How To Draw Big Picture With Colored Pencil

How to improve art skills by taking great pictures

If artists paint in figurative realism way, most rely on photography these days. Model fees, time constraints, lighting and studio conditions – all add up in a puzzle we have to organize and manage, if we pigment from life. While painting from life is a must for realist artists to get the skill going, perfecting photography is also a necessary skill. Because colored pencil drawing is such a slow medium to piece of work in, about all artists rely on their references to create art equally opposed to drawing from life. Sometimes it takes weeks to consummate ane colored pencil cartoon, and nosotros have to rely on our photo reference to capture story, composition, design, color, and details. That's why peachy photography becomes fundamental to artistic success. Let's main it!

How to take great pictures suitable for colored pencil drawing and painting

Information technology took me years to understand how to see the low-cal turning the class and how to pick pictures, capturing that light. I used to play with pictures from fashion magazines that looked incredibly beautiful, still they were missing something I couldn't quite effigy out what. Some were OK for black-and-white drawing but none of them were skillful for oil painting. Why? All magazine pictures are Photoshoped heavily, getting rid of important information necessary for artists to capture the grade realistically. Starting time, the Photoshop filters and presets become rid of warm/cool rest in skin tones, objects and even backgrounds that we normally run across in nature. Second, copyright is a large bargain, and we can't employ such images for our art to create the originals. Thirdly, a lot of times the "connection" betwixt the subject and artist is missing. Nosotros have no emotional attachment to the photograph that's not ours that results in unfinished or poorly executed art.

Photo equipment:

My greatest investment into my studio equipment is my camera Nikon D500 with the interchangeable lenses. The quality of lenses is even more than important than the the body itself. The higher the quality, the meliorate the outcome. Over the years I bought several lenses for different tasks.

• Nikon 105 mm- micro lens for extreme shut upward photography
• Nikon Nikkor 85 mm – for portrait photography (that gives no baloney)
• Sigma 12-24 mm – for interior photography (that has a wide angle with no distortion)
• Nikon Nikkor 18-200 mm zoom lens – for general photography ( while it'southward my heavy duty utilize lens, it gives the virtually baloney and requires actress work in Photoshop to even out the perspective, etc. Zoom lens accept the most baloney especially noticeable in cityscape photography).

I also have an inexpensive Westcott reflector kit with multiple colored surfaces (silver, gold, white) that I use for portrait photography at times. I use the reflector to bounciness the natural light back onto my model or object that removes harsh shadows or adds more light into the shadows.

You can also consider buying a properties equipment that I don't demand personally considering I shoot models in natural environs, and when I practise still life photography I brand my own light box set that you'll see in the article beneath.

As well having fantabulous equipment y'all also need to have a good eye to take dandy pictures, which you develop by studying the fine art of others and practicing your photography skills.

Pixabay image

Advantages of Mastering Photography:

• It develops your originality and vision.
• It forces you to extrapolate and focus on what's important in busy environments.
• It teaches yous to come across how light shapes the form
• The creative person is the sole designer and creator of artwork beginning from the very first pace of photography.
• It's a forgiving medium, giving you many chances to exercise at all times. You become attuned to cropping and balancing techniques that artists traditionally utilize in their paintings.

Disadvantages of Using Photography:

• Information technology ofttimes flattens out the form to such a degree that you take a difficult time re-creating the volume. That's why it is best to start taking pictures with one directional light source that gives you definite lights and shadows.
• Camera makes its option. Even the best cameras don't capture what y'all see every bit an artist, which involves emotion. By working from a picture, artists clarify the subject rather than respond to it freely.
• In that location is a lot of distortion in the images depending on the lens and photographic camera you use that is obvious in cityscape photography or in pictures of geometric objects. The aforementioned distortion is present in pictures of people or fruit, or whatsoever subject you have, only our eye doesn't take hold of those distortions as rapidly as we notice those in linear and geometric forms. Those "unseen" distortions will travel to a student'south cartoon when the artist transfers the outlines rather than learns to sketch freehand from his reference.
• You lot may have problems with exposure. Employ the HDR (high dynamic range) part on your phone to level out the exposure. HDR combines two or three pictures into i automatically, giving you a single balanced shot. HDR function is very handy when the sky looks too vivid or the background is and then calorie-free that it makes your subject appear too night. • You tin take good pictures with your phone, although the quality won't be the same as shooting with a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera. If you lot shoot with your telephone, zoom in on your object as closely equally you tin can. That will mistiness the background, giving your subject a heave in color and texture.

You lot'll observe sample photos and more data on mastering the photography in The Colored Pencil Transmission also my Colored Pencil Video Course

Subjects

This image is taken from Pixabay, a costless resource for artists to employ!

