This Simple Trick TRANSFORMS Colored Pencil Detail

Using a knife with your colored pencils can completely change the realism of your drawings. If you are looking to take your fur, hair, whiskers, skin or basically any part of your colored pencil drawing to that next level, then you have to try this simple trick. It will transform any colored pencil drawing into a super detailed piece of art. Now for me to show you how magical this knife can really be, we first need to put down some colored pencil shading onto our paper. And there are actually three steps that you need to follow when doing your shading to make sure that this technique works. If you miss any one of these steps, then this trick might not work. Okay, first things first, we need to talk about paper because there's so many different types of paper out there. And I found that this knife trick does work better on the Strathmore Bristol smooth paper, but basically any smooth paper will do. Now, step two is to think about your pencils. With this technique, I have found that any pencils do work, but I've definitely seen that wax-based pencils tend to work better. So that's brands like the Prismacolor, Premier Color Pencils or Caran d'Ache Luminance. This technique does work well too with the Faber-Castell Polychromos, but I do find that it does tend to be a little bit more effective if you do use that waxier based pencil. But I recommend experimenting with the pencils that you do have first before you buy any different pencils for this technique. So once you've got your paper and your pencils, it's time to move on to step three, which is actually doing the shading. So what you want to start off doing is actually pick a light color that matches the sort of lightest color that you'll want in your drawing. So if you're drawing fur, you'll want to pick a light color that matches the lightest tone in that fur. You actually want to do a pretty decent coverage layer of this really light pencil. You don't need to press really hard on your pencil or anything, but you do want to have a decent amount of coverage. And then you go over the top with your mid-tone colors and your darker tones and basically just do all of your other shading on top of that, working from light to dark, even get in those really dark colors that you need for your shadows until you've got a nice, smooth, blended layer of color pencil. So now that we've built up our shading, let me show you how amazing this knife can really be. This is the tool that we're going to be using for this technique. This is just a crafting knife. You should be able to get this from a local art store or from a website like Amazon, and it shouldn't be too expensive. Now I'm going to dive in and show you this technique and how it works, but I first want to let you know that I've got some cheat sheets that you can download completely free that basically sums up all this information that I'm going to give in this video. And they're cheat sheets for each of my favorite color pencil techniques, including this exacto knife one, so that you can just keep looking back at these cheat sheets to get the information on how to do them and what you'll need. This is a checklist that I follow when planning my color pencil drawings, when picking my colors. It takes you through the process of how to plan and set up for a really successful color pencil drawing. But now let's dive in and do this really cool technique. So all you want to do is you take your knife and you just use your knife to scrape away that top layer of color pencil. And what you'll actually do is you're scraping away those darker layers that you've just added, and that's revealing that first lightest layer of color that you started with. That is actually getting revealed when you scrape away those darker layers of color pencil. And that's why this technique works even better with waxy colored pencils because they just scrape away easier. As I'm scraping away this color pencil, I am actually revealing these really detailed fine lines. And not only is this technique perfect for drawing fur, hair, or whiskers, you can also use it for all kinds of textures. So you can use it for the skin to add fine lines and wrinkles, or even to create highlights in the waterline of an eye, or even to add pores to the skin, highlights on the lips. There's so many uses for this knife. I have had many students come to me and say, Cassie, I've tried this technique, but it's just not working for me. And in particular, there's three main mistakes that I want to talk about. Number one, you want to make sure that you're actually scraping away the colored pencil and not cutting with the knife. So it's a scraping action. We're not trying to cut into the paper or slice the paper in any way. We don't even really want the knife to come in contact with the paper. It's just about scraping away very gently that top layer of colored pencil. The second mistake is using a paper that's just way too textured. I mentioned earlier that you want to try and use a paper that's smooth. And if this technique is not working for you, it might be that your paper is just too textured. I've definitely found that the more textured my paper is, the harder it is to get a great result with this technique. But by far the biggest, most common mistake that I see with this technique is just not doing enough layers of shading with the colored pencil before using this knife technique. Not getting enough of that light base color down first before adding all of the darker colors over the top. You really want to make sure you're doing a full coverage layer of that light colored pencil that you've picked. Make sure you've done enough layers to the point where you are blending and burnishing that out and then try scraping away that colored pencil. It won't work if you haven't got enough layers of colored pencil down. And definitely if you haven't got enough of that light based color down first on your paper. So now that I've shown you a little bit about how this technique works and I've gone through some mistakes to avoid, how can we actually apply this to our projects? How can we actually use this to make our drawings really realistic and super lifelike? Well, now I want to talk you through the stages that I went through when I was creating this really lovely dog drawing. How I set up my shading and how I actually used this knife technique to create more realism. How I used it for the dog's fur, for the nose texture and for the whiskers. And I know that whiskers can be really tricky for so many of us. Keeping them white and getting them really nice and sharp. For the dog's fur, I started by picking a color that matched the lightest tone in the fur. Which was this more creamish color. And I used this cream colored pencil to add a base layer all over the fur. Remember this color needs to match the color we want for our details. So that when we scrape away those layers of colored pencil, it's going to reveal this lighter color underneath. I really made sure that I was adding enough of this pencil to the paper before moving on to using my other colors. And now you may wonder, well, how much is enough? Well, this is where I recommend getting a scrap piece of paper and just testing it out. Add a little bit of the base layer and then all of your other colors. Use the knife technique, see if it works. If it doesn't, then try using a bit more of that lighter base layer. And just test it on a scrap piece of paper until you notice what amount of pressure you need to apply to get it to work. As well as being able to add all of your darker colors still over the top. Because we still need to be able to add all of our mid-tone colors like I'm doing now. And our shadow layers of color over the top. We don't want to saturate the paper with just our lightest base color. So now you can see that I've gone in, I've added more of the mid-tone colors for the fur. And I'm working on adding in those really dark shadows. And because we're doing all of the fur detail with the knife, I don't actually have to worry at this point about creating detail. I'm just looking at the values in my subject. I'm looking to see where the light areas of fur are. Where are there shadows in the dog's face? And when you're doing your first layers of color pencil, it's going to look grainy. But as you do more layers, you'll start to fill in more of that graininess of the paper. And you'll start to get a smoother and smoother look. Now that I've gone in with my darker browns and really got in those darker shadows, I actually like to go back to my mid-tone colors. And use more pressure to sort of mesh all of these layers of color pencil together. And to start to smooth out my shading. So I don't do the darkest layers of shading as my last layer. I actually like to sandwich it in the middle of my mid-tone layers of shading. So you can see that at this point, I've done all of those steps with this one ear on the dog. Once I've sort of blended everything out, you can see it looks very smooth. I'm just going to go in with a couple of other colors, some warmer browns to just darken up the shadows a bit more. You can go back in with your darker browns just to darken up any values that need to be darker. But then once you've got all of your shading accurate, all of your values in the right place, that's when you'll then want to take your knife and start to add in detail and create that texture. Because this is short fur, all I'm going to do is I'm going to use the knife to scrape away really short lines that actually match the length of the fur. The next thing that I do is I just repeat that process for the rest of the dog, getting in all of those base layers of shading. Then I take that knife and I start to scrape away all of the fur details. And I really look at the direction the fur is going in on each part of the dog's face. I want my details to curve around the form of the dog's face. And I want to do the lines with my knife longer where the fur's longer and shorter where the fur's shorter. And you can just see how this creates so much detail in the drawing. It really takes it to that next level of realism and it makes it super lifelike. It's really hard to get these tiny details without using some kind of tool. And this knife is the perfect tool to have in your toolkit, especially if you love drawing animals or portraits because it is perfect for fur and hair. But this technique is also great for textures like the nose. You can see I'm doing little circles to help give that realistic texture for the nose. And lastly, we're going to use it to create the whiskers, scraping away that colored pencil. You can see that it reveals these really bright whiskers. And because it's a knife, you can get really detailed, sharp whiskers. This is just one of the useful techniques that I love for colored pencil drawings. So I just want to share a few more examples of where I use this technique in my drawings. Of course, I used it here with the dog for the whiskers and the fur, but I often also use it with facial hair to create some of that detail. And over here with this darker beard as well, it can be really useful. So you don't have to do super light details. It's just going to be as light as your base color. So I use like a mid-tone brown for the base layer of this and then the really dark browns and black over the top. And so it just reveals that mid-tone color. It doesn't always have to be a really light color that it's revealing. And I also use it, tend to use it for like eyebrow hairs. It can be really useful to scrape away some of that colored pencil to create the lighter eyebrow hairs. Can be great for that. So remember to download that free colored pencil cheat sheet pack. Link is at the top of the description. It's got my favorite ways to blend colored pencils, add texture to my colored pencil drawings. And it also has some cheat sheets for picking colors for your drawings, as well as a checklist that will help you set up for a successful colored pencil drawing. So definitely grab your copy of those cheat sheets at the top of the description. And now, even though this technique is amazing, there's one exercise in particular that changed my life when it comes to colored pencils. So I recommend checking out this video next. It's a really useful video and I think it's going to be a game changer for your colored pencil drawings. Check it out and I'll see you there. Bye everybody.