The Key to Fine Detail in Colored Pencil Drawings

Being able to add fine details with coloured pencils is so important for creating really realistic drawings. I add a lot of fine details into my drawings and I think it's when I add these in that the whole drawing tends to come together. So I want to go through today the process that I use and the things I think about when I'm adding in fine details and generally the materials that I use. And I can demonstrate some of these methods and thought processes by drawing these mice. There are huge amounts of details in this drawing so let's have a look at how I created this. I'm going to start off by thinking about the main materials that I need and actually the first material that I need is a reference photo. Now in order to add in all of these fine details with colored pencils it's going to be so much easier. If I can see these fine details, so particularly where I want to draw realistically, imagining all of the different directions that are on fur or all of the little details included in a plant is very difficult to think of that just out of your own mind. I think it is so much easier to add in those details when working from a reference. But it needs to be the right kind of reference, so I need to make sure that I can see those fine details within the reference. It wouldn't work to try and work from something like this. Once I have my reference photo to work from, the other important material that I need is a pencil sharpener. Now I like using the Swordfish pencil sharpener, I specifically like that I can change the the blade when it gets blunt which will lead to sharper pencils but it does It doesn't need to be a really fancy pencil sharpener, as I say it needs to make a sharp point and I do find sharper blades work better with this. I also want to make sure that I have the right kind of paper because I am going to need to add these details in bit by bit gradually building them up. I need the kind of paper that can take all of these details and all of these layers of colour. So I like drawing on a smooth Bristol board paper. It's a really nice and thick paper that you can build up. It's not going to work as well on printer paper or sketch paper which is generally a much thinner paper. So let's have a these little mice now and I'll show you the process that I always use to add in these details and I actually don't start off by adding in any of the details at all I always start off by building up the underlying blocks of color so I'm starting off here by only focusing on the three mice and I'm not worrying about any of the fur texture here I literally want to kind of squint when When looking at the mice and draw the... smooth under colors for that fur. So I'm going to work from the lightest color towards the darkest color. So I'm starting off here with a very light gray and just really nice and lightly blocking in anywhere where I can see a little hint of this color. So I want to be looking for the lightest color I can see in each section of the mice. Once I'm happy with that first colour I can move on to the lightest colour I can see in the next section. So here you can see me adding in a light pink. Before then moving on to a light brown. So the most important thing in this whole first step is to be pressing really nice and lightly. I want to be able to add in all of those details and all of the richer colour over the top of here. So I do need to press lightly so I'll be able to add those over the top. Now in order to help me press lightly I am holding the pencil a bit further back than you might expect. Now, because these mice are quite small, I'm not holding. I'm holding it as far back as you may have seen me do previously because I do still want to have good control over where the pencil is going but I'm not holding it really close to the tip and that stops me from being able to press too hard. You'll also see that I'm working with a really nice and sharp pencil and that because I'm not adding in any texture at the moment I'm trying to make this as smooth as I can, so you'll notice that I'm working in circular motions to build this up and I'm just going to keep working from the lighter colors towards the darker colors putting in these underneath shades so I'm not worrying about any of that texture. Now as I'm working through this it's also worth mentioning another thing that I do when adding in details. So you'll see that The whole drawing is made up of these mice but also various kind of plants. I'm not going to worry about drawing anything right now except for the small mice So I think it is so much easier when adding in a really detailed subject to just work one section at a time rather than working on the drawing as a whole, which I think is going to be much harder. I only want to focus on these mice and then a bit later I will only focus on the plant section and then from there I can start working on the drawing as a whole, but really only at the very end. So for now I'm only working on the mice. So once I've built in all of those underlying colors and I have something down on the paper for these mice, what I then want to do is start adding in some of the texture and some of the details. So you can see here I'm using my nice and sharp pencil. To very lightly brush my pencil against the paper, so I want to add in all of the details that make up the fur, starting off with this grey pencil. So because I'm drawing fur here, I'm particularly looking at the direction of the fur and making flicks going in those directions, and I'm focusing on adding smaller flicks where the fur is shorter and longer flicks where the fur is longer. But it's not necessarily only the case. with fur texture. I would go through this in exactly the same way with any other details once I've got the main shapes marked in. I can then start adding in any detail, any texture that needs to be slightly refined over the top but as I say once I've got those underlying base colors marked in. So I can go over all of the mice with that first gray pencil and then I'm gradually once again going to work towards the darker colors, adding in these details one at a time. So here I'm adding in the fur texture with this light brown pencil before then moving on to this darker brown pencil and I'm just gradually Building up the colour and adding to it more and more. Now one thing I think is worth saying about adding in these smaller details is that it's not a case of needing to get everything absolutely perfect. I don't need to get every strand of fur in exactly the same place as the reference photo. That would be very difficult to replicate. What I do want to do is generally look at the shapes and the texture that's here and try and get it looking reasonably similar. Now another thing that I'm particularly thinking about is the amount of detail that I need to