Trying a New Technique - Porsche 911 991.2 GT3 RS in Lizard Green
I don't like this drawing.
The graininess, the fuzziness of the reflections, the color, everything. I don't like it.
But then why would I write an article about it?
This drawing was a huge tipping point in my drawing process.
Just like the previous drawing I wrote about, this drawing was also very much an experiment. I wanted to try out a new technique and see how it worked and also learn from it.
My Inspiration for This Drawing
I was inspired to try this drawing process by SamieSocal. I had seen many of her YouTube videos and follow her on Instagram. Her drawings always turned out so well and so smoothly blended. I wanted my drawings to look that good, so I tried her technique of first coloring with alcohol markers and then refining with colored pencils.
The drawing itself was also heavily inspired by a drawing SamieSocal started in 2018, but didn't finish until over halfway into 2020.
Mistakes I Made With This Drawing
With this drawing, I might have not been as precise with the reflections as I should have been. Colored pencils aren't fully opaque, so you can see the markers slightly through them.
When coloring with markers I didn't color every reflection which I should've done. There were a ton of reflections on the hood that I didn't color with markers, but I did try to color with colored pencils.
They turned out way more fuzzy than the reflections I had already colored them with markers first. The fuzziness is also due to the paper I had used for this drawing (which I never used again...).
Also as colored pencils are not fully opaque you need to determine what to color which color and how it will affect the colored pencils later on. I didn't know how my colored pencils would react on top of markers because I had never done this before. So I didn't know what color was best to use when coloring with alcohol markers. Looking back at it, I definitely should've used lighter colors in some places to get the desired effect.
One Thing I Like About This Technique
Coloring the whole drawing first with alcohol markers and then using colored pencils was however a way more efficient way of drawing than I had done before.
You first color block with the markers to get an idea of what color goes where and then you go from there with colored pencils refining it and making it look smooth. Well, that was the intention at least. It turned out grainy as hell.
This was precisely why I didn't like colored pencils. But I knew there was a way to make colored pencils not grainy, but I didn't know it yet.
Isn't There Anything I Like About This Drawing?
No, not really.
At the time, at the start of 2019, when I just finished it, I didn't like a single thing about this drawing.
But looking back at it now, I do like how it inspired me to get better at this technique, and making this "bad" drawing was the first step to getting good at it.
The Start of a New Drawing Process
This drawing was the first of its kind for me and it was the beginning of a new drawing process for me. This technique formed the basis of most of my next drawings. From this drawing on I started using colored pencils for all my drawings too instead of only alcohol markers.
This resulted in better drawings than I had made before. It helped me immensely in becoming a better artist and making more realistic drawings.
A Few Things I Learned After Making This Drawing
In the months after I made this drawing I started learning a lot more about drawing with colored pencils.
I invested in paper that was more suited for colored pencils. My new paper could handle colored pencils a lot better and didn't have a very rough grain. This change made my next drawings look a lot smoother.
I also learned that colorless blender pencils were a thing. Sarah Sap recommended them to me, so I tried them out. I bought Derwent Blender Pencils and they worked fantastically! I used them a lot to get the pencils to look even smoother. With colorless blender pencils, you can also manipulate the opacity of the colored pencils without having this grainy look. This made it possible to let the alcohol markers show through more which helped more in getting the colors and effect accurate.
And a few months later I learned about using solvents to blend colored pencils. This was a whole new world for me. Suddenly drawing with colored pencils became more like using watercolor pencils.
I wish I knew these things before I started making this drawing. Then it might've turned out better. But you need to start somewhere, right?
Posting it on Instagram
I had never before posted a drawing I made that didn't turn out well on Instagram. I was kind of hesitant to post it, but I thought it would be good to show that not all drawings turn out well.
Everyone who commented on it was really nice and most of them really liked the drawing and encouraged me to experiment more. Even a few people shared some advice and tips that I didn't know about like that colorless pencil blender were a thing.
Maybe I'm just a bit too perfectionistic. And as the maker of the drawing, I see a lot more mistakes than other people will.
