Experimental Drawing techniques Hot Air Balloon

A character that comes up in my drawings from time to time is a hot air balloon. I don't know why, or what it means really. The feeling I get is something to do with maybe freedom of thought, but also the need to be grounded. I'm not sure, but anyway, I'm feeling the need to draw a little one and I thought I'd bring you along for the process, a chance to share some of my techniques that I'm currently using, and also maybe some more experimental ones that I'm working on. Also, this video is sponsored by Squarespace, but I'll tell you more about them later. Let's kick it off with sticking our paper to the table with some masking tape. It's important to never be afraid of a new piece of paper, so all you need to do is restrain its movements, this way it can't hurt you, and you also get a beautiful clean border at the end of the drawing. I get my tools all gathered to one side. The tools I start with end up being very different to the tools I end up with. Every time I feel like one day I'm gonna know what I need, but until then it's just kind of a guessing game. I start out by sketching in my hot air balloon. I just found some references from stock websites. You can also try using AI if you like, but there are a couple traps to be aware of with that. My most recent video goes into exactly what one of the more sneaky traps might be. I'm using a brush to gently mark outlines, as well as getting a bit of an idea of shadow. The reason I'm using a brush and powder is because the graphite sits lightly on top of my paper, and I can easily erase if I need to. My aim is to build up layers of tone, which allows for easy corrections with an eraser, or even more detailed erasing work down the line. I want to darken the whole right side section of this balloon, but before I can do that I need to just reinforce my landmarks, my reference lines. So I am just going over these with my pencil. The feeling to darken the whole right hand side of the balloon was intuitively what I should have been doing from the start. It's easy to jump into whatever marks stand out to us. Often those are details that don't really need to be drawn in the early stages, but sooner or later we'll find the order of things, and that's generally to focus on the larger shapes first. I think it's important to remember that we're never too experienced to forget things and to make mistakes, but we do eventually find our way. So because I have to go over this area of my drawing with graphite, I lost a lot of the marks I made, so I need to redefine my shadows and the ribs of the balloon. I'm alternating between using graphite powder and pencil to lay down material, and then just smoothing it out with a brush. I'm going to start testing things out with my eraser a bit. I'm using this Faber-Castell pencil eraser. It's got this little pink end, which is really nice for certain types of highlights. You can see what I mean here. Even just with a little highlight, it starts to make some of these ribs really pop out. It's really nice. It can be tempting to dive in at this point, right into the details here, but we have to make sure our tones are good before we start putting work into areas like this that we might have to just erase. With the way that I draw, I can always lift out, not always back to pure white, but there's so many ways that we can erase the graphite, so I tend towards rather making things a little bit darker and then gently being able to lift it out to try and find the tone. So I refer to this in some of the other tutorials that I've done as working positive and negatively, and we're trying to find that perfect tone by working from both ends of the spectrum. Every now and then, I'll brush over everything with a larger brush, just clearing away all the graphite that sits on the page, and that could distort what I'm seeing. After I've brushed away and things lose a bit of their sharpness, I usually use this time to bring out my highlights to test how the work is looking. Also, with the graphite just lying very gently on the page, it means that you can see the way that the eraser is working really, really accurately, so these are always good moments to start working negatively. I want to share a new technique that I've been testing out. I've been making a kind of eraser powder that I've been experimenting with, and it lifts graphite out in an incredibly smooth and gentle way without disturbing the surface of the paper. I'm really excited about it, and I'm finding so many use cases for it, especially with my particular style of drawing. But then just back to my old ways of applying material with a pencil and hatching it, or hatching the graphite into the paper, and then using a small brush to brush through those marks and kind of smooth them all out. I feel like I've been beating around the bush, and it's time to do the background. The tough part here is to try and get my smooth, dark background as close to the hard line of the balloon as possible, so I'll use a tiny brush to try and do this. I realized that the tone and consistency I was getting from using cotton wool for my background wasn't actually as consistent as I needed. I'm not sure if it's just this particular piece of paper, but in this case I need to use a makeup sponge to really push the graphite into the paper and get that smooth, consistent, dark tone. The only downside about this is that it's going to make erasing fine lines very difficult, and I want to draw little ropes hanging from the balloon. So I'll test this out with the little pencil eraser. I'm using the brush to get some background tone in the basket. I know there's going to be a bunch of corrections happening here, so I need to apply it very softly so I can still pull details back out with erasers. After I've gotten the right tone, I'm just brushing away any excess powder before I try some highlights. I'm going to use my mechanical eraser with a very fine point to try and erase the weave in the basket. This is painfully slow work, but it's the only way I'm going to get this look. Coming back in with a precision eraser to pull out the highlights for these fine lines, and I'm just going to do some or all of the other ropes as well while I'm here. Then switching over to a I'm using this to pull out larger highlights from the ribs of the left-hand side of the balloon. This is just cleaning it up a bit and making these areas pop a bit more. And now for the part that's really going to position the mood of this drawing, the clouds below the balloon. I wanted it to feel like the balloon had just broken through a storm. I guess that's, in a way, that's how I'm feeling at the moment. To create those clouds I'm starting off with a medium-sized brush to lay down some graphite powder. I'm just gently creating wavy shapes that feel kind of cloudy to me. The goal isn't really to get it right, I'm just creating something for my mind to bounce off and to start building from. Some of the marks feel right while others don't quite land well, but that's okay. We can pull and push with erasers and pencils to mold it into something that feels right. Just below the hot air balloon I want a wispy trail of cloud, and to do this I'm using a gum eraser that's got a nice square edge. I'm pulling it over the graphite and twisting it, allowing the eraser to create shapes with an even gradient. I really love using this technique, it feels intuitive and I'm always surprised at how well it creates that smoky, wispy effect. Of course there's some parts that just don't work, but I'll just use some graphite on a brush to brush away those marks and try again. I'm alternating between working like this with the eraser and applying graphite with my brush or pencil. I'm building up my textures, shapes and volume, but working from both sides of the spectrum, adding shadow or pulling away highlights. I kind of see this like a pendulum that's swinging from one side to the other, slowly finding an equilibrium where the light and the shadow show the shape most accurately that I have in my head. I'm going to keep playing like this and experimenting with shapes and form. Eventually it will feel like it's done, but before then I'd like to give a quick shout out to this video sponsor, Squarespace. I've been working with them for a couple years now and they've played a huge role in my career, not only in sponsoring these videos and helping me maintain this channel, but early on in my career I was looking for a way to showcase my work and make it easy for collectors to find me and get in touch with me. I didn't have time to learn HTML and to build a beautiful, reliable website, but I felt that Squarespace did all of that effortlessly. I never had to patch or upgrade anything. I could register a domain with them and set up an online store. Most importantly, I could design a portfolio and show my work the way that I wanted to. Also, every time I got stuck, their amazing support team helped me out instantly. So if you're looking at building a website, give Squarespace a try. And if you decide that you love them, use this alpha code and get 10% off your first purchase. There we go, that's pretty much this drawing done. It's always fun to remove the tape and see what the finished artwork looks like. I'm trying to just hold the paper still here so that when I pull the tape off it doesn't just go sliding along. And it's always important to sign your work as well. So yeah, let me know in the comments if there's any questions around the techniques that I was using. I'd be happy to answer those. And leave a like if you found it interesting or helpful. As always, it helps me out in a huge way. So thanks for the support and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye!