#technique

Before we begin, let’s get some anatomical terms sorted out to make sure the instructions are not confusing.

1 – Eyebrows, 2 – eyelid crease, 3 – upper eyelid, 4 – lacrimal caruncle, 5 – sclera, 6 – reflection, 7 – eyelashes, 8 – pupil, 9 – iris, 10 – lower eyelid. 

Now look at the eye drawings below, paying attention to different viewing angles. Notice how different people have very different eye shapes, eyelid sizes, and eyelashes.

Now, let’s get started! Draw two circles, one inside the other – the eyeball and the iris.

Next, add lines representing the edges of the upper and lower eyelid, then continue by adding a pupil and the edge of the face.

Use an eraser to remove the lines above and below the eye, then create the basic eyebrow shape using a few short strokes.

Next, add another line close to the upper edge of the lower eyelid – this will be the lower edge of the lower eyelid. Add an elongated drop shape below the eye, to the right, then place an oval above the eye, still to the right, and finally, add the lacrimal caruncle. Add a light reflection into the pupil as well.

Now move on to hatching. In our model picture, the hatching shows where the darkest areas are. Pay attention to the direction of the hatching lines – they must follow the facial shapes! Use HB and 2B pencils to hatch the darkest spots, paying attention to areas with no hatching at all – these are the lightest spots in the drawing. Let’s say we’re drawing brown eyes – that means that the iris will be dark too. Use a midtone for light brown, blue, or green eyes and make sure to keep the iris very light and contrasting for light blue, light green, or grey eyes.

Now use 2H and HB pencils for cross hatching, adding volume by creating a wide range of tones, from very light to very dark, almost black. Darken the iris.

Use HB and 2B pencils to add midtones, taking time to carefully study all shadows and half-shadows. Pay extra attention to areas that have to remain light. Contrast between light and dark tones is important in drawing, adding realism and volume to your work.

Use a 2B pencil to add a shadow to the inner and outer eye corner, then use sharp 2B and HB pencils to draw an eyebrow. Next, grab a 4B and 6B pencil to shade the iris, making sure to keep some light reflections in the eye. 

If you wish, darken the areas above the eye by adding more lines to the existing hatching. Darken the eye corner and continue to work on the shading. Use an HB pencil to draw eyelashes and keep in mind that they grow from the outer edges of the eyelids. Finally, add some thin, crooked lines to represent the veins. 

Wow, this was quite a detailed tutorial, don’t you think? Still, the best way to master drawing skills is by learning from an expert 😊 Come join us at Draw Planet and sign up for our drawing course for beginners! Or perhaps we’ll see you at our portrait drawing course? Choose the one that calls to you and come learn with us!

A simple pencil is more than enough to create a realistic drawing – you just need to know how.

Step 1
Make a sketch using a 2H pencil, trying to outline and mark the places where the tones will shift. When you are satisfied with the sketch, lightly go over the entire thing with an eraser to soften the lines.

Step 2
Begin hatching, starting with the eyes. Why eyes? First, the picture will already start to look alive, and second, eyes are the darkest part and can be used as reference for further shading and hatching.

Step 3
Use a 2T pencil to outline the hair growth direction around the eyes and on the forehead.

Step 4
Begin adding hair, starting from the darkest area – the eyebrow arc. Use short strokes to mimic short dog hair.

Step 5
Continue working in the same way to add hair around the other eye.

Step 6
Move on to an ear. Its darker shade helps separate it from the forehead clearly. Keep using short strokes and add small, sticking out hairs to avoid a hard transition between the dog and the background. When working the wrinkles in the dog’s skin, keep in mind that making them three dimensional is the key here. Do this by making the edges dark and adding light and shadow to the wrinkles.

Step 7
Start working on the second ear, again making your way from the darkest areas to the lighter ones. Don’t forget about the hair at the back edge of the ear.

