DRAWING REALISM WITH ONLY 3 COLORS *5 Colored Pencils*

when it comes to starting out with colored pencils a really common misconception is that you need lots of pencils a really big pencil set in order to create anything realistic so in today's video i'm going to ditch my large pencil set and create a piece of artwork with only three colors five pencils to see if it can be done hey everybody my name is kirsty and my aim is to help you improve your art skills so that you can create artwork that you are proud of and today we are just going to be using our red yellow and blue as well as black and white to create artwork and see if it can be done so let's get started i've only got the primaries available so the red yellow and blue which means that i need to use these to make all of the other secondary colors and different sort of values and shades of each color so i wanted to just start out by experimenting with the colors that i have got to see whether i can make these other colors that i need i started off by just trying to create orange first with yellow and red and i used the white and black to try and create lighter versions of orange and then darker shades of orange to see if i can easily create that sort of variation in value of each of the different hues that i was creating and i was really surprised at how easy it was to create all of the different colors that i needed now i'm going to move on to creating green so that is with yellow and blue i started off with a layer of the yellow and then added the blue on top and then kept sort of repeating those two layers until i was really happy with the color that i had which is a big tip that i have when you're trying to create your own colors is to do multiple layers and just keep layering until you get the color you need and then once again i added the white to make lighter green and then the black to create a darker green for the white instead of the polychromos white which i find is quite translucent i actually decided to use the karen dash white instead as it's a bit more creamy and opaque and finally the last secondary color that i needed to make was purple and that is done by mixing red and blue and i just alternate the layers and i do fairly even applications of each color when creating these secondaries adding the white i was able to get a really nice light purple and if i wanted more of a reddy purple i could add more red or if i wanted it to be more cool toned more of a bluey purple then i could have added in more layers of the blue so you really can create every different sort of hue and tint and shade that you need just by varying the amount of each color that you use i also just did a couple of other little tests just seeing the range of values i can get from the white and black and how i could mix them and lay them to get all of the different gray tones that i might need and a little tip that i have for you guys is if you add gray to your colors you can actually dull them down and desaturate them a bit so if your colors look a bit too vibrant adding some gray will really help to mute those colors or to mute a color you can use the colors complementary which is the color opposite it on the color wheel so the opposite of green on the color wheel is red so if you add a layer of red and then more of the yellow and blue then you can create a duller and often darker version of the color that you're trying to create if you add more of the complementary color like more red then it will become even more desaturated as well as the secondary colours another colour that i use a lot for my drawings is brown and obviously i don't have a brown available brown is kind of like a dark orange so i'm going to mix yellow and red with black to try and create a brown tone that could work for my drawings and makeshift brown you can start to see now that you really can create any color that you want from just a few basic colors and to make sure that you're making the most out of the colors you have i recommend downloading my free guide that i just created on picking and mixing the perfect colors this guide is all about showing you how you can make any color you want from just the basic colors that you'll all have available to you after reading the guide you will be able to look at a color in your reference and know exactly what colors you need to layer together in order to create it yourself i'll leave a link at the top of the description or in a card up above now that i've tested out the colors and sort of got an idea for how i can create each color that i might need i'm going to jump into trying to do a full drawing with only these five pencils and i wanted to pick something that would be very colorful that would allow me to really practice making lots of different colors so i found a reference of a ring that had different colored gemstones and i thought this would be a really great way to just have a real good challenge because obviously gemstones have a lot of highlights and shadows and different shades of the colors so it was a real challenge and i was really excited to do this because i've not really done anything like this before with just the primary colors so i really enjoyed it i started off by trying to create the gold color and i knew it was quite like a desaturated yellow so what i did was i mixed yellow and red to create more of a yellowy orange and then i darkened it up a bit with the black which sort of desaturated it desaturated it a bit and made it look a little bit more natural and then i just used the white to brighten up the highlights and then a bit more of the black for the shadows for the shadow that the ring is cast in i just used black and white and i'm using toned paper which i really love because i like the fact that white pencil shows up really well on it so i feel like it's really useful for