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Basic Copic Colouring Stage 4

Nicole — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:00:57 +0000

YAY – Basic Rosalie is almost done! Today we are just adding the final touches.

Let’s have a look back at what we have done so far:

First we added our base colour – using our lightest from each family we coloured in a circular motion.

Week 2 and we incorporated some basic shading using our middle colour and the flick blending method.

Last week we took basic shading one step further and added a third colour to most areas of our image. Doesn’t Rosalie look so much better now!?

We have talked about basic colouring technique and simple shading. Today we will just add a few finishing touches to our Rosalie and next week we start all over again – this time an advanced version – we will be covering shading and shadow in more detail and experimenting with light sources and lots of blender techniques as well as incorporating a few of my favourite non-marker copic products Look out for it!

So, back to Rosalie – let’s ‘get er done’ as my husband would say!! LOL

FINISHING TOUCHES: Evaluate your Basic Rosalie and think about what you can do to improve on her.

I love to add rosy cheeks to my characters, and RV10 is perfect for this.

Colour a circle on each cheek using your pink marker, then blend the edges with your lightest skin colour. Do this by colouring a larger circle over the top. Really soak the paper here, you want the edges of your pink cicle to completely disappear into the face so they look like flushed cheeks rather than painted on cheeks.

Use your clear blender pen (0) to remove some colour from places if needed. Just a little at a time, swipe over the head to lift some colour and create a bit of ‘shine’ in the centre of the hair area, rub in a circular motion on her belly and/or the centre of her face to intensify the ‘flash of light’, remove chunks of colour from the toes of her shoes to represent shine.

Experiment! Get to understand what happens when you use the blender pen – notice how it pushes colour out of the way. If you removed too much and want to add some colour back in, make sure you wait until the blender solution has evaporated, or your colours will be lighter than intended. We will be learning some fabulous blender pen effects in the coming weeks as we look at advanced colouring techniques.

Use V000 to draw a pale ‘halo’ around the image. This helps to ‘ground’ her, and removes the ‘floating’ element.

And basic Rosalie is complete!

For those of you who have purchased the starter kit and are now adding to your Copic Manual – Don’t forget to record everything on your swatch pages.

If you need to download extra pages, you can get them from

www.limetart.com/ltcc/blankpage.pdf

Happy Colouring! See you next week for ADVANCED Copic Colouring Stage One!!! Are you ready!?

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Basic Copic Colouring Stage 2

Nicole — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:00:05 +0000

Instalment 2 – adding dimension.

Last week we left poor Rosalie looking very flat, like this:

Now that we have a base colour down, we are ready to start bringing Rosalie to life

The next stage is to use the ‘middle’ colour from each chosen family to begin the process of developing shade. Shading should not be confused with shadow – both create a sense of dimension, but in different ways.

In colouring terms, shading is a layering of colour used to create the appearance of dimension. The addition of a darker tint in carefully chosen areas will hint at a lack of light – this technique is used to create ‘roundness’ or ‘depth’ by tricking the eye into believing that certain parts of an image are further away from you, or further away from a light source, therefore implying that they are not 2 dimensional.

Shadow can also provide a sense of dimension, but this is achieved by the more obvious display of a distinct shape cast by a specific object when a light shines on it and the object obscures the light. We will cover shadow in a later focus.

For this stage – if you like, you can work over the top of your first coloured Rosalie – adding the next dimension to the same image. However I would suggest that you re-stamp and re-colour her on another blank page for your swatch book. Not only will this give you the added practice of trying it all over again, but will also allow you to develop the full set of ‘Rosalies’ over the coming weeks – a series of 8 coloured images, each one a step-up from the last, and each one with journalling notes to remind you of the additional colours you incorporated and the new techniques you added.

Remember the hair colours I chose to work with?

The base colour (E31) went down last week. Today I will be adding the second colour from each of my chosen families. In the case of her hair, E35.

