what we're going to do is I'm going to grab the medium charcoal pencil here in a second, and I'm going to punch in some defined lines and I'm going to bring out that fish. And you'll get to see how those lines will make that fish on the side actually look like it's in front of the Marlin, little landscape effect, little uh elongated illusion, if you will. So that's the thing that a lot of people don't realize about people that draw, you know, especially people who draw, you know, more photo realistic styles, is that they're actually more like magicians than they are anything else. It's all about fooling the viewer into what they think they see, right? Here we are. What I'm doing here is if you look at the reference photo, there are some stripes that have some high value breaks in between the stripes. So this is just a quick, easy way that it's almost like a cheat, right? You can take define lines with your medium charcoal and you can draw around that high value. Essentially, what we just did that's a form of saving those high values, right? 6. Build your Body Values & Line Work : But then here what I'm doing. I'm just taking my medium charcoal pencil and making sure that my medium charcoal pencil is sharp here. And I'm just referring to the reference photo, and I'm running these defined lines down to establish the boundary of the body of this fish. This is what I've done in my time lapses. I have that time lapse of the Mo, time lapse of the tiger shark, of the gray white shark, how I'm doing the linework in this tutorial is exactly how I did the linework in those pieces. Okay? Nice, steady pulls, and then always, always, with very few exceptions, when you go to conclude that line, you lift up, right? And you'll thin out the quality of that line. I find that when you do that, when you lift up when you conclude your lines, it just gives your linework just a little bit of sass, right? Just a little bit a little bit of character. Compared to if you were just to hold it, right? You know, give your line work a little bit of finesse, right? Make sure that you care how each line looks, right? It's all you have to do. It's all about carrying. If you care, you'll pay attention to the details. Remember that quote, How you do anything is how you do everything, right? Just because you think that somebody might not notice, it's not about them, right? It's about you. It's about your quality of work. You know, why do something if you're just gonna, you know, not care and just kind of halfway put your heart into it. So just be aware of that. So now what we're doing is I'm going through and I'm I'm barely touching the paper here because I'm looking at the reference photo and I'm realizing that there are variations in the value that we see across this fish that's on the side of the Marlin, right? And so I can take my medium charcoal pencil because, again, the only thing that gives you more control over exactly where those low values go on your paper than a smudger is a very sharp pencil tip. Okay? So what I'm doing here is I'm going right up against that defined line of that fish that's on the side of the Marlin, and I'm, you know, very lightly. Going in, I'm establishing a nice gritty layer of charcoal to effectively lower the value that we see in the stripes. And then I know it looks gritty, but again, just like with dorsal fin, we're going to be going in with smudgers and brushes and we're going to be blending that grittiness away. That grittiness will literally disappear, and what we'll be left with is a really smooth gradation across all of our different values, and it'll look like one cohesive image. Just like this. And with the pencil, you can go in and you can establish exactly where those lines are if you don't want to waste time with the smudger. Again, when you're in smaller areas, control is everything, okay? Just like this. You can see how hard it would be to establish this control if I didn't have a really sharp pencil tip, okay? Just like that. So now that I got some runaway charcoal here, I just want to clean this up a bit with my Pentel click eraser. This eraser has a much bigger head on it than my other two erasers. That's why I like to use it for when I get runaway charcoal like this, okay. Alright, more defined lines. So we're going to take the medium charcoal. I'm just gonna start it right here. And I wanted to do this in one real time take just so you could see this is the speed, and this is how we're establishing that defined line all the way to the end. There we go. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my smudger. And we just this guy needs he needs more of a tail. He needs more of a tail, so we're just gonna pull down from that define line, just like this. And now our Marlin has a completed tail. Wonderful. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take my smudger, and I'm just going to start blending a lot of this greediness. Again, not pressing hard. I'm letting the smudger blend the charcoal for me so that that grittiness goes away. But I don't need to press hard at all. And you can use a number seven smudger. You can use a number one. You can use the 316 if your drawing is a little bit smaller. It's really up to you. Just remember your smudgers has with your pencil tips. The smaller smudger you go, the more control you have. The sharper your pencil tip, the more control you have. So what I'm doing here is I'm just taking my smudger and I'm going right up to that line, and I'm more or less blending from the line up. You see what kind of effect that gives me? See how all of a sudden that, you know, the belly of this Marlin is starting to look almost rounded. Well, here's another trick. See this. See how I'm taking my smudger and I'm just pulling down in the straight line and then pulling up, down and up in the same direction. Look at that. What does that give me? That gives me that roundness. Or should I say that illusion, right? That illusion of roundness. Or bringing out three dimensions in two dimensional space. And now I'm just going in with that smudger like 3/16. And I'm just blending away all of that grittiness that was left behind with my medium charcoal pencil. Right? Okay. He's kind of a trick here to establish that spine. You can just take your smudger. But, I mean, this is pretty much all I'm doing with my smudgers. I'm blending away all of that grittiness. And at the same time, while the grittiness is going away, the value that's being conveyed on those specific areas of the drawing is lowering. Just like this, see? Just like this. Okay. So now I'm going to take my elf brush. And I'm just going to very lightly hit this. What this is doing is giving me gradation, but then it's also giving me a nice even blend across everything. And then I'm able to go in with my number seven smudger here and go right up against the line, and I can start to bring out exactly where those stripes end on the fish. And I can also blend away any of this greediness that's in these stripes as well. And also, bear in mind that I'm moving extremely quickly. Obviously, if this was a commission piece for a client, I would probably spend many, many more hours on it than I have here, but, you know, given the nature of this video, it's tutorial, right? And it's longer than most movies. So otherwise, I would have a lot more tricks that I could show you. But the cool thing about it is I can make as many of these videos, as I need. It's not like this is a one and done type type of deal, but then here what I'm doing? I'm just taking my number six brush. More or less bringing out that gradation, right? That's the other thing about this specific drawing that I wanted to speak to is DaVinci is one of my personal favorite artists, and I'm sure that he wasn't the first artist to do this, but he was definitely one of the first prominent artists to speak to it. That is, he talked about what in optics is known as a landscape approach or what they call the landscape method. But effectively, what it is is it is a play on the eye where through detail and linework you are able to basically dictate where the viewer's eye spends the most amount of time. I've mentioned this in other drawing tutorials as well, but while you're here, basically, what DaVinci said was any area in a drawing that has the most amount of detail work, that is where the viewer's eye will subconsciously spend the most amount of time. The flip side of that is out of focus. So anything that's out of focus, the viewer's eye will subconsciously, there's nothing really to appreciate, right? It's blurry. Who likes to stare at something blurry? That's one of the reasons why we go and get glasses is because we don't like looking at things that are blurry. That's not pleasant. In this drawing, when you look at the reference photo, the head of the Marlin, the fin, the side of the Marlin, all of that is very detailed. That is where the viewer's eye spends the most amount of time. But as you go back down the Marlin's body, towards the tail, everything gets blurry. The tail itself is actually blurry. It's not even defined, which is why I have not outlined that tail is because I do not want the viewer's eye spending too much time back there because it's blurry. 7. Draw the Pectoral Fin: So just something interesting. Maybe you didn't know that. But now what I'm doing is I'm taking my artisan battery operated eraser, and I'm going through and I'm just doing some high value retrievals. And the cool thing about this one is you can do high value retrievals, and through doing high value retrievals, just like this, you can actually bring out a lot of detail work as far as, you know, the variations between high, low and mid values. And you can also convey texture when you retrieve high values with your erasers, as well, whether you're using the model zero eraser or you're using a battery operated eraser such as this one. So now see I've switched it up. This is the mono zero eraser. This does not have a battery. You are the battery when it comes to the mono zero eraser. But look at all this detail work that you can bring out, right? Which is simple, high value retrievals. That's what these are. Look at that detail work. Just like that. Wonderful. And see here, we can establish just high values. Okay, so now that we've done that, we're gonna go through and we're gonna have some fun. We're gonna have some fun. We're gonna get serious here. So here, what we're gonna do is I am going to start at the front, and then I'm going to work my way back. This is establishing the base layer for the side fin of this Marlin. Nice and light. Nice and light. No need to overwork it. Because what we're gonna do is we're going to go in with our eraser, and we're going to retrieve and get a nice crisp edge, right? And then from there, we'll go in, and I'm going to show you that not all lines are created equal, right? There's some tricks that you can do cause remember, it's all about staying one step ahead of that viewer. What they think they see is what you