Copic Shading & Outside the Box - Part 2

I started working on this card a while ago. . . another one that began from me trying to hone my Copic coloring skills.  I am more confident with the technique of blending and shading now! My mini work is "contrast"  in the most shaded areas.  I am particularly pleased with the daisy centers and hollyhock shading.  Two skills I am working to develop in this card:  keeping my light source consistent (a biggie) and coloring curly hair.  Most of the time my images have straight hair - but this one needed curly hair!  The Copic 3 Coloring Guide says to keep your lines loose and flowing which is not as easy as it sounds!!

Since I don't have any art background, keeping my light source consistent requires practice and training.  I have developed my own system for tutorials - when I am coloring an image for the first time, I search for the stamp with "google image" (or on Pinterest).  This gives me a wide variety of cards to choose from to use as a model to study for my own coloring.  This kind of practice is helping develop my eye ~ and makes it a little easier each time I color.  One of my "go to" gals is Paula Williamson.  Our styles are similar and I have learned so much about coloring and card composition from looking at her work.

Patsy Pixie - Stampin' Bella 

The colored image went into my box of unused images  (Kind of reminds me of the 'unfit toys' in Santa's workshop - just waiting to be finished off for a child to love them!) where it was "the star" in this card for Inspiration Challenge 374 over at Splitcoast Stampers and Bellariffic Friday on Stamping Bella's blog.  The overall flower explosion reminded me of a locket from the featured inspiration website.

This image begged to be cropped and have the flowers go beyond the framed border.  Rather than having a lot more white space to make the image blend in, cropping it brought the pixie and her flowers to the forefront. Try it yourself! Just like cropping photos, it gives you a whole new way to look at the picture!  Let me know if you do.  I would love to see your work!



 

P.S.  My Midnight Tree card was featured as a CAS favorite on Splitcoast!
Not bad for a non-CAS girl!  It's inspired me to take an online CAS class.
Watch for more in upcoming posts.