Step By Step Guide For a Realistic Drawing

Here's a new drawing I produced recently for a workshop, and in this video, I'll show you the steps I took to create it. Hello everyone, I'm J.D. Hilberry. Like all of my work, it starts off with a white piece of paper. When I do dark backgrounds on still lifes like this, I use masking techniques to keep the background from smearing into the subject. I begin by outlining the outside edges of my subject onto a piece of frisket like this. Then, I use an X-Acto knife to cut out the shape. If you want more detailed instructions on this step, check out the description for a link to a more in-depth video. The next step is to place this frisket onto my paper. This image just shows the cup mask, but the flowers and the lone petal masks are placed on the paper as well. You'll see the total mask more clearly as soon as I put in the background. The first step to creating the background is to sprinkle some charcoal powder on the paper. This image also shows where I've masked off the top and front edge of the shelf with painter's tape. It's kind of hard to see what is what here, so I'll superimpose the finished drawing over it so you can see the parts of the shelf that are masked. Here, I've started blending the charcoal background with a soft paper towel. I don't really want to make this too even everywhere, because in the next step I'll use those light and dark spots to help me create a natural looking stucco or stone texture. In this next step, you see me removing the mask from the top of the shelf. Also, I've darkened some of the darker areas of the background by adding more charcoal and lightened the lighter areas by wiping that charcoal away with a chamois and a foam blender. Plus, I began erasing a highlight on the top left edge of the lighter areas. Since the light is coming from the upper left, these little ridges would be facing the light, which would make them brighter. To complete the illusion of depth for this texture, I added a cast shadow on what appears to be these raised areas. Here, I started adding charcoal to the top of the shelf and then blended it to smooth it out. You can also see where I masked the lone petal, which is still covered by part of the tape. Now, the fun part of removing the mask. This always looks so cool because you can see the clean white edges of the subject. Before I do this step though, I always spray the drawing with a workable fixative to keep that background from smearing into the cup and flower when I start shading it. Next, I need to put in the details of the cup. I use the guidelines on the reference photo and take some measurements with a compass. These lines are very light on my drawing, so here's the reference photo superimposed on the drawing so you can see what I'm describing. In this photo, I'm measuring along the diagonal guideline to mark the width of the cup opening. Once these details of the cup are in place, I can begin shading it. I use harder charcoal pencils for the clean sharp edges and softer ones for the darker areas. For smooth textures and the lighter values, I use a foam blender. I continue to darken all the values. The darker I make this, the brighter those highlights will appear. And that's what's going to make this cup look shiny. At this point, I decided to put in the darker values of the cast shadow from the cup. This dark shadow value will help me gauge how dark to make the right side of the cup. And this is a rule that I almost always stick to. When rendering two adjacent values, do the darker one first. I continue to develop the cast shadows using soft charcoal pencils, a blending stump, and to get the soft, diffused edges of the shadow, I used a paintbrush. The flower is still masked here to keep that charcoal from smearing into it. When this is done, I spray it with fixative, remove the flower mask, and begin rendering the petals with graphite and small foam blenders. The darker inside part of the flower, which is called the pistil by the way, is rendered with charcoal. And the small white highlights in that area are produced using the indenting method. Next, I peel off the tape mask for the front of the shelf and begin rendering the same background texture I did previously. Beginning with the patterns of light and dark, and adding highlights and cast shadows to create the depth. At this stage, you can see the remaining mask of the lone petal. After removing that, I shade it with graphite and add charcoal for the cast shadow. The last step is to clean up the highlights with a kneaded eraser, pump up the cast shadows with more charcoal, and then spray it with a fixative. If you found this video helpful, please like it and subscribe. Till next time, keep drawing!