wanted them to see, right? So as promised, we are establishing the crispness of that line. If I was to leave that alone, the front part of that, that would be an implied line. That's a perfect example of an implied line, not a defined line, okay? Alright, see the back of this fin here. Let's get that skewed up here. There we go. Okay, so as promised, let's put a define line on this puppy. So we're going to start from the body. Nice and steady. I want that line quality, right, that thickness to be the same. So I have to go at the same speed, same pressure all the way through, and then I lift up right there, as I conclude. Wonderful. Okay, so now I'm going to do is I'm going to take my number seven smudger, and I'm going to start to bring out the shadows, right and bring out the underlying form of how that fin plugs in to the main body of the fish. That's what I want. You can even take your elf brush here and you can start to blend some of this away if you want. But again, don't press hard because what we're going to do is we're going to go in with our model zero eraser and we're going to retrieve high values, which, in effect, what that's going to do for us is that it is going to give us detail, right? Like this, just as promise is going to stand it up on end. Here. I'm just gonna I want to establish the back the back of this fin. I don't know if I should leave now. I'm not gonna leave that implied. Just like this. Nice long pole. Just like that. See that? There we go. See how with that nice base layer, even though we went and did those high value retrievals, we were able to convey texture, right? We haven't lost that underlying form. Okay. So now, what we're gonna do here is I'm going to take a hard charcoal, not a medium charcoal, a hard charcoal. I'm going to do a nice I'm going to do a nice broken pole because I want the line quality on this line to be thin compared to the front. I want the front line to be thicker, a thicker quality. I want the one on the back, the line on the back of the fin. I want that to be of a thinner quality. So that's why I used a hard charcoal. And this right here is a hard charcoal has the most amount of binder in it, and so it rests on top of the soft and the medium charcoal very nicely. Very nicely. It's still blendable. I can still blend. But it's just perfect for detail work. Okay, so now I'm gonna take my number six brush. I'm just gonna blend this real nice. Barely pushing. I'm barely pushing the paper here. See that? Barely pushing. 'Cause I don't want to push it too hard, right? Because then I'm just gonna blend away all that detail work that I just put into the fin with my hard charcoal. Okay. So while we're in it, right here what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take my medium charcoal. I just want to establish a bit more of these lines here in the back, but I don't want to give them too much detail cause again, we were talking about the landscape method from DaVinci. Well, I want to imply that same principle here, and I want to make sure that the viewer's eye thinks that this Marlin is elongated, right? I want to sell the illusion of that length in the fish. And how we do that if we're students of Leonardo Da Vinci is that we accomplish that with detail work, right? Sharpness versus blurriness. And here we're gonna continue to build these stripes. On our medium charcoal or with our medium charcoal. And then yeah, any grittiness, you can hit it with smudgers whether you're using the seven, the number one or the three 16th size. That part of it is completely up to you because who knows? Maybe your marlin will be a lot bigger than mine. Then see this trick here. Remember how I was telling you about the direction, the left to right shadow direction? Check this out. Quick little smudger trick. You just pull. Pull, and then you push. Pull it left to right, push it right to left. See that? That's a cool trick. I love that trick because what that does is now that has basically given us that long look. Those left to right shadows across the stripes. Then we just take our number six brush, real light. Real light. Real light. We just out. Just blend that out. Okay. So now we're gonna take our elf brush. And we're gonna focus underneath this fish. And I'm just gonna I'm just gonna dab the paper. It's like, this is more or less what I'm doing. I'm just pushing. I'm pushing. The brush into the paper. And I'm basically seeding that charcoal, those particles of charcoal into the paper because if you look at the reference photo, the light hits the top of the fish. The light hits the top of the fish on the side of the marlin, but then underneath the fish on the side, that whole belly, that whole underbelly inside from the midsection down is all extremely dark, right, a low value because the light just simply is not hitting it, right? So that's how we accomplish that. Okay. So now we're taking our smudger. And again, just like I was using the number six to kind of punch in, you know, the underlying form of the muscle tissue, right, where that fin plugs into the main body of the fish. We're doing that with the smudger. And then here I'm just going in and I'm retrieving the center of these stripes, right? I don't want to get rid of everything. And then here, if you look at the reference photo, these stripes do go down a bit past the fish on the side. So we just want to make sure that we're staying true to the reference image in that regard. And guys, if your Marlin doesn't look exactly like the Marlin in the reference photo, don't worry about that. Don't you stress. The cool thing about being an artist and drawing and being a draftsman is that it's all about the action that you take, right? It's all about drawing. I don't know about you, but when it comes to me, I personally hope that I never draw something picture perfect because that means that I've arrived, right? That means that I'm at the apex of my profession. That means that there's nothing above me, and how boring. How boring would that be? So, if your drawing isn't perfect, be thankful for that because that means that there's still much left to be discovered. You know, and that's fun. You know, what's on the horizon? You know, what do we not know? What's a trick that could benefit us in our next drawing, right? That's what excites me. And it should excite you, as well. Why not? Why not? We humans are imperfect things, and our drawings should be a reflection of that. But the cool thing that makes us virtuous is that we strive to be better the next go around. And hopefully, that's reflective in our drawings, as well. All right. So what I'm doing here is if you look at the reference photo, there is this bit here. So once we establish the charcoal, then we pull it. Just pull it left or right. Here we are. Here we are. Wonderful. And now we want to be mindful here when we're pulling this charcoal because if we look you can see the brow, right? The top of the Marlins head is almost completely flat, but the way the light strikes it is there is an implied line of shadow right above the brow of the eye and then down the bill of the fish. So we just want to make sure that we speak to that. This is more or less just that base layer. And so now what we do that we have the base layer, we want a little bit more control, so we switched it up for our number seven smudger. And we are looking at the reference photo and we are really just focusing on those low values and those shadows, the contrast that we see from mid value scale to complete black. That's really what we're looking at. We're using a light to at the very heaviest amid pressure control. The trick to this bit of the drawing is just pulling. Remembering the flow of the body of the fish, left to right, left to right. I hear very lightly, very lightly, I'm just pulling more or less, you can think of it as skipping across the paper, which is wonderful. That's what we want to do. Some finesse, as they say, some tact, some class. That's what we want. That's what we want. 8. Build the Head Values: Alright, so now what we're doing is I'm taking my monozur eraser, we're just more or less cleaning this up. Yeah, cleaning this up. There we go. Okay. All right, so now I'm going to do some high value retrievals. We have some planes here that need to be retrieved. Now what we can do is I can take my medium charcoal pencil and we can just punch in some defined lines here. Just pull this lift up. There we go. Pull right there. There we are. Nice. Now we have the bottom of that. Then I'm going to push a define line on the back side here. Something like this. Just push it, lift up. Bone. There we go. Okay, so now I'm going to take my graphite pencil and I'm just going to outline these little guys. Now, I didn't know this, but these are actually what they call a Marlins pelvic fins. Yeah. I didn't know that. They're the strangest looking fins I've ever seen on a fish. I thought it was, if you think of turkeys, they have what they call beards on their chests. That's what I thought maybe this was some kind of beard. But now, it's actually what they call a pelvic fin. I got those lined out, the graphite. And then I took my smudger and I put a nice base layer of charcoal on there. And now what I'm doing is I'm taking my medium charcoal pencil and I'm just putting in a nice define line, lifting up as we conclude, as always, following those graphite lines. And I'm just establishing the boundary of the pelvic fins. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go in and I'm going to put in a nice layer of medium charcoal and I'm going to do it with my pencil just like this. This, right up to the line. Right up to the linework that I just established. Because when you look at the reference photo, this is the lowest value in the entire drawing next to bits and pieces of the dorsal fins. So but now we're pretty much at the stage in the drawing where we are doing what I like to call targeting our low values. We've done the brush work for the base layering. We've really accentuated where we want the low values to be with our smudgers now we're going in and we are streamlining with our medium charcoal pencil exactly where we want those low values to be. The fact that they're gritty, we already um, by this point in the drawing that we can blend those away with smudgers if not smudgers definitely with brushes, whether we're using our number six brush or we are using our LF brush. But all throughout all throughout building up this detailed work, we are using a nice light pressure control. The last thing we want to do is scratch our paper, right? So as promised, we're taking our number seven smudger and we are just blending away that greediness. But notice how even though the grittiness is blended away. We're still able to keep exactly where we want those low values to be. And that's the cool thing about using the three layered method in this way, is that it is extremely targeted. You know, once you place those low values with your medium charcoal, when you go to