Step 1
Take or choose a good reference picture!
It needs to have an interesting composition, good dark and light contrast and clear details. If the picture doesn’t have enough contrast, your drawing will turn out flat.
(If the picture is not yours, make sure you have permission to use it. There are websites with copyright free images available.)
Step 2
For realistic drawings, you want to use good quality colored pencils and paper!
You can use soft wax-based colored pencils, like Prisma, or harder oil-based colored pencils, like Polychromos.
For Polychromos (which I used in the examples above), you need thicker paper with a rougher surface, because you will need to build up a lot of thin layers of color.
If you’re on a tight budget, you can of course use cheaper materials, but then it will be harder to draw realistically.
Step 3
Make a sketch, or trace your reference picture.
I cannot sketch well free hand, so I use a grid.
Print out the picture in black and white, in the size you want to draw in, and draw a (for instance) 2 by 2 cm grid on it. Then also draw (lightly, because you want to be able to erase it) a 2 by 2 cm grid on your drawing paper.
Then make your sketch in the grid, including the most important lines in the reference picture. Carefully copy what you see in each square.
I use a H2 pencil for this, so the graphite won’t smudge through my pencil drawing.
When the sketch is done, carefully erase the grid lines.
Restore the sketch, where necessary.
Then use your eraser (preferably a kneaded eraser, which you roll over the sketch) to make the sketch lighter, so it won’t show up through the drawing later on.
Step 4
Use washi tape or painters tape to attach your drawing paper to a sturdy background (like grey board or the smooth side of a cutting mat). If you are sketching, rather than tracing, you can do this before step 3.
Step 5
With the reference picture in front of you, either a print out, or the actual picture on a tablet or laptop, draw the picture. I know, I know, that’s easier said than done!
Tips:
Draw what you see! Don’t draw what you think you see!
You don’t want to be drawing, for instance, a duckling, but you want to be drawing darker and lighter areas, shapes and patterns.
And as by magic, your image will eventually appear!
Don’t despair if your drawing looks ugly. With this method, it will often look ugly until you put in the very last layers.
Use your eyes. Look, look, and look again!
Keep looking at the details in your image, over and over again.
If you see just the tiniest bit of a color in the image, use that color! The more colors, the more depth there will be in your final drawing.
Every shape you see, even if you have no idea what it is, draw it!
If you don’t have the exact colors you can see in the image, don’t worry! You will be building up layers of different colors (very lightly) and they will mix.
The values, the lights and darks, are more important than the actual colors you use!
Look at an area in your image (for instance, with the ducklings, a bill, a foot, the head, the belly) and start with the lightest color you can see in that area. Lay down a very light base layer of that color over the entire area.
Then find the next lightest color and lay down a thin layer of it everywhere in that area that is a little darker.
Continue to build up light layers of darker and darker colors you see in that area. Only where you see darker colors in that image.
Remember you cannot draw light over dark, so now is the moment the make sure the lighter parts stay light!
When you have quite a few layers build up, but the white of the paper still shines through, you can now (you don’t have to, but you can) blend/burnish the colors with a light-colored pencil, or with a colorless pencil, or even with (if your paper will allow it) a blending liquid. I don’t use liquids. I tend to use a colorless pencil to blend parts like the bill and feet, and sometimes the belly. For this blending pencil, you have to push harder then you did with your other layers.
You can only blend/burnish when you have enough thin layers of color build up.
And you can only do it on good quality paper. If not, it will not take more layers.
Then continue.
How do you continue?
You do the same thing, but now in reverse!
Start with the darkest color you used, and go over them again. Then with the next darkest color, etc., until you are back to the lightest color.
When you are drawing fur, you don’t want to draw every individual strand of hair (which isn’t necessary, since you already laid down a base layer of color), but you want to indicate fur by drawing some hairs with a flicking motion of your (sharp!) pencil.
Here I’d like to mention that I learned this way of building up my drawings from the free tutorials of Gemma Chambers on YouTube. She is an amazing colored-pencil artist!
If you didn’t succeed to keep your light areas, like some light hairs, or whiskers, or perhaps highlights in the eyes, etc., you can in the end go over your pencil drawing with a white gel pen. If the white is too harsh, you can lay some color over it once it has fully dried.
While you are drawing, always keep a piece of smooth paper under your drawing hand, so as you don’t smutch your drawing.
Do not smear with your hand over your drawing! You will mess it up.
There are ways to conserve your final drawing, but I don’t use them, since I keep mine in a folder with plastic sleeves.
If you want to frame your drawing, or want to sell it, you want to make sure you only use lightfast materials, for durability.
Have fun!
