Learn How to Draw Portraits with Colored Pencils forthe Beginner
Jasmina Susak and John Davidson
Learn to Draw
Book Series
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Smashwords Edition
Mendon Cottage Books
JD- Biz Publishing
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Learn How to Draw Books for The Absolute Beginner
Table of Contents
Introduction:
Drawing with colored pencil is super easy ifyou use the right colors and have drawn a good sketch. Unlike thegraphite pencils, colored pencils cannot be easily erased, so wehave to draw carefully, particularly the darker areas. Always drawa parts with colored pencil pressing down lightly and if it looksgood, color over the same area pressing down hard. Buy good brandof colored pencils and smooth paper. If you don't have a lot of sayred pencils, you can get more nuances with only one pencil, bycontrolling how hard you press when you draw. In the image belowI've drawn with one red pencil three nuances. In the first exampleI pressed hard, in the second I pressed normally and in the thirdexample I pressed lightly. Even more nuances can be created thisway:
Blending:
With colored pencils is difficult to make asmooth drawing, even when you draw on the smoothest paper, so youcan use a colorless blender or, like me in these tutorials, whiteand/or gray colored pencils. Be careful when blending the blackareas, don't go over them with white pencil because will get someyellow nuance. For blending the parts colored with black pencilrather use light or dark grey pencils. In the image below I want toshow you how it looks with normal red pencil without blending(left) and after adding a layer over with white pencil (right). Youcan see that the right example is smoother than the leftexample:
Mixing thecolors:
Some areas in drawing has to be blurry, forexample: something that's farther away, in a water or something inmotion. These areas cannot have a sharp edges and here we have tomake the things blurry, drawing the colors into each other. In theimage below, I've shown you an example of such a drawing. As I drewwith green pencil, I gradually reduced the presing, and from otherside I drew with blue pencil draw it toward green also reducing thepressing of my hand. This way I achieved the blurry edge betweengreen and blue. See an image below and try the same with othercolors. Finally blend this all with colorless blender or with whitecolored pencil.
Pastelpowder for skin:
Drawing the skin with colored pencil is notgood because the traces of pencils are always visible. That's whyan artists use the pastel powder for skin. If you don't haveappropriate nuance you can always get it mixing the pastel colors.With knife make a powder and spread it over the paper with youfinger. It is good if you use a tissue for spreading and cottonswab for thinner areas:
Drawing theshadows:
For making the shadows under anything use thedarker nuance of the shadowed area. In my example below you can seethat I used the dark green for shadow on the light green. Try thesame with other colors and use the darker nuance of that or pressharder. Also don't be afraid to use a black colored pencil forshadows on the brown or gray areas. For getting even better resultuse the darker nuance than used for shadow, and draw a thin linedirectly under the thing:
Proportionality:
If you want to draw in realistic style, youshould make it proportionally. As a first, draw a main lines withHB graphite pencil and don't press hard because these lines have tobe erased during the process. To get the good, proportional sketch,I recommend you to use a grid, which almost every artist uses. Drawa grid over the reference photo and draw a grid on a paper. Drawthe same lines from squares of reference photo in the squares ofyour paper (see an example below):
Womanportrait - drawing tutorial:
Draw the main lines using grid:
Let's start with black parts. With blackcolored pencil draw the eyebrows, pupils, eyeliner, eyelashes,under the nose and inside the mouth. In the pupil leave white forshining of the eyes. The parts of the eyebrows that are on the edgeof the bone are shining brighter, that's why I drew it with darkgray pencil:
With dark blue colored pencil draw thecircles around the irises and under the eyelashes. the parts underthe eyelashes are always darker because they are in the shadow. Youcan even mix it up with black, as you can see in the nextpicture: