How To Layer Colored Pencils LIKE A PRO - Prismacolor Tutorial

today i want to cover how to layer with prismacolor it is a extremely important skill and something that i use in all of my color pencil drawings layering is where you gradually build up the color bit by bit in very light layers rather than just going in really hard with the pencil i draw with a realistic style and in order to achieve my drawings i have to do a lot of blending from one color into another there is a lot of gradients throughout my drawings and the only way i'm able to achieve this is through layering i will mention now that my method is very forgiving although it does mean that the drawings tend to not look good until the last 10 minutes now generally speaking i always follow the same process so i'm going to talk you through that process by drawing this hair before we get into the video if you would like to draw this in real time with me it is available on my patreon as well as over 150 hours of other tutorials every drawing includes the reference photos sketch outlines and swatches of all of the colors i'll be using and i include in-depth instructions all right let's start our drawing now the first thing i do is always put down some base layers this is where i'm just trying to put some sort of color down on the paper it can often feel a little bit intimidating when you start so it helps to just do something i'm working from a reference photo here so i can use that to work out what the lightest color should be and it might be that the lightest color in one area isn't the same as in another area so for example on the top two thirds of this pair it's a different color to the bottom section of the pear what i particularly want to focus on is putting down a smooth and even layer to do this i'm working in little circular motions and i'm pressing very lightly i also making sure that i have a nice sharp pencil throughout all of this i want to keep my pencil sharp now there are a couple of areas of this pair that i am avoiding two main spots on the right side and two spots on the left side this is just where the light is hitting the pair these kind of are actually my lightest areas but because they are so light they're basically white i'm ignoring those for now as i mentioned the top section is different color to the bottom section so as i get to where these two areas meet i do want to slightly fade out with this first color and then i can go over the top of those very light areas with this green that i'm using for the bottom section and it's just going to kind of blend these two colors together i'm not worrying too much right now about making this perfect i am still literally just trying to get some color down on the paper so because the bottom half of this pair is green i'm starting this with a very light green and once again i want to do this in exactly the same way trying to make this as smooth as possible so from here i want to focus on starting to build up the colors so still with the same very light green i also want to be looking at my reference and seeing if i can see this color anywhere else and i can just put that lightly over the top of this more yellowish color at the top from here i want to gradually start working my way down through the colours so i've started at the lightest i want to gradually work my way to the darkest so what i'm doing is focusing on one particular section of the pear so i'm particularly focusing right now on the bottom green of and i want to be looking for the next darkest color so that would be a kind of mid green and i basically just want to put this anywhere where i can see this color so to start with my layering of my colors is really quite basic i would describe it initially as relatively rough i'm just trying to get these most obvious colors down i kind of look at it as building a template so with this mid green i'm focusing on the bottom left hand side because that is a little bit darker and then from here i can also look around the rest of the pair and see if there's anywhere else where i can see this green so once again i'm putting a little bit of it around the edges and then i can shift my attention back up to the top of the pair and again in this section i'm looking for the next darkest color which actually here i would say is a light brown so towards the top of the pear it's kind of a brownish red color and around the bottom as i say is a green so i've selected this quite light brown and i just want to be lightly marking in anywhere where i can see this color in the top i am varying my pressure a little bit here going over some areas slightly more than others just because this top section is quite patchy throughout all of the pair it does have lots of little spots on it i don't actually want to worry about those small spots right now that's something that i want to add in at the very end i'm particularly focusing on getting the general colors of the pair right right now so from here i am still looking for my next darkest color i also want to be thinking about if there's any prominent colors that i think are missing so as i mentioned this top section is red and it's not looking very red at the moment so i want to start adding in lightly over the top of all of these other colors quite a bright red and again because it is a little bit patchy up here i am just trying to follow the shapes in the reference and try and recreate those shapes on my pair i can't stress enough how at the moment i'm not trying to make this all perfect i'm just trying to get something down on the paper and then i can always adjust it if i need to later the most important thing that i'm doing right now is doing all of this very lightly i don't want to be adding any color harder until i'm absolutely confident i've got everything in the right place from here i can shift my attention back to the bottom section and i'm looking for a slightly darker green now that i can go over the top of the darker section on the left and i'd say it's around this sort of time that i start looking at drawing more as a whole rather than particularly looking at each section so i'd say the drawing as a whole the next darkest thing i need to do is add some more brown this is actually the same brown that i used earlier i'm just going to add in a little bit more of it so i was pressing extremely lightly earlier and that was making a very light brown i'm not by any stretch pressing hard now i'm just going over some of the areas a few more times to build up a slightly deeper brown i'm still focusing on building up these patches towards the top section and i can also add it over the top of the greens that i've been building up around the bottom it's not making these greens stop looking green is making them more of a darker brownish green so i've quite quickly managed to build up a lot of the main colors in the pair but i do still want to keep building upon this at this point i want to start looking for some of the darker colors and actually i'm going to go in with this very deep brown which is the darkest color i will be using in this pair but right now i am still using it very lightly the only area that i'm pressing a bit harder on is the shadow around the bottom of the pair just because i'm absolutely sure in this area that i'm not going to need to add any more colors here it is the darkest area of my pear so now at this point i've got everything lightly marked out it is looking like a pear but it does look very washed out it all looks very faint so what i want to do now is start working my way back down through those same colors and just beginning to build up the color a bit more pressing a tiny bit harder and it's going to start building up the color more so it looks more vibrant so i'm going to start off with the very darkest green and gradually work my way back down through to the lightest screen and as i say it's far easier to see where these all need to be now because i've essentially made myself a template as i get to my lightest screen i am pressing pretty hard now i still wouldn't describe it as me pressing full force but i am trying to really brighten everything up blend all of these colors together and i want to be left being able to see a lot less of the white paper coming through the pencil now i am still going to be able to build up more color on top of this if i need to but i'm just trying to make it look a bit more like a solid block of color i can also put this light green over any other areas of the pear where i can see this color and again this is a lot of the same areas that i put it earlier i'm just going over it a bit firmer so for example i've used some red and some brown in the top section but actually i'm wanting to add in a slightly different tone of this i'm going to add in some sienna brown i particularly want the top section to still look red but more like a mellow kind of red so i can lightly add that over the top and then i can keep working through the same colors so back through that lighter brown i'm going to add in some more of the bright red and just keep working my way down now again if i get to a certain point for example around here and i think actually i want to add in some more darker values i won't stop myself from going back to the dark colors if i need to but as a general rule i work my way from the lightest to the darkest and back to the lightest colors so again once i work my way through these colors i want to go back to that very lightest color this kind of yellowish brown color and i'm just going to go over the top of all of the areas i did at the very beginning but now just like i did with that light green i'm pressing much firmer which not only removes the white paper and you can't see that through as clearly but it blends together all the colors underneath so now one of the last things i do when i'm layering and building up colors is i want to take a step back from my drawing and just have one last look and see if there's any other colors that i feel are missing so for example around the edge of the red section in my reference photo it has much more of a bright orange tone and i don't have any of that at the moment so i can lightly add some of this color over the top and it just adjusts the color underneath so i basically want to use layering to adjust the colors until i get to the kind of values that i want and once i've added one color in it may make it more apparent that i need to add another color so for example now i want to add in a little bit more of this bright red and adding in that bright red has shown me that i need to add a bit more of this dark green just deepen down this bottom section so now i've built up all of the base layers of the pear i want to start thinking about adding in some of the dotty texture on the skin and it is literally just a case of adding dots over the top so looking at the color of these dots and they're not all the same colors some of them are darker than others around the bottom they're more of a green and building up these dots one color at a time and i only need to worry about the actual dots at this point because i've spent so long building up the base layers i'm happy with everything sort of the general color of the pear beneath once i've done that the last thing i need to do is build up the stem of the pear so i am once again starting with the lightest colors and working towards the darkest but because the stem is so much darker than the actual pear my lightest color on the stem is actually quite a deep color i'm just going to work through one color at a time in exactly the same way and then as i get towards the end once i work my way up to the darkest and back down it might be that there's some other colors that i can see are missing that i want to add in and i can just put that over the top and that is it so basically i started the lightest color work my way up to the darkest color and then gradually back down to the lightest color and then at that point i can see if there's any other colors that need adding or if anything needs adjusting now we get asked a lot what the difference is between layering and blending and they're kind of the same thing blending is what you get from layering now if you would like to learn more about blending check out my video here and until the next time happy drawing guys i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Gemma Chambers Art

Views: 263,545

Keywords: how to layer colored pencils, layering prismacolor pencils, prismacolor tutorial for beginners, how to draw a realistic pear, drawing realism with colored pencils, how to draw fruits, colour pencil still life drawing, adult coloring tutorials, gemma chambers art

Id: lZ3fGBOWMhk

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 13 2022