Here is the moment you have all been waiting for. Well, a couple of you have been waiting, the rest didn’t even know that a drawing was waiting for Christmas to be crossed off the calendar before the drawing could finally make its grand appearance online. Drum roll please! It’s baby Samuel!
Now that you have seen the picture most of you will probably tune out, but for those of you interested in understanding my process a little better then I have some notes for you below. Enjoy! And feel free to send any questions my way if you would like to know more.
For my drawings I use Prismacolor Colored Pencils
Colors Used (20 Total)
White – PC938
Light Peach – PC927
Deco Pink – PC1014
Pink Rose – PC1018
Peach Beige – PC1085
Beige Rose – PC1019
Clay Rose – PC1017
Crimson Red – PC924
Raspberry – PC1030
Non-Photo Blue – PC919
Cool Grey 30% – PC1061
Cool Grey 50% – 1063
Warm Grey 50% – PC1054
Light Umber – PC941
Dark Brown – PC946
Black Cherry – PC1078
Dark Umber – PC947
Warm Grey 90% – PC1058
Cool Grey 90% – PC1067
Black – PC935
Creating skin: I have always had a slight fear of drawing people because skin is a really tricky thing to recreate because it is far more challenging than just simply picking peach or brown and coloring the entire person. Samuel is only the second portrait of a person I have done, and I still have some more practice to do to get skin tones right, but I like to think I did a decent job here. So let me break it down for you:
I started with a base of White. This is always fun when using white paper because I ended up looking like an idiot trying to find the angle where the sunlight from my window reflects off the waxiness of the pencil so that I can actually tell where it has been put down and where it hasn’t. Next I put down a really light layer of Deco Pink (i.e. don’t press on the pencil too hard. This is just an undertone, nothing too prominent). Then I put down Light Peach, pressing harder on the pencil to create a strong base tone for the entire face.
Adding Shadows: I started with Peach Beige to add some variation to the skin, but eventually the main pencil I went with for shadows was Rosy Beige because the PB was a little too yellowish. RB still had a pink tint to it that went well with Samuel’s baby skin tone, though I also added a light layer of Dark Umber to darken the shadows where necessary. Do not press down hard with this pencil though! Once this is down I went back over it with RB to help blend the colors in. (Sidenote: I also had to add a very light layer of Crimson Red to parts of the ears because they are thin enough for light to pass through, which was then covered with RB to help blend and dull the red pigment).
Shirt: Even though Samuel is wearing a black shirt, it is still necessary to blend in greys to add variation in tone to give the shirt depth. The darkest shadows of the shirt were done in black, but I put down a layer of Cool Grey 90% in the areas that were lighter. Too add highlights to these CG90 areas I added Cool Grey 30% on top, pushing down pretty hard since I am making the choice to go from dark to light. And then White was used for the brightest highlights.
The stripes of the shirt are basically using the opposite technique, starting with a base of White and building shadows with CG30 and Cool Grey 50%.
Final Thoughts: If you want an explanation of how I did other areas, like the lips or hair or eyes, then feel free to add a question below. And next time I will be sure to take notes on my process so that I can explain things better for those interested. Or if you have any suggestions for me I’ll gladly take those too! Thanks!
Looks good!
Amazing!