Drawing and shading a cat eye | Colored pencil | Leontine van vliet

Hi guys! In today's video I am going to show you my process when I draw a cat eye. And this is a commission I was working on. It's now finished and I will show you the end result at the end of the video. But yeah, in this video I still needed to finish one eye of this cat and there's also another cat on the right which needed to be finished as well. This was actually a pretty fun commission and it was also a big challenge for me because I don't do realistic cats with colored pencils a lot, so this was really a fun commission for me. And I'm using Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils on Canson 1557 paper, which I always use for my pet portraits. So first I'm sketching in the pupil with a medium cold gray and it's really important that the pupil is in place. And then I'm taking a black and I just go over and fill in the whole pupil. But I'm drawing around the highlights though, so I'm leaving open a little space in the middle and that's where the highlight will be. I haven't done a tutorial like this in a long time on my channel, so I hope you like it. And I hope you like my drawings with colored pencils as well, because now I mostly do pastel drawings, because I love that myself. But yeah, let me know what you think. Also, if you want to see more tutorials like this, I have more and longer ones available on my Patreon. So you can look that up on patreon.com slash Leontine van Vliet. There's a link in the description as well. So when the pupil's there, I take a light beige and I fill in the whole eye. And that is basically the base layer. And then I take a green and I go over the light beige very, very lightly. There's a little bit of green in these eyes, but not a lot, so I keep that very light. And then I start using grays to get some more depth in there. And I'm starting out with a very light cold gray. And for these base layers, I use quite light pressure. Now I'm taking a darker cold gray and I'm going over the area where I just put in the light gray. And I'm building up those colors in very light layers. When you push too hard right away, the paper will get saturated too quickly. And then you won't be able to add more colors on top. So for the first layers, I'm quite careful with how hard I push. And I'm making sure there's enough shadow beneath the top eyelid. And now that the base layers are in, I am starting to burnish the colors into the paper. And I do that with a white Caran d'Ache luminance color pencil. And I like to use that instead of the Faber-Castell colored pencil, because the luminance are wax based. So that means the pencils are a little bit softer and you will get a smoother finish by burnishing with the white Caran d'Ache. And after burnishing, the colors often get a bit more flat and dull. So I go over with my colors again and re-establish the saturation. And I'm also using some brown around the pupil. So now it's time to add the final small details. And I'm also adding in some highlights with my Tombow Mono Zero eraser, which you can cut to a very small, sharp tip. So with that, you can erase very, very sharp lines. So for these small details, it's very important that you keep your pencil very sharp. And I really like the polychromos for that, because they are very easy to sharpen. Now I'm adding some more shadow beneath the top eyelid. And I can also add in some very small highlights with a white Gelly Roll pen by Sakura. So when I'm doing my colored pencil works, I'm trying to use as many colors as possible, because I really like a lot of color in my work. So it may not seem like it, but I used a lot of colors in this drawing. And now I'm also adding in some whiskers with the white Gelly Roll pen again. And now I am doing the final details, adding some extra veins here and there in the eye. I'd love to know what you think of these kind of videos. Do you like the long tutorials better, or the quick time lapses with music? Which are basically only meant for entertainment, I guess. And these videos, these longer ones, are a bit more educational. So let me know what you like better. And then the eye was basically finished. I really hope you like this video. Let me know what you think of it. If you liked it, don't forget to leave a like and a comment. And also don't forget to check out my Patreon if you want to learn more about my work. And then I want to thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye bye!