Technique Class - Drawing Candy

In today's tutorial I'm going to show you how to draw and colour these little round candies.  It won't be long before you have a production line on your desk, pumping out these sweet little goodies for your Christmas greetings and birthday cards!

1.  Start by making yourself a template by punching a circle from a piece of cardstock.  (I like using the punch because it means I can punch out my finished candy once I've coloured it in.  If you don't have a circle punch you can simply draw a circle with a compass or other round object and then cut out your candies by hand.)

2.  Use the template and a pencil to draw a circle on a piece of white cardstock that is suitable for your colouring medium.  (I used X-Press It Blending Card because I am using Copic markers.)

3.  Draw a dot in the centre of the circle.  It doesn't have to be exact, just approximate.

4.  Make a small mark at the top of the circle with your pencil.  (Please note:  I have pressed firmly with my pencil so the marks show up in the photos.  Generally, you will want to keep your lines and marks as light as possible.)

5.  Make small marks at the bottom, sides and then in between.  You should end up with eight marks around the outside of your circle.  Try to space them evenly, but you do not have to be exact.

6.  With your pencil, draw a curved line from the top mark to the dot in the centre.

7.  Repeat this step for each mark, turning your work as you go, until you have drawn lines from each of the marks to the centre dot.

8.  Select three shades of the colour you want your candies to be.  It's good to have quite a large contrast between the lightest and darkest colour in your set.

9.  Begin by colouring one of the segments of your candy with the lightest shade.

10.  Apply the next darkest colour over the first, starting at the centre point and feathering your colour about 3/4 of length of the segment.  Add more colour from the outside edge back toward the centre, feathering the edges again.  Leave a small amount of the base colour showing.

11.  Add your darkest colour over the top of the other two, leaving a wider gap then the last step.  You should be able to see all three colours as in the picture below.

12.  Colour over the entire segment again with the lighest colour pen.  This will blend the three colours together.  Keep colouring until you can see the colours come together and the lines between each start to blur. 

13.  Repeat for every other segment until you have four coloured in total.

14.  The other four segments are going to be coloured in light greys.  As the cardstock is already white, you only need to apply the two shading colours.

15.  Use the colourless blender pen to blend the greys together.

16.  Repeat for each of the segments.

17.  To add the illusion of a high shine, use a white pen to add streaky, broken lines around the candy circle.

18.  Now you can use the punch to pop out a perfectly round candy!

Experiment with colours, sizes and the number of lines you add for lots of different looks.