How to draw on your kicks! (alcohol markers)

How to draw on your kicks! (alcohol markers)

Have you ever wanted to draw on your kicks? (That’s your shoes.)

About a year ago, today’s project was birthed, but didn’t happen til today; I had visited Old School Shoes in Santa Cruz, CA, and on a whim I asked if they had any “orphan” shoes. Like a leftover single shoe no one had thrown out, but couldn’t sell because there’s only one. They sent me home with a pair that just needed laundered – and thus today, I finally get to share my new kicks!

Tutorial: How to draw on your kicks in alcohol marker

I’ll be using alcohol markers; if you want to use paint, then google for the right kind, I did see there are lots of recommendations out there, but I didn’t feel like buying something new for my shoes.

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!

Sunflower shoes

This was my first pair; I discovered just how soft the color blends, which is great except for detail, you have to add black pen. Use something waterproof so your shoes won’t run in the rain.

Also – do the color work first. The sharpie did bleed a little when I added color atop it. It’s possible giving it more time to dry would help, but test it to be sure.

Galaxy shoes

This design worked great for the soft blends! Lots of pretty colors make them a rainbow! You can create all kinds of gorgeous blends whether making it a sky or not – do rainbows, soft flowers, whatever you like! For the stars I used acrylic white, in hopes it’s permanent.

My doodled kicks

I’m so excited – I never once owned a pair of hightops! Glad I at least snuck that in under the wire before a full six decades passed. LOL. I used one of my favorite doodles as inspiration for the lines, and colors had to include the trim color on the shows – reds and blues (which I translated as a blue violet). And added my signature yellow.

UPDATE:

I wore my shoes for dogwalks a time or two, but just last night I wore them to an art festival/wine tasting. It was a swankier community so wearing the PF Flyers stood out among the nicer-dressed crowd. One guy ran up to me and asked if those are “real” PF Flyers? And could I run and jump farther and faster now? It was kinda hilarious – but I felt VERY cool wearing my new kicks!

What would you draw on shoes?

If you try it I’d love to see what you make! Tag me on social or email what you create….by the way kids can do this too, it’d make them so proud to wear shoes to school that they made!

Supplies

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Having trouble finding Ohuhu blending groups? I hear ya!

Having trouble finding Ohuhu blending groups? I hear ya!

For something a little different today – a “talkie!” Just chatting, no tutorial, but I hope there’s something in here that helps everyone learn a little bit.  Pull up a chair and let’s chat!

Vlog: HELP! Color selection in Ohuhu markers (hex chart)

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!

Thoughts from the cutting room floor

Originally this was an even longer video, believe it or not! Gah! Craziness. I apparently had a lot to say!

This is a government/business issue, not a people issue.

The people who live in any countries with the aforementioned terrible practices are NOT at fault. Please do NOT attribute characteristics of the unethical businesses and governments to the average citizens in these countries or in your own. We have enough of that going on. Don’t blame the wrong people for the misdeeds.

Costing us art supply companies

A big thing that I decided to cut because I think it was implied: these companies who steal intellectual property are putting art and especially small craft companies out of business. If you’ve noticed a bunch going under in recent years, that’s often a part of it. These manufacturers are stuck either paying legal bills to try to get these fake products removed from these horrible websites, or they just leave it there and lose customers who won’t come back to shop at their own store anymore, because they only shop from thieves around the world to get themselves a deal.

We can help keep our favorite maufacturers and retailers in business by taking care where we buy from.

Exceptions to every rule

There ARE products made in unethical countries all over the world that ARE clear of the kind of corruption mentioned.  Not everyone is on the take. There are even some products I use regularly that were invented in and sold by companies within corrupt countries—but they came up with something new and unique in the marketplace. I’m not at all against that!

I’m also not an avid researcher of EVERY single item I purchase; plenty of good companies source some portion of materials from unethical places, and mircomanaging everyone’s supply chain is not what I’m advocating. 

But products that should cost much more but carry a dollar store price always do raise my spidey sense. If it looks like a dodgy item, it’s safe to assume there’s more to the story. Feel free to give them the benefit of the doubt if you’re comfortable doing so, but I personally find another product to purchase.

