Colored pencil shading techniques
If your aim is to create photorealistic colored pencil drawings, you need to master the very basic drawing concepts, which includes colored pencil shading. Whatever subject you draw in colored pencil, it’s important to control your pencil pressure to achieve realistic result.
Pencil pressure
For instance, when you press on your pencil very lightly, you won’t be able to achieve rich darks or create enough contrast in colored pencil drawing. At the same time if you’re heavy-handed, your drawing may become too muddy or overworked quickly. So it’s all about finding that perfect balance in colored pencil shading.
You do need to increase your pencil pressure in colored pencil drawing when:
- you try to blend some areas with light pencils shading over the dark layers
- you blend the areas around the highlights
- you want to build up contrast in progression
- or when you work on textured paper and have to do lots of filling of a paper’s tooth.
Colored pencil techniques: colored pencil shading in white and off-white colors
When you work on your colored pencil shading using heavy pencil pressure, the area becomes very waxy and so filled with the pigment that you can’t layer more color over it. That’s the desired outcome. However, if you feel like you want to add even more color to that area, spray it lightly with a fixative. Wait for it to dry and shade over it again.
I hope that this article helps you in your creative colored pencil drawing and you also find some new colored pencil drawing ideas. Controlling your pencil pressure shading with colored pencils is a must. So next time you draw, pay attention how you press on your colored pencils and observe what results you’re getting. If you’d like to learn more about colored pencil drawing, check out these art books or watch my free videos on YouTube. You may find your answers there. 🙂
Art supplies on Amazon
- Drawing pad, bristol vellum
- Kneaded eraser
- koh -i-noor drawing paper, colored pencil
- Tombow mono eraser
- Drawing fixative
- Sennelier fixative for charcoal and pencil has a super fine spray mist, matte, high-quality
- Gamvar varnish for oil paintings, satin
- Brush for varnishing oil paintings
- Color Wheel
- Canson Colorline drawing paper is available in many colors and various thickness. You might find better choices at art supply online retailers
- Molotow metallic marker, gold
- How to color like an artist, coloring book for children and adults
- The colored pencil manual, art instruction book
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