How To Layer Colored Pencils Like A Pro - Prismacolor Tutorial

Today I want to cover how to layer with Prismacolor. It is an extremely important skill and something that I use in all of my colour pencil drawings. Layering is where you gradually build up the colour bit by bit in very light layers rather than just going in really hard with the pencil. I draw with a realistic style and in order to achieve my drawings I have to do a lot of blending from one colour into another. There is a lot of gradients throughout my drawings and the only way I'm able to achieve this is through layering. I will mention now that my method is very forgiving although it does mean that the drawings tend to not look good until the last 10 minutes. Now generally speaking I always follow the same process so I'm going to talk you through that process by drawing this pair. Before we get into the video if you would like to draw this in real time with me it is available on my Patreon as well as over 150 hours of other tutorials. Every drawing includes the reference photo, sketch outlines and swatches of all of the colours I'll be using and I include in-depth instructions. Alright let's start our drawing. Now the first thing I do is always put down some base layers. This is where I'm just trying to put some sort of colour down on the paper. It can often feel a little bit intimidating when you start so it helps to just do something. I'm working from a reference photo here so I can use that to work out what the And it might be that the lightest colour in one area isn't the same as in another area so for example on the top two-thirds of this pair it's a different colour to the bottom section of the pair. What I particularly want to focus on is putting down a smooth and even layer. To do this I'm working in little circular motions and I'm pressing very lightly. I'm also making sure that I have a nice sharp pencil throughout all of this. I want to keep my pencil sharp. Now there are a couple of areas of this pair that I am avoiding. Two main spots on the right side and two spots on the left side. This is just where the light is hitting the pair. These kind of are actually my lightest areas but because they are so light they're basically white I'm ignoring those for now. As I mentioned the top section is a different colour to the bottom section. So as I get to where these two areas meet I do want to slightly fade out with this first colour and then I can go over the top of those very light areas with this green that I'm using for the bottom section and it's just going to kind of blend these two colours together. I'm not worrying too much right now about making this perfect I'm still literally just trying to get some colour down on the paper. So because the bottom half of this pair is green I'm starting this with a very light green and once again I want to do this in exactly the same way trying to make this as smooth as possible. So from here I want to focus on starting to build up the colours. So still with this same very light green I also want to be looking at my reference and seeing if I can see this colour anywhere else and I can just put that lightly over the top of this more yellowish colour at the top. From here I want to gradually start working my way down through the colours. So I've started at the lightest I want to gradually work my way to the darkest. So what I'm doing is focusing on one particular section of the pair so I'm particularly focusing right now on the bottom green half and I want to be looking for the next darkest colour. So that would be a kind of mid green and I basically just want to put this anywhere where I can see this colour. So to start with my layering of my colours is really quite basic. I would describe it initially as relatively rough. I'm just trying to get these most obvious colours down. I kind of look at it as building a template. So with this mid green I'm focusing on the bottom left hand side because that is a little bit darker and then from here I can also look around the rest of the pair and see if there's anywhere else where I can see this green. So once again I'm putting a little bit of it around the edges and then I can shift my attention back up to the top of the pair and again in this section I'm looking for the next darkest colour which actually here I would say is a light brown. So towards the top of the it's kind of a brownish red colour and around the bottom as I say is a green. So I've selected this quite light brown and I just want to be lightly marking in anywhere where I can see this colour in the top. I am varying my pressure a little bit here going over some areas slightly more than others just because this top section is quite patchy. Throughout all of the pair it does have lots of little spots on it. I don't actually want to worry about those small spots right now that's something that I want to add in at the very end. I'm particularly focusing on getting the general colours of the pair right right now. So from here I am still looking for my next darkest colour. I also want to be thinking about if there's any prominent colours that I think are missing. So as I mentioned this top section is red and it's not looking very red at the moment. So I want to start adding in lightly over the top of all of these other colours quite a bright red and again because it is a little bit patchy up here I am just trying to follow the shapes in the reference and try and recreate those shapes on my pair. I can't stress enough how at the moment I'm not trying to make this all perfect. I'm just trying to get something down on the paper and then I can always adjust it if I need to later. The most important thing that I'm doing right now is doing all of this very lightly. I don't want to be adding any colour harder until I'm absolutely confident I've got everything in the right place. From here I can shift my attention back to the bottom section and I'm looking for a slightly darker green now that I can go over the top of the darker section on the left. And I'd say it's around this sort of time that I start looking at drawing more as a whole rather than particularly looking at each section. So I'd say drawing as a whole the