7 DRAWING HACKS Pro Artists Use That Actually Work

in this video i'm going to go through seven drawing hacks that i definitely wish i knew sooner that you can apply to your drawings to make them not only better but also get them done faster hey everyone my name is kirsty and my aim is to help you improve your drawing skills so that you can make art that you are proud of let's get into the hacks the first hack is a trick that i always use to easily blend my charcoal and graphite drawings this basically requires just using one simple art supply that you most likely already have available which is a round paint brush or you can use a filbert brush if you want or a flat brush just any sort of soft paintbrush that you have you could even use a makeup brush and what you do with this is that when you've applied a layer of graphite or charcoal and done all of your shading you can go in with your paintbrush using circular motions and use it to actually blend out your shading and you'll end up with a really smooth result and it's a lot easier than blending with your fingers which can typically make the drawing quite messy this is great because it really keeps the drawing clean and allows you to really control the blending process and it's great for adding some subtle light values and light shading to the highlighted areas of a drawing without everything getting too dark you can really control your values when you use a brush to blend and it just allows you to soften out all of that shading and get rid of any really harsh pencil strokes that are showing through on your paper the next hack is a really cheap way that you can blend your colored pencils and this is using lots of different household products like hand sanitizer nail polish remover even things like baby oil and hair gel and what you need to do is once you've actually got your color pencil shading down on your paper lots of layers of color pencil you go in with one of these products on a cotton bud or a a paintbrush something like a filbert paintbrush and you actually take a little bit of the hand sanitizer or nail polish remover those are my favorites and blend your color pencil again in circular motions and it gives a really nice smooth look by fusing all of that color pencil pigment together and this is a great cheap way to blend out your color pencil drawings if you don't have a bottle of solvent which is what i would normally use to do this type of blending i'd use a type of solvent if you don't have that but you have one of these items already around the house you can use them to blend out your colored pencils but just bear in mind that these products aren't archival so you probably won't want to apply this technique to your final pieces of artwork that you want to sell but for practice and trying out this type of blending before you invest in a bottle of solvent like zested pencil blend or rubbing alcohol this is a great way to get a feel for this technique the next hack is a tip that i have if you have lots of tiny white hairs that you need to preserve in your colored pencil drawings so for this i use a tool and this is an indenting tool which you can get really cheaply of places like amazon or you could even get the same effect if you use an empty ballpoint pen that has no ink and basically what you do is you take this sort of stylus and you use it to indent where those white details are in your reference into the paper before you add any colored pencil to your work and this is really effective if you're drawing an animal with bits of white fur or a portrait where you've got white eyebrow hairs or white facial hair anything like that this is a really cheap and easy way to get in those tiny white details and the result is amazing it looks super detailed it looks like you've worked around and preserved all of these tiny details it looks like it was really hard to achieve getting this level of detail when really it's fairly easy if you just go in with this indenting tool and you push in all of these details into your paper before you add any color pencil and then when you add color pencil on top the pigment won't be able to get down into all of these little crevices that you pushed into the paper and will preserve those details and this trick isn't just handy for white details if you have already added a base layer of colored pencil you can go in with this tool and indent any details that you want to keep this color before you go in and add any other colored pencils or darken that color for example i use this for things like grass if i want to preserve a few light green blades of grass before adding more dark green pencil over the top and it's really effective for preserving those types of details so really play around and experiment with this tool and the different effects you can get this is definitely one of my favorite and must-have tools for my color pencil drawings and if you're starting out with color pencils and you're not quite sure what supplies you need to make really impressive color pencil drawings while still keeping on a budget then i recommend checking out my free guide the colored pencil supply guide which will go through everything that you need to get in order to start making amazing color pencil art i go through the color pencils that i use and how to pick the best brand and size pencil set for you and i also go through the different types of paper to consider when starting your color pencil drawings as well as all of my favorite must-have tools for my colored pencil drawings that i just couldn't