Step 8
Now work the inside of the ear. Start by filling the entire ear with an even shade using a 2H pencil and try to keep the strokes the same colour (but don’t smudge the pencil work!). Next, take an HB pencil and start adding darker areas and more detail and definition, trying to keep strokes from becoming too obvious. Use a 2B and 5B pencil to darken the forehead as well.

Step 9
Move on to the nose and start by filling out the darkest areas but keeping them barely visible before moving on to a softer pencil and making the shadows more pronounced using a circular motion. Focus on the nostrils and use the softest pencil, 5M, to work on them. When you’re done with the nose, use very short strokes to draw the hairs above the muzzle, paying attention to the hair growth direction.

Step 10
Work on the muzzle, starting with even, midtone hatching before deepening the shadows of the darkest areas.

Step 11
Now move to the tongue, working the way you worked the ear – start with even hatching, making sure that individual strokes are not too obvious, then deepen the shadows and finally, use the edge of your eraser to create light reflections.

Step 12
Continue using the same method and move on to the jaw, paying attention to the many details in the dog’s mouth. Start with the darkest areas and work your way to lighter areas.

Step 13
Hatch the lower jaw.

Step 14
Draw the wrinkles (skin folds) on the neck and make sure to properly capture their volume. You will need to pay extra attention to the hair growth direction  (the hair is in the fold too, but the direction can vary with every fold). Start your strokes in the darker area and move to the lighter area.

Step 15
Finish working on the neck. That’s it, your drawing is now finished!

Are you a fan of drawing? Are you curious to see what other media can be used to create monochromatic pictures? Come join our drawing course and learn all about perspective, still life, figure drawing, and much more!

There are many cloud painting methods, and in every drawing or painting, clouds are always easy to identify even if they were created by beginner artists. Let’s not forget, however, that clouds are not just random, shapeless blobs in the sky. Keep reading to enhance your cloud-painting skills and improve your future artworks!

Beautiful clouds: five cloud-painting methods
The first cloud related decision arrives rather early, in the composition sketching stage, when you need to decide how much space your clouds will take up in the finished work. Do you want them to just spice up a simple blue sky, or are you going to make it super cloudy and really work on the details of your sky? Once you’ve got that figured out, follow the steps below to make your clouds look amazing.

In this article we will focus on cumulus clouds, the ones we see most often. Cumulus clouds come in many shapes and forms, they are dense, and their colour can range from snow white to menacing dark shades. Just look at our examples.

1. Wide, broad cloud

A cumulus cloud is usually rather voluminous, but still, parts of blue sky tend to peek through here and there. These clouds are nice and dense, and their shape and size vary greatly, so they are fun to draw. To make a wide, broad cumulus cloud look realistic, make sure to add some tattered parts to your sky as well.

Step 1

I decided to keep things simple and went for a simple sheet of watercolour paper and a single blue colour. Start by sketching your “holes” with tattered edges – this is the sky peeking through the clouds. Don’t put too much pressure on the pencil to keep the lines light – you will need to erase them or hide them later. 

Using watercolour, make a wide, smudgy cloud, using wet paper and filling your “holes” with light strokes of blue colour. Then, leave your paper (or at least the sky part) to dry for 30 minutes.

Step 2

Believe it or not, you’re just one step away from the finale! Add more colour to the blue spots you made in the previous step. As the paper was drying, the blue colour probably hid the pencil outlines, which is great – your clouds will look natural and undisturbed by anything that shouldn’t be there. 

Now apply another uneven layer of blue to a wet paper and watch it spread, gathering here in there. This is a great effect that we need and will use in our favour. Keep making your blue more saturated until you are happy with the result. And that’s it, you’re done!

2. Voluminous cloud
This is the most common type of cumulus cloud. They glide smoothly across the sky as we try to find familiar items and figures in their shapes. And the good thing about them is that they are very simple to draw.

Step 1
Draw a curved oval or circle shape. I like to give my clouds defined edges when working on illustrations for children’s books. Keep in mind that this is an outline, a sketch, so don’t put too much pressure on the pencil – you will need to erase these pencil lines later. Add a couple of lines inside the cloud’s body, making them look like small hills.

Step 2
Wet the paper around the cloud, keeping the cloud itself completely dry. Paint the sky blue.

Step 3
Only start working on your cloud once the sky around has dried completely. To add depth, emphasize the convex parts of the cloud with some grey (number 1 in the picture below). Add some wetness to slightly grey the areas around the “hills” inside your cloud and clean the edges with your brush (number 2 in the picture below).

3. The WOW cloud
This is the type of cloud you see when the weather changes suddenly, with fluffy white “hills” breaking out from the cloud.

Step 1
Make an outline of your cloud, just like in the previous example. This time place the “hills” above one another and some to the inside and around the edges of the cloud too.

Step 2
Wet the entire sky area. You can decide to keep the cloud itself a bit muted to make the picture more interesting (number 1 in the picture below). 

To create volume, I made the colour more saturated at the tops of the “hills” – another way to achieve a three-dimensional effect. 

Cirrus clouds can be seen when the weather is good, they are light and fly high in the sky. Their colour is a misty white, with spots and the structure resembling marble or sea waves. There are two different approaches to drawing them.
Blue on white
Wet the sky and a couple of blue curls, then let the paper dry. Repeat this twice to give the colour some volume and create soft edges, and don’t worry about any hard edges that might be there as a result of paper drying unevenly – they will fit into the picture nicely.

White on blue
If you choose this method, you will be applying white paint to a blue sky.

In this picture, you can see an example of this method – I painted the sky blue, let it dry, then mixed some white gouache with water and applied a few light strokes. Then, I wet my brush again to soften the edges that were too hard. And that’s all there is to it! You can even use white pastel instead of paint for this method.

Final tip – don’t limit yourself to one medium – experiment! These tips will all work for other techniques as well; just look at the charcoal drawing of a cloud below.

And if you are intrigued by watercolour, come discover its secrets with us and join our watercolour course for beginners!

Acrylics and oil paints are the most common paints in art.

The key difference lies in their chemical composition – while acrylics are synthetic and contain water, oil paints are composed of natural ingredients and their manufacturing involves dissolving the pigment in oil.

With that being said, many contemporary artists use both of them, often combining acrylics and oil paints in the same painting! In such cases, acrylics are used for a base and oils come into play to add surface details, a method that doesn’t require the artist to wait for the underpainting to dry completely. 

Let’s briefly go over the key properties of these two types of paints.

Acrylics are water-based and made with synthetic materials and they darken slightly once dry. 

Oil paints are made with natural oils (with a synthetic drying oil being used sometimes as well) and pigments. They maintain colour well after drying but require special canvas preparation before they can be used.

If you want to get more familiar with acrylics or oil paints, come try one of our courses! Our amazing teachers will teach you to work with them properly and share some tips and tricks to help you achieve amazing results. We look forward to seeing you!

There are plenty of various techniques in art – some are traditional, some are non-traditional, and some could be described as innovative, even. In general, an artistic technique is characterized not just by the materials used, but also by how they are used and applied. Length and direction of strokes, their brightness, the colour mixing method – all these factors are important, and they are also very individual, allowing each artist to create their own style. Still, there are some main techniques defined by the materials used to produce a resulting artwork. The most famous and the most popular techniques include pencil drawing, pastel drawing, watercolour painting, and oil painting. 

Pencil drawing is the simplest of them and it’s where most artists begin. Pencil drawing doesn’t require any special additional skills, and often pencil drawings serve as a preparatory stage for other techniques. However, there are still things to master in pencil drawing, like realism and precision or the secrets of hatching and shading.

Pastels require a rough surface with enough tooth and texture and allow you to both paint and draw with them – that means you can smudge the pastel to create a seamless layer over a larger area (painting) or use it to apply individual strokes (drawing). Pastels tend to look especially nice on dark backgrounds, which is why toned paper is often used for pastel work. 

