Hello and welcome to my stop on the Colorado Craft release partayyyy! I’m super happy to welcome you here for this little garden party today – be sure to read to the end to check out ALL the giveaways!
My project is complex but simple….I used Olo Markers along with Prismacolors to make a 7-stamp-set-one-layer-card!
Tutorial: Olo Marker + Prismacolor on Colored Paper
If you haven’t tried Olo yet, they’re a marker that I’ve reviewed — and made a hex chart for! While they’re missing some colors I’d loe to see, combining them with pencils really does solve that issue pretty well.
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!
A few tips
To set up a layout, just stamp everything in a light ink on desert storm cardstock – let them layer over each other! Pencil and marker will cover most if not all of the excess lines.
Color from front to back; don’t get distracted by the cacophony of stamped lines, just tackle one bit at a time.
Try just one or two images in this technique before this many. It was a bit…overboard. LOL!
Bleed-through
Neenah does allow some color to bleed through; but I did only a limited amount of blending so that was minimal. It was easy to add a layer of desert storm behind the card front, which also gave it a little more heft as a card to survive better in the mail.
One of my Patrons will be getting this card! In the next few weeks I need to get a new batch out. If you’d considered joining our little Patreon band now’s a great time to maybe get in for a card!
Join Artventure
My little Mighty Networks community called Artventure isn’t so little anymore! I’m SO excited about how it’s taking off. Lots of people are sharing their work, encouraging each other, getting answers to questions, and inspiring each other. Best thing? No ads, no algorithm, no viral dancing…just ART! 🙂 Join us – it’s free!
The new little gouache class will be there in the near future; I’ve got the class videos ready and the classroom built but now I’m awaiting Apple’s approval. (Any time you sell anything through an app they get to weigh in, lol!) The class won’t be expensive – but you’ll need a few things so see the post over therewith a peek and a supply list if you’d like to be ready ahead of time.
THREE Giveaways!
Giveaway 1: I’ll be giving away the Veg Out set from this release to a lucky winner that CCC will draw from all the comments left on my social media hangouts like this blog, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook – the more sites you visit, the more you increase your changes!. Leave a comment, follow or like and be sure to join my email list too.
Giveaway 2: CCC will be giving away a complete bundle of this release to one randomly chosen winner that has placed an order using my link!
Giveaway 3: CCC will be giving away 3 sets to 3 randomly chosen winners on their Instagram.
Bloghop!
It’s a hop of course so check out the others who’ve made beautiful creations with these stamps. Hope you get inspired!
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 imagesand 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!
I’ve always had a weakness for vintage ornaments – and anything with pretty glass! Since this was “shiny things” week I decided ending with a lovely red ornament would be a fun challenge!
Tutorial: Drawing Mercury Glass Vintage Ornament
Colors for markers and pencils are listed in the supplies at the end of this post.
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!
This one is super easy to draw: two circles, a hangy thing on top, and point at the bottom! Or use a stamp for a round ornament and make the ridges in that – it’s fun to try!
You may be wondering why I used a Stonehenge sketchbook for this: it’s because I wanted to finish off with pencil. I knew that top layer was what would make or break it, and needed the texture of this paper to pull out the richness of the Polychromos pencil pigment.
INKing an image I can color counts (and you can go buy it and color it too!)
It’s time to jam on Christmas cards because WHOOPS! I’ve not got much done yet!
I was inspired by a jingle bell that’s gold – and wanted to see if I could color a variety of metal types – brushed, polished, and glittered…I’ll let you be the judge as to whether or not I succeeded!
Tutorial: Copic coloring 3 types of metal jingle bells
If you’d like to color along, there’s a printable for sale over HERE!
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!
By the way, a few months ago Blick started following my YT – they always leave such encouraging comments! I hope to meet their commenter someday….keep an eye out for theirs when you look at one of my YTs!
The idea for the glittery metal would be awesome for things like gumdrops, don’t you think?
How badly did all that blue freak you out? I know, I know. I’m weird. I’m brave. I’m crazy. But isn’t it beautiful?
Grab the printable jingle bells!