blend them and hit them with your smudger, even though it blends, that low value still keeps its place on the paper. It's just the texture that changes, right? But then you're right behind the eye. We have a low value, so we want to establish that. One of the reasons why we're using the smudgers because it's kind of a goldie locks, right? It's not small enough to where we need the pencil right off the bat, but at the same time, it's also not big enough to where I would feel comfortable laying down this base layer of soft charcoal with a brush, even my elf brush. It's just a little bit too small. So we're just pushing back and forth, left to right here. We got some greediness down here that we need to blend away. So we're going to blend it away with our smudger. There we go. Very nice. Right up to the lines. One of the things you'll find with trying to bring out form and stuff in different drawings is that your lines are everything. In fact, when it comes to blending, making something look like it's seeded, say in the head of an animal, like what we're doing here, you can just use your medium charcoal, draw out a nice define line like what we're doing right here. I'm just going to push this line up and over, lift up as I conclude. There we go. I'm just going to push this line up and over. Now I'm going to bring this line underneath. And now I'm going to establish the center of this fish's eye. Just like that. And a lot of times, when it comes to fish eyes, you want to establish the linework around the eyeball first, and then you can take a smudger and you can pull charcoal from that line to give the eyeball a certain look, right, a certain rounded look. And that's just to kind of speak to just the nature of what fish eyes, you know, look like as far as texture is concerned. Then here, we're just using our pencil and we are bringing out those low values. Just pulling it a bit. It's giving us some nice texture. Gritty. But again, we know the solutions to solve the grittiness. Then we have a little plane right here, little eyelid above the eye. So we want to pull back on that line then left to right. There we go. You eyes coming together here. All right. So now I'm going to go ahead and I'm gonna take my graphite pencil, and we're gonna re establish the jaw of this fish. This Marlin has a beautiful beak. And so I want to make sure that I do that beak justice and I get my lines right we're just going to run the jaw line there. We got the beginning of the beak right there. It's pull over and back. Now I'm just gonna take my monozero eraser. I'm just gonna clean up these lines a bit. There we go. Something like that. And then we're gonna be using our smudger. Then right about here, looks like the mouth opens up just a little bit. I'm going to pull that back. There we go. Okay, cool. So now I'm going to take my smudger. And one of the reasons why I'm using my smudger for this versus a charcoal pencil is because when you look at the jaw, right, in the beak of this fish, it's all very smooth. Extremely smooth. And so these lines are more akin to implied lines, not defined lines. Now, granted, we are going to define the beak a bit with certain lines. And this depends on you. But if you want to go through and you want to start to build the jaw and the beak of your Marlin in this way, you give yourself some options. You can either keep the implied lines that you convey with your smudger in this step. Or if you want to go ahead and you want to streamline those lines with a defined line with your medium charcoal pencil, you can do that, as well. It's really up to you. A lot of times my tutorials are all about showing you what you could do. You don't necessarily need to follow what I do verbatim, unless, of course, you know, you want to. That is totally your call. I just love drawing. So, like, you know, for me, I'll, you know, if there's something new that I want to try, I'll give it to go, whether it's a new tool or a new approach, or I mean, maybe something as simple as how to convey a defined line from an implied line, like what we were just talking about. We're just blending this away, lowering the value, bringing out gradation. And this is what I was talking about with the fishy here. So you watch this. Bing bada boom. There we go. Something just like that. Just like that. See how you can pull it. I just kind of makes the eye look round and smooth and kind of glossy, right? Glossed over. Then here, I'm just barely touching the paper, barely touching the paper because I want to I want to showcase, you know, that form, right? There is form. On top of this fish's head, it's just all implied. There's no real defined lines here. So This is how we can start to convey that. But here I'm going to grab a number six brush and I'm just going to load it up. I'm just going to dab the paper here. This is giving me a nice blend and it's also lowering the value for me as well. Just pull this back a little bit. There we go. I kind of pull this down. There we go. I'm just trying to use the tip, use the tip of the brush, 'cause that gives me a little bit more control, not much, but, you know, by holding the brush on its side, it's more control than if I was just to dab the paper, you know? Dabbing the paper like this is I'm trying to lower that value. And then I just blew off all that charcoal. 