Mirelle's Coloured Pencil Tutorial

[Please note:]
This layout works in IE, firefox and safari. Though for some strange reason, firefox and safari make the main text a couple of sizes bigger. But that's pretty much the only issue.

Oh, and I've heard of a bug with IE and not being able to view PNGs. If you're having this problem, let me know so I can fix things.

Contents

Basic techniques
Putting them to use:
Step one
Step two
Step three
Step four
Step five
Step six
Step seven

Shading white
Colouring eyes

Finishing up
Final notes
Links

So you want to learn how to colour your artwork using coloured pencils? Well you've come to the right place! I hope you can go from this page with a little more knowledge on coloured pencils than before.

Tools you will require:
Coloured pencils - I use prismacolor pencils, they're good for blending colours and creating smooth shading, but are fairly pricey. If you don't have them, I'm sure whatever you have will be fine.
Pencil (for sketching) - Anything lying around will do. Seriously.
Paper - I just use the paper out of my sketchbook. Just do not use printer paper. It's too smooth and pencils do not like blending on it.
Fine liners/inking pens - Not neccessarily a must have. They will be needed if you want clean lineart though. I use unipin fine liners, pretty cheap and they do the job.
Pencil sharpener - Keep your pencils sharp for better results.

Basic techniques

The basics is a good place to start, yes? Time to be introduced to some basic shading and colouring techniques!

Now this is an incredibly basic introduction to shading with coloured pencil.
It's colouring up and down, dark to light. Start by pressing harder with the pencil to get a darker shade, then gradually use lighter pressure as you move to the right. After doing this with one colour, you can add more and blend the colours by overlapping them. With this technique, practice makes perfect. :)

Then you can try with lots of colours!
This is good practice.

Strokes.
These are very important to know for colouring. I use them frequently. They're quite good for things such as hair and grass.

This one is slightly tricker to describe. It's basically colouring in little circular movements. Or scribbling, almost. As you can see, the colour is darker in the corner and progressively gets lighter. I find this technique is best used when multiple colours are used, and is extremely good for blending colours together. I use this technique a lot as well. It's a good one to know.

As you can see by this rough demonstration, this technique involves a circular like motion.
But this is only a rough example, you should do very small circles, or else the blending effect it's good for won't turn out very nice.

The scan here was terrible and the difference isn't as strong as in person, but the same technique mentioned above is great for blending one colour into another and creating another colour.

Putting the techniques to use

Now that I've shown you some basic techniques to use when colouring with coloured pencil, it's time to actually put them to use. In this section, I'll show you a walkthrough of a picture I have drawn from start to finish. Hopefully you'll learn something useful. ^^

Step one: Sketching

Every good picture starts off with a sketch. It doesn't have to be neat or tidy, just get your idea on paper. This is actually a secondary sketch. I wanted you to be able to actually see what was going on in the picture, so I did a copy of it.

Step two: inking

This step isn't always neccessary. If you don't want your picture to have lineart, you can skip this step. I'm not going to go into too much detail, after all this is a colouring tutorial, not lineart. Notice I didn't go over some lines (background, stripes, etc), this was because I didn't want these parts to have harsh, dark lines.

Step three: First colour

[Yellowed orange]

Finally the moment we've all been waiting for! The first layer of colour. Ok, ok, it's nothing spectacular. Especially because my scanner made it look even worse. But this layer is a must.

When I colour my pictures in pencil, I usually have just three different coloures. My darkest colour, middle colour, then the lightest.
In my way of colouring, start with the darkest colour and lightly shade in the areas you want to be darkest. It's important to do this lightly, otherwise your other colours won't blend well. Remember, you can always make something darker, but not lighter. In this step, I used a mix between the stroke and circle/scribble technique.

Step four: Second colour

[sunburst yellow]

What a difference one colour makes! Colouring in light strokes in the same direction as the orange, go over the dark colour and colour in little circles in the darker places to help blend the two colours together. As you can see, I haven't completely finished with the yellow. This is just to show you the difference the yellow makes when blended with the orange and the spots where the yellow hasn't been added yet.