Did this inspire you to want to color them up? Head over to pick up your own image and follow along with this tutorial; remember, you can change the dark gold to dark grey, light gold to a pale grey, etc. That allows you to make Santa’s lost jingle bells any color at all!
Your suggestions?
All week I’ll be coloring shiny things – while you watch, be thinking of what kinds of objects I should color and post over at Artventure and on social media. Leave me comments!
I’m not particularly…fashionable. I don’t have the latest coolest outfits, you can ask my friends if I’m an embarrassment to be seen with! I still own —and wear—a tshirt I’ve had since highschool! In the 1970s!! I have to admit I don’t even know what IS fashionable any more. I kinda live under a rock.
In 2013 I bought this cool fashion sketchpad that I saw online, and did I use it? Once, apparently, I don’t even remember drawing Batman, but I guess I did at least crack the book open. So when I found it recently I thought it might be fun to play with for a week. I’m not the best with proportions in the human body; I’m fine in my life drawing group when I’m looking at a real person, but so many other drawings come out with a little something odd. So this book full of templates – or croquis, as the book calls them – that really helps. I get to do just the fun part of adding the clothing!
Tutorial: Trying fashion illustration
I’ve come up with four outfits inspired by my sunflower bouquet in the studio….I wonder how many there might be? Sunflower shorts? Sunflower vests? Shoes? Hats? 🙂
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!
My drawings
I chose to make sunflower outfits out of a made-up fabric that would look like my sunflower….a long dress and a skirt…..
…and then for something different, a swimsuit and a princess gown! Don’t forget to accessorize all the ladies….
Update to hex chart!
Before you get excited, it’s NOT that big a deal. I changed….fonts. For the title and paragraph. LOL. It bugged me that the outdated one is still there as well as the link was to my blog not the place where it’s now sold. I also did eliminate some of the extra “sliver” divisions from the previous chart; they’d made sense to me in 2014 but not so much now. But THERE ARE NO NEW COLORS. NO HEXES HAVE MOVED. You don’t need to update unless it’s time to recolor a new chart. And you could still color up the old chart, no biggie!
IF you bought the chart at art-classes.com then you’ve already got access to the new one: just go to your account and the downloads tab and grab the fresh one.
IF you bought the chart when it was here on my blog (until 2017) then I’ll need to move it for you. It would help if you have the receipt to email so I can track it down and check it off…but if not, just email and I’ll dig around for it. Or if you found it $5.99 worth of helpful you can buy another rather than waiting on me, but – remember you don’t need the new one. Really. LOL.
You can draw your own ladies, of course. But if you want you can also stamp just the head and arms of a rubber stamp or digital image….Mo Manning has some extraordinarily beautiful ladies in her collection you could try!
Need your ideas!
All week I’ll be playing in this sketchbook, or variations on it, I don’t even know yet. Probably different themes, not all sunflowers – got ideas?
Hey there – Mother Nature heard me whining that my morning walks were still requiring jackets at 53F…..guess what? 90s this past weekend! GAH!!! I knew it was coming so did some prep last week….I bought a new fan, stocked up on beverages and popsicles and…ICE CREAM! Before the heat hit I decided this week’s theme would be ice cream, and created a ginormous set of printables for you and called it “Peace Love and Ice Cream!”
These are the colors that were out on my desk after finishing all this coloring…..and look at that sweatshirt sleeve! Yes I filmed before the heat got bad in the studio….I sat out under a tree instead all weekend!
In the zip file you’d download if you purchased this set, you’ll get nice flat versions of the colorings from today that you can keep along with the folder of images so it’s handy dandy.
The more complicated ice cream – with three flavors. You might want the version without the stippled details for things like lemon ice cream – light colors might seem a bit odd with all the black detail. But the limited detail is also a great way to learn your shading by putting it in yourself!
These, I’ll just tell ya, are too tiny! ha. I really wanted to get in more detail and couldn’t. But a tip on the soft serve with sprinkles: add them in with a gel pen or with stickles or other colored substances; coloring around tiny ones like this is too hard!
Supplies
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