Step-by-Step Portrait TUTORIAL with the MOST UNDERRATED Pencils

With the Derwent Drawing Pencils, less is definitely more. In this video, I'm going to show you how you can use this limited number of muted colors to improve and speed up your colored pencil portraits. I start every portrait sketch with a graphite line drawing and then a thin layer of color over the entire surface. Once I have some color on the paper to work with, I then jump in to mapping out my shadow shapes. When I look at my shadow shapes, these are things that I've already studied a little bit with my line drawing in graphite first, so I know where they are roughly, but I can adjust and change as needed. Here I'm using the Sanguine Colored Pencil to lay in all the values and I'm laying them in lighter than they're ultimately going to be because right now I just want to see where they are. Having these shadow shapes is going to give this face more form and I'm not worried about teeny tiny details right now, just the general shape. During this layer of colored pencil, I'm also blocking in the hair. I'm looking at very basic shapes and I'm simplifying what I see in the hair quite a bit. When you're only spending an hour or two on a colored pencil portrait sketch, you really need to be economical with your decision making and the hair is definitely a supporting character to the main character, which is the face. So I'm not spending nearly as much time in the hair and I'm picking and choosing strategically where I'm going to put the most effort. In the next stage of my drawing, I'm refining the features and here I'm using a slightly darker colored pencil. This is the Sepia Pencil to help me redraw the features, specifically focusing on the deepest, darkest values. Up until this point, I've used the wheat and the yellow ochre as that background layer, the Sanguine Colored Pencil in the shadow shapes, the green in the hair, and then I've got that darker sepia color that I'm refining the details with. Now that that is all in, it is time to get more detail oriented and to start layering. So I'm now opening up all the other color options and keep in mind there are not tons, there are just 24 colors, so sometimes I'm doing quite a bit of extensive mixing to get the color and intensity that I want and sometimes I am altering my plan a little bit because I don't have the exact color. I actually love that about this set. This is one of the reasons that less is more. You are able to create a more harmonious drawing with fewer pencils because they all are curated to work together and to build and make really harmonious color schemes. Let's take a look at all of those steps again with a completely different portrait. So here I'm taking my time with a 4H Graphite Pencil to lightly sketch in the proportions. I don't always use a pencil with my colored pencil sketches because sometimes some of the extra graphite can mix into the colored pencils that I'm using and create some gray tones that I don't want. But I did decide to do that here because I wanted the opportunity to tweak and change my sketch and it's a lot faster and easier to do that if I'm using pencil. To prevent those gray streaks too much, I pulled it off with a kneaded eraser first. Here I'm And this is a cooler color than I used in the first one. I really wanted to experiment with temperature and how that initial color played into the overall feel of the drawing. Now I'm laying in the shadow shapes with the brown ochre and this is not something that I am being super super careful and meticulous about. I want the edges to be relatively soft and I want the coverage to be relatively even but this is not something that I am obsessing over. I want to get those shadow shapes in as quickly as possible so I can start seeing the form of the entire face. And then I quickly scribble in the hair with the crag green. I want something that is going to contrast really significantly with the shadow shapes in the face and that is not going to be dominant or pulling focus. After the shadow shapes and the hair are mapped in, I'm coming in with the warm earth to start refining the features. I'm not necessarily outlining the features although it might look like that a little bit but I'm looking for those darkest values and I'm refining the proportions. Using a mid-value color to do this first allows this process to be a little bit more flexible and forgiving and when I'm more confident about where everything is, that's when I start pushing my values a little bit darker. I'm also coming in with this warmer orange color to bring in some warmth to the temperature in the cheeks, the nose and the lips and I'm paying really close attention to how the color changes as it moves across the face. Because I'm working with a limited color palette, I'm not worried about these colors being exact or perfect but I'm looking for the overall feel. I'm paying more attention to the value and the temperature than I am to the exact color matching. Isn't it amazing what you can do with a limited number of muted colors? I'm going to talk about how you can mix these colors together really strategically in the next portrait so stay tuned but if you like what you've seen so far, go ahead and hit the like button. If you want to try this next one with me, I am going to put the reference photo that I used here and I'm also going to mention each of the colors that I used. So for this piece, I started with a light graphite sketch. I'm paying really close attention to making sure that the features are all parallel with each other. So by that I mean that the eye line is parallel with the bottom of the nose is parallel with the lip line or that line between the top and bottom lip. That being said, this does not have to be perfect. This is a sketch. I'm not selling this portrait to a client and it doesn't need to look exact. So go for close then lighten up your portrait with a kneaded eraser and glaze over the entire thing with the yellow ochre. I selected the yellow ochre because it's really warm and it allows a lot of the warmth that's natural in the skin to come through. Now I'm marking in the shadow shapes and the shadow