A Step by Step Art Tutorial of tonal layering in Coloured pencils (2024)

Stage 1 - Laying the Foundations

COLOURS:​560 Peach,170 Soft Pink,010 Cream,460 Lime Green,410 Dark Green

Achieving great effect using coloured pencils are achieved by layering colours together, ideally light to dark- starting with a gentle application of pressure and building up to heavier ones is the best way if you wish to create detailed art but beware as adding too much pressure early on could saturate the paper so you will not be able to add further layers and may spoil your work. Begin the undertones to this watermelon by starting with theSoft Pinkfirst, applying a loose application from top to bottom following what I call the 'sunshine' direction, (see the pink lines) Apply thePale peacharound the edges of the pulp where you can see warmer tones and follow this up with a light application of theCreamto the inner rind section. Onto the outer rind, apply a heavy line using the Dark Green as this is a hard edge so pressure can be used here. Apply a layer of Lime Green between the dark green & the Cream tone. The foundations have now been laid.

Stage 2 - The Rind

Begin the build up of the fruit at the rind for this exercise, for better effect, using 4 tones of green is going to give more realism than say, using only two and so for this I have picked out the Dark Green, Light Green, Yellow green & Lime Green. Begin by applying a gentle application ofLime greenimmediately above the Dark green of the rind already placed, follow it up by gently applying the Lime Green over the top and finally the Yellow Green in the line between the lighter green tones and the Dark green edge, this will give a smooth transition. You may wish to reapply the Dark green to the rind to make the colour stronger if your initial application was light.

COLOURS:410 Dark Green,440 Light Green, 450 Yellow green,460 Lime Green​

Stage 3 - Define & Apply - Mid layers

Looking closely at the mid section of the fruit itself, you can see a few pale seeds in places which you should define using the white & cream pencils before applying any other colour to the pulp. Once completed take note of the dark red areas where the pips usually sit and it is helpful at this stage to apply the Red pencil defining these areas. As this needs to stay the darkest point of the fruit, you can apply heavier applications of colour, including the Red Orange to areas too for added effect. These areas need to stay darker than the rest of the colours so you may need to darken them further as you add more layers.​

The next part is to create the tones of the red fruit - I have only used a couple of colours in this quick example but you can create more realism by adding more colours such as the Orange, Salmon Pink and even a yellow tone too - remember whatever colours you choose to add, make sure you apply the lighter tone first up to the darkest colour. The 2 tones I used, Red & Blood Orange were both applied following the same 'sunshine' application as previous (see the direction of lines on the image) I worked from the top point of the watermelon to the bottom simply to avoid creating an untidy section at the top of the fruit that should be flat, but whichever way you choose to do it will make little difference if you are careful. You can see from the image that the central section is much darker than the bottom section where pulp meets rind and the colour lightens up considerably.

Stage 4 - Applying highlights and final details

COLOURS:570 Pale peach,170 Soft Pink, 010 Cream,720 White,Brown 510

The final stage is applying the 'top layer' of detail. This is the last part where you have completed the build up of tones and are now looking to apply the highlights or additional shading that adds to further realism. Looking at the watermelon photo, there are many highlighted areas/markings that need to be put in and the white is very good for this subject in particular but adding shades in Pale Peach, Soft Pink and even Cream will also help to add to the effect. White will create one tone, so these additional colours will help to create further highlighted tones adding to the authenticity of a natural subject. You may wish to blend the lighter section of the rind using the white or even the cream pencil to create a smooth, transitional distinction between that and the pulp itself and as an added point of definition, I added some light layers of the Brown pencil to define the pip 'pockets' even further.