Category: Reader Questions

Lets talk about one way to draw rich black colors.

I recently wrote a post about drawing dark backgrounds and some of that information will help you draw rich black colors, too. But there are times when you need nice, saturated black colors and don’t want use heavy pressure to create them.

How to Draw Rich Black Colors

There are many ways to make a nice, vibrant black. Peggy Osborne wrote a post on this subject a few weeks ago, but she uses a slightly different method than I do. I encourage you to read her tutorial as well as this post, and then do a little experimenting on your own.

Peggy and I agree on one thing, though: The best black colors result from mixing different colors. You can use black—I do—but rarely alone.

But I don’t always use the same methods twice. However, here’s a general rule of thumb method that works every time with only a few adjustments.

Step 1: Decide What Type of Black You Need to Draw

That may sound like an odd place to begin until you realize that not all black colors are the same. Some blacks are warm, with shades of brown or gold mixed in. Other blacks are cool blacks and tend more toward blue or violet.

The best way to tell the difference is to look at your subject in good, natural light. If the subject is a warm black, you’ll see warm colors mixed in with the brightest highlights. The black may also look a bit brown.

If the subject is a cool black, there will be blues and other cool colors mixed in with the brightest highlights.

You need a very high resolution photograph to see this and even then, it can be a difficult decision to make. That’s why I prefer to see my subjects (usually horses) in person. On a sunny day, you can get a good look at the other colors that appear in the black hair.

One word of caution. On sunny days, there will usually be some blue in the upper highlights—those highlights on the upper surfaces. This could be because the black is cool, but it is always very likely the result of reflected light from the sky. Reflected sky light is always bluish on clear days. Don’t confuse reflected light highlights with other highlights. For the purpose of determining whether or not black is cool or warm, check the highlights other than those on the upper surfaces.

Step 2: Choose the First Color

I usually start a drawing with a light earth tone such as Light Umber Prismacolor or Brown Ochre Polychromos.

Depending on what you’re drawing, you may want to start with another color. I started this drawing with green, believe it or not, then layered many other colors to develop the black. I didn’t use Black until near the end of the drawing. Even then, I added black only to the darkest values.

A good rule of thumb is to make the first color warm or cool based on the type of black you need to draw.

What you want to do at this stage is draw the shadows, and begin establishing the middle values. But don’t draw them too dark. Every color you add darkens the values naturally, so draw even the shadows lightly.

Use a sharp pencil with light pressure, and start by carefully outlining the most obvious shadows, then filling in the shapes with the base color.

You may want to do two or three layers with the base color, darkening the shadows each time, but also drawing more middle values with each layer. By the time you complete a few layers, you should have dark values, two or three middle values, and the light values, which have no color at all.

Step 3: Mix Black in With Other Colors

Layer other colors over the black area. Choose those colors based on whether you’re drawing a cool, blue-black, or a warm brown-black. Alternate between the layers as you develop values, colors, and details.

It’s all right to use Black. I use it all the time, but it’s almost always toward the end of a project and I’m using it to darken an area. It can be mixed with the other colors at any stage or the process, however. The decision is based entirely personal preference.

And how much time you have to finish the drawing!

Step 4: Continue Layering Colors

Repeat the colors until you get the black you want, and/or until the paper holes are filled in. Mix Black in with the other colors, but you might also consider adding a complementary color once in a while just to add a little sparkle to whatever you’re drawing.

Step 5: Finishing Layers

You can either do the final layer with Black, or with a dark warm color if the black is warm, or with a dark cool color if the black is cool.

Again, use the colors that give you the result you’re looking for.

Beware Wax Bloom!

Whenever you use wax-based pencils and a lot of dark colors with medium pressure or heavier, you may encounter something called wax bloom. Wax bloom makes a drawing look cloudy or foggy, and it’s especially obvious in dark colors. If you use heavy pressure, wax bloom may appear overnight or even from one session to the next on the same day.