My own policy

I don’t knowingly promote any product that benefits from their Human Rights violations or commits Intellectual Property theft. (I’m not perfect at finding out all the details on every company, and every time Amazon is involved there’s a risk since it’s hard to go track down information.)

I also don’t promote product that I simply do not think is worth you spending your money on—unless I tell you don’t buy this $125 ballpoint pen. You certainly may buy anything you wish, but I don’t need to be part of that food chain, so generally I ignore not-good supplies rather than providing them oxygen.

I get 5-1o emails a DAY from foreign dodgy companies wanting me to promote their stolen goods, and it’s exhausting. Their marketing is insane. Ads chase me on Instagram and Facebook, and I hardly scroll my feed any more because of it! Any company that hounds me that way gets the “talk to the hand” treatment. Ohuhu hasn’t been as bad as others, but they did fall into the too-many-ads category and I had to mark them as spam on Instagram.

If any companies ARE really reading my blog like they tell me they are (ha!)….please just stop emailing me. Engage with my social posts and YT videos in comments, let’s get to know each other, THEN you can email me. Cold emails get you nowhere but my block list. Thanks.

So I can sleep at night…..

Since I do not want to profit from products I do not believe in, I’m doing two things:

  1. I’ve donated my set of markers and a bunch of sketchbooks to our family homeless shelter, and I’m hoping some young person with talent finds them and uses them to lift their family out of poverty.
  2. I’ll be donating the profits from the Ohuhu Honolulu Hex Chart to Human Rights Watch. 

I think that’ll help me get better sleep.

Ohuhu Hex Chart – Honolulu Set

Purchase a downloadable hex chart for Ohuhu’s Honolulu set of alcohol markers – included are both a blank one to color with your own markers, and a completed one to print for reference.

How to Use a Hex Chart Class

In this color course, learn all about ways to use the Hex Charts for alcohol markers or colored pencils to choose the right colors! Includes discussion of color theory as we examine photos and learn terminology like hue, value, saturation, temperature, and more.

Helpful?

I hope this was helpful – if you have further questions please don’t hesitate to ask. 🙂

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Hawaii Fundraiser Color Wheels + new Hex Chart Class

Hawaii Fundraiser Color Wheels + new Hex Chart Class

Shall we join hands for a Hawaii Fundraiser? It’s been heartbreaking watching so many lives disrupted – and ended! This story absolutely broke me.

I can’t do anything to stop climate change. I can’t build back homes. I can’t bring back those who perished. But I can use my art and platform to do a little something along with the art community, and I hope you’ll participate in one of the two ways I talk about in today’s video. THANK YOU in advance for your help!

Video: Hawaii Fundraiser Color Wheels + new Hex Chart Class

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!

“Perpetual” fundraising

I plan to keep giving through the sale of this printable; the beneficiary will change, because, sadly we know there’ll be a new hurricane, landslide, flood, earthquake…..it seems there’s something new once a month, sometimes only a week or days apart.

Each week I’ll be making the donation to whichever situation is in the most dire need at that time. So if you want to help, color the image up again and share it with your online friends so we can keep generating income for those who need it!

If you want to keep giving through this method, you can just repurchase when there’s a cause that touches your heart; 100% of the money goes to the charity, I’m eating the Paypal fees myself, and knowing me, I’ll round up the donation. 🙂

Purchase yours today!

How to Use a Hex Chart class

For quite some time (to be honest, YEARS), new colorists have asked how to use the hex chart. Uhm, I just thought, hey you can see colors near each other so pick some out, right? I’d done a few YT videos using the chart, but I hadn’t done a deep enough dive to help folks. Until now!

This is an inexpensive class, so while the samples are pretty spectacular, please don’t get your hopes inflated! It’s primarily about color, and helping people to see the differences between colors by looking at photos, then a drawing of them. Sometimes that can help show what desaturation IS, and the power it has to change your art. So there are 10 lessons like that; little clips of coloring, some sample color chart tests, but I think it’ll be well worth it for those who want some help with their hex charts!

Thank you!

I appreciate your support of this fundraiser…..please share widely!

