Hello, and thank you for stopping back in. I'm Dave Nebo. And in this video, we're going to be starting to add some value to our drawing. So we've already made a grid of our reference image. And we've already drawn out the subject and I already started adding a little bit of graphite in this picture. So I just want to show you what I'm going to be working off of for my reference images.

And we've already talked about the different darkness is and of prints that you make for your reference so that it's easier for you to actually see things so I'm working off of this one. And I'm also working on this really light image here. Now what I did with the dark image is I mapped out the highlight of where the light is actually shining in so you can see the light right here just shining right there. That's going to be the lightest section right there. of the egg. So I kind of map that out a little bit, just writing the word is.

And then this, we want to add in the graph, I can concentrate, say, okay, that's going to be the lightest part of that egg. Even though the egg is like a tan color, that's still going to be the lightest spot. So I want to make sure that I'm drawn that accordingly. So a couple things that I want to go over. And I always want to try to add some tips in just some helpful tips for you. When you're drawing, always make sure that you have a sharp pencil.

You don't want to have adult pencil because what happens is the tooth of your paper the graphite will not be able to get inside of it. So you want to you want to have a sharp pencil. And right now I'm working with a four H pencil and Tombow graphite pencils is what I'm using right now. And the four H pencil it's a harder lead. So what that means is that when I'm drawn on here I'm not going to get that dark of a value, but the graphite is going to actually go into the tooth. And then you're not going to see all those white little specks that you would see if you use a lighter pencil.

So it's really important for realism, john to create a base, I like to call it a base or, you know, just putting down one layer, so then you're conditioning that paper, so then you don't have any of those white dots that are realistic, you know, so if you're drawing a face, or you're drawing an animal or you're drawing a mug, you're not gonna have all these little white spots everywhere. That's just not realistic. So if you're trying to draw as realistic as you can, you want to make sure that those little spots aren't there, or something just not going to look worried. Now what I'm doing here too, is I'm concentrating on the darkest areas. I'm always going over the dark theories and then I'm gradually going lighter following the contour of the egg. And it's almost when I'm looking at this image, I'm almost in my mind, I'm seeing it as a three dimensional object I'm seeing, like how thick the object is.

And your brain can actually tell you how thick an object is, because of the way that light is actually hidden it. And it tells you the curve, it tells you how much curve that there is on a subject, or how flat something is on a subject just by the way that light is reacting to that subject. So it's really important to become familiar with how light actually reacts to every single different surface that you're drawn. And if you notice, I'm gone. different directions here long, drawn this value in here. And I'm doing that, because I want to cover all of the egg.

But also, when I'm going over an area that I've already drawn the darkest area, that's where I start with the darkest area, it's going to be gradually getting darker. So every time that you put a line on another line, that's going to get darker. So that's important to keep in mind when you drive. So if you're just going over a line, that's going to be darker than the line that doesn't have any graphite underneath it. Just got some imperfections here. So another thing that I'd like to actually talk about, you're going to get some imperfections there's going to be sometimes you're gonna you're going to draw something a little bit too hard or maybe a spec will come something's going to happen where there's going to be something that's imperfection on your drawing, take care of it right then in there.

You don't want to be waiting and say, Okay, I'll go back to that later. I've done that so many times, and you end up forgetting you forget where they are, you can't really see him with the holes drawn being done, but they're going to be there and you don't want them to be here. You want to make your job as perfect as you can, and and try to make your job as easy as you possibly can. So while you're drawing the graphite, if something happens where you need to adjust it, adjust it if you want to wind darker, and again, I'm using a two H pencil so I'm only going to get a certain amount of value here. Now when I'm done getting all The value that I came from this to a four H pencil, I'm going to go to a two H pencil, then I'll go to a HB pencil, then I'll go to A to B pencil.

And if need be, I'll go to a four B pencil. Very seldomly, I will go to a six p, but there have been occasions. So you want to get all of the value that you can from every graphite pencil grade that you're using. And in this way, you're putting on a layer slowly and softly and you're concentrating on the reference image and making sure that the values are correct. And in this way, you're going to save a ton of time adjusting and fix him and if you draw something too dark, then you're stuck because then everything else is going to have to be adjusted accordingly to make that john look realistic. So you want to make sure that you your or I like to I know as I'm Not saying you have to, but I like to put things on very slowly.

