Layering

Guide to Coloring~ Layering Colors 

Why color a picture with just one color when you can use three or more colors and tools to create a great layer effect! Layering is a way to artistically combine different media on top of one another to create a mixed-media piece. Layering incorporates different tools like markers, pencils and pens into one single picture. One thing to keep in mind when layering is that it is all about experimenting, all brands of markers, pencils and pens are slightly different in their colors and quality, so this is where you would experiment what color best layers with the other (Couch 77). Only by experimenting can you determine what different layering combinations work and which you like.

Before starting to layer on your picture you should do some test experiments. Some things that work best when layering include gel pen on colored pencils, gel pen on markers or colored pencils on markers. Here are some examples from the book...

Here are some that I did. Both 1 and 2 are gel pens layered on markers and 3 and 4 are gel pens layered on colored pencils. For my colors, the gel pens worked best on the colored pencils but still have a nice and dark impact on the markers. It brings a tint and shade sort of layering on the markers.

One last thing to consider, "...is whether the entire piece will include layering or whether just a specific area will and are you going to use a combination of markers and colored pencils over the entire piece..." (Couch 79). You should always know exactly what colors you are going to use to layer and where because if you decide to layer some colors on the spot, some just simply will not look layered due to the colors not quite fitting together.

Step 1

Step 2

For my picture here I decided to use colored pencils on a marker. First you would use your lighter color (my marker) and color in the picture lightly. Next you shade with the darker color (for me this was my colored pencil). As you see the picture in step 2 got a bit more darker and you can see the layers.


Lastly you can add a third layer with a nice alternative or corresponding color. I did this with the use of a dark blue metallic gel pen. This gave the drawing a nice shiny layer.

Step 3 is the last and optional step.

Here is another example I did. I used the same tings as before. First a light marker and then a darker colored pencil. Lastly the optional step by adding some dots with a gel pen. The gel pen accents create highlights and more dimension to the picture (Couch 80). Gel pens or even a third layer are not required at all, but to give your drawing a more lively image you can add them in small parts where necessary to create the little layered illusion.

Do you think layering adds another dimension to a picture? Do you prefer any ways  to layer your colors or coloring tools?


Couch, Peg. New Guide to Coloring for Crafts, Adult Coloring Books, and Other Coloristas!: Tips, Tricks, and      Techniques for All Skill Levels! Fox Chapel Pub Co Inc, 2016.

Blending Techniques

Guide to Coloring ~ Dry & Wet Blending

Awhile back I did a post on how to blend colors in the most basic way. Today I'll be sharing some bit more stepped up ways to blend. As I got further into the chapter on blending, it talked about 4-5 more ways to blend your colors on a drawing or piece.

There are many techniques that help utilize your blending and allow it to appear smooth and neat! One type is called dry blending. Dry blending basically means what it says, it is where you do not use any wet or liquid forms to blend your colors instead you would use a tool or item that is different that what you used to color with (Couch 72). There can be many tools that can be used for dry blending, like paper towels or tissues and colorless blending pencils.

For my dry blending I decided to use a paper towel. "This technique is best used with colored pencils...it can produce smooth, even, clean-looking surface in your coloring and can often remove the visible pencil strokes that pencil blending sometimes leaves on..." (Couch 72).  Blunt blending is one of the most simplest techniques in the dry blending category. It turns your drawings into nice finished picture that turn out really clean and beautiful.           

  

First I drew a basic picture, if you
can't tell its the top of an umbrella.
Then you color in the picture staring
with the darker color on the outer side
and work your way down with lighter
colors. It can be messy!

Here is the final result as you can
see by comparing this to the first
picture the colors are much more
blended out and smoothed together.
You can not see many of the
marks from the coloring before!

The blunt blending was done within a minute, all you need to do is get a paper towel and rub all over the colors you want to blend one at a time on your picture. Make sure to apply some pressure for better results. In the end you get a very nice subtle effect.