Supplies

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art

  1. Alcohol markers:
  2. Colored pencils:
  3. Papers:
    • Stonehenge Drawing Paper AMZBLICK 
    • Neenah Cardstock, Solar White 250pk 

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Bringing animal images to life with color (tips for newbie artists) – CCC New Release

Bringing animal images to life with color (tips for newbie artists) – CCC New Release

In a Facebook message. a new colorist asked me which medium is best for coloring animals like dogs and cats. (And of course, it depends!)

The new Anita Jeram designs from Colorado Craft Company were too perfect a chance to show the comparison. They are SO DANG CUTE. #justsaying

So in today’s hop, I’ll show you three ways to color the same stamps, and you can decide what YOUR priority is!

BLOG HOP PRIZE INFO IS LATER IN THIS POST

Tutorial: Advice for new artists – coloring mediums for dogs and cats

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!

Alcohol marker

Not high on my recommendation list for new colorists, because, well, they’re expensive, and it takes getting a few trios or pairs before much can be accomplished. By the time you spend on that, you might decide that maybe you didn’t really like the look or the process anyway. But if you’re totally attracted to the look and you have a budget? Go for it! I have a few free charts with suggested colors to start with here.

Then get yourself some Neenah cardstock and either stamps with a Copic friendly stamping ink or a multiliner (Copic friendly) pen, and get busy making art! Then there’s always a Copic Jumpstart class that might help out too. A hex chart is a help too!

Watercolor

Though it’s a favorite medium for me, it’s tough to learn if you’re trying for realism; loose splashy color is fine but once it comes to mixing, water management, etc, it can be rough going. Don’t go buying a gajillion tubes to get started though – folks who have palettes with 36 or 48 colors paint no better than someone with 6! Learn to mix from the start and you’ll save yourself hundreds of dollars in $10+ paint tubes. Daniel Smith has an excellent set of 6 essentials colors – 3 warm, 3 cool. Simple. In the Watercolor Jumpstart class you’ll learn some basics of mixing colors and make charts to show yourself  how to achieve colors without buying lots of tubes. (Later you may want particular colors for ease of painting or techniques – but don’t start out buying them all!) 

Also start with good paper. I know it feels counter intuitive and you want to save money. But honestly, it’ll make a difference in your practicing. Decent brushes for beginners are the Silver Brush Black Velvet line, try a round 4, round 8, round 12.

#1 recommendation: Colored Pencil

The new artist wanted to know about dogs and cats — and realism. So this is one of several reasons this is my best recommendation. The subtlety you can get, the fine points with a good sharpener (handheld or electric)  – much to be said about them!

Pencils are something we’ve all used since we were children, so holding a pencil requires no special training. You can get a lot of colors without spending a ton (I recommend Prismacolor – a good artist brand, and has the best neutral range for animals). Colored pencils are also adaptable – trying out blending solutions and powdered pigments can give you lots of options inexpensively to achieve a lot of effects.

The Colored Pencil Jumpstart class is another that teaches color theory at the start so you get a good footing. You’ll learn about solutions and stumps and powdering your pencils – lots of techniques that’ll send you off on a coloring adventure. Pick up a hex chart here.

Pattern Stamping Class

The class I talked about that teaches how to make stamped patterned paper with Art Impressions Watercolor stamps…..it’s so much fun! Distress inks and stamping in the Pattern Stampinc Class. 

The rest of the CCC release!

I didn’t have time to fully develop cards, due to lots of unforeseen things coming at me this week (watch the Superpower or Thanks videos for more on all that. Remember that purchasing using my affiliate links also helps with the goal I’m working on, I appreciate your help in meeting it!)…..but I did find a little time to at least color up the images! Tap on any of them to enbiggen.

LIFT HIGHER

I expanded the tree, there’s just something about not “finishing” a scene that makes me crazy 🙂

PICNIC CATS

Again, expanded the background. Also changed a cat into a raccoon, eliminated the picnic basket.

PLAY BALL

A simple scene – note that putting a shadow WAY under the dog’s feet makes him look like a real leap-er!

TEAM CATS

This tree NEEDED to be bigger, and darker, so the birdhouse took the stage. Imagine Pink Panther theme music!