add in. I think it's worth remembering That there's no point in adding in absolutely tons of detail necessarily if you're not going to be able to see that detail at the end. So something that I talk about a lot is how the drawing looks from a normal viewing distance. So you'll see how small these mice are on this drawing based on how large my hand is. There's no point in adding tons and tons of really minute detail when when someone's looking at it from a normal distance they're not actually going to be able to see those details. So I do very much make sure that I am adding in details but I'm not adding in unnecessary details and I'm not Worrying about trying to make everything perfect. So once I've added in all of this fur texture and the mice are looking much better, what I then want to do before moving on to the next section is to tweak the mice and refine those shapes and colors a little bit better. So once I've built up all of the initial texture, And all of those little fine details, what I now want to do is start refining those colors and shapes a little bit further. So I have a good amount of, in this case, fur texture marked in, but I think it looks kind of a little bit scratchy and the mice look a bit pale. What I want to do is lightly go over the top of that, build up the color more, and that And that will help make these mice look more realistic. So adding some colour over the top of all of that fur texture doesn't remove the texture, what it does is kind of tones it down a little bit and makes it look softer. So I don't want to be having really harsh texture and really harsh details, that's not going to end up with a realistic drawing. So you can see that I'm going over the top of what I've got here in a very similar way way as to what I did for the base layers, working in circular motions and gradually bill. And quite quickly, that creates some much more realistic little mice with a good amount of detail that I can then. tweak further later but for a first pass I think these mice are looking very good and very detailed and they're going to look even more detailed when I'm not zoomed in as close. As I say these are very small little mice which you can kind of tell in relation to the size of my hand. Now before we go through the rest of the drawing if you want to go through these mice with me in a lot more detail I do have the full tutorial available on my website. In fact I have not only these little mice I've put loads of other tutorials covering a whole host of different subject matters. For every single one of these tutorials I include really in-depth instructions covering the full process for every drawing. I include my full material list including the exact colours that I'm using and I include sketch outlines, both light sketch outlines for if you want to print the sketch directly onto your drawing paper and heavier sketch outlines for So once I'm happy with the mice, I can move on to the next section. And once again, I want to go through this in the same way. So I want to start off. By adding in those base layers. So I want to be lightly building up the lightest colour I can see in each section. And just putting something down on just the tops of all of these plants. From there I can start marking in the next darkest colour. So that is a slightly darker green. And I am adding this to anywhere where I can see this kind of colour or darker. Now it's a little bit more complicated on this. barley because by adding in these darker areas I'm also kind of adding in the details. If I can get the main shapes marked in of all of this detail at the top here then adding in The further details will be so much easier because I have a good idea of what's going where. So it's very much a case of working through this one little section at a time just really looking at the shapes that are here. I think often when people are adding in details it's easy to make assumptions of what should be here but I always focus on drawing what I can actually see and if I do that I find that it does generally eventually create a nice and detailed realistic looking. So I can then keep working through, so working from those lighter colours towards the darker colours, I'm working with a darker green now, before then moving on to adding in the darkest colour I can see in this area, so this would be the black. And once I've got all of those base layers marked in, once again I can look at building up the detail. So this is slightly different this time because we're not adding the detail of fur texture. Here we're adding the detail of these plants so I can use the base layers that I've already marked in and the shapes that I've already marked in to really look at each of these little segments. I guess one at a time really focus on the shapes and colors that are here and I just want to try and Within reason follow it as closely as I can. Again I don't expect it to be perfectly the same as the reference photo but I do want to try and get it as accurate as I can. And just working through all of these little sections one at a time does gradually build up a very detailed looking drawing just by going through this same process with the mice and then the barley. Once I'm happy with all of those details I can then once again go over the top of it and slightly adjust the colors, smooth things out. So here I want to make it a little bit more of a yellow tone so I'm adding quite a bright yellow over the top. And just adding a little bit of this colour drastically changes the whole look of these plants. I can then do exactly the same process on the stems at the bottom, so because I've been working through this one area of detail at a time, at this point the stems need marking in and I'm only going to focus on that area. Once again working from the lighter colours towards the darker colours to build up those shapes. And then from here I have a really lovely and detailed drawing already. What I can now do is start working on the drawing as a whole. So at this point I'm adding in any final details, any colour adjustments that I think the drawing would benefit from. And generally brightening everything up and tweaking anything. So I can still go back in and add any final details with a nice and sharp pencil, but I am doing this as part of the drawing as a whole, rather than looking at one area at a time. And that is it. So that is the general process that I always use to add in fine details. Always working one small section at a time, working from a reference photo. And gradually building up that colour and texture Now don't forget if you want to go through this drawing with me in a lot more detail I do have the full tutorial available on my website and if you would like to go through my process for drawing fur in more detail check out this video here. Happy drawing guys and I'll see you in the next one.