9. Detail the Head (Medium & Hard Charcoal) : Okay, so now define line time. This is where I established where that beak sat in that mouth. So I'm just gonna pull this straight back from this point. Slow and steady. I want that line quality to be as uniform across the length of the line as possible. And then just lift up. There we go. So then here I'm just gonna clean this up a bit. I'm just gonna run this monozursa right up to that line. Right here. There we go. And then here I'm just going to clean up the bottom of that. Then here as well, because I used that smudger. I just want to make the line on this bill crisp. So now I can take my line, and I'm only going to run a medium charcoal define line on the bottom here. So we're just going to go up and then straight out, and then just lift up. Boom. There we go. And then now I think I'm gonna just the mouth is slightly open here on the bottom jaw underneath the top of the beak, so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna pull this right along this line and make it look like that mouth is slightly open, slightly open. There we go. And then just very lightly want a nice thin quality all the way through. Then just lift up. Something like that. Then here on the bottom, why not? I'll give it a I'll give it at a fine line as well. Just something like that. Boom. Alright, so now what I'm doing is I'm taking a medium charcoal pencil. And again, just I'm targeting those low values and I'm bringing out that texture. When I grab my hard charcoal, I'm going to show you why you want to use hard charcoal for certain detail elements of your drawing, especially when it comes to fish or reptiles or any type of animal that has a smooth texture, smooth but rough at the same time, if that makes any sense. A lot of animals from the ocean, especially, not only are they obviously smooth, like whales, dolphins and certain types of fish. But then they also at the same time, can have very rough appearances, like, you know, if you look at the reference photo behind the eye of this Marlin, you know, that skin, even though I'm sure it's probably silk smooth, it does seem to be rough, right? But you can convey that type of look on paper with a hard charcoal. You really don't need much of anything else. But then here, I just want to put a little put a little lip on this, and then just kind of lightly. Any kind of targeted values. Any kind of targeted values that I want I can put on here. I got some runaway charcoal. Come on. Let's go. Charcoal everywhere. Charcoal for everybody. You get some charcoal, and you get some charcoal. Now here we are. Okay, so now I sharpened the tip on my number seven smudger, and I'm just going and just doing targeted blends and, you know, bringing out the gradation across these values. But then at the same time, still maintaining as much control as I possibly can, being that, you know, the head of this Marlin is going to have, you know, the most amount of detail for my viewer. You know, the head is really the head and the side of this fish specifically is where I want my viewers eye to be spending the most amount of time. So but it's really amazing what you can do with simple smudgers with this technique. So as far as, you know, building up, implied lines and smoothing out defined lines and increasing line qualities and decreasing line qualities, kind of like what I'm doing here, I'm kind of blending, running that blend along the bottom. But just like that. Boom, there we go. Of course, the longer you spend on a drawing, the more time you put into it, the detail is just going to keep coming, right? With very few exceptions, if you are maybe overworking one specific area, you can do just that. You can overwork that area. But as long as you are aware of not overworking a drawing in a specific area. When you start nine times out of ten, you won't, but you just have to keep that in mind. Then here what I'm doing is I'm taking my elf brush and I'm just trying to establish you know, that implied line, right? Like, on the top. I define the bottom, but so much of the time, when it comes to sharks, dolphins, whales, fish, right? Anything, especially in the ocean, where you have your light source above, you're going to want to put your defined lines on the bottom, right, the bottom of the fins, the bottom of the jaw, the bottom of the belly, right? Very, very rarely do you put defined lines on the top. Of an animal in the ocean. And, I mean, obviously, you can do whatever you want, but I have found that if you make sure that your heavier line quality is right, your darker line weights are on the bottom of your drawing, it just looks more realistic, at least to my eye. But, I mean, you can try both ways, and you tell me what works for you. But then here what I'm doing is I'm just taking my elf brush and I'm just bringing out gradation. That's really all it is. A lot of times with gradation, when it comes to your brush work, if you push your brush in a specific area, you'll bring out gradation in that specific area, where sometimes if you swipe, especially if you swipe one area too much, you'll bring gradation not only in that one area, but in multiple areas. But there was a little indent on there was a little indent on the jaw, so I just wanted to bring that out with the brush. Now here, take my modo Zora eraser, put a nice crisp highlight on the jaw here. 10. Final Detail Work: In that way, I can bring the opening of that mouth all the way forward. But then as far as your final detail work is concerned, one of the things that you can do is towards the end, you can go in with your medium charcoal pencil and you can just go over the same spot like around the eye, like