The Colored Pencil Layering Method I Wish I'd Known Years Ago

Most layering advice for colour pencils says start light, build up your layers slowly, from light to dark. And I followed that advice for years and my drawings came out smooth but totally flat. And then I discovered the key to realistic drawing and built a whole new way of layering around it. My drawings finally looked realistic and I started every drawing feeling confident instead of second guessing how to layer. So I'm going to share my exact layering method with you and give you a free tool that you can use to plan the colors in your own drawings before you even start with a single layer of shading. The first thing to know is that whether your drawing actually looks realistic comes down to one key thing and if you don't know this then it doesn't matter how perfect your layering technique is your drawing still won't look real. So let me show you two different spheres. This one has been colored a lot more carefully. You can see it's got beautiful colors and it's really, really smooth. And this one is a little bit sketchier. You can still see some of the pencil lines showing through. It hasn't been layered and blended as carefully as this one. Now, which sphere looks more 3D and round? It's actually this one that looks more realistic because it has those darker shadows. That makes this sphere look more round. because it has that darker shading whereas this sphere looks a bit flatter because it looks like it's just had a few colors shading over that circle and when i take the color away you can see it even more clearly you can see that the only real difference here is just how light and dark each one is and that's called value value is how light or dark your shading is and it's actually value that creates depth and makes something look 3D when we draw. Value is the key to making something look realistic. When we're learning how to layer colour pencil, most of us put all of our focus into trying to layer really smoothly, get that nice buttery blending, and try to avoid that graininess. And those things will definitely help to make a drawing look more polished, but it is value that makes a drawing look realistic. But here's the problem. The first problem, the classic way of layering from light to dark can actually make it harder to get those accurate values. And that is because of three big reasons. Let me show you the first problem with layering light to dark. So I'm gonna add a few different swatches of color. We've got this lovely light yellow. Next, let's add in a nice, richer, ready color. brown this yellow tone compared to the white it looks a lot darker than the white paper and then this brown tone this looks really dark when we're comparing it to the white of the paper and so this here is where most artists would stop with their shading they would go this dark and then stop because if we look at it compared to the white of the paper it does look a pretty dark color but it's only when you add an even darker color next to it so let's So let's add in now. This really dark brown. We can suddenly see that this color is so much darker than this one. And in fact, it's actually making this middle color look quite light in comparison. And this difference is amplified even more when we add a black as well, which is our darkest value that we can get. So now if we look at all of these colors and compare, this color that we originally thought was dark enough With these other two colors that we've added, can you see that now this color actually looks really light and this one looks even lighter because now we can see both ends of the value scale. We've got the white of the paper and we have got the black value. When we just have the white of the paper to compare our colors to, anything looks dark compared to white. It's only when you have your darkest value as well that you can compare how dark your colors truly are a little bit better. The second problem is one that my students run into all the time and so I'm going to now show you the classic way of layering from light to dark starting with the lightest color that I've got down here. Now let's move on to our second color. which is that mid-tone beautiful ready brown that we just used in the last example using these same colors when you build up your layers with color pencil you're applying pressure when adding the pencil and slowly what happens is the more layers that you add you are damaging the tooth of the paper you're flattening it out which is basically this texture that we see here you see that sort of That sort of graininess here. That is the texture within the paper. And with each layer that we're adding, we're pressing on that paper and flattening it out. So we're filling up all of the paper. So as we start to get to those darker colors, It's harder for them to stick to the paper. There's less room for them because we've already added so much color to the paper. So we can see underneath is what the true colors should be able to achieve. You know, these are really dark black and brown tones, but can you see with our shading here, the brown hasn't been able to stick to the paper as well. So it doesn't show up as dark. So with the classic way of layering from light to dark, When you add in all of those light layers first, First, you're saturating the paper with all of these light colors. So by the time you get to your darker tones, they don't show up as well. They may slide over the top of your layers of shading or look streaky. So when you need these colors to show up the most, because they are the most important thing for making a drawing realistic, they don't actually show up as well as they need to or get as dark as you need them to be. And that is the second problem. with going light to dark when layering and the third problem with layering light to dark is actually not really about the drawing itself but more how it can make us feel because imagine if you spend hours and hours working on that drawing layering up those light colors it can then feel so scary to take that dark pencil and go really dark It can feel like so much pressure because we've already put in so many hours into a drawing and we don't want to risk ruining it. My students feel like this all the time and I have felt this so many times in the past. It can feel like just going a bit darker, it's just going to tip it over the edge and ruin the drawing and it can feel like a risk that's not worth taking. And you may know that you need to go darker, but it can feel so scary. But not getting in those darks is exactly what's going to keep your drawings looking flat. And so I hope you can see how layering the normal way makes getting those dark values in really tricky. But how do you layer in a way where your drawings will look lifelike and you can get in those darker values? Well, it starts before you even pick up a pencil. Imagine this, we sit down to start a drawing, we look at our reference, But we're not quite sure what we're looking at. And we think, okay, what color is this? Is the frosting just white? Is this bit darker than that bit? Where are my darkest darks? And how do I even make this color? Whether a drawing ends up looking realistic is often decided before you even pick up a pencil because the planning is the most important part. If you know what colors you're making and where your darks are, the layering process becomes so much easier. But knowing where our lights and darks are or what a colour actually is can be really tricky and the colour can look different depending what other colour it's next to and our brain just loves to make assumptions. We think strawberries are red, the frosting is white and those shadows are brown. So I decided to make a tool for color pencil artists. I wanted something that could swatch any color, tell you exactly how to make it, and show you easily where your darks actually are. So the link to this tool is in the description. It's completely free for you to go and try it out yourself and use it whenever you're doing a color pencil drawing. So let's put the reference into the tool and plan out this strawberry cupcake together. First of all, I just want to swatch a few different colors from each area of this cupcake. So I've created a few groups and that's something you can do inside the tool, create your own groups. I'm going to swatch some colors for the strawberry. And I'm going to try and pick a light area. There we go. And straight away, we can see it's this nice, pale, slightly dulled-down pink. Okay, what about the more vibrant red? A more general red from the strawberry. Can you hear me? And also, let's see, where's the darkest area of the strawberry? Maybe between these seeds. You can see with the magnifier. It gives you a better idea of the true colour and you can see it's quite a deep red and so we can see within that strawberry we have got a pale pink, a vibrant red and a deep red and if you click on one of them It will tell you about the color so we can see that it's a dark red and this really helps when it comes to planning how dark are our values and what colors do we need to use because this is telling us that that color for the strawberry is a dark red it will tell you which value it is so it's here it says it's a value seven of nine which is definitely one of these shadow values it goes up to nine values so it's number seven so it's right here and it tells you whether it's vibrant or muted So this is quite vibrant. Vibrant. If it's more gray and dull, then it will look more like this. Whereas we can see this pale color for the strawberry, it's a red tone because pink is Technically a red, it's lighter, it's only a value three. So we can see within that strawberry, we have got a value three, and earlier we saw a value seven. So there's a variety of values here. Okay, so next up, I'm also going to swatch a couple of the leaves. Let's have a look. We've got this paler, more yellowy green. You always look to see what's the darkest part of each part of the drawing. So we've got a shadow here. Where's the shadows? So we've got a few different greens. Now, one thing that's really useful for us to do is if we're trying to figure out where our darks are, we can turn the reference to grayscale. With that button, it turns it to black and white. And when you get rid of the color, it's just so much easier to judge where your darks are because we can see here that our darks, we've got a lot of dark shadows in that blueberry here with the leaves. We've got even some shadows underneath the frosting, shadow underneath the cupcake. So when you're doing color pencil drawing, this tool could be useful to just turn your drawing to black and white, get rid of all that color and just see, okay, where are my darkest areas? And we will then know to try and get those values as dark as they need to be. Okay let's go back to color and now let's swatch a few for the blueberry. So we've got a lighter blue here, we've got a darker blue and then we can see it will go into the blueberry category. So if we look at this color we can see it's a blue and what's nice is it will tell you if it leans towards another color because it's very rare that a color is perfectly in the middle of the blue it might lean slightly green or slightly purple so it will tell you that it's it's leaning a little bit towards the green there again we can see this is a value five so it's a mid-tone it's right in the middle of our value scale and it's slightly muted and what that means is it's not super vibrant if it's slightly muted then it's a bit more dulled down and you can easily dull down a color by adding gray to it and it will tell you here how you can make it So it says, start with a mid blue, layering a little green to push it towards a greeny blue, a light