In addition to dry blending, there is another way to blend called wet blending. Just as the name suggests, wet blending is done with some sort of liquid. Before beginning a good tip is to make sure you have a thick enough paper for wet blending because sometimes the liquid may bleed through (Couch 73). Wet blending tools include water, rubbing alcohol and colorless blending markers. If you are new and do not have many tools i always suggest going with the easiest tool available, like water, which I will be using.

When using water it is called Water blending. "Depending on the color medium you are using, something as simple as water and a stiff paintbrush may work best for wet blending...coloring tools such as crayons or wax-based colored pencils wont work with water" (Couch 73). When doing water blending, waxed colors are not the best ones to use, you should go with watercolor pencils and water-based markers or even pastels at times for best results.

First start by coloring your picture,
again use darker on the outer and
lighter on the inner. Does not have
to be nice coloring. Just start by
placing colors at a certain part.

Next you can use a Q-tip and dip
it into water or rubbing alcohol.
Then gently start blending your
colors by area. Increase pressure
and add more water if needed to
get the effect that you want. Repeat
this process to other areas of colors
you want to blend.

Here is the finished picture! I went
back and blended the center as well.
The colors all blended nicely and
mixed well. You can still see how
 it goes from darker to light but
 in a more toned and mixed way.

As you can see there are many more ways to blend your colors on your drawings. These two methods required some extra tools that can be easily found around your house. Simple blending where you just use two colors is really nice and easy, but these pick it up and show other unique blending styles. Even though they may take a bit more time, the outcome is worth it!

Do you think the two color transition blend is much nicer or do you think the wet and dry blending give a picture more depth?

Do you know any other ways to blend your colors?

Couch, Peg. New Guide to Coloring for Crafts, Adult Coloring Books, and Other Coloristas!: Tips, Tricks, and      Techniques for All Skill Levels! Fox Chapel Pub Co Inc, 2016.

Patterning

Guide to Coloring ~ Patterning

A great thing for beginners to make their drawings more intricate and advanced is simply by adding unique and even basic designs to your drawing. This task can seem daunting but in fact it is really quite simple. Patterning involves the use of different shapes and lines to add some nice details to areas of coloring design, all patterns no matter how complicated are made up of basic lines, dots and shapes (Couch 52). If you can draw a square, circle and curvy/wavy lines, you can pattern! Basically whatever shape you can think of can be turned into a pattern.

A pattern in the most basic form would just be a shape or design repeated over and over. It is how you put the pieces together and all the different variations you incorporate that allow unique simple patterns to become diverse advanced ones, all by using simple shapes and ideas. Some examples of basic patterns are...

Mandala templates are very good when working with patterning. "Mandalas in particular are great for patterning because you can repeat patterns in symmetrical areas easily and create a very cohesive, polished final piece without a ton of planning" (Couch 57).  Basically Mandalas are simple drawings like a bird or plant that have already started out with simple basic outlines of the thing being drawn but with plenty of blank space and this is where you would draw all your patterns to make the basic picture much more intricate. I had many examples of Mandala templates in my book, but of course you can always search some up and copy and sketch those down. For example here is mine...

As you can see the picture on the left, I started off with a flower and worked my way outwards by just adding more flower layers. This is the main base aka the Mandala template because it has so much blank spots left for me to add in more design and patterns.

On the picture on the right is where I added some basic curves, lines dots and some squiggles. As you can see the basic flower has become much more detailed and makes the drawing seem much more advanced.

Here is the final result. I am very satisfied with the outcome! I always lacked patience but patterning did not really take up as much time as I thought it would and the best part is that it is quite simple and anyone can do it! As always you can add color to bring the piece to life, but I wanted to focus more on the patterning part for today.

Have you ever tried any forms of patterning? Do you think basic patterns give a piece more attention or does it make it more sloppy? 

Couch, Peg. New Guide to Coloring for Crafts, Adult Coloring Books, and Other Coloristas!: Tips, Tricks, and      Techniques for All Skill Levels! Fox Chapel Pub Co Inc, 2016.