Watercolour technique is a bit more complicated, and to many people it remains mysterious, perhaps even misunderstood. Its name comes from the Latin word for water – aqua, and the artist’s ability to control water mixed with colour determines how good they will be with watercolours. The paint itself is fluid and transparent, and very receptive to every move of the brush. Despite being sometimes misunderstood, watercolours are very popular with many great artists.

When it comes to oil painting, there are two distinct approaches: with or without underpainting. The first approach requires some rather complicated preparations, although there are no dogmatic rules when it comes to working with oil paint. The best thing you can do is to try them out and decide what works for you, and don’t get discouraged – even a non-professional artist can handle oil paint.

Recently, a new technique appeared and quickly gained popularity – digital drawing, with artists using drawing tablets and special stylus pens. This is great for both beginners and experts, and there are plenty of specialized programs that are designed to help both adults and children master digital art.

Whatever technique you decide to choose to develop and show off your creative abilities, don’t forget that only practice makes perfect. And for those whose heads are spinning with all the options to choose from there is also a solution – come to our drawing and painting course for beginners and let one of our amazing teachers guide you as you try your hand at all the most popular techniques to discover which one suits you best!

Painting on fabric is a great way to breathe new life to an old, plain t-shirt, boring tank top, or any other piece of clothing! Mastering this technique will allow you to easily transfer your ideas to any fabric and create unique pieces for your wardrobe or your home décor. Follow our tutorial to learn how to create your drawing, transfer it to any fabric, and bring it to life!

Fabric paints

Acrylic, polymer-based paints are the best choice for fabric painting. Their pigments don’t actually go through the fabric – instead, they coat with a “protective layer”, making the fabric structure denser and less elastic. 

Paint will make any fabric vibrant, colourful, and unique. Acrylics have an added bonus here – they are waterproof!

Why choose acrylics

Acrylics really are the best choice for painting on fabric – if you don’t believe us, just look at how popular they are among enthusiasts and professionals alike. So what makes them so great?

– Wide range and availability
– Safety and ease of use
– Option to use water to dilute them
– Water resistance, detergent resistance

Acrylics are also easy to mix, allowing the artist to experiment with new, original shades. Setting a layer of acrylic paint is easy as well – all you need is a warm (not too hot!) iron.

Acrylics can be used on clothes, but also shoes, purses, or other items – for instance, you can decorate your own umbrella!

Paint manufacturers usually indicate what types of fabric are suitable for use with the paint:

If the package says “silk”, the pigment is designed for painting on soft, thin fabrics like silk, batiste or chiffon. 

A label that reads “Textile” means you can paint on denser fabric, leather, velvet, and suede. 

On a dense fabric, an acrylic stencil can look very nice as well, with the fabric’s density allowing for clearly defined edges and vibrant colours.

Preparation
Before you start painting, take time to prepare your fabric properly and carefully by submerging it into cold water for about an hour and then slightly stretching it. Rinse with clean water, then let your fabric dry and finish preparations by ironing it.

If you are using a thin fabric like silk or batiste, stretch it on a wooden frame and let it dry completely. If you want to work on a piece of clothing it is best to separate the layers (like front and back) with a piece of cardboard or thick paper.

Painting techniques
There are certain rules you should keep in mind when applying the paint:

Make sure to put an impermeable foil or wax paper under the fabric you are painting on to protect your desk (or whatever surface you are using to work).
If you are using a stencil or pattern, work the way you would with a colouring picture for children. The only difference is that when applying acrylics in layers, you need to wait for the previous layer to dry completely before adding the next one.
Apply light colours first, then move on to darker shades.
Stick to these simple rules and create your own amazing acrylic-decorated fabric that will last through repeated washing! Find some awesome inspiration and dive right into it. Good luck! 😊

Painting is more than just applying pigment to a canvas, and the way you mix colours is just as important as your style or technique. Choosing the right shades can greatly affect the emotions conveyed by your painting – just think of Picasso’s “Blue Period” works. Would they have the same effect without those blue tones?