It takes a little bit longer for me to to complete a join. But I enjoy all the process of it. I enjoy watching the image come to life. And I can also at any point say my John's done because the values are all accurate with each other because I'm putting on the layers softly. And another reason why I do this is because it's a lot easier to fix any mistakes. Now, I've, I've made I've made so many mistakes in the past and that's why I enjoy doing these tutorials and that's why I'm going to have a whole series of tutorials.

I'm going to try to get at least two or three of them up a year. If I can get more than That's great. But I want to, I want to be able to teach you how to draw anything that you want to be able to draw. I love drawn animals because I just, I just love animals. So that's what, that's what my passion is. A lot of my commission work comes from people who own pets, dogs, cats, I get portraits, every now and then.

But usually it's animals and I just love drawing animals. But I want you to be able to draw whatever you want to draw. And all the techniques that I'm going to be going over will help you to draw any type of subject because I want you to be able to draw what you see. And I want you to be able to understand how light is going to react to the surface that you've drawn. So it could be a metal surface, it could be for it could be a face could be an app. It doesn't matter.

Light's going to react differently to each subject. And as long as you know how lights can react to it, you're going to be able to draw that, you're going to be able to be able to duplicate that on to a drawn surface, as long as you focus on subtle value changes, not trying to do too quick. Not trying to press too hard with your pencil. And just being patient, it does take a lot of patience. As you can see, I haven't really gotten too far with this, this drawing already. And you know, if I took A to B to B pencil and I started adding graphite to a Yeah, it would be darker right now, but you know what the value changes wouldn't be there.

I wouldn't be focusing on darker sections. I'd have all of these little white spots everywhere. Where that I'd have to try to fill in which it's almost near to impossible to do that. I, I just made those mistakes in the past and I've learned how to make my job a little bit easier. And that's what I hope to help you with, I want you to be able to enjoy drawing, I want you to be able to learn a little bit quicker than the wide it has a lot of trial and error. But on the other hand, I want you to try things, I want you to find what's best for you.

Every artist will have different techniques and that's why there's no two pieces of art that will be exactly the same. So I want you to find out what works best for you. I'm going to tell you things that, you know, I've learned that made my job easier. And I'm going to also kind of give you some helpful tips that I've learned throughout the past I've been drawn now over. It's been over 40 years I haven't been selling art for four years but I've been involved with drawing for 40 years. I have worked with some mediums as I did acrylic paints.

Never really worked with oil paints, did wood burning colored pencils on my favorite is grayscale. I love working with graphite. Just because it's To me, it's amazing that you can make a realistic drawing off of just using one color and just by focusing in on on the different values. And you want to know what's great about learning how to do this. I don't care what medium you use. I don't care how many colors you use.

It all works together. So if you learn about how to control values with a grayscale, you can apply that to colors. You can apply that to acrylic paint oil paint colored pencils, whatever medium that you want to do soft pastels, it doesn't matter because the value is what's going to make the drawn look realistic. You can see that I'm constantly going over the darker areas, and that's because I want that to gradually get darker too because there's that dark section I want to focus on and I want it to get lighter. So I'm not going to go over these pencil marks as much as well. Because if I go over because what happens that line is going to get there Now a lot of people ask me, they say how how hard are you supposed to press on a pencil, you're gonna, you're gonna learn that that you're going to learn the different feeling of the pressure of the pencil and what's gonna come out with all of the different types of pressure that you put.

Now, most of my most of my pressure just comes from the weight of the pencil, and so the very seldomly add any pressure to the pencil. I just lied on the paper and I lift the weight of the pencil and the graphite to that On. And that might be one of the reasons why it takes me a little bit longer. But a more accurate, every line is consistent. I'm not worried about pressing too hard or too soft. And you're going to realize that there are going to be days that you're going to come to draw, and you're just not going to have that touch.

So for me to be able to counteract that, if I just use the weight of the pencil, that reduces the chance of error, because I'm just using the winter pencil. I don't have to worry about how hard that I'm actually pressing down on the pencil. So I'm just going to continue to add some graphite here. And you can start to see that the contour of the SEC starting to pop up And it might be hard for you to see right now, just because this is a four H pencil and seeing it on video is a lot different than actually seeing it in real life. But you're going to see this drawing come to life, you're going to see this egg actually start to pop off of the paper. And I think this is just such a great exercise.

