Personal story

Tutorial: Complex Christmas scene shading 

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Shading first

Creating all the shadows can come easily if you think of the warm fire – the closer you stand to the flames the hotter you are and the more light shines on you. Your front side is warm and bright,  but your backside is chilly, right? Follow that principle around the room and the shading should start to get obvious. With practice, of course!

Add color

Once that basic shading is done, just adding color flatly onto objects is the easy part! No extra blending is needed for this, though you could select some objects for extra TLC.

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About the Ohuhu markers

Quite a while ago I did a first look at this brand and didn’t like them much. The color system is insane, the naming convention makes no sense, cap colors don’t match….these are dealbreakers for me. I’m not one to judge anything SOLELY on its price – especially with art supplies, they have to be usable. So I didn’t recommend them. And oh did folks get mad.

(It’s one reason why I rarely publicly review anything I do not like; people don’t like hearing that someone doesn’t like the thing they like. And I don’t like getting mean comments.)

I made a quick hex chart with them though, because I still care about the people using products I don’t like – if I had the set in the studio, I would use it to help others. So I did that, then gave away that set of markers to a school, and figured I was done with them.

But since they’re “back,” I figured I’d explain how that happened.

First, an artist friend forwarded me a set of 48 Ohuhus that she had received from a partner she works with. She didn’t like them one bit (doesn’t like alcohol markers) and thought she’d delight me with a surprise package. I was of course sweet about it and thanked her but thought, dang, I thought I was done with these. ha! I created one video using them, and a tiny class, as my offering of gratitude to my friend. And THAT was to be the end.

Until, well, a local artist friend and I had lunch. We were talking about supplies, and she didn’t know a thing about alcohol markers and wanted me to ‘splain. So I did. Even mentioned there are a lot of companies now using the same Chinese markers under different brand names, and she’d seen Ohuhu on Amazon. I recommended she not get those, that I’d lend her some Copics and Olos to try out if she wanted to get into them.

We talked a bit about hex charts too – and I told her I was thinking about making some combo hex charts with two brands on them. I was considering doing that with Olo. And she asked why not the Ohuhu? And….I explained I was not about to drop hundreds of dollars on markers I didn’t like just for a chart, LOL. 

A little time went by and we had lunch again. At which she showed up with…..a full set of Ohuhu Honolulu markers.

“What are you doing with those?”

“Oh I’m lending them to  you,” she said with a grin.

“You’re what?”

“You wanted to make a combo chart. I wanted to play with markers. So you get first dibs to make a combo chart, then I get to learn to draw with these.”

“But I wanted to do that with OLO markers, not Ohuhu.”

Okay, they both start with O. She was a little mortified about misunderstanding – but in all honesty, she wasn’t familiar with any of them. So….I accepted her offer to lend me the pens, which turned into the combo hex chart. 

She was then a sounding board for me when I fully freaked out over someone posting the Ohuhu chart all across facebook for the whole world to download for free. (GAH) As I worked through getting it taken down all over, I also started looking at the posts in these groups, answering art questions for them….and my friend suggested a coloring book class for these folks. 

So she lent me the pens. Again.

I swear these pens are stalking me.

But….I just finished prepping all the lessons for the Coloring Book Basics+ class, and am tickled that I can now return them PERMANENTLY this time to their rightful owner. And I hope I didn’t use up any of her fave colors, ha!

So below you’ll find the regular hex chart, combo hex chart, Warm & Cozy class, and Coloring book class, and I hope this is all. You can always complete any alcohol marker course in any brand – but I want to get back to Olos – I have a fun project to work on coming up in the new year!