First of all, decide what you favorite subjects are, and isolate them from busy environments. Here are some ideas for your photography. Shut-ups of textured subjects—these can be the most fun, unpredictable subjects for your photography and fine art. They tin can exist reflective surfaces and reflections, fabric patterns and lace, rusted door locks, forest grain, colorful feathers, processed, sliced fruit, marbles, flowers, kitchen utensils or tools, and even mechanical parts of clocks. Other popular subjects are drinking glass; portraiture; animals, birds, and pets; nutrient; florals; seashells and bounding main life; trees and landscapes.

Properties of light

Your goal of shooting in the "right lighting weather condition" is to adorn your subject and to bring the best out in information technology. Ask yourself what attracts you to this object. It could be a specific texture, transparency, color, or an abstruse pattern of calorie-free and shade that you run into. You need to figure out what you love near your subject and how you lot can highlight its most attractive qualities in a specific lite. If your subject field looks tiresome in a picture, chances are that the lighting conditions were irksome at the fourth dimension it was shot.

Calorie-free temperature:

In this picture the evening light is warm (yellow) and the shadows are cool (blue).

The light can be either warm or cool. In the beginning information technology may be difficult to spot the difference, but if you ask yourself if it is yellowish or bluish, it makes more sense. Fluorescent lights tend to be cooler, while the tungsten lights are warmer. In nature, you see a beautiful golden light twenty minutes before the sunset. The light temperature affects how you lot see the colors and how they unify everything in the paradigm. You besides use the light temperature to understand the color on your discipline: if the low-cal is cool, information technology gives cool lights and warm shadows. If the light is warm, information technology gives you lot warm lights and cooler shadows.

Quality of light:

This motion picture has a soft, diffused light throughout. While the picture looks like fun to draw, it would be much harder for a get-go artist to create book and to plough the form using this kind of lighting. (Pixabay image)

Natural low-cal is the near beautiful light we have equally artists. While the soft, diffused calorie-free may give the artist beautiful, soft skin tones in portrait photography or a dream-like mist in a landscape, this light is difficult to master for a beginner who is shooting pictures of glass, fruit, or flowers. The glass loses its sparkle and reflections, the fruit doesn't have the volume or shadows, and flowers appear quite bleak. That'south because the diffused light gives you very soft, almost unnoticeable shadows and highlights, which, in turn, are difficult to reproduce in fine art for a student. Any the light temperature is, the goal is to avoid getting monotonous images that often happen in diffused light situations when you have an overcast sky.

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Lite direction and shadows:

This teapot has one directional lite ready upwards on the correct at night. Such light gives strong highlights and shadows that are easier to re-create in a drawing.

The most constructive style to study the light on a form is to have a singular, stiff directional light source set up at 45 degrees, which is often chosen Rembrandt lighting. This light direction creates cute highlights and shadows that will add dimension to your objects.

If you go to an atelier school of classical painting, y'all'll see students draw from plaster casts and still lifes set under a single directional light that doesn't change management for the entire drawing process. Such setups are vital to an artist'south understanding of how to turn the grade. So when you take pictures inside, find and focus on i primary calorie-free source, similar a table lamp, and consider its forcefulness. Wait at your subject and find definite highlights and shadows on and under information technology because it will give y'all this 3-dimensional quality you desire to re-create in your drawing.

Gear up a strong directional light drawing people. In this case the David'south Middle sculpture looks very three-dimensional because of the directional light that makes the forms popular.

In my video form I teach how to take your colored pencil drawing to the next level including set upwardly and photography. Watch a video preview here:

Depth of field:

Shallow depth of field allows you to capture your object in a precipitous focus, blurring the residue of the image. A soft background supports the focal point rather than competing with it. When you take a high depth of field set at f16 on your photographic camera, everything is in focus, and oft the prototype will look as well busy and indistinguishable from other elements in the background where everything competes with each other. Ever call back what you'd similar to focus on, then make it your priority by zooming in or fixing the depth of field.

Zoom in, keep it unproblematic & use negative infinite every bit a design chemical element:

This is a crystal pitcher colored pencil cartoon. The groundwork (negative infinite) becomes part of the design in the artwork.

Groundwork affects the edges and creates abstruse shapes. Every bit a beginner, stick to obviously backgrounds to isolate your bailiwick and to show contrast. Subsequently a while you tin start playing with the color and complexity of your negative space likewise.

Use backgrounds and boxes for staged photography:

Calorie-free box even so life set

If you lot don't want to buy a light box, you can make a very simple setup next to your window. Utilise colorful simply manifestly matboards, fabric, or newspaper every bit your choices. The result is a single image with a beautiful, natural directional light, a shadow, and a white or color background all around it.

Avoid flash photography:

Flash destroys the natural period of light and its shadows. It flattens out the object and gives you strange, unnatural colors. Professional photographers know how to rotate their flash unit of measurement to get the right position of the flash, only most of us don't!

Prioritize values over color:

When a student is learning to draw and paint, it is difficult to interpret hues to tones. Convert your photos into greyscale to meet values. Most students cease up with centre-toned drawings because of weak dissimilarity.

Well, I hope this mail service helps you in your artistic endeavors a bully deal. 🙂 Savage free to share this post on social media!

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