what I just did, and you can just really bring out that low value because we want in this specific drawing, we want that eye to look like it's seated inside of, you know, the head of the fish. And then right here, these are just some high value retrievable methods with the mono Zero eraser, but look how it starts to bring out, you know, that texture, right? Okay. So then like, right here, I just want to bring this indent out just a little bit more. Just a little bit more. Pull left to right. Just like that. Alright, there we go. That's looking good. And this is the 3/16 smudger. Alright, this is the smallest one that I have. So this one gives us the most control. There we go. And, of course, I got grittiness here on the bottom of the Marlins beak. So I just want to keep blending. Just pushing left, right? I'm doing long poles long poles, especially because of this bit of the drawing I don't have a lot of room to work with, right? Cause I just want to be I just want to be careful. Here we are. Okay, then high value retrievals. And one of the things you'll find as you draw more and more, especially like this, is that high value retrievals with your monozero eraser will actually do a couple of things. Not only will it give you, you know, those high values, but then it will also give you texture, lots of texture, especially when it comes to fish like this. So just keep that in mind. But then here I'm just pushing my brush and pushing that charcoal into the paper. This is for a gradation effect, right? Then once the gradation has come through, then I can start to do high value retrievals. Here I'm just doing short quick little polls and whatnot. I'm trying to you can see the effect that I'm going for in that regard. Those those little, like, ripples and stuff across the skin, those little bumps. I don't know if those are bumps or bruises or what those are supposed to be. But, you know, using the model or eraser in this way, just barely touching the paper. See this? I'm just barely touching it. This is how you convey that type of texture. And texture is not too difficult to bring out, especially with the three layered method, because literally all it is is high value retrieval and then using your hard charcoals to basically take care of your medium and your low values, as far as detail work is concerned. There. So But with certain poles and strikes of the monosur racer, you can bring out underlying form. If not underlying form, you can bring out detail on top of that form. There's not too many things that you can't do. Like here, I'm just running a line, nice, nice, super, super thin quality on that implied line. Alright. So now I'm just gonna grab my brush very lightly. And you know what? Here is the trick. This is what I wanted to show you. This is a hard charcoal, okay? This is my detailed charcoal. And there's just looks like, I don't know, like, some nostrils or I don't know, some bits and pieces. Here. But now this I'm barely touching the paper right here, okay? Barely. We're talking pressure control, I hardly have any. But if you look at the reference photo, you see all that grittiness. It's almost texture. That's what it is. It's a type of texture on the fish. This is how we're going to convey that texture. Now, be careful. You can overdo it in this regard. But the cool thing about texture like this is that you can bring this texture up and over onto high values, medium values, and even low values, right? Because texture rests on top of the underlying form. So you barely have to use any pressure control. All you really have to do is just kind of focus on the overall underlying form as far as the direction that you apply it, but even then you really don't have to because it's resting on top of what's already there. Okay. All right. So that's looking pretty good. It's like that. Just this implied line is just not what I was hoping it would be. So, you know what? I think what I'm gonna do. Yeah, let's do it. This is with a hard charcoal, okay? I hardly ever run defined lines with hard charcoal. I did it once in the side fin, but I'm just gonna do it here. Why not? Remember, even constant pressure and pulling. Constant. I kind of cheated right there, but do as I say, not as I do. There you go. Awesome. And it looks it looks a little better. And then here for blending purposes, we're just pushing the charcoal into the paper, and we're getting a smoother look, a better gradation, and just an overall smoother aesthetic when it comes to the drawing. As a whole. But yeah, this one's been pretty fun. You know, to when it comes to drawings, I always prefer drawing animals that um it's hard to find drawing tutorials on, right? When I was a kid, I would run home back in the days of cable, we only had 40 channels to choose from. And I would jump over the couch and I'd turn the TV on, and I would immediately go to Channel 34 because that was the discovery channel. And that's where I got to watch, you know, shows about Africa and, you know, you know, the ocean and, you know, the Amazon rainforest and, you know, the Arctic and, you know, space, you know, all these really, really cool places that were so different, so different from what I knew as normal. And, and I don't know, I think that's kind of had an effect on the type of art that I like to make and the type of art that I like to help other people make, right? Exciting things, new things. Things that are different. I hope you enjoyed this one. Stay happy, stay healthy. And remember. Never stop drawing.