Impression Obsession - Old is New

Greetings friends.  Today the IO team is revisiting some of the older stamps that we absolutely love.  I am sharing a design that I find to be perfect for practicing your Copic coloring.  The goal is to color the berries so they are darker around the edges and lighter in the center to give them a more "rounded" appearance.

 

Here is a closeup of the coloring:

 

The first step is to stamp the Strawberries image onto white cardstock with black Memento ink.  Now it is time for the coloring!

Impression Obsession Items Used
Strawberries D2200

I used these berries in one of my Copic classes, so I thought I would share the extensive notes with you.  I hope it helps you with your coloring!

Blending Three (or More Colors). 

• This techniques works better with colors in a natural blending family.  In other words, the markers are from the same color family (B, R, E, etc) and are a few numbers apart form each other (B01, B04, B07).
• Color the entire area with the lightest color.  Make sure that you really saturate the area with ink.  This will serve as your base color for the entire piece.
• While the base layer is still wet, add the mid-tone color to your picture using a flicking motion.  By this, I mean to press your pen to the paper, color, and lift the pen up at the end of each stroke.  Do not cover up all of your light/base color.
• Blend the two colors together using the lightest color.  Circular motions will really help with the blending..
• Add your darkest color to the piece using a flicking motion. Do not cover up all of your light or mid-tone color.
• Blend the darkest and mid-tone colors together using the mid-tone pen.  Again, be sure to use circular motions to help with the blending.
• Finish with the lightest color if necessary.

**Note..if things aren’t blending really well, you can repeat the whole process again.

Step 1- Light color

Step 2- Add mid-tone

Step 3- Blend with light color

Step 4- Add dark color

Step 5- Blend with mid-tone

Remember, light colors are easier to blend than dark colors, so practice with you light pens first.  However, for this card, we are moving on to reds!

Working With Reds:

• Reds can often be tricky, and people sometimes experience them bleeding more than other colors.  The particles of red dye are denser and larger than other colors and therefore they fill up space faster than other colors.  It is therefore much easier for these colors to bleed past the lines.  Here are some tips to help with reds:
• Work on an surface such as scrap paper or even a paper towel.  The extra absorbency will help pull the colors down instead of sideways.
• Use less ink than you might use with other colors.  Don’t try to saturate the images or you will end up with a lot of bleeding.
• Avoid using circles when coloring.  This technique works well for getting rid of lines, but it saturates the paper with even more color.  Instead, use more feathering with your brushstrokes.
• Let the paper dry a bit more in between colors.  The wetter the surface is, the more your color will bleed.
• Don’t color directly up to the edges.  Give yourself a little space around the edges until you get a feel for how much the color is going to bleed.
• Remember that the blender pen doesn’t do much to get rid of mistakes.  Reds tend to bleed into the wet area instead of back towards the image edge.  Other colors can be “pushed” with the Blender, but not the reds.  You can try putting a paper towel under the piece of you use the blender to absorb some of the extra die.  Just remember to move to a dry piece on the paper towel every time you add more of the blender pen.  It will take many attempts to get rid of the extra red (if you can at all).
• Always remember to add your reds first.  That way you will have a chance to fix any mistakes before you spend a lot of time coloring the rest of your image.

Instructions:

• Stamp berries onto white cardstock using black Memento ink. 
• Decide where your light source will be.  For this particular card, the light will be shining straight on the berries.
• Color the centers of the berries with the lightest (R20) marker.  Do not color all the way to the edges of the berries.  Allow the piece to dry a bit.
• Add some of the mid-tone marker (R22) from the edges of the berries towards the center.  Again, don’t go all the way to the edge.  Also, remember that you do not want to cover up where the light would be hitting the berries.  Let that area remain light.  It will act as the highlight of each berry. Allow the piece to dry a bit.
• Blend the two colors with the light (R22) marker.  Allow the piece to dry a bit.
• Add a touch of the darkest (R27) marker to the edges of the berries and feather the color in towards the centers of the berries.  Allow the piece to dry a bit.
• Blend the mid-tone and darkest colors with the mid-tone (R22) marker.
• If you are not happy with your blends, allow the piece to dry and repeat the process.  Just remember that you are working with reds and don’t want to overdo it!
• Color the leaves with the green marker.
• Outline the berries, leaves, and stems with the grey marker to get some dimension.
• Stamp the saying on the inside of the card.

