Just know that burnishing and layering go hand in hand. In colored pencil art, you can create the appearance of glossy or shiny objects by using this technique. The word actually comes from a word that means, “to brown”. You are smoothing the pencil layers.īurnishing, as a word, technically means to polish by rubbing. Which leads me to a popular question I often get… What exactly IS burnishing?Īn easy definition for burnishing is to press hard on your final layer to remove the white of the paper. These cherries have a very glossy type of skin I wanted to use the burnishing technique to be able to show this texture. Otherwise, simply freehand the cherries onto your drawing project and place them within the center (leaving enough margin around the edges to mat and frame the piece if you so choose). I like to use Prismacolor Col-erase pencils for the line drawing. I like the Tikteck A4 Ultra-thin Portable LED Light Box Tracer. This will generally shave off some of the upfront time in working out your line drawing. If you are brand new to art and don't feel comfortable creating your line drawing, feel free to use a ruler to get an exact placement for the elements in this piece.Īnother simple way to just get started with a line drawing is to use a lightbox to trace the outline of your reference. This created a pleasing variation in the lines and overall composition. I decided to draw it pointing to the left rather than the right.

I noted one small change to make to the direction of one of the stems. In the case of the Cherries reference, I decided that there was enough there to work with to create my artwork. On the other hand, if there’s a significant amount of changes required, then I’ll take reference shots all over again, noting the changes I need to make. If there are simple elements in the piece that need to be changed I’ll do it. Before starting a new art piece, I ask myself the question: Will this reference help me make a compelling work of art?

Color pencil drawing for beginners