touch of gray or orange will soften it. And that means like dull it down. And you can use orange because it's the opposite to the blue. If you want to dull down a color, you can add gray or the opposite to it on the color wheel. So that's why it's handy as well to have this color wheel, because if you want to dull down a color, you can easily see what color is opposite on that That color wheel one area that. It's really important to swatch out is the frosting because it looks white but is it actually? So let's swatch the lightest area that I can see in the frosting it's probably here and we can see this color it's not white at all it's actually a very light gray it's a value two and What's lovely is it shows us what would its vibrant color be, what bit of color has it got in it. And we can see this is a very bluey gray. So it's a cooler toned gray, which can be really helpful for us to know when we start layering our shading. What about a more darker area? Because there's some darker shadows within the frosting. Let's click this shadow here. We can see this is a much darker. gray it's actually more of a yellowy gray it's a warmer gray this time and it is a little bit darker on our value scale it's a value three so we're seeing this isn't just white look we've got even these golden tones in this frosting look at this this color is in that frosting that we thought was just white but actually it's got this gorgeous golden yellowy brown in there So this is really great just to spend a bit of time swatching colors before you dive into shading because quite often our brain will try to tell us that this is just white frosting, so we'll leave it white. But actually, we're seeing that there's so many different colors in here. Look at all of these different colors in this frosting. Let's swatch a few different areas of the sponge. So here's what we've got. We can see we've got a variety of different warm tones here. Some lovely brown, some vibrant tones. We've got really dark shadows as well. We can see that we're really needing to cover the full range of values in that sponge. We can see that this drawing needs lots of lights, mid-tones and dark values. And to make a drawing look realistic, You need to find these different values in your reference and understand where those darks are and where the mid-tones are, where your lights are. Now my favorite thing about this tool is that once you've swatched out all of your colors you can press this button and it creates a beautiful color pencil plan that we can keep next to us. As we do our drawings. So we have all of the swatched colors, like for the strawberry, the blueberry, all in the nice groups. It also shows you all of your colors. With their values underneath, which can be really useful if you just at a glance wanna see, okay, what value is this color meant to be? And you can compare it to a nice value scale as well as getting your reference in black and white so you can have it next to you. Also, it has a breakdown of all of the color recipes, all of the information about each color and the tips for creating them. And then one thing that I added was a worksheet at the end so that you can practice creating all of the different colors. So it has the color and then And then a box next to it where we can practice mixing the colors, testing out our pencils. Now that we understand all of the colors and where the darks are in our strawberry cupcake, let's draw it. And I'm going to walk you through now my entire exact layering method step by step, including how to stop your darks from looking muddy. Remember the first problem we talked about where I said that when you start with your light colors, the only thing you've got to judge them against is the white of the paper and that can make it hard to do dark shading and to know if you've gone dark enough. So in my layering process, I actually like to flip it. Instead of starting light, I start with the darks first. I'm actually going to start with a dark brown and I'm going to use it to shade in the darkest areas first. And we know where those dark areas are because we already discovered them when we put the reference into the tool earlier. So I'm going to map out those shadows first and it's almost like creating a little value study before any color goes on. Now, just because I'm using a dark pencil, that doesn't mean I'm pressing hard everywhere. I adjust my pencil pressure depending on how dark the value is. And when I'm doing this initial step of basically doing the darks first, I'm not shading everywhere. I'm only adding this brown pencil to the darkest values that we see in the reference. All of the other areas, I'm leaving white for now, just letting the whites of the paper show through. So we are just shading in the shadows and the darkest values for now using the heaviest pressure for the really really dark nearly jet black areas and then easing off the pressure using more like a medium pressure for those areas that are still shadows but not quite as dark as the darkest value. You can see that even when I'm working on this Frosting, I am not leaving it completely white. There's even a few areas within the white frosting that we need to add a little bit of that dark brown shading to. And it is really important that you don't add this dark brown everywhere and just add it to those darkest areas because that is how your shading can end up muddy. For any areas that are lighter values or those more vibrant mid-tones, don't add the brown to those areas yet. And here's the strawberry cupcake drawing with just the darks in. Now we've got the lightest value that we can have which is the white of the paper and we have got our darkest value in. So it makes it easier to judge all of our other colors and values in between because we've got two reference points to go off of instead of just basing it on the white of the paper. So now it's easier