Category: Reader Questions

Today’s topic is how to draw thin fabric, but the process I’m about to describe applies to drawing anything that’s transparent or translucent.

To begin, here’s the reader’s question.

I need to know how to make a hazy overlay with a white, like a mist or a thin fabric.

This is a good question, but not because of the specifics. Some time ago, I wrote a post describing one way to draw a foggy morning. That works for mist, too.

I’ve also written about How to Draw Folds of Cloth. The method I described in that post works for any kind of fabric; even sheer fabric.

Now for today’s post.

How to Draw Thin Fabric or Mist

I want to begin with drawing mist because that’s the easiest to draw.

Mist

The first thing to remember when drawing transparent or translucent subjects with colored pencils is that you can’t add the mist or veil after drawing whatever is behind it.

With oils or acrylics, you can paint a landscape, then glaze mist or fog over it. A thin layer of transparent color makes whatever is behind it look dimmer, just like mist or fog does in real life.

Colored pencils don’t work that way. In a lot of situations, you have to draw the mist first, then draw whatever is behind it.

Yes, sometimes you can draw the landscape, then lift enough color to create the look of mist. That’s what I did in this short demonstration.

But most of the time, it’s better to fade the landscape colors into lighter values from the start. If you still need to lift color, the results are likely to be more pleasing.

Thin Fabric

Thin fabric or other similarly see-through things usually can’t be drawn by lifting color. It’s far better to focus on the shapes, values, and colors (in that order) as they appear in the reference photo. Here’s an example.

Preparing to Draw

The first step is to make an accurate line drawing. Whether you make your line drawing simple or complex is up to you, but include all of the main shapes. The shadows, the gold-colored drape on the left, the window frames visible through the sheer, and even the things you can see through the window if you want to include those details.

In short, your line drawing should contain enough details to provide a good road map for drawing the shapes, adding the values, and shading color. It shouldn’t be so complex that you get lost as you draw.

The next step is drawing the values. It may help you to convert your reference photo to black-and-white so you can see how light and dark things really are when compared to other parts of the image. I used GIMP to convert this photo to black-and-white, but most photo editors can be used this way.

Drawing Thin Fabric

Next, begin adding values layer by layer. You can either work with a single color or with all your colors. I personally prefer using one color at this stage, but use whatever method works best for you. How ever you start, use light pressure and draw what you see.

For example, the drape is clearly visible to the left of the sheer, so you should draw it that way.

But the part that appears through the sheer is visible only as a blotch of color where the light hits it. So don’t draw the same folds you see on the left. Draw the blotch of color.

The creases and wrinkles in the sheer also appear over that blotch of color. That looks complicated to draw, but it can be simplified very easily.

Focus on one small area at a time, and pretend you’re drawing an abstract. It works for water, and it works for sheer curtains, mist and anything else that’s translucent.

Put the shadows where the shadows should be, and put the highlights where the highlights should be. Also put the color where it appears.

When you finish an area as much as you want to, move to the next area and do the same thing.

When you’ve covered the entire composition that way, then work on the piece as a whole, and make whatever adjustments are needed.

How to Draw Thin Fabric

Drawing thin fabric—or any see-through subject—doesn’t have to be complicated. Just study your reference photo and draw what you see. If it helps, pretend you’re drawing an abstract collection of shapes, values, and colors.

Take it one step at a time, and don’t rush.

And before you know it, you’ll have a finished piece you can be pleased with!

Today’s topic is how to draw thin fabric, but the process I’m about to describe applies to drawing anything that’s transparent or translucent.

To begin, here’s the reader’s question.

I need to know how to make a hazy overlay with a white, like a mist or a thin fabric.

This is a good question, but not because of the specifics. Some time ago, I wrote a post describing one way to draw a foggy morning. That works for mist, too.

I’ve also written about How to Draw Folds of Cloth. The method I described in that post works for any kind of fabric; even sheer fabric.

Now for today’s post.

How to Draw Thin Fabric or Mist

I want to begin with drawing mist because that’s the easiest to draw.

Mist

The first thing to remember when drawing transparent or translucent subjects with colored pencils is that you can’t add the mist or veil after drawing whatever is behind it.

With oils or acrylics, you can paint a landscape, then glaze mist or fog over it. A thin layer of transparent color makes whatever is behind it look dimmer, just like mist or fog does in real life.

Colored pencils don’t work that way. In a lot of situations, you have to draw the mist first, then draw whatever is behind it.

Yes, sometimes you can draw the landscape, then lift enough color to create the look of mist. That’s what I did in this short demonstration.

But most of the time, it’s better to fade the landscape colors into lighter values from the start. If you still need to lift color, the results are likely to be more pleasing.