And that's why I'm doing this with you to be able to learn how to control your pencils in how to be able to see the different value changes of a subject, and how to actually duplicate that. Now you probably you've probably seen my paper fly up and down. I'm trying to hold it down. We're in the middle of a heat wave right now. So I got I got the about fanime right just so I can kind of keep cool so it's actually blowing the paper on me and also I got a I'm pretty excited because I got some new recording equipment that's going to make the videos a little bit better. So hopefully, you're going to see improvements on this.

So every video I'm going to try to learn a little bit more on taking these videos for you. So then there'll be higher quality for you, because I want you to be able to feel like you're actually right here with me drawn. I want you to have fun instead of trying to struggle to see what I'm doing. Okay. So I'm getting a little miss perfection here. So I'm just going to take my kneaded eraser.

I'm going to dab some of that graphite apps and then it blends nicely if I didn't do this. What happens When I add graphite to it, that little spot or imperfections is going to get darker, right? That's what's going to happen. So I don't want that I don't want that spot there to be darker because that's not part of the reference image that's not part of the job. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to continue to add value to this egg. I'm going to continue to focus on the darker areas.

Now again, I'm just using this lighter image right here. Okay, so I can see where the real births are, and how it gradually gets lighter. Now, of course, this is going to be a darker value because I'm going to go to a darker image, our reference image, but this has given me the foundation this has given me that foundation of knowing that this is dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, and then it gets lighter. And it also shows me that the shadow isn't as dark as this. So I want to make sure that I do that. And it's gonna look more realistic.

Because we see shadows all the time, our brain knows what a shadow looks like our brain knows that a shadow right here is not going to be as dark as this, because of the way that light is hitting this egg. So I want to be able to duplicate that I want to be able to draw that on the surface that I'm drawing. So for me to be aware of that is to have a lighter skin. I'm going to continue to do this, I want you to continue to do this as well. Just keep adding graphite to paper concentrate on where the darker sections are. And try not to add any or try not to skip lines or miss lines.

I should say you want all of the graphite to connect from one another. You don't want to be having spaces if you have spaces. The John's not going to look correct. I'll just give me an example of that really quick before I go. So when you're drawn I you Want to be able to have consistent value. Scrolling through with no extra lines, I'm going to zoom in see what happens again, just getting used to this camera here.

There we go. So you want to have consistent lines here, okay? With no spacing. You don't want to be drawn and then like like this and then have all kinds of space in and then what happens when you go to make that darker and you're adding lines over that and you're going in a crosshatch section, look what happens. Those basins they're getting darker, but so aren't the lines that you've already drawn. Now we'll send it looks like this checker box.

Now this is a great trick if you're trying to make that effect. But if you're trying to draw an egg or you're trying to draw a solid Color, this is not going to work. So every time that I'm adding graphite onto this, everything's getting darker. And that includes all the lines that I've drawn. Now it looks like just this big checkbox. So you you want to practice focusing on not having any spaces, you want to be able to go nice and even use the pencil and don't have a space.

And then what happens when I go to make a darker, everything's getting darker, there's no extra space, it's just the values getting darker. That's it. Now, every time that you do this, you're going to have space here and there. You're not going to be 100% accurate. We're all human. We're going to make some mistakes, something's not going to go right.

But you want to be able to control your pencil and to be able to fill in that space. So you might want to take some time You might want to take some time, drawn some lines and then add in the value in there to blend it to see if you can do that. So then it looks like there's no difference. There's no space and see if you can actually accurately add in that graph i. So then it's one solid, color or one solid. I don't know what the word I'm trying to say is one solid.

I'm going to go with color. This way, you're not having lines. This way your subject matter. Doesn't look unrealistic. So draw some lines. Add that graphite in there.

Get used to that because you're not going to make every single line perfect. is sometimes you're going to have some spaces you want To be able to know that you can go into those spaces for any circumstance that you can do whenever you want to do it. I hope you got some value from this video and I really look forward to seeing you on the next video to be able to make this egg look more realistic. And to be able to help your drawing techniques become where you want them to be. And you can be able to take your drawings to whatever level that you want to. So I look forward to seeing you next time.

I hope you have a great day and have fun, adding some graphite to your drawing and then we'll continue from from there next week.