Looking to build your skills with colored pencils? This activity will help you develop skills in layering and burnishing your colored pencils to create a super realistic paint blob with defined shadows and highlights. This blog post features tips, a video tutorial, step by step photos, and 70 royalty-free paint blob photographs in a variety of colors to continue exploring this skill.
Interested in more art tutorials with colored pencils? Check out my video tutorial on how to draw a glowing light bulb on black paper with colored pencils.
Materials list:
You don’t need a lot of materials to complete this activity. The materials include a piece of drawing paper and colored pencils. You may also wish to have a ruler for drawing straight edges, an eraser, a pencil sharper, and a white gel pen.
When it comes to colored pencils, I recommend investing in a decent set of Prismacolor Premier pencils. They are superior for layering and the pigment and color saturation they achieve is phenomenal. I really like the Marvy Uchida Reminisce Unique Smooth Gel Excel Pen, it’s very opaque and goes on many different surfaces effectively.
Video tutorial:
More photographs to download:
Below is a file with 70 royalty-free paint blob photographs. Feel free to use develop your own original paint blob drawing. There are lots of different paint colors and shapes to choose from. Enjoy! 🙂
Step by step photos:
Here is the photo reference I use for the image below and my final drawing.
Step 1: Use a light color pencil (like a soft yellow) to lightly draw the paint blob contours and map out the values.
Step 2: Use light pressure to begin layering in the color of your paint blobs.
Step 3: Use a variety of tones to layer and blend to achieve your desired color. As you work, strive for little to no white paper coming through. This is called burnishing.
Step 4: Add the cast shadow to develop a great sense of 3 dimensionality. Explore making your shadow out of a blue or purple, rather than just black to develop visual interest.
Step 5: Touch up the highlights with a white gel pen, white colored pencil, or white paint.
Thanks for checking out this tutorial! I hope you found it helpful! I would love to see what you create. Feel free to share with me on my Facebook group page, instagram, or email me at makeamarkstudios@gmail.com.
-Stephanie Villiotis