How To Draw Mist With Colored Pencil

The topic for today is how to draw a foggy morn. I'll begin by sharing some basic tips, so conclude with a short tutorial from a specific image.

To get us started, hither's the reader'south question.

I've been reading your posts on under painting a landscape… my question is, would you lot consider explaining how to get the result of light showing through trees on a foggy morning? I dearest the soft, relaxing expect that comes through a painting that has a partially "hazy" look to it…almost dreamy. Dianne

A proficient question, Dianne.

Let'southward begin with a give-and-take of some of the tools I've used to draw foggy morning landscapes.

Tools I've Used to Describe a Foggy Morning

H2o Soluble Colored Pencils

Water soluble colored pencils are ideal for drawing foggy morning landscapes—or any other type of misty mural. They can be used dry out like traditional colored pencils, and then blended with a little scrap of water on a castor.

The sample below shows a strip of color activated with a wet castor after being drawn on the newspaper (dark blue). The strip of yellow below information technology was washed onto the paper with a damp brush.

Y'all can also dampen the pencil tip by dipping it into clean water, then either marker the paper with information technology, or stroking the damp paint with a clammy brush and brushing color onto the paper.

The method that works best for me is to make a palette of the colors I want to utilize, so dampen a brush, pick color up off the palette, and brush it onto the newspaper like regular watercolor.

Read How to Start a Cartoon with Water Soluble Colored Pencils on EmptyEasel.

To get lighter values, dampen the paper commencement, then pick color up from a palette and brush it onto the wet paper.

How ever you use h2o soluble colored pencils, they can create cute washes with the addition of water. You lot tin can then use a paper towel to "lift" a little color for even more than subtle affects, provided you're quick enough to do so before the newspaper dries.

Read how I used this method in Colored Pencil Plein Air Drawing Week viii Report.

Erasers

Erasers can besides be helpful in drawing a foggy morning landscape. In this sample, I drew the dark trees with regular, wax-based pencils. And so I "drew" the sunbeams with a click eraser. Combined with the super soft trees in the distance and the "fog" in front of the darker trees, the outcome was very pleasing.

Textured Papers

I drew West of Bazaar (below) on gray mat board with a linen-similar surface texture. I used Prismacolor pencils and the texture of the mat board to "break upwards the color" and create an atmospheric bear on.

If you're drawing on a smoother newspaper, you lot can get a similar effect by property your pencil horizontally, and stroking with the side of the exposed paint cadre. The pigment doesn't become down into the tooth of the newspaper with a stroke like this.

The result is what painters phone call "broken" color. Y'all tin get much the same affect with colored pencils if yous apply very calorie-free pressure or the side of the pencil.

Now let's take a look at a specific example.

How to Describe a Foggy Morning with Colored Pencils

Here'southward a photo from Pixabay. Hither's a direct link to the paradigm.

For this tutorial, I used traditional colored pencils without solvent blending. The only special tool was mounting putty.

TIP: For a subject area like this, I'd probably use a toned paper. Stonehenge cream or ivory or Canson Mi-Teintes cadmium yellow, canary or pale yellow would be interesting choices. I had a pad of Canson Mi-Teintes assorted colors that includes vitrify and champagne, then I chose buff just to keep things interesting.

Footstep one: Basic Colors

Lay in the basic colors of the drawing. In this instance, a light yellow, a medium yellow, and a dark xanthous or chocolate-brown. The actual colors matter less than having a low-cal, medium, and dark color.

Employ sharp pencils and closely spaced strokes to add several layers of each colour. Many artists recommend circular strokes because they leave no unwanted edges, but use whatever stroke gives yous the result yous want.

Draw with calorie-free pressure. Add layers to darken color, even in the lighter areas. This is almost always better than using heavier pressure level to darken layers, considering it doesn't damage the paper's texture.

It's likewise easier to elevator color if you lot've applied it with lite pressure.

Don't worry about details. Instead, suggest the trees, heaven, and foreground with shape and value. Detail will come later. However, you lot can apply fewer layers in the foggy areas if you prefer.

I layered the medium colour (Polychromos Terra Cotta) over the dark colour (Polychromos Burnt Siena.) The darker values represent three or four layers. The lightest values are the color of the paper.

Footstep 2: "Elevator" the Fog

After you lot've established basic values and shapes, begin lifting color with mounting putty. You can use an eraser if that's all you have, but mounting putty lifts colour in a delightfully random fashion that's perfect for drawing fog.

It's all-time to elevator color in layers, but don't lift color over all of the fog with every layer. Instead, overlap and so that some areas are lighter than others. The resulting fog will look more natural.

To draw the lighter area of the sun, scroll the mounting putty into a ball betwixt your palms. And so press it against the newspaper, requite it a one-half twist, and lift information technology again. Repeat the procedure until the lord's day is as vivid as y'all want it.

I chose to make use of the color of the newspaper by working around most of the fog, but I too used mounting putty to elevator some colour where the sunlight angles to the lower right. To balance that, I also created a less clear shape angling to the lower left.

Step 3: Darken Values & Add Details

Darken the values in the background trees and the foreground with more layers of color. Brand sure your pencils are sharp. Use light force per unit area and closely spaced strokes.

Too add any details you desire, just continue them soft and in the foreground.

I was tempted to add a horse, but refrained for the sake of time!

What I did instead was add together more than layers of the previous colors to darken the trees in the background. Then I selected a darker brown to brand the foreground darker and add together the grass.

Step 4: Add Highlights

If you need to, add highlights by lightly layering lighter colors every bit needed. Don't utilize white! Instead, utilise a lighter shade of the bones colors you chose at the showtime, or a lighter value that goes with whatever color of paper you used.

Avoid using heavy pressure. Burnishing volition not help you create the soft await of fog.

Embracing Happy Accidents

Equally mentioned above, I used Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper for this drawing. Mi-Teintes paper has a texture designed for pastel on the front. It's quite rough and not usually suited to colored pencil. I usually use the back, which is much smoother.

Merely this time, I accidentally used the front. However, the rougher texture was ideal for this subject. Rather than starting time over, I chose to make employ of the texture of the paper (as well as the colour.) As y'all tin see, both were to my benefit!

And that's how to describe a foggy morn with colored pencil!

Of course, that's only one method, but information technology'due south a method that works for complex compositions, likewise as simpler ones. Just recall that fog mutes the value and detail of anything that appears behind it.

Experiment with different colors of papers and pencils, and with different methods until you find the one that works for you.

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Carrie L. Lewis

Carrie L. Lewis has been an artist longer than she can remember. An oil painter from her teens, she began using colored pencils considering they were ideal for highly detailed work, and were easier to send and utilise at equus caballus shows. She now uses colored pencils nigh exclusively. From the beginning, horse were a favorite subject, and she'south been an equine portrait artist for most of her career. When she began drawing with colored pencil (and later a move to Kansas,) she found special beauty in landscapes, and landscapes are now what she draws most often. The rugged Flintstone Hills region of eastern Kansas is at the peak of her listing of beautiful places to visit and draw.