Don’t worry. It’s nothing serious. The wax binder in the pencils is rising to the surface of the color layers. Wipe it off with a clean tissue or cloth and go back to drawing.

When you finish, wipe off the wax bloom, then spray the drawing with a final fixative to keep wax bloom from happening again.

That’s One Way I Draw Rich Black Colors

As I mentioned before, this is just one way to draw rich black colors. There are others.

The best advice I can give you is to recommend you try every method you come across, and see which one works best for you.

And remember that not every method works equally well for every subject. Always look for ways to adjust your favorite methods to get better results.

For more in-depth how-to on this subject, try my Portrait of a Black Horse tutorial.

Anyone who draws animals has to draw whiskers sooner or later. They’re such a small part of most animal art, but believe it or not, they can make or break a piece. It’s important to get them correct.

Today’s post is a followup to a reader question from December 2019. You can read that post here. That post was specifically about drawing whiskers over watercolor pencil and it’s a helpful article for anyone who combines watercolor and traditional colored pencils.

But I wanted to share a few more general tips for the rest of you.

There are several ways to draw whiskers, but the correct answer for each artist depends on what they want to do with their artwork. Since my focus is creating archival art, I’ll answer this question with methods that are archival.

But there are several other methods that can be very useful if you’re doing adult coloring books, greeting card art, or craft art. I’ll talk about some of those at the end of this article.

4 Ways to Draw Whiskers for Fine Art

The following four ways of drawing whiskers—or any similar small detail—should work with any brand of colored pencils.

They are all archival and are therefore acceptable for portrait work, and other animal art that you want to sell. They don’t all work for every situation, however, so it’s best to practice with each one before trying them on a piece that’s important.

#1: Impressed Lines

I used to always impress lines into the paper before layering color. I impressed lines to highlight hair, draw whiskers, and add other small details that would be difficult to draw over color.

Then I started using impressed lines after putting down a layer or two of color. That way, the line was whatever color I layered first, instead of the bright white of the paper.

Impressing lines still has a role in my work, but I no longer use it as often as I once did. Why? Mostly because I usually tended to go overboard with it. You know the idea. If one impressed line is good, two is better, and you can’t go wrong with three. Or four or five or a dozen.

Except that you can go wrong. Used too much, impressed lines become distracting.

When you use impressed lines, remember two things.

Tips for Impressing Lines

First, use your impressing tool the same way you use a pencil. That is, vary the amount of pressure you apply. For drawing whiskers, for example, start with heavier pressure at the base of the whisker and decrease the pressure as you draw toward the end of the whisker. That produces a more natural looking whisker.

Second, try impressing with a very sharp pencil. I sometimes use Prismacolor Verithin pencils for impressing lines. They’re a hard pencil and hold a point very well, so they’re perfect as a stylus. You can also add color at the same time, so you can see where your impressed lines are before you start layering color over them. That is always helpful (especially if you tend to go overboard!)

#2: Use a hard pencil to draw whiskers over color layers

The second method is to add them over layers of color by using one of the harder colored pencils. Prismacolor Verithin pencils are just like the regular Prismacolor pencils, except they contain far less wax. The pigment cores are thinner and harder, so the pencils hold a point longer. That’s what makes them excellent styluses, and it also makes them good for drawing over other colors.

What you do is layer all or most of the color you want in the animal’s face. Then sharpen a Verithin of the right color to a very sharp point, and draw whiskers over the other colors. Because the pencils are so hard, they dig into the color somewhat, but they also leave a little color. The resulting marks will not be very bright, but you can add less obvious whiskers this way.

Colored pencils with thinner, harder cores like Prismacolor Verithin pencils or many oil-based pencils can be used to draw subdued whiskers over other color. You can also use them to “dig into” the color a little, scratching out whisker shapes.

The biggest advantage is that you can add whiskers of different colors, so not all the whiskers look the same.

I’ve used this method in the past, but the results have never been what I was looking for. However, it is worth a try. It may just work for you!

#3: Scratch out whiskers with a knife

Probably the best way to add whiskers is to use a sharp tool like the Slice ceramic blade or an X-acto knife. Use the knife the same way you would a pencil, but scratch out color after you’ve finished the rest of the drawing. You can scratch a few marks into the drawing, then layer more color over it and scratch out a few more lines.

Be very careful, though. It’s frightfully easy to cut into or even through the paper if you tend to have a heavy hand. This method definitely requires practice before you use it on finished or nearly finished art.

#4: Brush & Pencil’s Touch Up Texture and Titanium White

Finally, there is Brush & Pencil’s Touch Up Texture and Titanium White. Titanium White can be painted right over colored pencil, then drawn over with more colored pencil. It was developed specifically for use with colored pencils, so there’s no worry about damaging a drawing or the white flaking off, as may happen with gel pens or acrylic paint.

Use a very small brush to paint the whiskers, then shade them as necessary with color with they come out too white.

Peggy Osborne uses these tools in most of her pet and animal tutorials. Take a look at one of those to see just how effective these tools are.

3 Non-Archival Methods to Draw Whiskers

The following three methods of drawing whiskers will work, but some of them work for very limited periods of time. They’re not suitable for artwork you plan to exhibit or sell, but if you do crafts, greeting cards, or create art from which to make reproductions and you don’t sell the originals, they will work.

Acrylic Paint

When I was first getting started with colored pencils, I could never get bright enough highlights. So I bought a tube of white acrylic paint to add highlights. It looked great at first, but after the paint dried, it seemed to fade into the colored pencil. The result was so displeasing that I used it only a couple of times.

I’m glad that happened, because I’ve since learned that acrylic paint doesn’t stick to colored pencils very well for very long. It’s just like trying to get water to stick to oil. The wax in the pencils keeps the water-based acrylics from sticking.

Gel Pens

I’ve never used gel pens with colored pencils, and probably never will because they behave in pretty much the same way acrylic paint. They may last for a while, but sooner or later the bond between the colored pencil and the gel pen will break down and the accents added with gel pen will flake off.

That won’t happen quickly enough to make a difference with greeting cards, adult coloring books, or craft art, but for portrait work and other drawings I want to last decades, it would be a problem.

Oil Paint

I haven’t tried this, either, though I did once try adding details to an oil painting with a colored pencil. That didn’t work very well, and I don’t expect oil paint on colored pencil would, either.

But the biggest potential problem with this combination is not with the colored pencils. It’s with the paper. Oil paints are made with an oil vehicle to make them useful. That oil could soak through the layers of colored pencil and stain the paper beneath. It could even discolor the colored pencil.

The idea is interesting enough to have me thinking about trying it someday, but not interesting enough to try it on a finished drawing. Especially not one I like! If I do try it, I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Those are My Tips for Drawing Whiskers

They’re not the only methods by any means, so if none of these fit your drawing style or give you the look you want, keep looking.

And try new things. You never know which method will be your best solution.

Toni wants to know how to keep track of colors and order of application.

Hi Carrie,

Just read your post about getting out of your comfort zone/challenges.  Read minds much? I’m bored with myself.  But I may have bitten off way more than I can do.

I’m working on a red/yellow pix of an African Bush Viper snake.  I am trying to do one scale at a time and it’s sorta working.  It’s VERY confusing trying to make sure that I’m on the right scale in the right row etc.  I’ve crossed out the scales as I go but …. good thing no one knows the snake personally!

How do you keep track of the colors you’re using, in what order you lay them down or blend.  This guy has lots of reds, dark reds, pinks, oranges, lemon yellow, light yellow, cream, and some in between.  The colors repeat (sorta) down a section of the body.  I get so involved trying to get the part I’m working on right that by the time I need to repeat it, I don’t know exactly what I did.

I feel like there is a logical answer but I can’t see it.

Sorry this is so convoluted.  You should see my rant on Flicker about POLKA DOTS😶

Toni

LOL Toni!