Thin Fabric

Thin fabric or other similarly see-through things usually can’t be drawn by lifting color. It’s far better to focus on the shapes, values, and colors (in that order) as they appear in the reference photo. Here’s an example.

Preparing to Draw

The first step is to make an accurate line drawing. Whether you make your line drawing simple or complex is up to you, but include all of the main shapes. The shadows, the gold-colored drape on the left, the window frames visible through the sheer, and even the things you can see through the window if you want to include those details.

In short, your line drawing should contain enough details to provide a good road map for drawing the shapes, adding the values, and shading color. It shouldn’t be so complex that you get lost as you draw.

The next step is drawing the values. It may help you to convert your reference photo to black-and-white so you can see how light and dark things really are when compared to other parts of the image. I used GIMP to convert this photo to black-and-white, but most photo editors can be used this way.

Drawing Thin Fabric

Next, begin adding values layer by layer. You can either work with a single color or with all your colors. I personally prefer using one color at this stage, but use whatever method works best for you. How ever you start, use light pressure and draw what you see.

For example, the drape is clearly visible to the left of the sheer, so you should draw it that way.

But the part that appears through the sheer is visible only as a blotch of color where the light hits it. So don’t draw the same folds you see on the left. Draw the blotch of color.

The creases and wrinkles in the sheer also appear over that blotch of color. That looks complicated to draw, but it can be simplified very easily.

Focus on one small area at a time, and pretend you’re drawing an abstract. It works for water, and it works for sheer curtains, mist and anything else that’s translucent.

Put the shadows where the shadows should be, and put the highlights where the highlights should be. Also put the color where it appears.

When you finish an area as much as you want to, move to the next area and do the same thing.

When you’ve covered the entire composition that way, then work on the piece as a whole, and make whatever adjustments are needed.

How to Draw Thin Fabric

Drawing thin fabric—or any see-through subject—doesn’t have to be complicated. Just study your reference photo and draw what you see. If it helps, pretend you’re drawing an abstract collection of shapes, values, and colors.

Take it one step at a time, and don’t rush.

And before you know it, you’ll have a finished piece you can be pleased with!

How do you know when you’re stopping too soon on colored pencil art and when a piece is finished?

That may sound like an easy question to answer, but even experienced artists (like me) sometimes wrestle with finding the right answer.

The reader who asked the question for this week is certainly struggling. Here’s what she has to say.

I have come to love colored pencil art and am always amazed when something looks pretty good!

But my work is too light overall! I have tried deepening and darkening and seen how it improved the picture, but I stop short because I am afraid I’m going to ruin everything.

My hand is naturally very light and this seems to compound the situation.  Does drawing darker just come with time and experience?  It takes me months to complete a project!! Karin

Karin asks a couple of very good questions. Let me answer them in order.

Stopping too Soon on Colored Pencil Art

Stopping too soon with a colored pencil drawing seems to be something every artist goes through.

The reasons vary, but being afraid to ruin a drawing certainly is one of the biggest. Especially when you’re relatively new to colored pencil.

When you’re new, knowing whether a piece is finished or not is especially difficult. Even if you don’t think a piece is finished, you may not know how to finish it. In either case, the result is the same.

You stop too soon.

We’ve all done it. I’ve done it. As I mentioned above, I sometimes still stop too soon (though I don’t realize it until later.)

This is a piece I did in 2004. It looked finished at the time. I was happy with it.

Actually, I still am happy with it.

But as I look at it now, compared to a portrait finished in 2020 (below,) it looks about three-quarters finished. I see several things I could do to improve it. To make it look more finished.

Does that mean there’s anything wrong with the first portrait?

No. It just means that I had a lot to learn back in 2004.

So the first thing I want to tell Karin and everyone else who struggles with the same problem is to be patient with yourself. Learning any skill takes time, and learning proficiency takes even more time.

Learning all the skills necessary to make great colored pencil art takes a lot of time. The plain truth is that you’ll be learning and improving for as long as you draw!

Don’t give up. Keep drawing and sooner or later, you will get there.

Is Having a Naturally Light Hand the Problem?

I’m not sure having a naturally light hand has anything to do with this particular problem. Artists with a heavy hand also struggle with getting dark values dark enough. The fear of going to far and ruining a piece is pretty much universal.

If anything, I think having a light hand is a good thing for a couple of reasons.

First, artists with light hands have to layer more layers than other artists. That means they make adjustments more slowly. Yes, it takes more time to do all those layers, but they’re less likely to make a big adjustment in just one or two layers.

That means they’re less likely to ruin a piece, or to make a mistake that can’t be fixed.

Artists with a naturally heavy hand, however, tend to put color on the paper in just a few layers. If a drawing gets too dark, it gets too dark very quickly. Because the color is applied heavily, it’s also difficult to correct.

So there are advantages and disadvantages both ways.

Time and Experience will Solve the Problem

Karin asked if time and experience would help her. The short answer is: Yes! Time and experience will help.

The more drawings she does, the better she’ll get at deciding when a piece is finished.

She’ll gain confidence in her ability to darken values enough without going too dark. And if she does go too dark, she’ll learn ways to correct the problem.

How Long Should a Drawing Take?

As for taking months to finish a project, that goes with the territory. Colored pencils are naturally slow. There are ways to speed up the process, but the drawing process is still slow!

So don’t worry over taking months to finish a project. I recently polled newsletter readers about the longest amount of time they’ve put into a project, and some of them said they’d worked on something over a year or more!

The larger your drawing and the more detailed you make it, the longer it will take to finish.

I’ve also written on this topic previously, and you can read that post here.

Are You Stopping too Soon on Your Colored Pencil Art?

If you are, I suggest that you focus on your technique.

Don’t rush it. Rushing usually doesn’t turn out well.

When you reach the point at which you don’t know if a piece is finished or not, set it aside for a day or two, then review it again.

When you get discouraged over your progress, compare some of your recent pieces to an early piece. That may very well be all the encouragement you need.

And above all, enjoy the process.

I have a confession to make. I was a long time fully understanding the importance of pencil strokes to the artwork I created. For the longest time, I was more concerned with just getting color on the paper than with how I put it there.

So I’m delighted to have received this question from Arthur.

Hi Carrie,

A question for you. How important are the pencil strokes we use, and what do you recommend?

Cheers, Arthur.

If you’ve listened to art-talk long enough, you’ve no doubt heard the phrase “brush work.” Brush work refers to the way an oil painter (or acrylic painter) uses his or her brush to put paint on the canvas.

Brush strokes can be very fine or quite heavy. They can leave no mark at all in the paint or they can make paint very thick and textured.

The artist decides what type of stroke to use based on the affect he or she wants to create.

The same holds true for colored pencil work.

No. You don’t create physical texture with colored pencils like you could with oil paints or acrylics.

But you do create the appearance of texture, and how you put the color onto the paper is just as important to you as brush work is to an oil painter.

The Importance of Pencil Strokes

Some artists always use the same type of stroke no matter what they draw, and they get excellent results.

I prefer to match the type of stroke to whatever I’m drawing, because that works best for me.

When drawing hair or grass, I use curving, directional strokes. For trees, I use a squiggly stroke and tap in accents or details with a stippling stroke. Base layers are often applied with parallel or cross-hatching strokes, and I sometimes even use the side of a pencil. All of those pencil strokes are important to my drawing methods and style.

A Couple of Examples

Let’s look at some examples of how I use pencil strokes for different applications. I chose each of the following sketches because they show stroke work more clearly than more finished work.

The Dead Tree Branch

Blick Studio on Fisher 400 sanded Paper.

I wanted to capture to the look and texture of a dead branch that still has some bark. I used long, steady strokes for the smaller branches, but used mostly short strokes for the main branch.

Combined with differing values and overlapping, the shorter strokes produced a much more realistic bark look.

Three Trees

Derwent Lightfast pencils on Lux Archival sanded paper.

I had more time when I drew Three Trees, but I still matched pencil strokes to different parts of the composition.

For example, the fine branches at the top of the drawing were drawn with short, broken strokes. That was the only way I could produce fine lines with such soft pencils.

For the larger branches and trunks, I used a mix of long and short strokes, but blended them together to “shade” color.

In the grass, I combined short, directional strokes with stippling (tapping) strokes. That was the only way to get a grassy look.

Sasha’s Tail

Blick Studio on Stonehenge.

This is an example of all directional strokes.

This is the tail of one of our long-haired cats. She lay still just about long enough for me to sketch this. Using this type of stroke helped me get as much of her drawn as I was able to in the amount of time available. In this case, the importance of my pencil strokes cannot be ignored!

So How Important are Pencil Strokes?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, some artists use the same stroke all the time or use a limited variety of strokes to create stunning works of art. Other artists such as myself prefer to use different strokes to create visual textures.

There is no right or wrong way to draw, in other words.

What it all comes down to in the end is what works best for you. I encourage you to practice using different types of strokes to create different affects, then use those that work best for you.

Some time ago, I wrote an article for EmptyEasel on different types of pencil strokes. You can read The Five Basic Colored Pencil Strokes here for more information.