Blending

Guide to Coloring ~ Blending 

By getting further into my New Guide to Coloring book I have learned of another simple technique to make drawings a bit more creative and fancy looking. It is a simple technique called blending. Blending refers to two different things that have a lot of overlap: mixing colors together to create a new color and also seamlessly shifting from one color to another to create a gradient effect (Couch 68). Blending is an essential for more advanced coloring and creates more beautiful, smooth rainbows in your designs. 

Mixing colors is pretty straightforward you just mix two or more colors together to create a new colors. So I will explain more on the transitions and gradients and overall blending finishes. "To use blending to create gradients and transitions...begin working with a light and dark tool of the same color family...the light color will be your base color "(Couch 70). Blending works best with two similar colors from the same color group because then it really gives the effect of two colors colliding and mixing together. Colored pencils are best to use when starting out this technique, the colors have have chosen are a light and dark green. I will be trying something fairly simple by blending a leaf.

Base Step: First you start by coloring your 

drawing (start simple like my leaf) with 

your light color over the entire area you 

want to blend. 

Next Step: Once your satisfied with the base layer use your dark shade to color lightly from the middle of your base color toward one edge of the shape. As you move further away from the area of the base shade apply more pressure to your pencil.

Last Step: Once you have added your darker color go
back with your light base color and color over the entire
area you've previously colored with the darker shade.
Redo process if needed ti create a nice and even coat of your color,
blending from light to dark. 

Here is the final result, as you can see
the leaf is darker at the bottom and
slowly starts to lighten up causing the
gradient and transitioning effect. 

Do you think its simpler to just mix two colors or blend the colors with the transition method? 

Do you have any favorite techniques you use in your coloring's/drawings? 

Couch, Peg. New Guide to Coloring for Crafts, Adult Coloring Books, and Other Coloristas!: Tips, Tricks, and      Techniques for All Skill Levels! Fox Chapel Pub Co Inc, 2016.

Shading and Shadowing

Guide to Coloring ~ Shading and Shadowing

I have always enjoyed looking at others drawings and pieces of art. Many have unique and interesting pieces due to all the different techniques and the varieties of their style. I'm not the best creative person when it comes to coloring or drawing. I've always wanted to improve because art is very captivating. So this blog is where I'll share my tips and experiences for being better at drawing and coloring.

The more I read the book New Guide to Coloring by Peg Couch, I found that there are many easy tricks and tips to improve your drawings. One of the first things I am going to focus on is shading. It is something nice and simple. Shading is where you layer colors to darken an area to make an object appear three-dimensional, or in order to show that something is overlapping something else by adding a light source and shadows to your drawing (Couch 60). Shading gives the flat drawing a much more real 3-D perspective and it is a great and easy step to add to your coloring's to make it seem a bit more next level!

When shading you need to decide where to shade, by choosing to shade either inside or outside (known as underneath) your shape or drawing. You can even do a combination of both, which the drawing I have done happens to be. The key thing to remember is perspective. "Just be careful when combining the two that the dimensions make sense to the eye. If the light source is coming from the upper left of the shape, your shading would fall on the lower right of the shape. The same would be said for the shadow underneath or around the shape..." (Couoch 61). So always keep in mind that from whatever side the light is shining down on the object that your shading and shadowing match up, a good way to remember what side to shade is basically remember that the shading would fall on the opposite side of the light as the quote above had referred to.

The shading is a bit hard to see, but if you can tell the balls are both darker on the bottom left side. The ball on the left side shows the correct way of shading. It is the realistic shading- the shadow is cast opposite of the light source.
The ball on the right side is an example I drew of incorrect shading. It is non realistic- the light source does not match up with the shading and shadows.

As you can see the shading does give the flat shape more dimension. I am pleased at how it came out, but also can't wait to see other tips and techniques that will help me prove!

Do you agree that shading makes a drawing more realistic or do you think otherwise? Do you enjoy drawing in any specific way?