next darkest thing I need to do is add some more brown. This is actually the same brown that I used earlier. I'm just going to add in a little bit more of it. So I was earlier and that was making a very light brown. I'm not by any stretch pressing hard now. I'm just going over some of the areas a few more times to build up a slightly deeper brown. I'm still focusing on building up these patches towards the top section and I can also add it over the top of the greens that I've been building up around the bottom. It's not making these greens stop looking green, it's making them more of a darker brownish green. So I've quite quickly managed to build up a lot of the main colors in the pair but I do still want to keep building upon this. At this point I want to start looking for some of the darker colors and actually I'm going to go in with this very deep brown which is the darkest color I will be using in this pair. But right now I am still using it very lightly. The only area that I'm pressing a bit harder on is the shadow around the bottom of the pair just because I'm absolutely sure in this area that I'm not going to need to add any more colors here. It is the darkest area of my pair. So now at this point I've got everything lightly marked out. It is looking like a pair but it does look very washed out. It all looks very faint. So what I want to do now is start working my way back down through those same colors and just beginning to build up the color a bit more, pressing a tiny bit harder and it's going to start building up the color more so it looks more vibrant. So I'm going to start off with the very darkest green and gradually work my way back down through to the lightest green and as I say it's far easier to see where these all need to be now because I've essentially made myself a template. As I get to my lightest green I am pressing pretty hard now. I still wouldn't describe it as me pressing full force but I am trying to really brighten everything up, blend all of these colors together and I want to be left being able to see a lot less of the white paper coming through the pencil. Now I am still going to be able to build up more color on top of this if I need to but I'm just trying to make it look a bit more like a solid block of color. I can also put this light green over any other areas of the pair where I can see this color and again this is a lot of the same areas that I put it earlier. I'm just going over it a bit firmer. So for example I've used some red and some brown in the top section but actually I'm wanting to add in a slightly different tone of this. I'm going to add in some sienna brown. I particularly want the top section to still look red but more like a mellow kind of red. So I can lightly add that over the top and then I can keep working through the same colors so back through that lighter brown. I am going to add in some more of the bright red and just keep working my way down. Now again if I get to a certain point for example around here and I think actually I want to add in some more darker values I won't stop myself from going back to the dark colors if I need to but as a general rule I work my way from the lightest to the darkest and back to the lightest colors. So again once I work my way through these colors I want to go back to that very lightest color this kind of yellowish brown color and I'm just going to go over the top of all of the areas I did at the very beginning but now just like I did with that light green I'm pressing much firmer which not only removes the white paper and you can't see that through as clearly but it blends together all the colors underneath. So now one of the last things I do when I'm layering and building up colors is I want to take a step back from my drawing and just have one last look and see if there's any other colors that I feel are missing. So for example around the edge of the red section in my reference photo it has much more of a bright orange tone and I don't have any of that at the moment so I can lightly add some of this color over the top and it just adjusts the color underneath. So I basically want to use layering to adjust the colors until I get to the kind of values that I want and once I've added one color in it may make it more apparent that I need to add another color so for example now I want to add in a little bit more of this bright red and adding in that bright red has shown me that I need to add a bit more of this dark green just deepened down this bottom section. So now I've built up all of the base layers of the pair I want to start thinking about adding in some of the dotty texture on the skin and it is literally just a case of adding dots over the top so looking at the color of these dots and they're not all the same color some of them are darker than others around the bottom they're more of a and building up these dots one color at a time and I only need to worry about the actual dots at this point because I've spent so long building up the base layers I'm happy with everything sort of the general color of the pair beneath. Once I've done that the last thing I need to do is build up the stem of the pair so I am once again starting with the lightest colors and working towards the darkest but because the stem is so much darker than the actual pair my lightest color on the stem is actually quite a deep color and I'm just going to work through one color at a time in exactly the same way and then as I get towards the end once I work my way up to the darkest and back down it might be that there's some other colors that I can see are missing that I want to add in and I can just put that over the top and that is it. So basically I start at the lightest color work my way up to the darkest color and then gradually back down to the lightest color and then at that point I can see if there's any other colors that need adding or if anything needs adjusting. Now I get asked a lot what the difference is between layering and blending and they're kind of the same thing. Blending is what you get from layering. Now if you would like to learn more about blending check out my video here and until the next time happy drawing guys I'll see you in the next one!