Tutorial Tuesday: Colour Me Beautiful
Today on Tutorial Tuesday, I will be providing you with lots of pictures full of information and inspiration focusing on colouring with Prismacolor pencil crayons. These pencil crayons provide a professional finish when blended with Odorless Mineral Spirits, also known as Gamsol or Odorless Turpenoid. This Odorless Mineral Spirit (OMS) can be found at your local craft and hobby store.
For more information on Prismacolor pencil crayons you can read a recent post of mine entitled Colour Your World with Prismacolour.
As I colour, I blend after each area is coloured. For purpose of this tutorial, I am colouring the entire image before I blend. I hope you enjoy this tutorial.
Supplies:
Prismacolour Pencil Crayons
Odorless Mineral Spirits/Gamsol/Odorless Terponoid
Tortillions (paper sticks)
Permanent Ink Pad (such as VersaMark or Versafine)
The hat is coloured gold. Notice the large area left uncoloured. This allows even a lighter area of gold once it has been blended.
To add a 3-D look to an image, darker shades are used, and this is called “shadowing” or “shading.” To add a shadow, imagine where an item is blocked by the sun. In this photo, the sun hits the tip of the hat, leaving the area around the rim in the shadow. A shadow will also sit around the ears. When two lines butt up against each other I often colour that area darker, thus creating a depth as if the item is indented.
When I colour an image, I chose at least two areas that will be coloured using two different colours. Once again, this adds interest to the image. Here, I chose blue as the main colour for the pants. The blue was coloured in a random pattern, leaving uncoloured areas for reasons explained next.
One item that I often refer to is the colour wheel (I have an upcoming post related to the use of the colour wheel). I decided that I would like the pants to contain two different colours. Wondering what would be the best choice, I looked to see what complemented the colour blue. There were three colours to choose from: red, gold/brown and yellow. I chose gold.
Next, the gold is coloured in a random pattern, leaving some areas free of colour. When the pants are blended, the joining of the two colours, along with the uncoloured areas, will reveal a lovely variety of colour.
Like the pants, the boots were coloured with two colours–a light green and a dark green. The jacket was coloured, leaving areas of white so that the colour is lighter in the bottom area. Notice how the vest is left uncoloured on the bottom as well. As I go along, I add darker areas in the areas that need shadows. If you do not have a deeper shade of the colour you are using, then use brown in the shadows. When blended, it will look lovely.
Now it is time to colour the fish. I like to add as much interest to my image as I can, so once again I pulled out my colour wheel to see what colour would work well. Because the moon is yellow, I put that colour at the top of my wheel. There were three lovely colours to choose, and I picked purple because the colour was not in the image at all. Just like decorating a house, splashes of different colours is visually appealing.
Now it is time to blend my image. Here you can see the OMS I am working with. It was chosen for no particular reason. Any OMS is good. Gamsol may be just a little bit better.
These are paper tortillions made specifically for blending. A starter kit is very handy to have because it comes with several shapes and sizes of paper tips, and it also comes with a hand held pad of sand paper. The sand paper is used to sand the colour off of the colour and to sharpen the points. I have many shapes and sizes of tortillions so I do not have to sand a lot.
The larger the area to be blended, the larger the tip I use.
In small areas I use small tips. This tip was used in the vest area, including along the blue vest edge.
There is a lot of blending in this image. Notice the white area on the hat that was specifically left without a dark colour. Can’t you imagine the sun hitting that area? Under the shirt you can see how I added brown to the top of the pants because I felt it was in a shadowed area. There are no mistakes with colouring and blending. Experiment, have fun and play.
You are now ready to finish your card.
Another close-up.
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25 People have left comments on this post
Jul 28, 2008 - 09:07:31This was a great picture tutorial. I just purchased the prismacolor pencils and gamsol. I was having a little trouble blending as well as I wanted. You cleared something up for me…different size tips on blending sticks! I only have the smallest ones. Great tip…will invest in wider tipped ones immediately. Great blog! My first time here…I’ll be back!
This is so awesome Beth! Great tutorial with photos! I need a color wheel!
Very nice thanks for the info on the white space. I learned something new today.
Very nice coloring tutorial Beth! TFS!!!!
i will also list you as oneof my favorite bloggers.
Susan
Great tutorial!!! Love your color wheel!!
Awesome tutorial Beth.. Thanks much!!
Thanks for the tutorial. It explains how to color very well.
Thank you for the technique. Now I just have to get brave enough to try.
Wow!! Very nice! I’m going to have to try you technique the next time I pull out my pencils!
This is a Fabulous Tutorial….Thanks for taking the time to share it!!
Awesome tutorial Beth, superb coloring.
Beth – Wonderful tutorial..I’m still trying to perfect my coloring and this will serve as a huge help! And beautiful card! Love it all!!
Awesome tutorial, Beth!! I really love the beautiful blend of colors that you used for your image!! I love coloring with pencil!! Love your new blog site! I really love the flower banner!!
Maria
Thanks for the great tutorial. It was just what I wanted! Talk about asking and receiving. Wow.
GREAT tutorial Ms Beth, and (as usual), your colouring is splendiferous!
Wow thanks for the coloring tips. I did go out and buy those kind of pencils because you had them at the last crop we went to. I need to practice blending. TFS
Beth You do a wonderful job . I forgot about this crayon tutorial . Thanks for doing a great job and it is sooo concise. I have filled a binder with your tutorials. Merci
LOVE IT! OMG! Your tutorial rocks! I’m so signing up for the feeds! TFS!
Fantastic tutorial.
Keep coming these kind of tutorials.
Thanks for sharing.
Regards,
image coloring
Hi Beth thanks soooo much for this tutorial from a complete newbie in this technicque. I was soo greatful, when a friend gave me the link foryour blog, and told me, I could read loads of tutorials here about stamping, which I´m just trying to lear, but there´s no classes or anything here where I live, so I have to find out about everything my self, so this was really sent from heaven. Thank you soooo much for a great site here. I´m definately comming back here many times in the future, that´s for sure.
Thanks again and biiiig hugs Maryann
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