WELL LOVED CATS

Here I pictured Tsuki and Punch out by the pool, chilling out! I may need to add a scene to this one before mailing it.

TINY BIRDS

These are the ittybittiest! What would be your sentiment recommendation for this card?

BEST IN ME DOG + STAY PAWSITIVE

I combined two stamp sets, with the dogs stamped partway off the page.

You can imagine their conversation! They often are chasing and wrestling – then suddenly they’re both sitting very very still catching their breath, giving each other the stinkeye. It’s so hilarious!

Something to note on the grasses: I colored the mass of greens first, and the greens stopped a bit low—the grass in my back yard is in desperate need of mowing, so I added some tall and going-to-seed blades of grass to bring the level up higher. Which looks more like what my puppers are doing when out in the grass!

Shop the new CCC release

Bloghop!

Check out all the creations in the hop…..with 2 giveaways! The commenting for the contest will end July 12th at Midnight eastern time and will be announced July 14th on the CCC blog.

  1. One complete bundle or equal value gift card to one winner. The winner will be randomly drawn from orders placed that use a designer’s affiliate link.
  2. Giving away one stamp set on MY blog. CCC will randomly select the winners from the comments and will notify winner.

The bloghop list:

  1. Adrienne Kennedy CCC
  2. Amy Tsuruta
  3. Amy Young
  4. Daniel West
  5. Emily Midgett
  6. Jenn Shurkus
  7. Jennifer Kotas
  8. Jessica Frost-Ballas
  9. Kassi Hulet
  10. Kelly Griglione
  11. Kelly Taylor
  12. Nancy Sheads
  13. Sandy Allnock <— that’s me!
  14. IG:
  15. Adam Karle
  16. Jenn Gross
  17. Joe Sysavath
  18. Laura Inguz
  19. Mansi Bhatia

What would YOUR best recommendation be for a new colorist?

Think about someone brand new – needing to buy everything AND learn everything. Do you agree with me? Disagree? Why or why not? Leave me your feedback, I’d love to hear your answer!

Supplies

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art

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Alcohol Marker Comparison Part 2: Unique colors + Human Rainbow

Alcohol Marker Comparison Part 2: Unique colors + Human Rainbow

I promised you I’d tell you about the unique colors in Sketchmarker and Olo, as well as my overall assessment of the three brands….and this is the day. But I’m SUPER excited to also have a new Human Rainbow class ready – scroll on to see more of that, and in the video you’ll see a little peek inside class!

The art demo in this video, in addition to lots of color tests I’ll explain, is this picture of these birds – if you’ve taken the Whimsical Sketching class you might recognize these cuties! I scanned my original and printed it out smaller.

 

Tutorial: Alcohol Marker comparison: Unique Colors + Human Rainbow

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!

Unique colors

I gathered up the colors that were not included in my conversion charts for Sketchmarker and Olo – these colors may still be close to a Copic color, but when I did the assessment I found a color that’s a better match to that color, so that’s why some colors you may recognize are here. But I’ve noted a few colors I find particularly interesting to a Copic user:

Greens

I wish I’d done this little exercise before the previous video – it really would have helped me out! ha. Better late than never though. You can see here the progression of colors – in Copic it shows the relatively regular steps toward desaturation; in Sketchmarker it shows….well, that they call YG green, and they call BG green, and BG is blue gray, and the numbers…well yeah. I’m lost, but it’s not necessary for the numbering systems to make complete sense, it just helps!

The number system for Olo generally-ish seems to jive with Copic’s; they place a dot (.) between the digits, which helps to separate them – because each digit means something different, just like with Copic. Great idea to help us remember that fact.

Grays, grays, and more grays

I’ve always said for the majority of folks, some warm and cool grays are plenty….though some of these new ones are interesting!

Pinks and purples

For those who love these colors, you might be especially excited here! Note that this is marker paper, which shows color more dull-ly than a nice bright cardstock. 

Browns for flesh, hair, animals

I wanted to see how much each brand is “weighted” in their browns, and this was the one way I could figure out how to depict that for myself. What it shows me is there are few light tones in Olo, wayyy lots in Sketchmarker. And for my own liking, since I love my dark colors, I wish everyone had more darks in all the columns (reddish, yellowish, greenish and purplish).