Tada!
All done with the sunburst yellow. Just colour in strokes and small circles to blend. But I think it's still a bit rough, and we still have another colour to go. Onto the next step!

Step five: Third colour and more blending

So now all we have left is our third colour, the lightest colour. This will be used extensively for lightening up spots that maybe got a bit dark, and blending the other colours together. Yes, there will be a lot of blending involved in this step.

Blending? You say. Hang on, lemme just get my white pencil...
NO.
Don't touch that white pencil! Or colourless blender or whatever you're reaching for. When we have such vibrant colours, why dull them down with white? Because that's what will happen. It will make your bright colours go somewhat milky.

So what do you use to blend? Well, I find the best thing is just a lighter shade of the colours you were using.
For example, in the last step, I used sunburst yellow. I'm going to add and blend in canary yellow because it's a lighter shade and a similar colour. If I need to blend more or make it even lighter, I'll find a lighter yellow than canary yellow.

[Canary yellow]

This step was almost completely done using the small circle colouring technique, as it's the most effective way of blending colours. You can see how the lighter yellow has brightened every thing up, as well as making the colours even more vibrant while still blending them together.

Step 6: Touching up the shading

This step isn't that vital either. In fact, it should probably be named 'Mirelle being picky and a perfectionist'. I wasn't completely happy with the shadows and thought they needed to be a bit more dramatic, so I fiddled with it. More layers of colour.
This is another reason why I said not use printer paper. This style of colouring involves lots of layers of colouring, and since printer paper is thin, you risk going through the paper.
Trust me, I've done that quite a few times.

[Yellowed orange, sunburst yellow]

Again almost completely done in the circle colouring technique. I went over the shadow areas in the orange lightly and then blended it in with the sunburst yellow using the same technique.

And do you know what?
I think we've actually finished the yellowish part! See, that wasn't so hard.

Step seven: Keep going!

Just because the yellow part is done, doesn't mean it's finished. Got to keep going. As you can see, I've been working on the stripes:

[apple green, spring green, chartreuse]

They were coloured the same way as the rest of it. Starting with the darkest colour, working my way to the lightest, blending as I went.

Not much to say here. Finished the face mask thing, stripes, hair, hooves, shoyru plushie and the little heart. All in the same way as all the other steps.

shading white

I've heard it many times before;
But how do I shade white?!
It's so haaaaard!
I can't get it to look good!

Well, I'll admit it. I'm not great at shading white either. But I do have a couple of tips that might help you improve:

- You may not have realised, but there is no such thing as pure white. It's made of many colours, and that means not just grey or black. Instead of shading white with grey, try with a different colour. Common colours used to shade white are very pale blues and mauves, and not as often, pale yellows and sometimes pinks. The colour you choose really depends on your picture overall. Yellows should usually only be used if the lightsource is yellowish. Blues can be used in a more subdued lighting.

You're probably looking at me with an odd look by now. But trust me on this.
But Mirelle, when I look at shadows on white surfaces, they look grey. So why shouldn't I shade with grey?
I'm not saying you shouldn't, or can't. I've seen grey being used to shade white and look lovely and natural, I'm just suggesting other ways.
Also, have you taken a very close look at the shadows? Can you say they're just plain grey? I've been staring at a shadow on my white desk for about five minutes because of this part of my tutorial, and I have noticed hues of blue and green forming the grey.

I'm afraid my scanner did not like picking up the light colours, so this is the best example I could get, sorry guys. ):

As you can see, here are three different colours all used to shade white. Grey I think every one knows pretty well, blue is a soft alternative to grey and yellow brings warmth to the white.
And before you start yelling at me, I know I need to clean my scanner. Shush. xD

-When it comes to shading white, less is more. Remember, it's trickier to make something lighter than darker. Even though I still work darkest to lightest, I press very lightly then adjust the darkness later. And because white is...well..white, anything and everything well show up on it. Every mark and pencil line. So try and blend and shade as smoothly as possible as you go.