getting that 3d effect to a drawing now i'm going through all of the little bits of metal in between the jewels and i'm just adding the little shadows with the black pencil first one tip that i have if you try this yourself is that when you do use black to darken up a color make sure that your last layer isn't just black otherwise it will look very unrealistic so if i add black to darken up a color i always make sure that i do a layer over the top of the black with the colours that i've used before moving on to the jewels i'm starting off with the red gemstone and i just did a base layer of the red first and then use the black to create all of the darker red values so get in all of the shadows and then use the white to create any lighter values so the highlights within the gemstones or any areas that just needed to go a bit lighter and that sort was my whole strategy for the whole of this drawing just sort of doing the base color for each area and then using the black to darken up the shadows and the white to brighten up the highlights normally i wouldn't do it this way if i had all of my colors available to me i try to avoid black where i can i use darker browns instead or any other color that's dark to darken up my base tone i tried to limit the amount of black i used but it still got the job done in this case and it still created a nice looking drawing moving on to the green gemstones now i started with a layer of the yellow and then yellow and blue make green so i added a layer of blue and i keep alternating them until all of the layers mesh together and gave me that green color that i wanted i was actually really pleasantly surprised when i was doing this drawing i really wasn't sure what to expect when i decided to do this challenge i thought it could easily end up a complete disaster but i was really happy with how this drawing turned out and it was a lot easier than i expected to create something that looked realistic where the colors were realistic with just these five pencils and i think it really goes to show that you don't need many pencils at all in fact you only need five of the most basic pencils to create pretty much any drawing that you want and of course it is a bit more challenging because you have to layer multiple colors to get simple colors like green or purple but it is still possible so definitely don't let your supplies limit you if you can't afford a massive set of pencils you really don't need it as this goes to show you can make great artwork with just some basic colors if you put your mind to it and you're willing to be patient and layer those different colors together until you get the colors that you need and in fact doing this challenge which i really recommend you guys trying out doing this challenge gives you a much bigger understanding of how colors work together and you get to understand colors more and understand the theory behind how they work together to get the different values and hues which will help you and make you a better artist which will help you with your future color pencil drawings when you do have more colors available it will become easier then to identify what type of colors you need i'm just working on the purple gemstone and i used the red and blue to create the base color for this and then i added a layer of white to sort of lighten it up and make it a bit more vibrant it was very dark and dull and then i added a bit of red in certain areas just to make it look a little more interesting and i'm doing the exact same thing with the other purple gemstone adding the white gives it a really nice sort of lilac lavender color and then i work in the black in between those highlights to create the shadows for the gemstone and then the last two gemstones that i've got to create like a ambery yellow color so i add a big base layer of yellow first and then some of the red especially in the shadowed areas i added a lot more of the red i didn't use a lot of the red for the highlighted areas because they tended to be more yellow anyway so i just let that yellow shine through but anywhere where i wanted it to be a bit more orangey i added the red and then i dulled it down made it a little less harsh and intense and vibrant i used the black to desaturate it a bit and darken up those values i even used the black within the white just to desaturate it gray is a great way to mute colors and make tones of different hues if you aren't too sure what i mean when i say hues and shades and tones and tints and all of those words then i do recommend checking out that guide because i go through all of this all of the color theory principles that you need to know for color pencil drawings i talk through all in the guide in a lot of detail so if you want to see how i was able to create a drawing like this was a with only those few colors then the guide will tell you everything you need to know be in so much more detail than this video it's a 20 page pdf which goes through everything but here you can see the finished drawing i was really happy with how this turned out let me know what you think and if you try this challenge yourself let me know how you get on with it but that is it for today's video remember to check out the free guide so you can learn how to create any color you want with just a few basic colors and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Kirsty Partridge Art

Views: 524,806

Keywords: colored pencil, colored pencil drawing, coloured pencil, colored pencils, how to draw, drawing with colored pencils, colored pencils for beginners, beginner drawing, drawing realism, how to draw with coloured pencils, colored pencil tutorial, colored pencil tips, colored pencil realism, drawing tips, how to draw tutorial, art tutorial, drawing challenge

Id: vu6Ean79zN4

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021