STEP BY STEP - Colored Pencils Portrait🍦

Hi Everyone! 

I'm back! 😊 It was an amazing and pretty crazy week! I'm very happy with the content we managed to film - it's gonna be a long course! 🎞 Today I wanna share with you my new portrait study made with colored pencils. I try to slowly come back to drawing for myself instead of focusing on the course and tight deadlines! 🧘‍♀️ 

MATERIALS

I still don't have my luggage so most of my favorite materials is somewhere in Europe 🤷‍♀️ I wanted to draw something with colored pencils and remembered that I have a box from Arteza. Today's portrait is made with them 😉 

I bought a new, small Talens Art Creation Sketchbook in square format (most of my sketchbooks are also in my lost luggage 😭). 

REFERENCE PHOTO

I used this photo as an inspiration but I wanted to change the expression to be a bit stronger and more confident:

STEP BY STEP

1-4: INITIAL SKETCH

I made simple sketch with a pink pencil. I realized that the eyes are placed to low so I erased them and drew again. Arteza pencils aren't very easy to erase but it worked on such a light sketch:

5-6: DEFINED SKETCH  

I added darker values and more defined lines with a blue pencil (face) and with green (hair):

7-8: COOL AND WARM TONES + LOCAL COLOR OF THE FACE

I painted some shadows with blue pencil. Then I added the local color of the face (light peach) and emphasized some lights with light orange.

9-10: SKIN, HAIR, CONTOURS AND BACKGROUND

I didn't use many colors in this drawing. I find most of Arteza colors pretty dark and I like pastel tones so I focused on them. I used red and orange to emphasize central part of the face (cheeks, nose, ears, eyelids and lips). I used light blue, green and lime to paint colorful hair and some hues of the face (especially on the chin, bottom part of the cheeks and temples). 

I emphasized the contour of the portrait with pink and blue (the colors of initial sketch). 

Then I added orange + pink and blue + light green + yellow as gradients of the background.   

11: STYLIZATION

I liked the final result but wanted to push this character more into bold and confident look. I decided to add more contrast to lights and shadows to create more mysterious look on her face. I emphasized her gaze to be stronger and added tattoos to make her look more like a bada$$ 😎 I think it nicely contrasts with the cotton candy palette of colors 🎨 

I hope you like it! 🥰 Let me know if you have any questions! 

Hugs 🧡 

Gaby