shapes are already blocked in lightly with my graphite pencil but now I'm filling them in with the mars orange. The sanguine color could also be a good choice for this. It's really up to you and which color you prefer. If you don't have Derwent drawing colored pencils, I have a link down in the notes below and you can snag a set. They come in 6, 12, and 24 packs and the reason I would recommend the 24 pack is for this color right here. This mars violet is so beautiful and it isn't in the 12 set. I love it for neutralizing my yellow colors and I'm using it here as a backdrop for the hair because I really want that beautiful purple color to shine through. Now I'm refining all of my features and I'm doing that with the sepia colored pencil. This sepia is not as dark as the darkest colored pencil in the set. It allows me, however, to start seeing the features a little bit more clearly and allowing some areas to stand out from the shadow shapes I marked in with the mars orange. For the block-in phases of this portrait, I wouldn't consider sharp pencils to be absolutely crucial. You're just scrubbing in color and getting a base to work off of but once you come in and start refining the features in this part right here, it's much more important. When I move into the lips, I do not have a color that is exact. In fact, I don't have a color that's very close at all so I am picking colors that are going to be close enough and that is the beauty of a limited palette. You get things to work in a way that you might not even think to get them to work if you have a full huge color palette available to you. For the lips, I'm using a lot of terracotta and ruby earth. These reds are a little bit closer to the violet side of the spectrum so they stand out from the orange that I'm using in the shadow shapes and then I decided to come in and add some of those warmer reds to the shadow shapes as well so there's a little bit more unity and that orange is going to be more of a transitionary color from the shadow shapes to the yellows that I use in the lighter areas of the face. At this point, it's much more of a layering game so I'm coming in and refining and layering as I go. For the shadows in the hair, these are going to be the very darkest colors that I use but I don't want the hair to steal focus from the eyes so I'm actually using the chocolate first to map in the shadow shapes and I'm doing it really loosely. If I do need to push the shadow shapes a little bit more, I can always come in with the ivory black but I want to hold off on that until I know exactly how dark I want it and for that reason, I'm building up the entire drawing together. There's definitely ivory black in the eye here where I've got more detail and I'm rendering the pupil and the eyelashes and right next to the eye, I'm coming in with some of the ivory black but I'm not using ivory black everywhere and I'm definitely not jumping to that color first. Another thing that you'll notice that I'm doing in the hair is I'm using a lot of vertical lines for the hair. If I was doing a fully rendered, really polished portrait, I might not do this approach but I am looking for something that is going to be quick and efficient and that is going to allow me to establish a visual hierarchy. I want the eyes to have the center stage so I don't want anything to steal focus from them. I am using this vertical line to quiet the hair a little bit but I'm going to let some curls and some unique character peek out so that this hair has a fun character but doesn't, like I said, steal focus. The Derwent Drawing Colored Pencils are the softest artist grade pencils that I have ever used. When I say soft, I'm talking about a higher wax content and a lower oil content so if you press the pencil really hard into the paper, rather than indenting the paper, it will crumble. A soft pencil is really good at laying down a lot of pigment at a time. It's also really good at soft transitions and blending but because a soft pencil lays down a lot of material at a time, you're going to fill up the tooth of your paper faster. The surface that I'm using here is the Stillman and Byrne Zeta Series Sketchbook. This paper is great for mixed media projects. It held up really well with colored pencil but it was a little bit of a slicker paper and I think that a hot press cotton paper or the light fast paper would be so great for these pencils because you want just a little bit more tooth to hold the colored pencil so you can build and build. These pencils would also perform super great with odorless mineral spirits if that is part of your process but that isn't something that I used on this particular portrait. Here I am drawing a line between the top lip and the bottom lip and I'm looking really closely at my photo reference when I do this. I notice a darker shape and a delineation between these two lips. However, I don't see a dark line on the top or the bottom so I am not outlining the lips. I'm looking really closely at my photo reference and I'm not inventing things that aren't there. I've been really interested in this quote lately from Leonardo da Vinci which reads, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and I've been trying to apply this to my work more and more. How can I keep it more simple? How can I pay attention to what is there and not invent things that don't belong or are unnecessary? One of the best places to keep things simple is the hair. You could draw every single hair and you would probably go bananas. I've done drawings like that before but another approach is to look at the shadow shapes, block them in so that the hair has shape and form as a whole. Then just draw a couple little flyaway hairs so that we know what that mass is made of. It gives us an essence of texture. Then finish it off with some glazes and some light layers. In my opinion, there are four phases of mastering color and working with specifically curated palettes of color like the Derwent drawing pencils is part of what I would consider phase four. If you're curious about phases one through three, be sure to check out this video next. Thanks so much for watching. See you next time!