Applying color to sketches

Drawing to many people is a outlet of some sort, and to me I view it that way as well. However whenever I do sketch I tend to not apply color to it of any sort. Coloring a picture has always been hard for me. There are many factors that you have to take into account such as: how is the lighting, where should the hair be a darker shade, how do I make the hair look as natural as possible? In the book, Drawing Manga, Faces, and Bodies, by Anna Southgate and Yishan Li they addressed different tones of color, specifically with color pencils. On page 9 it says, "Unlike with markers, successive layers of tone and shade can be built up with the same pencil, by gradually increasing the pressure on the pencil lead (Southgate and Li, Pg. 9)." Reading this made me want to apply it to my own drawings. I decided to sketch a hair style and use only one color pencil to color the whole picture. This made me realize that what the authors had said was really true! On the occasions when I do color my picture, I always used variations of the same color, sometime using up to 4 different color pencils that are essentially the same color. Now that I know this technique, it has made my coloring of drawings more efficient and not such a tedious job.

For the sketch I colored using the gradual pressure technique, I applied another aspect of Southgate and Li's book. The aspect I decided to try out was complex highlights in hair which will make a drawing more realistic. The authors claim that to draw a well-done highlight I must use a darker tone for the shaded areas of the hair. In addition to that, drawing fine lines will make the character look like they have individual strands of hair (Southgate and Li, Pg. 33). I tried my best to apply the authors advice. Using there advice it allowed my overall drawing to look better. Applying the fine lines to illustrate individual hairs, in my opinion, really differentiated this hair drawing from the rest of mine. Hair without fine lines seems to look more flat, so using the fine line technique gave it more depth and a real feeling. Shading certain areas of hair ties in with the gradual pressure technique. Combining the two different tips allowed me to give the hair dimension. Instead of the whole head being one tone, there are different tones and shades by the roots and where the hair is farther back from the angle it's seen at.

Do you agree with Southgate and Li that gradually increasing pressure is a better technique to show different shades of the same color, or do you prefer an entirely different pencil within the same color category?

Southgate, Anna, and Yishan Li. Drawing Manga Faces and Bodies. New York: Rosen, 2013. Print.