Advanced Layering Over a Water Soluble Under Drawing

Our topic for today’s Tuesday Tutorial is advanced layering over a water soluble under drawing! I’m still working on the landscape over a water soluble colored pencil under drawing.

If you’ve missed any of the previous posts, the links are:

How to do a Water Soluble Under Drawing for a Landscape

Adding Colored Pencil Over a Water Soluble Under Drawing

Now to today’s installment!

Here’s how the drawing looked at the end of last week’s post.

Let’s get started.

Advanced Layering Over a Water Soluble Under Drawing

Step 1

Use a stippling (tapping) stroke to add Dark Green to the trees with a slightly blunt pencil. The result is a pattern of “dots” that mimic the look of trees seen from a distance.

To keep the dots from looking the same, turn the pencil in your fingers after every stroke or two or turn the paper periodically so you’re working on each tree from different angles.

TIP: This stroke is time consuming and can be stressful on your hands and even your forearms, so take frequent breaks by working on another area, or stepping away from the drawing.

Step 2

Layer Olive Green over all of the trees except for the brightest areas. Use a sharp pencil, but don’t worry if it’s not needle sharp. Using a slightly dull pencil will help you take advantage of the texture of the paper to add visual interest to the drawing.

Use light to medium-light pressure.

Step 3

Darken the cast shadow near the trees on the left with a layer of Olive Green applied with medium pressure and very short, vertical strokes. Use Dark Green in the darker value nearest the trees, also applied with short, vertical strokes.

Draw the road with a fairly “open” layer of Dark Brown applied in short, horizontal strokes. Add lighter values with a combination of Sand, Powder Blue, and finally White applied with medium-heavy pressure.

Sketch the broken shadow between the road and the grass on the far side with a sharp Dark Brown pencil.

Finish (for now) the hills beyond the road with layers of Chartreuse burnished with Powder Blue and White in the back-most hill, and Chartreuse burnished with Lemon Yellow and White in the grass on either side of the road.

Step 4

Layer Chartreuse over all of the foreground using light pressure.

Next, use Olive Green to begin adding grass details to the bottom portion of the foreground, and Dark Green in the corners.

Make sure to vary the length, thickness, darkness, and curve of the directional strokes you use to add grass details.

Step 5

Begin adding detail to the foreground with Olive Green and a variety of strokes. Use stroke type and length to create the illusion of distance. Longer strokes in front, shorter strokes toward the tree line.

Start with a sharp pencil at the bottom of the drawing and work toward the tree line as the pencil gets duller. The duller the pencil, the less defined the strokes become, and that helps you draw distance.

Use light medium to medium pressure throughout.

It doesn’t matter where you place these darker values. I followed the reference photo, but did not duplicate it exactly.

Step  6

I used elongated, curving strokes at the bottom to show that the grass is tall and on the unruly side. As I draw into the middle distance, I continued using elongated directional strokes, but made them shorter and less distinct.

About halfway to the tree line, the strokes are just elongated marks, and right at the treeline, I mixed short strokes with stippling.

Step 7

Add Dark Green to some of the places where you used Olive Green in the previous step. Use the same types of strokes, and the same pressure (medium-light to medium.)

Don’t cover every stroke of Olive Green with Dark Green. You want to add the appearance of shadows, so you need some highlights.

Also, don’t add Dark Green all the way to the treeline.

On the upper right, immediately in front of the treeline, add a glaze of True Green. Use very small, careful stroking to draw smooth color, but you don’t have to cover the entire area. You want to make that place look a little more distant than the warmer colored foreground, but leave enough warmer color showing to provide a transition between warm and cool.

Step 8

Next, glaze Chartreuse over the foreground. Use a sharp pencil and light pressure to draw a smooth layer of color. I worked around some of the areas I want to be lighter, but if you prefer, you can glaze Chartreuse over them, as well.

Step 9

Add alternating layers of Olive Green, Light Umber, and Dark Green into the foreground, beginning with the area on the right, immediately in front of the trees. Use medium pressure and short, vertical strokes and/or stippling strokes. Draw the lights and darks by mixing all three colors in the darkest areas, and only Olive Green and Light Umber in the lighter areas.

You can also use circular strokes to draw even color if you wish. I added color that way in the lower right corner just to darken the area. But directional strokes duplicate the look of grass more quickly.

Here’s how the full drawing looked at the end of Step 9. You’ll notice how the way I’ve layered color has created a “hill” in the middle of the foreground. Is that a happy accident to keep or an error to correct? I didn’t quite know.

I’d also worked on the trees some. I’ll cover that step-by-step in the next Tuesday Tutorial.

 Conclusion

Yes, there will be another installment on this tutorial! I’d really hoped to have it finished at the end of this post, but there’s so much yet to do…. I didn’t think you’d appreciate being left hanging!

And there is now a question to answer. If that hill turns out to be a mistake, I’ll show you how I fixed it.

We’ll also talk about making final adjustments once a drawing is finished. Are they necessary or not?