Whatever medium you are using, understanding and learning to mix colours properly is key. Most beginner artists tend to use only the colours that come directly out of the paint tube, but these shades are often oversaturated, flat, or simply unnatural. By learning to mix colours, you can create much more beautiful shades and save some money on top of that too since you won’t need to purchase a tube of every colour you might want to use.

To help you truly master the art of colour mixing, we put together a simple colour theory overview.

• PRIMARY COLOURS 

The primary colours are blue, yellow, and red. All other colours are created by mixing these three together, so if you want to keep your palette minimal, primary colours are a must since you can mix any other shade using just them.

• SECONDARY

When you mix two primary colours together, you get a secondary colour. Red and blue result in purple, blue and yellow in green and finally, red and yellow will result in orange.

• TERTIARY 

As the name suggests, tertiary colours are created by mixing primary and secondary colours. There is a total of six tertiary colours: vermilion (red–orange), amber (yellow–orange), chartreuse (yellow–green), teal (blue-green), violet (blue–purple), and magenta (red–purple). These shades can vary, and you are free to adjust them as you see fit. For instance, you can make your vermilion more yellow and less orange by working with ratios of each composite colour.

Colours are all about ratios, and one shade can look very different depending on how you mix it. Always keep the colour wheel and each colour’s position in mind when pairing and mixing different shades. The colours that are opposite of one another on the wheel are complementary colours, which means that red and green, blue and orange, and purple and yellow will always look great together.

Colour mixing is a bit of a mysterious discipline, like alchemy, and it certainly requires a lot of practice to go with the theory. Join us at our oil painting course for beginners and learn the secrets of colour mixing with us!

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Roses are one of the most popular flowers out there, often considered to symbolise love. Composed of many layered petals, they are notoriously hard to draw since you have to work in layers too before you can move on to shading.

You will need:

• A hard pencil (like HB)
• A medium pencil (2B or slightly softer)
• A soft pencil (5B or softer)
• A sheet of paper
• A pencil sharpener

Step 1
Use a hard pencil to draw a drop or egg-shaped outline – this is the inside of the rose, the bud.

Step 2
Draw the “opening” part.

Step 3
Add petals inside.

Step 4
Think of a heart shape when drawing these petals; they will also work as the edge of the other petals.

Step 5
Connect the “heart” to the rest of the bud to create a petal shape.

Step 6
Draw another heart, this time connecting it to the lower part of the bud.

Step 7
Draw another heart, making it more open and less smooth this time.

Step 8
Now it’s time to add more petals. Think carefully before adding each of them – too many will only cause you to get lost in the picture.

Step 9
Now it’s time to plant the bud into a “bowl” of petals. Start by adding small petals and continue working, adding more and more of them.

Step 10
As you add petals, make sure to make them point more and more downwards, as if they were almost laying down.

Step 11
Once you are satisfied, put a bit more pressure on the pencil in the areas that you want to accentuate with shading to mark them

Step 12
Now grab a softer pencil and darken the inner parts of the rose. Start with light strokes first…

…then add more pressure to create deeper shadows.

Step 13
Use the same pencil to place dark accents at the tips of the petals, but don’t go over their entire outline!

Step 14
Now use the hard pencil again and use it to add light structure to the parts that are “lit”. The more shaded the fragment is, the crisper your lines should be.

Step 15
Finally, use the softest pencil to add final strokes to the dark parts, especially in the darkest folds.

All done – you know how to draw a rose now!

Would you like to learn to draw other things too? Sign up for our beginners’ drawing course at https://www.drawplanet.cz/kurz/kurz-kresby/ and learn to work with pencils, charcoal, pastels, ink, and other exciting media!