No, I don’t read minds at all (I don’t always know my own, let alone messing with other people’s!)

I’ve learned after so many years of blogging that if something affects me personally, it affects others. Those sorts of posts resonate.

I know exactly what you mean about repeating patterns. I did one of those a year ago. A red Christmas ornament with a braided cord of yellow, green, and red. Not quite on the scale of what you’re doing, but very close.

How to Keep Track of Colors that Repeat

Here’s the finished drawing.

When it came time to draw the cord, I thought I had it pretty well taped, because I’d drawn everything out carefully. Except I hadn’t been as careful as I thought and I didn’t get more than two or three of those repeating patterns done before I realized I’d made a mistake in the line drawing.

Time for a rethink.

The first order of business? Scrapping the line drawing and just laying down color, blocking in each color from one end of the cord to the other. I don’t remember the order I worked in, but would guess it was probably yellow, then green then red (light to dark.) I put flat color in each area using light or medium pressure and a sharp pencil.

After blocking in the cord, I went back and add shadows and middle values to create highlights.

I used only six colors total. A light or medium value yellow, green and red, a dark value green and red, and a light golden brown. The blocking in was with the lighter colors and I did all of each color in that round. So there was no need to remember the order.

Then I went back and did the same thing with the darker colors. Again, there was no need to really remember the order of each color because I worked the entire area with each color.

When I did the final round and added details, then I worked back and forth between lights and darks and may have even added other colors to get darker values.

For the most part, I either laid the pencils to one side of my working area, or held them in my left hand. A method known fondly as the handful of pencils method.

But that method works best if you’re using only a few pencils on a small drawing (or a small area.) I used six or seven over a small area. The entire drawing was only 8 x 10 inches.

So probably doesn’t help you with your African Bush Viper, since you’ve already done some of the scales.

Two More Ways to Keep Track of Repeating Colors

There are a couple of ways to keep track of colors in complex pieces.

Make Swatches as You Work

The easiest method is to make a mark somewhere along the edge of the drawing or on a piece of scrap paper as you use each pencil. Either before or after you layer that color, do a little swatch or even just a mark or two. You don’t even need to label them, because you can compare pencils to the marks.

Do the same thing with the next color and the next and the next and so on. If you repeat a color, make another mark, so you have every layer documented, as well as every color.

This will be easier if you keep the pencils you’re using separated from the rest of your pencils. Hold them in your hand if they’re just a few, or put them in a cup or jar, or just lay them to one side. Quite often, I take them out of the box and then keep the box a little bit apart from where I’m working. Handy, but not so handy I’m likely to put a pencil back into it without thinking.

Mind, the difficult part is going to be remembering to make that mark. If you draw anything like I do, you get so involved in the process that everything else ceases to exist. You’ll have to train yourself to make this part of the process, so it becomes automatic.

Try a Color Recipe Sheet

The second way I’ll describe is to make a “recipe sheet” before you start. Use the same type of paper you plan to do the drawing on, and make a small study. In the case of your African Bush Viper, you might draw a few scales in full, glorious color. After you’ve seen which combination of colors works the best, make either a swatch or a written list of the colors you’ve used and the order in which you used them.

Keep that sheet handy as you work through your drawing.

Of course this method also works best if you keep the pencils you’re using separated from the others.

One Thing to Keep in Mind

Even on an African Bush Viper, the scales that are the same colors and have the same patterns will look different depending on where they are along the body, and whether they’re in light and shadow.

It may be frustrating—maybe very frustrating—not to know the exact order of color application, but it probably won’t make that much difference in the finished piece.

I’ve never drawn a snake before, and I don’t know if I will. But I venture to guess those subtle variations that happen when the same colors are applied in different order might produce a more realistic and natural drawing. Get the light values light enough and the dark values dark enough.

Thanks for the question, though. It brought a smile to my face and that’s always a good thing!

PS: I’d love to see your African Bush Viper when it’s finished, and I’ll bet I’m not the only one (reading minds, again!)