Color Pencils! I love them!

Over 2 years ago my husband, then fiance`, gifted me a wonderful Sony Vaio laptop to help with our long distance relationship :)  He is in a habit of adding a goodies bag along with his gift with some tini-mini stuff, he knew I loved to draw, so that bag contained a pack of 12 pencil colors along with other things. So these were my first ever pencil colors and I didn't know what to do with them.

Out of my love for him and putting a good use to his gifts I did a random drawing on the first page of a drawing book that my sister had gifted me.Remember, how we used to do a "My Art book" drawing on the first art class in school. After that the colors were more or less forgotten. Now, on my last birthday, he gifted me a pencil drawing set which had a nice assortment of graphite pencils, the kinds I use, colored pencils and some other drawing tools. These colored pencils I put to use for decorating the scrap book I made of our Thanksgivings vacation pics. That is essentially the only experience I have with color pencils.

Day before yesterday, I was checkout pencil drawing tutorials, tips and techniques, online and I came across a couple of color pencil drawings and I was immediately attracted to the idea! I really love colors in general, I like to keep things a little colorful, it is my way of keeping my life colorful :) Vivek  had always been insisting that I try doing the drawings in color but I wasn't confident enough.But, I read through a couple of articles defining techniques in color drawing and I printed out a photo of Taylor Swift. I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome! I did not expect it to be this well a drawing in my first attempt.

So here I go, starting with drawing the outline. 

After I was done with the outline the real dilemma began. At this point I was very confused as to which color to apply as the background of the face as I had only the basic 12 colors and nothing to go for the skin shade. Had it not been for Vivek, my drawing was ruined. I was about to apply a very light shade of brown. When I told him that, he said that mostly the base is done in light orange. Sometimes, I feel he is more knowledgeable about drawing than me! So, here's how it looked after a light wash of orange. I left out the eyes and lips and covered all the skin in light orange. I then used an ear bud or Q-tip to blend it, so that the fine lines would be gone.

I have one regret about this drawing, not having a proper shade of yellow and only one shade of brown has made the hair look quite different from it should have been. All I had was a lemon yellow shade and dark brown. I moved on to the eyes and the lips and from here the drawing starts to look realistic. Its the eyes, I guess.

 I started to darken the shadow areas in pink and blending with the ear bud all the time.

Yes, I had the original picture open on my laptop all the time. It really helps! For a while I just continue to darken the pinks and using a little black for the lips and teeth.

This is where I stopped working on it. It was almost 3 hours and this is all I had achieved. I supposed had it been a graphite one, it would be almost done. So here's the thing, color pencil drawings take way longer than the graphite ones. Almost more than double the time, and obviously not as easy to erase and re-do.

Next day (i.e. yesterday), I read some more on using colored pencils and different ways to blend the colors in. I have added more pink along with a touch of brown to the shadows along the neck and the hand. I have also added a little orange in the hair on the right and highlighted it in brown.

As I sat to do the rest of the drawing I decided to do the flower first, and came another issue, I had only one shade of pink which I had been using to darken the shadows on the face. I decided to keep blending/ mixing a little red, the one I used for the lips to do the shadows in the flower. By now I was so engrossed in it that I forgot to take any further pictures :)  I took this picture from my iPhone 4 and although it is a little yellowed, it shows the tones best.

Here are some pictures taken from my digital camera...I forgot to mention adding the sleeve in the end, it is some pattern similar to the one in the original picture and not the very same.

At the very end I highlighted the eyes, eyelashes again, used some more black on the lips added a touch of brown in between the eyes and nose.

I am yet to take a picture, after I corrected the right eye :) Will add that soon. Click on the images to see larger  versions.

Self Portrait - A first one.

I had been having a craving for drawing something since last few days, I came accross Deepika Padukone's picture in Tanishq's facebook feeds and I printed out the picture for reference. When I eventually sat down to do it, my husband insisted I draw something else, something more inspiring than beautiful looking hair, very tempting to draw.

The next one I chose to do was a cartoon featuring the popular Disney characters Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald etc. And the response I got from my husband when I showed him what I was planning to do was "If I had your kind of talent, I wouldnt do cartoons when I had a craving for drawing" :) After some pondering I settled on a picture of myself. I have never done one of my own. The reason why I selected the below image of myself was because the hair seemed interesting(I love to draw hair :) I think it is evident by now) and I wasnt sure if I would be able to do the sun glasses.

When I started, I did not have a printed picture and my first attempt was by looking into my iphone 4! The first outline sketch that I came up with did not capture the correct tilting of the face and the sun glasses, so I went to bed feeing low and dissapointed, as this was my first attempt at a portrait in more than 2 years!

Yesterday, when I sat again to do it, I had a printed copy of the picture :) I always print the picture I am going to draw in gray scale because it gives me idea of the depth of shading I should do. I ended up at this stage after 20 mins using HB.

I was happy with the tilt of the head and started with the hair, I usually do the hair in 2B first and then move to the face, coming back to hair with darker tones like 5B, 6B and usually end in 8B. I also use, click pencils a lot of times to do the finer things.

A first layer of the hair done and the rest of the drawing a little highlighted. Next I started with the sun glasses and at this stage I was a little confused as to what level of darkness should my first layer of the frame be? As I knew I had to show it visible agianst the hair, I decided to keep it a level darker than the hair from the start. I used 3B.

Taking a closer look at the reflection in the sun glass, I realised its going to be much more difficult to do it justice than I had anticipated. Nevertheless, here's a comparison of the actual picture and the drawing. There is considerable size difference. I will upload a comparative picture in the end to show the proportions. 

First level of shading done on the sun glasses and started to darken the hair.

Unfortunately, I only have the end result now, I got so engrossed that I didn't capture any more stages. I have applied 3 more layers of graphite to the hair and 2 more o the sun glasses. I was also hurrying a little by now because it  was getting late in the night and the horror of waking up next morning for work makes me really spead up.

This is the one that I took in the morning in natural light, before leaving for work. And obviously, the first thing I did as soon as I got in the car was upload it to Facebook for my friends to see :) Some people actually come up with knowledgeable comments which helps me improve.

 Thanks to my husband's support and appreciation and Very helpful reviews, I will continue to draw all my life :)