Yes, its Teacher Anya again

I received a few questions about how I colored Anya’s blonde hair – so I thought I’d show you a step by step of how I colored Anya.  

Its probably not the best way and I know its not the fastest way – but here goes…

I almost always color by laying down a base color first, and then adding my other shading colors and blending with (usually) my base color.

A couple of things – blending in place like this puts a lot of alcohol in contact with the stamp ink.  If you don’t have a good paper-ink-marker match, your stamp ink will bleed.  I have found that the Neenah Classic Crest cardstock with Memento ink works best for me.  If you are having problems with your stamp ink bleeding you may want to change your paper or stamping ink.

Another thing that can happen is that that the ink can “creep” past the stamp line.  You are putting a lot of alcohol on the paper so you need to remember that it can travel.  Consider starting your coloring back from the stamp line a bit until you know how the marker ink will behave.  Brand new markers can be really loaded with ink and will flow more quickly. 

If you have a lot of bleeding and feathering, consider trying a different paper.

If I know I want to use certain pattern paper or cardstock, I usually pull it out first to help me choose marker colors.  In this case, I’m using the paper from the Pink Lemonade Paper Kit.

I also decide where my “sun” is going to be.  I decided to place the light in the upper left.  This means I’ll put a little bit more shadow on the bottom and right sides of the image. (At least in my symplistic view of the world).

Here I stamped Anya in Memento Tuxedo.

Normally, I do skin first – but I’ll do the hair first so those of you who don’t care about the rest can move on (LOL!).

I chose Y-21 for my base color and colored in all Anya’s hair solid with the Y-21.  I just fill the area well – right over top of stamp lines.

 Then I added E-33 in the areas I want the hair darker and added a little Y-35 overlapping the E-33 (as kind of a medium shade). 

Why these colors?  Don’t know - I just play around with colors till I find something I like..  The only “rule” I usually follow is not to try to blend colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel (like red and green).  You will usually end up with some kind of unattractive brown or pukeish green. 

Hey – there are a lot of rules in life – I don’t want to add too many to my coloring fun….

I try to work somewhat quickly so I’m mostly blending wet on wet.

 Then I blend the colors with the Y-21 base color again.

If you think an area is too dark (or if you want a highlight), you can remove ink by swiping  the blender pen over the area.  You can also go back and add more dark color if you wish.

For the skin I used E-000 for the base and colored the skin solid with it. 

Then I added E-00 to the hair line and the right side of the face for shadow.  I added a little E-02 for cheeks.  I’m not sure cheeks go with this image – but I can’t seem to resist  making rosy cheeks! 

I also added a little E-00 to the arms and legs for shadows. 

Last I blended the edges of everything with E-000.

I choose yellow-green for the skirt and shirt because of the paper patterned paper.  YG-13 is the base and YG-23 is the shadow.

 I probably put a little too much shadow on the left side of her skirt ( wanted to add some to make the skirt look round).  You can usually fix too much shadow with more blending but it might make the overall color darker.   But if you are really blending your heart out – keep an eye on how much alcohol you’re adding so your ink does not travel beyond the stamp lines.

 For the vest I used R-32 for the base and and R-35 for shadow – again chosen off the paper..

For the apple, the base is R-14, then I added R-17 and a little R-27 on the darker (right) side of the apple.

I added a little glare on the apple by using G-20 to remove some of the red ink.  Just swipe it on there and let it do its thing.  If it is not light enough, just swipe again.

I know I said up there not to try to blend red and green.  But in this case, I’m not really blending, I’m using the very light green to push the red ink aside.  Besides – who wants all those rules anyway…

The last thing I did was add a shadow line to the right and lower sides of the image – since the “sun” is on the upper left (see the finished card). 

Since the image is so cartoony (is that a word?) I was not really worried about creating a realistic shadow (a good thing too – since I’m still working on my shadow technique).  I just didn’t want to leave her floating in outer space.

One last opinion - try letting the marker ink dry completely before you decide you hate a blending attempt.  Usually the blend improves and “mellows” a bit as the marker ink dries.

So thats my approach to coloring.  I’m still learning and playing so I’d love to hear about your special Copic tricks and techniques.