Couch, Peg. New Guide to Coloring for Crafts, Adult Coloring Books, and Other Coloristas!: Tips, Tricks, and      Techniques for All Skill Levels! Fox Chapel Pub Co Inc, 2016.

Learn Drawing Quickly: Texture With Color

Welcome to my second post! In this post I'm going off of what I have learned from my previous blog post. I've learned how to add texture to my drawings just by using a pencil. But adding in more than one color and making it look somewhat realistic is hard. I decided to use my last drawing; the clove of garlic to test out using texture with colored pencils.

This was my first attempt at using colored pencils to create texture and make the drawing look more realistic as the book says (Finamark 18). In Learn Drawing Quickly the author says, "By marking or smudging with color, you give the appearance of a more realistic object" (Finmark 18). Although it was my first try, it wasn't very bad for someone who hasn't done this kind of thing before.

What do you think? Is there anything I can improve on in making my drawing more realistic when I use color?

Extreme Sports Drawing - Formula One Powerboat

For my second attempt at drawing something out of my Extreme Sports Drawing book, I decided to draw a Formula One Powerboat. Power-boating is a lot like F1 car racing, which is what I drew in my last post. Powerboats can reach speeds up to 100 miles per hour in about four seconds. Doing this drawing was fun for me but also challenging. The powerboat had a lot more detail then the formula one car did.

 This picture is from after I had finished all the lines and sharpie'd it. The book's instructions on how to get to this point were a lot like the ones for the formula one car. The first step was, "Start with a stick figure frame of the powerboat, as shown." (AV2 12) This step is the authors way of trying to simplify the drawing as much as possible by making you draw simple shapes to start with. Step 5, "In this step, draw the hull on both side of the powerboat." (AV2 13) was the toughest step for me. This was a tough step because I had to precisely draw many lines within two small ovals while trying to keep a 3D look to the drawing.

The top picture the final product of my drawing and the bottom is what is supposed to look like. I do not think that this drawing is as good as my previous drawing. This was more tough for me then the last drawing because it was a lot more detailed. I also decided to color with crayons instead of colored pencils just to compare which one makes the drawing look better. I think that the crayons gave it a unique look. 

Even though this drawing was not as good as my last, I believe that I have still improved my drawing skills because I now have more experience with detailed drawings. What should I draw next? A Moto X Bike or a Rally Car? Do you think my drawing skills are improving? Should I color with crayons or colored pencils? Thank you for reading and please leave feedback. 

Kyler Jergenson - Extreme Sports Drawing

Hi, I am Kyler Jergenson and I am doing my quarter 2 IRP blog on Extreme Sports Drawing. This seemed very fit for me to do because I am really bad at drawing and I have loved extreme sports since the age of 6. Instead of being miserable during this entire quarter doing this project I thought that I could actually use this project as a time to get better at drawing.

The book that I have chosen to use for my project is "Learn to Draw: Extreme Sports" by AV2. The book begins by trying to simplify drawing for beginners like me. The book states, "Drawing is easier than you think. Look around you. The world is made of shapes and lines. By combining simple shapes and lines, anything can be drawn." (AV2 4) The first thing to draw in the book is a Formula One Race Car so I started with that. On the pages introducing the formula one car there are descriptions of the car, "An F1 car has wings on both its front and back ends." (AV2 6) These descriptions really helped me visualize what I needed to be drawing.

First, I started out simply with a stick figure frame of the car, as the book told me to do. "Start with a stick figure frame of the car. Use lines for the body and circles for the tires." (AV2 8)

Second, I filled in the details as the book told me to do. "Add details to the car, as shown." (AV2 9)

Lastly, I colored my drawing to look like the one displayed in the book. Shown below is my drawing (Top) and the final product shown in the book (Bottom)

So far, this book has simplified drawing for me very effectively and allowed me to draw something that looks somewhat like the example.

What do you guys think? Will I be able to improve my drawing skills with the help of this book? Is there anything that I should look to improve in my next drawing? What should I draw next, a Formula One Powerboat or a Moto X Bike? Thank you for reading and please leave feedback.