Often when I draw the initial outlines of the roses, I press down too hard with the pencil, so even after that outline is erased, it's still slightly visible under the layers of colored pencil, due to the indentation of the paper that the outline caused. To try to eliminate the visibility of those indentation lines, this is what I usually do when I start filling in the rose.
First, I color in *most* of the petal, but not all of it. I get as close to the pencil outline as I can, but try not to cross it. Here, for rose #14, I didn't quite go all the way to the edges because I intended to add in another color right up to the edge. So I used my base yellow to color in where the petals were, but leaving a slight gap around the actual pencil lines.
Then I went through and erased all those pencil lines. They're still pretty visible (as eraser smudges) at this point, but more layers of colored pencil will cover those up.
(I don't often show the step by step process of this first layer because it's hard to get a good photograph through all those smudges. There's too much blurriness and too little for the camera to focus on.)
Once the lines are erased, I fill in more of the petals, but again try to only go right up to where the pencil line was, without actually crossing the line. If you color over that line, even when the pencil isn't there anymore, it will stay the color of the paper and look like a line through your coloring - because the colored pencil can't drop pigment into the indentation your first pencil made. (I use a mechanical pencil to draw the outlines, which is thinner than the Prismacolor pencils I use, with the exception of possibly when they are at their sharpest point. But Prismacolor pencils are really soft, so good luck getting a sharp point that doesn't immediately break/fall off as soon as you touch the paper - or even the pencil sharpener - with it.)
By keeping the indentation line where the black shadows are, it doesn't matter as much if the colored pencil can't color over it - because I want to preserve the black paper there anyway.
Of course, I could just not push down so hard with my pencils, or not use graphite pencils that I want to erase - and instead use a colored pencil in one of the colors I plan to use to draw the light outline. But I don't always have the confidence to draw straight with a colored pencil (which is much harder, if not impossible to erase), so when I do have a graphite line as an initial step, this is what I have to do.
Once the initial yellow and pink markings were lightly in place, I started going over the pink with more weight on the pencil/more layers - so that the pink would get brighter. Then I added in some magenta in some of the shadows, blending that in to the light pink and yellow.
As I built up layers of color, I added some brown into the yellow, some blue blended in with the magenta shadows, and some hints of highlight with a light cream color. Often I put the highlights on the edges of the petals, but for this one I emphasized some of the middle parts of the petal with that cream colored pencil, to give it the appearance that the petal had some waves or wrinkles in it, with shadows and highlights.
Here is the entire drawing so far, with roses #13 and #14 just starting the middle row of five total rows.
First, I color in *most* of the petal, but not all of it. I get as close to the pencil outline as I can, but try not to cross it. Here, for rose #14, I didn't quite go all the way to the edges because I intended to add in another color right up to the edge. So I used my base yellow to color in where the petals were, but leaving a slight gap around the actual pencil lines.
Then I went through and erased all those pencil lines. They're still pretty visible (as eraser smudges) at this point, but more layers of colored pencil will cover those up.
(I don't often show the step by step process of this first layer because it's hard to get a good photograph through all those smudges. There's too much blurriness and too little for the camera to focus on.)
Once the lines are erased, I fill in more of the petals, but again try to only go right up to where the pencil line was, without actually crossing the line. If you color over that line, even when the pencil isn't there anymore, it will stay the color of the paper and look like a line through your coloring - because the colored pencil can't drop pigment into the indentation your first pencil made. (I use a mechanical pencil to draw the outlines, which is thinner than the Prismacolor pencils I use, with the exception of possibly when they are at their sharpest point. But Prismacolor pencils are really soft, so good luck getting a sharp point that doesn't immediately break/fall off as soon as you touch the paper - or even the pencil sharpener - with it.)
By keeping the indentation line where the black shadows are, it doesn't matter as much if the colored pencil can't color over it - because I want to preserve the black paper there anyway.
Of course, I could just not push down so hard with my pencils, or not use graphite pencils that I want to erase - and instead use a colored pencil in one of the colors I plan to use to draw the light outline. But I don't always have the confidence to draw straight with a colored pencil (which is much harder, if not impossible to erase), so when I do have a graphite line as an initial step, this is what I have to do.
Once the initial yellow and pink markings were lightly in place, I started going over the pink with more weight on the pencil/more layers - so that the pink would get brighter. Then I added in some magenta in some of the shadows, blending that in to the light pink and yellow.
As I built up layers of color, I added some brown into the yellow, some blue blended in with the magenta shadows, and some hints of highlight with a light cream color. Often I put the highlights on the edges of the petals, but for this one I emphasized some of the middle parts of the petal with that cream colored pencil, to give it the appearance that the petal had some waves or wrinkles in it, with shadows and highlights.
Here is the entire drawing so far, with roses #13 and #14 just starting the middle row of five total rows.
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