The Human Rainbow!

The browns were a big part of choosing colors for the new course – I’m SO PROUD of Human Rainbow II. The last time I created a class with people drawings in it, they were embarrassingly bad to me given my current skill level – and rather than being down on myself for HRI, I’m just ECSTATIC that I’ve made progress that’s truly visible! My Life Drawing Group as well as a lot of pen and ink practice has really grown me. So even if no one takes this class, I’m still going to puff out my chest a little bit and cheer for me!

But if you WOULD like to take this class, well, I hope you love it as much as me! It comes with the printable images ($30 value, included in the price). You could also purchase just the images and color them without the class. If you do that and change your mind later about class, just email me and I’ll invoice you just for the class fee minus what you paid for the images. All the printables are here.

I’m pooped!

Do you ever bite off more than you can chew, artistically? Does it drain you like the past few weeks/months have done to me? Man, oh man, I even made myself sick! (Might have been norovirus by my symptoms…but they went away as soon as I had everything prepped for today, so I’m thinking it was stress!)

I’m hoping to now return to my more chill artistic self and let go of some of the testing I’ve been inundated with. What would you like to see me playing with next? Either a medium or a subject, lmk if you have a challenge or an idea!

Supplies

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art

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Alcohol Markers: Do you really need all the colors?

Alcohol Markers: Do you really need all the colors?

Do you need all the colors in order to feel ready to make art? In a comparison of marker brands, I tried matching colors by layering, to see if I could make them look right without having the exact colors they called for – by layering.

A word from our “Sponsor”

This post is brought to you (ha) by one of my brand new pages on the art-classes site….the new Hex Charts and More page! If you haven’t visited in a while, scroll through this page, or any of the mediums… they’re no longer just long lists of thumbnails. There’s hidden jokes, helpful videos, quotes to inspire you, and context around groupings of classes.

My goal is to make the content more helpful, motivational, and just plain fun to check out! I’d love your feedback, especially if you find any oopses; I’ve been discovering some copy/paste errors and would love to know if you find others.

Tutorial: Alcohol Markers: Do you really need ALL the colors?

It’s a long one – skim through to the section you want, or just park with a donut and coffee and let’s chill together a while!

  • Three brands of alcohol marker – Copic, Sketchmarker, Olo 03:22
  • My alcohol marker reference book 05:16
  • Alcohol marker conversion charts 08:13
  • Red blending test 09:30
  • Green blending speed drawing 14:44

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!

Basic blending test

The markers all seemed to perform the same in blending with two exceptions:

  1. Copic retained some hard edges (see the light outline around the butterfly)
  2. Copic’s blender pen retained some of the “removal” of color, the others just got very very soft.

Copic’s c0lorless blender has never been something I’ve loved because of the almost pixelly-texture created, but I was really surprised the other brands just melted in instead. This might be the paper or the fact that it’s RED. Hateful red that loves to be a pain. LOL.

Drawing head-to-head test

The greens between the three mediums aren’t apples to apples by any means; but an overall assessment:

  1. Copic’s range contains more useable muted greens IMHO. The other brands are generally more saturated, with the exception of the G1s through G3s, which are a nice warm range that I’ve been hoping would show up. (No luck on getting dark desaturated ones, bummer!)
  2. Sketchmarker has a lot of greens, or shall we say “G” markers, that are actually blue or bluegreen. Hard to call them greens, but – they were very helpful in layering with their more yellowish greens to create the tones in the Copic version.
  3. Olo. Poor Olo with so few greens to play with! The ones they have are nice, and I like the way the color lays down, but I hope their next release whenever it happens will have more range. But even with that – I was surprised I could get the right greens!

Part 2 is coming up Saturday

Now that this one is finished, my attention turns to the neutrals – the browns. So far I haven’t found any gamechangers in that range, though the Red Greys for black-brown hair are pretty interesting from Sketchmarker. But stay tuned – that post will also talk about some colors in both Sketchmarker and Olo that seem to be unique to them, so if you had interest in adding a color or two, I hope to have some suggestions!

Supplies

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art

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