New Video

I finished another video and thought I would share. You can either watch the embedded video on my site, or you can watch it directly on YouTube here. It is a technique video highlighting how to stamp with Twinkling H2Os and features some of the latest Memory Box products. I am in love with the new papers!

Airbrush Tutorial

As I mentioned in my last post, there is a Holiday Open House at Angela's on Saturday (tomorrow). What I failed to mention is that I will be doing a free Copic airbrush demo from 10:30am- 11:30am and again from 2-3pm. It is the same demo for both sessions, so hopefully people will be able to attend one of them. While preparing for the demo, I thought it was also an opportune time to post pictures of one of the techniques I will be showing. Posting a bunch of pictures for a tutorial really makes me appreciate people who do it on their blogs all the time. Yikes!

For today's tutorial, I used my airbrush with a brass stencil of a pear.

This is a close-up of the finished card. You would be able to get similar results with pigment inks and a makeup sponge if you didn't have an airbrush. However, the airbrush really allows you to have smooth transition of color.

I first placed the stencil onto white cardstock and held it down with stencil tape. Regular masking tape will also work if you "de-tack" it a bit on your skin or clothes before you lay it on your paper.

I sprayed the body of the pear with YR23 (Yellow Ochre). I hope you can tell from the picture that I tried to add more color to the right side and bottom of the pear. To add extra color with the airbrush, try holding the airbrush closer to the paper as well as pressing the trigger a bit harder.

Next I added YG03 (yellow green) to the leaf area as well as the body of the pear.

I added some more shading by applying YG67 (moss) to the bottom of the leaf and some E35 (Chamois) to the stem and bottom of the pear.

I could have left my pear "as-is," but I decided I wanted to stamp over the pear with some pear words. You will notice that my stamp was also in the shape of a pear, but it just happened to fit nicely over my stencil. You could use any sort of background image for this step...swirls, script, checks...whatever.

I inked my stamp with green ink and then stamped it over the stencil.

When I removed the tape, I was left with the image above.

I layered my pear onto some orange cardstock and thought it looked a bit like it was floating in air. I took it back off the cardstock and did some more airbrushing.

I airbrushed some W1 (Warm Grey 1) along the bottom of the card to ground my image. To finish the card, I simply layered it onto some green cardstock. I hope to see some of you tomorrow!

CPS Challenge #65

Well, I finally finished my sketch challenge card. Whew! For some reason, the branch photographed looking kind of red/orange to me. However, I am on photograph overload, so you are just going to have to picture it a browner color in your mind!

This sketch challenge was provided by Card Positioning Systems, and I wanted to participate. Part of the reason why it took so long was I wanted to brayer the background. This usually doesn't take very long because I normally use white glossy paper and a Kaliedacolor ink pad. However, for this card, I wanted to use certain blue colors and they were blending TOO well on glossy paper. I was ending up with a solid blue piece of cardstock. What is the point of brayering if you can't see the different colors? Here is a breakdown of the card:

First, I stamped some owls by AMuse onto cream cardstock with a black Memento pad. I stamped multiple owls because I was making more than one card at once. I then colored the owls with Copic markers.

For the background, I stamped a branch from another AMuse set with brown pigment ink and embossed it with clear powder. I colored the insides of the leaves green, covered them with VersaMark ink from a pen, and embossed again in clear. This step was wasted because I ended up cutting out leaves and layering them on the card....explanations later! I then brayered back and forth and back and forth with my Cloudy Blue ink. I must have inked the brayer about four times and rolled it onto the paper multiple times between inkings.

I repeated those steps with the Sailboat Blue ink over the top 2/3rds of the card. I made sure not to cover up all that I had already done.

I finished brayering with the darkest blue ink over the top of the card. Remember, this was regular cardstock, so I had to go back and forth and back and forth to blend and get rid of lines. Have I said this enough yet? :)

I cut the card into three strips to match the sketch layout. I edged the pieces with the dark blue ink pad because the cuts showed the cream paper underneath. I also sponged some black ink to the top. This picture also shows how I stamped the owl again onto the bottom panel so that I could glue a little owl body on top. I did it this way so that I wouldn't have to cut out little owl feet. I added a saying with black ink, popped up the owl on top of the feet, punched out a yellow circle and popped it up on the card, and added "stars" with a stardust pen. I ended up cutting out leaves for the branches because I made the mistake of inking the entire branch with brown ink. By the time I embossed the branch, there was very little of the leaves left to color. I wanted more green on the leaves, so I cut some out freehand with green paper. Hope this tutorial helped!