to judge where the other colors should be. You can see that even though we've only gotten some darks at the moment, this strawberry cupcake is already starting to take shape. We can already tell what it is and it's starting to have real depth. Because it is these dark values like we mentioned that gives a drawing depth and makes it look realistic. Now the next step is to start bringing in our colors, adding vibrant reds to the strawberry, adding those blues to the blueberry, And when you add those colors over the brown, you will see that it will mix together to create darker versions of those colors. So you can add the red onto the strawberry, and for the areas that we've added that brown on the strawberry, can you see that the red mixes in with that brown layer of shading to create a deeper red tone? And the same thing happens when you add the blue to that blueberry can you see that it looks a nice vibrant blue where we haven't got that brown but then when the blue layers in with that darker brown tone do you see how it turns into this deep blue it doesn't look brown anymore and so that's the key thing to remember just because you're adding the dark brown shading at the start that doesn't mean that it will just end up looking brown in those areas The dark brown works really nicely to just. Deepen colors. So you can create a deeper blue, a deeper red. And so it works really nicely with those colors. And that's why I often use a deeper brown instead of using black, which can turn more gray or muddy when you mix it with other colors. With the frosting we want to make sure that we are adding in those little bits of color that we saw when we swatched out the colors within the frosting. We saw little bits of blue, little bits of more yellowy tone. We saw gray in there. It's definitely not white. Just because we see something as white We saw when we swatched out those colors that we need to build up more color in this area. We can't just leave it white as it won't look 3D or realistic. So you can see I'm building up those colors and we don't have to press hard on the pencils at all. I'm keeping it very light handed, very light pressure. And even a little bit of color, just a subtle bit of shading makes all of the difference in making your drawing look realistic. And now even with the right values, your drawing can still look grainy or streaky if your layers aren't built up carefully. And that's what can stop it from looking polished and smooth. Like we saw with that first sphere, we want it to look smooth still. So let's talk about how to get your layers smooth. Here's what I do. When I am shading with my colored pencils, I like to use a circular motion when I'm building up my layers. Can you see that I am using a circular motion with my hand? And this can stop you having those streaky lines that show through when you're building up your layers. As I am building up these more colorful layers, I do tend to start with lighter pressure and then I gradually increase the pressure and press harder as I build up more layers. Using a circular motion when shading really helps to fill in all of the The tooth of the paper, all of those nooks and crannies, it fills in that graininess from all different angles, which really helps to give you a smoother look. And I do recommend keeping your pencils quite sharp so that your pencil can easily get into all of the nooks and crannies of the paper and fill in all of those white speckles that you can get. And that's what's giving you that grainy look when you can see the white speckles of the paper showing through. Also, it is completely normal for your first layers of colored pencil shading to look grainy or streaky. For me, when I'm doing my colored pencil drawings, they only get that smooth, buttery look once I blend out those layers of shading. When I blend, I often reach for a white colored pencil to blend out the lighter areas. A white pencil can be great for blending, Especially a waxy white, like a Prismacolor white pencil, Or the Caran d'Ache Luminance White. Wax-based color pencils tend to be a bit more creamier, and so they blend really nicely. But I don't use the white pencil to blend the dark areas. It would wash them out and make them look muddy. So instead, I would use more of a mid-tone pencil to blend those darker areas. And to blend, I'm still using that circular motion, but I am pressing harder. And this is called burnishing. Burnishing is a blending technique where you're using more pencil pressure, pressing harder on your pencil to actually blend all of those layers of colored pencil together. I hope you can see that starting with the darks first really helps you to get in those darker values and to create a drawing that truly does pop and have a load of depth, whilst also still being able to get that smooth, buttery shading. And the key to confident layering really is in the planning phase, in understanding your colors and where your values are in your reference. So for your next drawing, try planning it first with my color swatch tool. Remember, it is free, the link is in the description. I'd love for you to try it out and let me know in the comments how you got on with it. It's the kind of tool that would have been super helpful for me if I had it 10 years ago when I was starting to learn to use colored pencil. But the thing is, if you want to create beautiful, realistic color pencil drawings, then knowing what colors you've got to make is one part, but actually understanding how to make them is a whole different beast. So I recommend checking out this video next, where I go through the color pencil exercise that helped color click for me, so you will understand how to make the color that you need with your pencil set. And if it doesn't look quite right, you will know how to tweak it, what color to add in to make it the exact color that you need. Check out that video next.