Realistically drawing smoke is a difficult task. Many aspiring artists want their works to be original, but they do not want to go far from reality. How to draw smoke realistically? This will be easy to do if you train daily and work consistently.
Smoke structure
To draw any natural phenomenon, you need to understand how it happens. When wondering how to draw smoke, you need to understand that smoke can be different, and depending on whether it comes from a cigarette or from a bonfire, it will be painted in different ways. But the overall structure of the picture will be the same.
- The smoke is in clubs. The smoke screen looks like a cloud, but in reality it comes out of the source in clubs and only then merges into one common stream. This must always be considered.
- Smoke comes out of the source in a thin stream and expands as it spreads. Smoke will never be intense at its source. Air clubs expand gradually, taking in more and more space.
- Smoke intensity is affected by lighting. In bright sunlight, almost no white shroud is visible. But in the twilight it stands out against a black and gray background.
- Smoke changes color depending on the time of day. It can be blue, gray or white. If bright light illuminates it, the color can change from red to green.
Pencil drawing smoke
How to draw smoke so that it is identical to natural? To do this, watch the smoke. Observation is the main feature of the artist. First you need to understand that it makes no sense to draw a shell, and then build separate lines into it. This will not add to the picture of either beauty or realism. How to draw smoke with a pencil? You need to start drawing with small clubs of steam coming from the source. If the source of smoke is large, then, accordingly, there will be many clubs of steam, but all of them will be quite thin. Then you need to start drawing small clouds on top of ready-made small streams. They must overlap and intertwine. Each new layer should be larger than the previous one in size, but its intensity should gradually decrease. This can be achieved by reducing the pressure on the pencil or shading the last layers. To add realism to the picture, you need to reduce the boundaries of smoke to nothing. With the help of strokes, this is difficult to do, therefore, it is better for novice artists to use a sharpened eraser or a washcloth.
Cigarette with smoke: drawing features
How to draw a cigarette with smoke? Many aspiring artists are asking this question. This is easy if you know some features. At the base of the cigarette, the pressure of the pencil should always be intense, so you need to choose a soft pencil to draw. A maximum of 5-6 puffs of smoke comes out of a cigarette. Do not be zealous and draw more, otherwise it will turn out unrealistic. Particular attention should be paid to the position of the cigarette. Smoke always rises. Even when drawing calm weather, you need to consider this. Never smoke will go down or clearly horizontally.
Smoke pattern in color
Ink painting is complicated by the fact that the smoke seems to be colorless, but in fact it has many different shades. How to paint smoke with paints? You need to know the basic principles. At its source, the smoke will be saturated and dense, that is, for its image you need to use dark gray shades. But the steam clubs located high from the source should not just be white. It all depends on the lighting. If it is warm, then ocher shades will be present in the picture. If the lighting is cold, then it is worth using blue and blue colors.
Clouds of smoke should look like the total mass, so you do not need to separate each individual part with a clear border. It is desirable that the borders are smooth, light colors flow into dark. And of course, it is worth knowing that you need to draw smoke last of all on well-dried paper. Otherwise, white clubs can spread out and merge with the background. And then it will be difficult for such a shapeless mass to give at least some boundaries.
Smoke from natural phenomena in the figure.
How to draw smoke from a volcano or from a fire? It must be understood that a smoke screen emanating from a large source will always be large-scale. Therefore, choosing the size of the canvas, this must be taken into account. The cut off part of the smoke looks very ugly. You need to start drawing a smoke screen with a common outline. This is done so that then the drawing does not crawl beyond the boundaries limited to it.
Draw white clubs from the bottom and gradually rise up. The smoke is in clubs, so it will not fly horizontally, but vertically. Regardless of the drawing style, for the smoke to be recognizable, its clouds must overlap each other. The background of the picture will always be more saturated in tone, but not in color. Unlike a small cloud of smoke, a large smoke screen always has clear boundaries. Do not be afraid to emphasize them with light colors. If the drawing is done with a pencil, then you need to darken the skylights bordering on white clubs.