I blame the scanner for these awful pics. I'm sorry.
Anyway, you can see I chose to shade with blue. This picture is rather vibrant, too bright for grey. Grey would dull it down. There's no yellowish lightsource, and plus there's already a fair amount of yellow in the picture and it wouldn't balance out.
In the first part, you can just barely see, but the darkest blue was used. Just because we're shading white doesn't mean the technique isn't any different.

By the way, it isn't actually as bright a blue in real life. It looks far more natural. My scanner is just a pain in the butt that makes colours go strange.

And here the white is all finished.
Heh, the legs look the worst. Sorry 'bout that. xD

Eyes

Now I'm going to show you a ways to colour eyes that is so easy, a dog could probably do it. And they don't even have aposable thumbs! What's great about this technique, is that it's easy to apply to different styles and make your own. (:

1.Start with a sketch, you can outline it in pen if you wish. Get the shape of the eye and the iris.
2. Because I'm doing a blue eye, I chose my darkest shade of blue. Not black, not quite yet. I coloured the pupil and indicated where the glare would be.
3.Using the same colour as in step 2, shade from dark to light from the top of the iris until roughly half way, give or take. The further you shade the darker your eye will be. Colour in strokes and circular movements.

4.Continue the shading of the iris with your second colour, dark to light. Keep using strokes and circular motions to blend.
5.Use a lighter colour than step 4 and finish the shading. Same techniques.
6. Now we use some black. Go over the pupil in black, you may choose to leave some of it partly uncovered, revealing the colour underneath. Go over the very top part of the iris, darkening the shading. Colour in circular motions.
7.All that's left to do now is finish the rest of the eye. Colour the white, do any touch-ups, etc. And you're done! I told you it was easy. (:

Finishing up

Now lets get back to our lovely picture of a peophin. The foreground is finished, so all we need to do is give it a background. I wanted something that would go wth the theme, but not distract attention away from the peophin and shoyru plushie, as they are what the picture is all about. (;

So here's the top half of the background done. It was all coloured using circular movements. If you see the part in the basic techniques section on the circle/scribble colouring technique and the example using three colours, that's exactly the same as how this was coloured.

And here it is done. Note that the size and a bit of the quality has changed, this is only because this was going to be an entry for the Art Gallery. Sadly, it didn't make it in. Ah well, next time. (;

Final notes

2. Take care of your pencils. If you are going to use this tutorial, your pencils are going to have the spotlight. Try not to drop them too much, as this can damage the lead and cause them to break. There's nothing like having to sharpen a pencil 374895 times because it keeps breaking. If they came in a box or tin, try and keep them the pencils in them.

3. Keep your pencils sharp when colouring. Sometimes blunt pencils are good to use, but in this style of colouring used here, the pencils must be kept sharp or else the effect won't be as good.

4. Using this tutorial to improve your colouring is one thing, blatantly copying my lame style and artwork is completely another. Do the right thing, lets keep my art on my pages only. (;

Phew. Ok, I think I've rambled on enough for one lifetime. I hope you found something on this tutorial that was useful.

Happy Colouring! (:

[other cool stuff]

Here you can see some of the other art I've done in pencil. Just drag the thumbnails into your address bar to see the full image.

This tutorial has been reviewed! Check it out here:
neopets.com/~wild_dog_1

There are also other cool petpages listed there. Worth a look.

Links

Want to come back to this page later or show it to others? Well here's some handy dandy links for you.

Link back

<a href="http://www.neopets.com/~Magix41"><img src="http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/125/tutorialicon1na7.jpg" border="0" alt="Mir's Coloured Pencil Tutorial!"></a>	<a href="http://www.neopets.com/Magix41"><img src="http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/375/tutorialicon2ki2.jpg" border="0" alt="Mir's Coloured Pencil Tutorial!"></a>	<a href="http://www.neopets.com/Magix41"><img src="http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/2408/tutorialicon3aq6.jpg" border="0" alt="Mir's Coloured Pencil Tutorial!"></a>

Links to others

None yet. :(
If you want your tutorial here, drop me a neomail and I'll put your link up.