Table Of Content

How to draw animals with colored pencils Introduction: In this book with 15 drawing tutorials you can find a lot of tricks and tips that you can apply to your drawings. The most important is to keep practicing. Some artists draw area by area, some start from the darkest parts, some from the lightest ones. You have to find out what is the most appropriate for you. I'll try to keep it simple and helpful. Few advices that I want to give you that might be helpful: - Don't compare yourself with those who draw worse than you. This way you can be satisfied, although you still have a lot to improve. - The more detailed, the better drawing. - Patience. If you just throw your pencil saying "It's not for me!" of course you won't develop and improve. If you want success you have to work on drawing with patience. - Don't be jealous. This is the waste of time. Just try to make it better and be aware that artist you are jealous of, has much more practice than you - that's all. But also it is important to be able to see your mistakes. Be critical with yourself. We are going to draw a tiger close-up: To create a 3D effect with shading: To make a life like animal's body, playing with darker and lighter nuances: To draw on toned paper having fun starting with white pencil: To draw a close-up eyes: Table of Contents Tools: Using the grid method: Tiger head Horse head Cheetah Cub Snake Horse portrait Red Fox Running Horse Yawning Tiger Flying parrot Leopard Puppy portrait Tarantula spider Cat and aquarium Fish German shepherd Cat's face Epilogue: Author's Bio: Tools: I would recommend a two types of colored pencils: for the thinner parts and edges use the harder colored pencils such as Faber-Castell or Lyra and for creating a smooth texture (skin, larger areas) use a soft colored pencil such as Prismacolors. You can also use a colorless blender, but for blending the drawn areas you can use even a white colored pencil. You don't have to get all the existing nuances of colored pencils; learn to mix them up and create a color that you don't even have. Of course, it's easier if you can afford a bigger set of pencils. If you are not much experienced in drawing, you should use a graphite pencil for sketching, because unlike the colored pencils they can be easily erased. I suggest having a toned paper and blending stump on hand. This book is about drawing with colored pencils, but I would recommend a white ink gel pen, which is very useful for drawing over already drawn dark areas. We can achieve it with white colored pencil, but it's really difficult, so this pen is great. It costs about $2 and lasts long. Using the grid method: As a first you should draw a sketch and make it as proportional as possible. Take time and patience for drawing a main lines, because it is a base of your drawing. If it's difficult for you to get a proportional sketch, you can use a grid-method, which many artists use. Actually, always try to draw a main lines freehand and use the grid only if the things don't look good and proportional in your sketch. Some of the advanced artists use only two-three lines in their grid, because this is enough for the orientation. If you're using the grid-method, your sketching can go much faster, not to mention that there's much less erasing and the paper stays smooth and clear. In the next image you can see how it works, I've made one sample of my drawing. Draw a grid, with mechanical pencil using a ruler, over a reference photo and draw a grid on a blank paper. Draw a main lines of the squares of reference photo to the squares of your paper. Once you're finished with the sketch, erase the grid lines. * * * Tiger head Use the next image as a reference photo: Try to draw the main lines as proportionally as possible. If you still cannot do that freehand, try to use a grid-method, as we've already mentioned. Let's start with the eyes. Using black colored pencil, draw the black fur around the eyes and the pupils, but leave white color of paper for the reflections of light in the tiger's eyes. You can also draw the full pupils with black pencil and draw over that with white ink pen, but maybe you won't be sure about exact positions of the reflection. So it's the best if you don't draw those parts, but around them. Using grey colored pencil, draw the black areas affected by the light. Blend the edges between black and grey areas. You can do this with colorless blender, but carefully do that, because sometimes the color changes when we blend using this tool. You can use a simple blending stump to soften the edges. The next step is about creating the irises. With a green colored pencil draw outwards from pupils. Also leave white for the light reflection on the eyes. Draw around them, using dark green pencil. Using the same dark green pencil, draw the shadowed parts of the irises. Be sure to keep your pencil sharp to get nice clean areas. Finally, add a yellow color to the rest of the irises. Some tigers have an orange irises, so you can use this color, if you want. Try to create a gradually transitioning from green to yellow. Thoughtfully analyze my next image and you will notice that there's no clear edge visible between green and yellow, because I've mixed up these two colors. Keep untouched the areas for the reflection of light. With black colored pencil draw the nostrils and around the nose. Using dark pink pencil, draw the nose. Go over the highlighted parts with white colored pencil. Using black pencil, draw all the stripes and press hard. They don't have to be the same as the stripes in the reference photo. Draw the black hair outwards from stripes, as you can see in the red circle in the next image: