Colouring with Promarkers #2 - Skin (caucasian)

This is a really quick "How to.." as I personally only use 2 colours to do caucasian skin: Ivory and Blush, so lets get down to it. As before I am using the Sitting Gorjuss Girl of set #1 from Sugar Nellie, stamped with Memento Tuxedo black ink onto Concord card. 

Ok, firstly here are the 2 colours of promarkers I use...

I colour the skin area with Ivory using a circular motion

Then I add Blush by dotting colour to areas that I think would be in shadow e.g. just below the fringe/hairline, the neck and the top of the arm just below the sleeve as well as areas that would naturally have a bit more colour, for instance cheeks (elbows and knees are other places but not in this particular image)

I then go back over the whole area with Ivory, again in a circular motion in order to blend the colours.

And this is the image so far with the skin and hair done...

To download the tutorial just click on this icon 

Colouring with Promarkers #1 - Hair (brunette)

I'm asked a lot about how I colour my images with promarkers - especially the hair, so I'm going to show you how I do it. This is not a tutorial because I'm in no way qualified to give lessons, its just the way I do it. I use concord card which I buy from Caboodle and Memento Tuxedo Black ink for stamping my images.
For this "how to.." I have used the Sitting Gorjuss Girl image from Sugar Nellie.

Firstly I choose about 4 or 5 promarkers from the same colour family, for brown hair I usually use Sandstone, Cinnamon, Cocoa, Burnt Umber and Umber.

I start off with the palest colour, in this case its sandstone, and roughly colour any areas I want highlighted. It helps to imagine where the light source is coming from.

Then I take the next darkest colour (cinnamon) and colour with inward strokes around the pale areas, if the promarker has dried you may need to blend the 2 colours - I do this with the palest colour, taking the strokes from the darker colour towards the paler colour.

I then repeat this for each gradually darker colour, keeping the darkest colour for areas that are in shadow - for instance the hair behind the character's neck and the very tips.

Once the ink has dried on the page, I take either a sakura white gelly roll pen or an inkssential white pen and draw on some highlights on the lightest areas.

So this is what the finished article will look like

this technique works for almost any colour of hair, I have used it for brunette, black (using 5 shades of warm grey promarkers), blue, pink, green, auburn etc

I'll be posting more"how to..." with promarkers soon.

The Sugar Bowl - Challenge #10

The Sugar Bowl have had a bit of a change and have decided to move forward as a sketch challenge. Which pleases me no end. I find the layout of a card the most difficult thing sometimes, and having a sketch to work from often makes a card come together far easier and most times a lot quicker too.

So for challenge 10 there is a fab sketch by the wonderful Marlene, and I really enjoyed making this card. In fact I'm quite proud of how it turned out, I think its my favourite so far.

Image: Country Garden from Sugar Nellie, coloured with promarkers (fine details were added with whispers brush markers as some areas were just too tiny for the promarkers - the detail on these stamps is truly amazing)

cardstock for matting and layering is all core'dinations, as is the creamy taupe card which was embossed in the cuttlebug and sanded.

papers are all Basic Grey - Bittersweet

the three swirly bits on the bottom right are strips cut from some KI Memories tulip diecut cardstock

flowers punched using woodware daisy punches from core'dinations cardstock, papermania paper flower from new embellishment trios, chocolate buttons from embellishment trios and finally the greeting is from the Daisy & Dandelion greetings banner pack