BASIC SHADING AND BLENDING – To incorporate darker colours from the same blending group, we utilise the technique we first visited when testing our paper for its blending properties . This is commonly known as the ‘flick blending method’

For now we are keeping the shading positioning fairly basic – assuming a direct front-on light source – much like that created when you photograph someone face-to-face using a flash. Imagine that the light will fall most harshly on those parts closest to you – the front of the head, the centre of the face and the torso. Keeping this in mind, add your next darker colour (the middle colour in a 3-marker family) from the outside edges to the centre. Position your angled brush end on the stamped outline, and flick into the centre, slightly lifting at the end of each stroke – this will allow more ink to remain at the shaded side and less on the trailing edge where we will be blending with the existing base colour.

Once you have all of your shading in place, go back to your original (lightest) base colour and use the circular method to re-colour over the 2 shades where dark meets light. A gentle touch here will result in a subtle blend (a more distinct variation between the shades) Whereas a heavier hand will create a seamless blend between the 2 colours, resulting in a smoother shading effect. I prefer to retain a significant variation between my shades but it is a personal preference thing. Experiment to decide what suits you.

Remember:

• Use the middle colour from your chosen family

• ‘Flick’ the brush end from the edge to the centre

• Colour in a circular motion back over the join using your lightest, original base colour

When it comes to shading – do what comes naturally – you might get a ‘feel’ for where the shading should go. Try to ‘read’ the image for clues. Keep it simple for now – we will elaborate on this idea later. I have imagined a camera flash from directly in front of Rosalie – this helps to decide where you need to add your second colour and where you need to leave it lighter.

Here’s Rosalie now, there’s still a long way to go, but she’s starting to look much better already:

Here are some tips for how I have incorporated the first level of shading on this image:

HAIR: Work from the root to the tip – so flick from the centre of the scalp outwards both left and right of the parting, and for the fringe, use very tiny flicks from both the top and the bottom of each section. Add more E35 in other places where you think her hair would be darkest – just under and above the ribbon tie, the braided hair closest to her face where you can see that it sits behind her cheek.

FACE: Flick in to the centre from the sides and bottom more than from the hairline, this will create a sense of ‘roundness’. Add your second colour as a drawn line in the small areas such as her neck and the outer edges of her legs and the top parts of her legs just under the skirt.

DRESS: Flick in from the outer edges to the centre, and down from the waistband. If you flick up from the hem as well, you will create the impression that she has a pot belly. Notice the waistband – darker colour was only added to the edges.

SHOES: Rosalie’s shoes are a good example of ‘reading’ the image for your shading clues. It is clear that one shoe is behind the other. If the light is coming from directly in front of her, then the shoe behind will be darker, particularly at the points closest to the shoe in front, where that shoe obscures the light. You can also see that the strap of her MaryJanes sits in front of the rest of the shoe, so it would be lighter than the main part of the shoe. The strap itself comes from the other side of her foot, and crosses over to the front, so we know that the part of the strap furthest away from us should be darker too.

For SOCKS AND PETTICOAT – I have treated the white paper as my base colour here – so my second colour from white could be any very pale colour – starting with 0 in most cases.

Next week we add our third colour, and the basic Rosalie will be almost complete. Then comes Advanced Colouring!

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Paper Roses

Nicole — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:16:22 +0000

I thought I would show you how I made these rustic paper roses today.

Step 1: cut a 1″ strip from patterned paper.

Step 2: fold lengthwise twice, or roll it up like shown

Step3 3: twist in opposite directions from each end so you end up with a spiral like below.

Step 4: prepare a base for your flower by squeezing glue into a circle on a scrap of cardstock. Doing it now allows the glue to start getting tacky by the time you are ready for it

Step 5: start to twist your spiral into a snail shape, forming a circle while maintaining the twists already in the strip.

Step 6: when you have your ’snail’ shaped how you like it, place it on the glue circle and hold it in place until it stays by itself.

Step 7: trim the excess cardstock off

Adhere to your project!

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Is it okay for a grown woman to squeal?

Philippa — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:33:31 +0000

Because that’s what I did when I opened up an email from Nicole with this card in it! Is it not the most adorable card that you have ever seen?

Nicole has used the December A la Tarte which has that gorgeous Jenni Bowlin paper, a set of sentiment stamps, and those cute as cute can be red flower buttons. Besides her wonderful colouring of the Mistletoe and Mice stamp she has also used the EK Success medium rock fern punch.

Some close ups of the amazing colouring of the stamp and those beautiful buttons:

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