Hi, welcome back. In this lesson, you will learn how to blend colored pencils. I'll show you different techniques that include solvents, blender, and light colored pencils. I will also complete a demonstration blending techniques. When you draw on smooth paper that is designed for colored pencil work, your colored pencils tend to blend on their own during shading. But what do you do once you work on a different kind of surface that may be very colorful but has a texture that subtracts from the drawing?

Or how do you achieve glass like appearance? on some surfaces such as water or crystal? blending becomes key. There are several blending techniques that can work in conjunction with each other or separately. Depends on the subject paper and your handling of the medium. While many artists love to use odorless mineral spirits or solvents can produce, often they're too harsh or aggressive on the drawing and may kill its freshness.

Also, it's not quite clear what happens to the diluted pigment in the long run. Sometimes I wonder if it stays on paper long enough or begins fading away because of the solvents. I think the Safer Choice is blending with a colorless blender, but it's a very slow process. When blending large backgrounds, they can be very difficult and time consuming and they achieved saturation is just not the same as Vista, solvent blending Another technique would be to blend with light or white colored pencils by using the heaviest pencil pressure to lighten up and blend a specific area. The best solution is to practice all of these techniques so you can understand their potential and then arrive at the method that works best for you. Now I'm going to discuss the blending techniques, use them colored pencil painting, blending the solvent, solvents like Gamble's as that arriving alcohol or terpenoid natural male the pencil pigment producing a saturated even surface that eliminates pencil strokes.

Always handle solvents with care and store small amount of a solvent in a glass jar with a lid for easy access. Try not to inhale at all. Let that come into contact with you. skin. To move your solvent around your drawing, you need to have either airbrush or cotton tips when buying an expensive synthetic brush that can keep a fine buoyant and the reserved for colored pencil blending on layer. The alternative to brush is a cotton tips web, but the fine point of the brush makes it much easier to work around the edges with care.

Solvent based finesse blend blend up and four colored pencils is the closest alternative to the solvents as it melts the big means the same way, but I often see that it doesn't last for very long. Some things to keep in mind about blending the solvents. Being painting is a solvent works on most scholars but it works by Little well on darker medium dark colors. It's not noticeable on light hues, even if you apply it solvents work. So if you start blending and don't see the results, it just means that you either don't have enough pigment on your paper yet. All your colored pencils don't have much wax in them.

Also, this blending works best this very soft, waxy pencils, such as luminance Prismacolor, premier or color soft. You won't be getting the same results using oil based colored pencils. Also, always blend the colors from light to dark to avoid contaminating light colors with dark smudges. It can happen very easily as you move your brush around the white area when it's time to blend the colors And you'll see that everything is colored except for the highlights. You can blend and burnish the surface burners carefully in the light and around the highlights. When you use solvents to blend, wait for the page to dry completely before reapplying the colors.

And I also use a paper towel to tap on the paper towel to get rid of the excess solvent. And then I begin my blinding process. Over here you see how wax based colored pencils look and blended on colored paper which is which has a lot of texture. The paper seems pretty smooth to the touch, but when you start coloring, it actually has tons of texture because it's so difficult to work on colored pencil when fighting this set size Texture blending it after the initial lane is a must. And here you see a very clear difference between the blended and blended surfaces. I usually use gamsol and synthetic brush to mail the big month as you see me doing here.

Always wait for the drawing to dry before continuing work on it don't start coloring while it's still wet. colorless pencil blender. The colorless pencil blend that has no big maintenant but it moves that pigment in the drawing to get rid of texture. The surface becomes smooth and bright and the result is not as harsh as using gamsol The pencil makes the surface vaccine quickly and it limits additional layering. That's why please use this blender closer to the end of your drawing unless you spray the artwork between the layers. The main advantage to blending is the colorless blender is it's non toxic quality, greater control and handling ease.

The major disadvantage is the difficulty of working is that you must apply a very heavy pencil pressure to achieve the desired effect. If you work on textured paper, it becomes very time consuming and exhausting when working in large areas. While it's easy to give up and shade in cross hatching to move faster, please make sure that your strokes makes sense And don't flatten out the form because when you blend, you also create a different kind of movement and the stroke. The colors blender is necessary to smooth out the edges soft layer and when you work in the light and there are the highlights, it's a must as well. My favorite pencil blenders Karen does full Blender because it's 100% colorless. It blends really well and in an also creates a barrier against UV light, like a final spray.

I find that other colors blenders tend to have a slightly gray tone and offer no protection against the light in order to blend color Effectively, you must use medium to heavy pencil pressure. If your blender hasn't made much difference and you're drawing it means that you either have not applied enough pigment to blend it well or that you haven't applied enough pressure to blender to produce results. It's impossible to blend colored pencils with paper stamps used for graphite and charcoal drawing. Please never blend the colors with your fingers either. blending with white and off white colored pencils. Very soft and light colored pencils such as Prismacolor premier light cream sky blue light beach, beach and wide can lighten up the surface considerably while burnishing it.

This technique works very well. Is the off white colored pencils for blending edges around the highlights, as well as light lightening up and untie area. So when you work these various soft colored pencils, shading usually requires medium to very heavy pressure for it to work well. You won't be able to achieve the same results with harder colored pencils. effects of blending with light colored pencils include much lighter and more unified color. It also reduces Chroma or color intensity.

The light colored pencils make the surface blended and it looks great around the highlights. It also can give you a very subtle and dreary may affect when you blend with light colored pencils. You can also try Garros board blending as that teaches you how to blend colored pencils using her art board. It speeds up the entire drawing process and softens the edges quite quickly, but you have to use the same materials that the artist uses to make it work well for you. blending with a solvent to achieve rich darks. Here you see how you can make your backgrounds rich and colorful by using dark colored pencils over the initial black layer.

Black bye itself doesn't exist. It's the absence of light. So even in high contrast situations, light bounces off other objects to produce color in the dark. pictures are from Photoshop, and as a beginner you may not notice or pay attention to subtle colors present in the black and in colored pencil drawing pure black backgrounds just look lifeless. That's why you want to create rich darks using other colors not just black. Here you see various color combinations brides use just one hue is applied of a black and blend that visa solvent.

I suggest You to make a swatch like you can see here and just test the materials and see how you can mix various dark colored pencils and use the solvent to blend them to see the results. What is Vax Bloom? bags bloom happens naturally as an oxidation process of wax based colored pencils. It often happens in warm and humid climates. Like he in Florida, as well as some drawings. There's lots of burners black colored pencil.

If you have very soft wax based colored pencils, chances are you'll encounter legs bloom in your art. When you start blending and burnishing the surface, bags blown looks like a wall White fog over your drawing. And if you use lots of black it may arise A few days later after the drawing is done. So to get rid of bags bloom, you can wipe the drawing of visible in soft, dry cloth and then spray your drawing is a final fixative. Sometimes I do two to three light coats of professional spray to get rid of bags bloom to prevent Vax bloom from appearing, you need to avoid the use of too much black. Try to use minimizing wax based black colored pencil and keep adding dark other dark colors on top of that, or under being visible, dark markers and then use a combination of that colored pencils on top of that.

Burnishing means layer and colored pencils, this very heavy pressure. You're done with your artwork. You think about your first colored pencil painting. What else do you do with it? To preserve it, you have to use one of the varnishes to spray over your drawing for that. You need to look at the spray to see if it's designed for pencil work.

For instance, over here it says pastel charcoal pencil mediums that you can use a because a lot of times when you go to the store you'll see varnishes that are good for oil painting or acrylic painting and you cannot use those So you have to read the labels to see if it's designed for dry media. Then the second thing that you need to pay attention to is the final fix itself or the workable fix that you can use the workable fix that they have in between your layers. When you fix it, you can apply more color or apply more pigment without disturbing the previous layer. Oh, this is the final one and it protects your drawing from the usual light and just moisture so your colored pencil painting is not gonna feed as quickly. I like to use semi gloss or matte finish so my drawing doesn't reflect any light.

I spray my pictures outdoors so I don't inhale, the vapor or I hold the can in the upright sizes. Jim, and I give it a nice go. I wait for a couple of minutes until it's dry and I give it a second coat. So it's done. When you're done spraying, you can map and frame your image. Custom frame is very pricey.

So you can do it on your own by by buying a map online or going to Michael's Hobby Lobby and buying pre cut maps that are going to look like this. And then you buy a frame that measures the size of your map. I buy my three card maps online, matching the size of my paper, which is nine by 12. And that's this cell over here picture size nine by 12 and Grain Size is 12 by 16. This is my image. This is the white mass that I have.

So this is how it's going to look like when it's done. I can also go to the store and buy a frame for it, which is a standard size because my mouth is got to the standard size. I use the ISIS free tape to tape the corners of my image to the cardboard that I have which is also free. In this demonstration, I'm using Pollock Allah in Prismacolor colored pencils interchangeably. Please refer yourself to the color chart to match the colors. For this technique to work well you must use very soft colored pencils in the background to blend them with a solid them.

If you have oil based colored pencils, they're not going to blend as well as backspace colored pencils. And a harder colored pencils like Pablo or cotton or Pollock Allah won't produce the same results. You will see me use soft colored pencils in the background more and then I mix them up with the harder ones when drawing the details. Before you begin coloring, let's analyze the light direction and the directional lines for each gummy bear that you should keep in mind while drawing. The light comes from the right and travels across the candy producing long dark shadows with fractions of colors reflected from the candy to imitate the light direction, you'll shade the background with various tones instead of simply filling it in. Lack to simplify the image and to cut down on time in drawing it, you can draw one gummy bear instead of all five.

Just pick your favorite and draw one bear. If you draw all the gummy bears plays a directional line for each one to rotate it in space correctly. Once you determine the direction, you can sketch out the outline for each bear keeping the lines parallel to that single directional line. It similar to placing the bear in the box. Their legs top and bottom all line up in accordance with the directional line. Because the Kenda alight in color, it's best to avoid sketching in graphite pencil on the drawing paper.

I use a soft and light colored pencil to transfer the outlines onto my drawing paper. Then I begin shading this a soft black pencil horizontally to fill in the background. I layer more color in the top left corner as well as in the cast shadows under the gummy bears observing the specific shapes. So where do I start coloring, I always focus on the deepest shadows and that's why he I focus on the deepest shadows of each candy. I shade the red bear, this Prismacolor green, crimson red and the green bear this Prismacolor grass green or dark gram reflecting these colors into the cast shadow seen underneath each gummy Because the next three damages are quite similar in color, I decided to separate them by using three different light colored pencils on each candle. You can pick your own base color and see how it affects further coloring.

I add warm brown to the background. There is no need to pick the exact color that I'm using here. You can train yourself to see the basic hue and color temperature in the black For this project to work, I need a solvent and a small, clean synthetic brush. I don't use this brush for anything else, I just keep it for diluting the pigment. Once again, you must use wax based colored pencils for this technique to work well. I dip the brush into the solvent tablet against the paper towel and start painting visit over my image.

I usually start somewhere in the corner so I can warm up and feel comfortable with it. Usually it takes some practice to learn how much solvent to use on a drawing. And I would suggest using less rather than a lot because It can dissolve the big men completely or dilute the colors to such extent that they will become muddier. And once again solvents work best on dark to medium colors, meaning that the blending of light colors doesn't show as much. Although it's okay to apply the solvent on them as well. It's not gonna hurt but you'll see that the light colored pencils don't blend as well.

I'm painting over the background only I don't want to paint visa solvent over the government's because they haven't been colored yet. Apply Prismacolor yellow ocher to all three gammas I'm overlapping over the base color and extended over to fill in The middle tones of each guy, man. You see me rotating my pencils and paper shading in various directions to create volume in every part of the body, such as the stomach, arms and heads. I'm also very careful not to touch the paper with my hands while I'm blending it and after I'm done. I usually allow it to dry completely for a few minutes. Once I'm finished blending I'm shading this cannery yellow in the three gammas shading around the highlights canora yellow will give me a warm yellow, while yellow rose you'll give me a cool yellow it looks as light green is yellow sure to shade all the colors arrive to the edge of the gummy bears to keep their form.

It's always the problem that students don't shade to the edge of the object. Also, you can see me overlap this colors over the edge in cast shadows for saw Because I keep overlapping my colors I don't really need to blend that often. I'm coming back to the light green gummy bear and shade this Prismacolor shadows and Jade green. Jade green gives a cooler hue that blends well with 20% cool gray. These are the colors that you see me use around the cool highlights in this garment. I'm also blind Prismacolor White is a very heavy pressure around the school highlights to blend the edges even more I'm blending everything colorless blender.

I step back look at it from the distance and I usually reply the same To deepen the hues. Then I use Prismacolor green on the right side of the head and here to create the reflected light cast from the green diamond next to you irregardless any subject that you draw, always remember to start drawing from the shadows that you see or the darkest areas that you see on your subject. Then outline or remember about the highlights, which are the brightest parts on your subject. I usually outline the highlights these are very light pencil, like like cream or any similar color. And then all you do is just when you establish the dark, you create the transitions of tones between the dark in the light this What you see me doing in all of my demonstrations I basically establish the darkest areas. Then I create a series of middle tones to transition into the light.

And the way to do it is to overlap your colors constantly and leave the highlights uncolored at all times if you work on white paper. Once you have this concept in in place, it would be a lot easier for you to pick colors and save your subject to completion. Because you know that you need to develop your dark then you need to transition into the light and then you work carefully around the highlights using They're like colored pencils or white. blending the edges I'm coloring the top two gammas at the same time this Prismacolor cannery, yellow and attach of yellow shutters and orange I'm blending these colors with the colorless blender following the form. You can see me going in the direction that shows the roundness of the head and arms. I'm also shading this white around the highlights I'm trying to make the dog bear much softer.

There's no visible details or hard edges in comparison to the rest of the garments. You can see here that all three garments have the same colors, in essence, but because the initial color was different they were in college quite a bit. In this step I'm working on the green bear in the first layer, I've established the darker shadows and now I'm creating subtle transitions between the shadows and the highlights. If you're scared to color your highlights by accident, you can outline them visit very light colored pencil and then shade around them first. So your highlights stay white and they're not colored by accident. Did Hear You see me work the same way from dark to light applying more color over the first layer.

In the first layer, I established the shadows and now I'm creating transitions between these darks and highlights. I'm avoiding coloring the highlights making sure that the pure white is the color of the paper. You see me blending this wide around the highlights and I'm also using the colorless blender to blend other hues in this gummy bear. These gammas need to have very soft edges and blended colors to be a candle like that's why you have to use the blender to achieve this result. colored pencils are semi transparent, one shaded one over another, which allows for the creation of sophisticated hues. And remember to use at least two colors in any given area to create beautiful color.

Transparencies the ability of any given color to show through if applied with a light or medium pencil pressure to vary the transparency of the color, vary your pencil pressure I spray the image slightly and let it dry so I can work on the background once again to unify the colors. And here you see me applying Prismacolor 20% color gray in the light and 70% French great in the dark. And I'm using a very heavy pencil pressure to blend in unify all the colors in the background. And then I just keep adjusting my pencil pressure to create soft transitions between the tongs and as you can see the these Gray's blend the colors nicely and this way I've created a very colorful background that is also Gray because the background is great, the garments look very colorful, but at the same time the background is not black and it has a lot of color and as well it's much easier to apply more pigment on top of the solvent and the subsequent staging becomes a smooth and effortless after that.

As you can see, I applied all the blending techniques in this demonstration using Ganzel in the background. colorless blender, and why the non white colored pencils on the gardener's. Thank you for watching guys. I'll see you in our next lesson.