live without i'll leave a link to that free guide at the top of the description and in a card up above but let's get on to the next drawing hack and this is another really quick and easy way that you can guarantee to get smooth shading with your pencil drawings and for this you'll just need a piece of cloth and what i like to use is the cloth that comes with a pair of glasses but you could use a bit of an old tea towel or a piece of an old t-shirt anything like that will work but the softer the cloth is the better and what you'll want to do is wrap it around your finger and then once you've added your layers of shading whether that's graphite or charcoal or even colored pencil to your paper take that cloth and go in circular motions with your fingertip and blend out all of your shading and this is kind of like blending with your fingertips but because you've got the cloth around your finger it not only gives you a smoother result but also it stops the oils from your fingers getting onto your paper which means that your paper stays cleaner it doesn't get dirty or oily or greasy and you don't end up with a patchy result so that is why i love using cloth and what's great about it is that it even works with color pencil which you don't typically find you don't normally blend color pencil with your fingers but i found that if i've done some layers of shading especially with oil pencils oil-based colored pencils just going in with a bit of cloth does a really good job at removing a lot of that graininess that you get with colored pencils and it just smooths everything out pushes some of that pigment into the little white dots and dips and crevices of the paper and just gives a really nice soft result the next hack is something that i like to do to really prevent smudging especially with my charcoal works or pastel drawings or even just graphite drawings and these types drawings can get really messy and a lot of pencil can build up on the side of your hand so what i like to do is actually either try to keep my hand elevated off the paper so that it doesn't come in direct contact with the drawing especially if i'm at a sort of final stage with the drawing and there's a lot of shading down or what's really good to do and will keep your drawings really clean is to actually put a piece of tracing paper or even you know if you've got baking paper around the house something like that under your wrist something that's preferably see-through that you can see your drawing a little bit underneath and this will just keep the sides of your hand really clean it will prevent you smudging and messing up any of your shading and will keep your drawing clean as well the next hack is a simple change that you can make to make your colored pencils last longer because we all know how expensive colored pencils can get especially when you have to keep replacing them and buying new ones so the longer we can make them last the better and the best way to make our pencils last longer is to avoid having to sharpen them as much because when you sharpen your pencils you actually eat away a lot of that pencil and you waste a lot of the pencil by having to sharpen so much so what you can do when you're actually applying your shading to your paper is every few seconds just rotate your pencil and i know that sounds really simple but you'll be surprised what a massive difference this makes to the longevity of your pencils because when you're rotating your pencils it actually keeps them sharper for longer because you keep refining that point and keep it sharp which means that you don't have to go and sharpen your pencils as much which means that they will last a lot longer than if you just shade on one side until it goes blunt if you're always rotating you're always renewing the size the pencils and keeping that point nice and sharp moving on to the next hack this one is really useful if you either don't have a light box or you just want a really easy cheap way to accurately transfer your reference onto your drawing paper or transfer and trace an existing sketch that you have created onto your drawing paper and so typically our tissue is a light box but if you don't have one you can always just use a window which is a technique that i still use all the time where you just put your reference up to the window and tape it down and then tape your drawing paper on top and the light from the window will shine through both sheets of paper allowing you to easily see your reference image or your sketch underneath your drawing paper and then you can go in with a hb pencil and just create that sketch really easily and quickly onto your drawing paper and you'll be guaranteed a really accurate sketch every time i love using these hacks when i do my drawings and i hope that you love using them too let me know in the comments section which one you are most excited to give it go and remember to check out my free color pencil supply guide so that if you're new to color pencils you can find out everything you need to get started with this medium even if you're on a budget and for those of you that have been drawing with color pencils for a while you can use this guide to learn some cool tricks and other supplies that will just take your coloured pencil drawings to that next level check that guide out and i'll see you in the next video bye everybody

Channel: Kirsty Partridge Art

Views: 544,259

Rating: 4.9300632 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: lHT9ma0Guls

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021