How To Draw Feathers with Colored Pencil

Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. If you're new around here, I'm Amy and I am here to help you along your coloured pencil creative journey. In today's video I want to share with you a few of my tips for drawing feathers, both that super fluffy kind and those ones which are slightly parted like what you can see on my little robin friend here. I also share with you my number one tip for creating a more natural feather effect, so make sure you watch until the end to see that in action. Let's get straight to it. I'm going to start off with the paper and pencils I used for this project as it's something you guys are always asking me. I always use Fabriano Artistico hot pressed 140lb, that's in weight, extra white watercolour paper. This is the paper which I find works best for me and paper is an extremely personal preference so use whatever paper you love to work on. I always use a mixture of coloured pencils in my pieces, mainly the Faber-Castell Polychromos and the Caran d'Ache Luminance. For this robin project I used a lot of the brown tones from the Polychromos along with a few brighter tones like Cadmium Orange and May Green. From the Luminance I mainly used the Cornelian and the Perylene Brown. I'm pretty sure that's how you pronounce that colour, if it's not then please correct me in the comments below. So that fluffy feather texture, let's begin there. I begin to render this in exactly the same way as I would any other drawing. I make sure my pencils are nice and sharp and I analyse the direction that the texture is going in. I then start to lay down very light, smooth, even layers of warm grey one, taking care not to press too hard and to work in the direction of the feathers. I use a shading motion with the pencil, going gently back and forth and keeping the strokes really loose and fluid to avoid any of those stop start lines. The aim here is to create a smooth layer with even tone. I have a whole video dedicated to the art of shading which I've linked as a card up above for you if you want to check that out. With that initial layer down I then start to build up some warmer tones. The fluffy texture I'm showing you here is the red or orange part of the robin's breast so after the warm grey one I added in some brown oak 10% from the Caran d'Ache Luminance and I applied this in exactly the same way as the previous layer. I then move on to my mid-tones and I opted for a cadmium orange polychromos colour and again I start that same soft shading motion as the previous layers. Instead of just one layer here though I add multiple layers of the cadmium orange to start to build in the darker areas of the feathers. The darker variations of tone you can see here are made by just layering over and over extremely lightly with that same coloured pencil. Once a few of those darker areas are built up I then go in with some terracotta, a darker more earthy orange and work some more on those darker tones. I'm still using exactly the same technique of shading back and forth. I then switch to the Cornelian Luminance pencil and again work into those shadows. The idea here is to work from your lightest to your darkest colours concentrating those darker colours specifically into those darker areas which you can see on your reference photo. If you're working on feathers of a different colour, say brown, then you would start with your lightest browns and work up to your darkest. For example, layer with a warm grey one to begin with then maybe use a raw umber followed by a beaster and nougat before going in with a burnt sienna and walnut brown. So you want to lay out from your lightest colours to your darkest colours. Every now and then I go in and blend out the colours using my favourite method, that Luminance white pencil and to learn how I use this method check out the video linked above for you guys. Once a little blending has occurred I then re-saturate the colours by going back in with those mid-tone oranges and I continue to use that shading motion. Once I'm happy with that colour then it's time to start building that soft feathery goodness. I start to build the texture by using my darkest orange, that being the Cornelian from the Luminance and I create small soft lines in the direction of the feathers. This is exactly the same technique as I use for fur, the only difference being with feathers is that I keep the pencil strokes extremely short and sharp. I also build in the very dark colours here so I use that perylene brown and I create the same short sharp strokes and slowly build in those darker tones. I create these strokes pretty much over the entire area and slowly but surely that feather texture builds. Every now and then I blend those darker strokes out with my mid-tones switching back to that shading motion. This helps to smooth out the lines and create a somewhat blurry look which creates the perfect feather texture. I continue the previous two steps until I've built in enough of those darker strokes in my darkest areas. I also add a little bit of walnut brown and a little bit of the Scarlet from the Luminance to help those darker colours along and create a really nice saturated colour. With these darker tones I always use that soft line technique to continue building that feather texture. As you can see this builds a super nice soft texture that you just want to sink your fingers into and it's ridiculously easy. Now let's move on to that slightly harder texture, those darker more parted feathers. These feathers start life in exactly the same way as the previous. I start with that base layer of the warm grey one using the pencil in a shading motion back and forth and once that base is down I then go in with my main colour which is a warm grey 5 in this case and I start to build up some of the darker tones. First of all by lightly shading and layering and then going in with the point of my pencil and really depicting those dark really defined feather parts. I start by identifying the shapes of those dark prominent areas and using the point of my pencil start to add light lines around the outside of the shape before going through and filling the inner of the shape with more soft subtle lines. I then add multiple layers to really darken certain areas keeping that same technique and motion with my pencil mapping in all of the super super dark areas. I continue to use that line method and gently blend from the darker areas into the lighter surrounding feathers and this creates a really subtle blend from one area to the other. I go over and create some more darker single lines in the lighter feathers and keep my lines quite far apart and work in a slightly different direction to convey the effect of overlapping feathers. The aim is to create a really dense fluffy look and just shifting the direction of one or two of your dark lines ever so slightly not by much just a little bit gives a really good overlapping feather effect. I add a little bit of toning into the lighter feathers with some Delft Blue and a little bit of the May Green and then continue to darken and add that texture with the Warm Grey 5. I switch from that shading motion to using that short fine line technique which I reserve for the darker colors and the final layers and I continue to add texture to those lighter feathers. To enhance that super soft downy look I crisscross some of my pencil strokes and I vary the pressure on my pencil so I create light soft strokes and darker crisp strokes and the difference in pressure helps to convey that texture more. I continue to add some more tones and colors mainly some Nougat for warmth and May Green to complement that orange red breast and I gently shade these over the top of the texture I just built and this helps to blend that texture out a little bit. So my number one tip that I can give you for creating this texture especially when creating those short fine lines is to work both in the direction of the feathers and back into the direction of your feathers. So say your feathers are coming from top to bottom you want to work your pencil from both top to bottom but you also want to work your pencil from bottom to top so you want to work back into your feathers and this creates a more natural look for the feathers and it adds a little bit of variation to your line. One of the final things I do to finish off this texture is add a layer of dark sepia to the dark parted shapes within the feathers and I work a little bit of the luminance white to bring out a few of the top fine feathers. For both of these parts keep your pencil super sharp and I start with a light pressure and I gradually build into a heavier pressure for those really dark and similarly those super light parts as well. That's pretty much it from me today this is just a really simple easy technique to creating those super soft fluffy feathers found on a cacophony of small birds and larger birds alike. If you enjoyed this tutorial and you want to create your own robin then I have this full tutorial available for my Patreon and website subscribers. If you fancy checking out either and following along with me I'll leave the links in the description below for you guys. If you like this tutorial then make sure you give it a big thumbs up by clicking that button below and if you're new around here and you haven't yet subscribed then go ahead click that sub button too. I post new videos every single Friday and I live stream on Sundays too which is always a hoot. Anyway thanks for watching guys and I will see you next week bye