Turn to me: seeing colors!

Turn to me: seeing colors!

This project is about seeing color in subtle subject matter (in this case, mostly white birds) and exaggerating it in your drawing. I used a photo by Jerry Chandel from unsplash.com (thank you!): it has a grate composition and also one can already see hints of color.

For sketching, printer paper (A4 sized), graphite pencils, eraser.
For final illustration: smooth medium-weight paper (I used Bristol 200 gms); Caran D'Ache Neocolor II crayons.

1. Draw guidelines on the printer paper (A4) by dividing it into thirds vertically and horizontally — these will help you to place your object more accurately. Do the same (mentally or physically) on the source picture.
2. Start drawing the foreground bird by placing major shapes only.
3. Add more details on the first bird and add the background bird by focusing on relating placement and negative space between them.
4. Once you are happy with the overall drawing, erase the lines you don’t need and darken the ones you want to keep.

We will transfer the finished sketch onto our “good” paper in an old-fashioned but very effective way — over a window:
1. Tape your sketch (use masking tape) onto the window pane.
2. Tape the paper on which you will be doing your final illustration over the sketch.
3. Carefully transfer all the lines with a graphite pencil (H2 to HB).

1. To give you ideas how you can you exaggerate the color that you see, you can modify the original photo by adjusting color, by playing around with setting for the exposure and contrast. Use any photo editing software available to you; I used Preview on Mac.
2. Jump in with adding colors, starting from light to dark. Feel free to stray away from the original and even modified photos.
3. Keep working until you’re happy — only you know when to stop!
4. Don’t forget the rock — here’s your chance to find (or imagine) colors in a dark object.
5. For the background, I chose to do a simple partial hatching in two of the colors used o the birds. You may to choose to do something different or omit the background altogether!