PEP tangles - my Zentangle Inspired Art blog

Saturday 11 June 2011

Some Thoughts About Colouring

Prior to my post of the MCC Week 5 projects,  I believe it is worth recounting my own colouring journey & thoughts. Not only will it provide me with a record but it might be of use to someone else.


When I started to colour 18 months ago I knew nothing about shading or paper never mind that there were different pencils/crayons, except that some were water soluble & some not. What a paper stump looked like was a revelation when I finally saw one, although I had come across Odourless Mineral Spirits - a curious thing called OMS or Sansodor - in a magazine describing the use of another strange item called Prismacolor. I began by watercolouring on ordinary cardstock with a set of Whispers Brush Markers & quickly moved on to Distress Inks. I discarded the watercolour paper I bought as I couldn't stamp properly on the rough surface nor get to grips with the way the ink responded but I struggled on using watercolour pencils on ordinary cardstock until May when I began to use Copics & ProMarkers & wrote this:


........I am becoming convinced that this colouring medium is one with which I shall be comfortable (I am already thinking of the Copics & ProMarkers as friends rather than something to do battle with.


I was given some on-line Suzanne Dean Copics classes for my birthday but didn't have time to start those before the meltdown of my relatively new Microsoft laptop & the subsequent switch to a MacBook Pro, plus the opportunities to take Glenda's MCC stamping courses. In the meantime the gift of a bundle of paper stumps prompted me to try using those with some pencils I'd acquired & Sansodor. In addition  Glenda's Colouring Course was offered before I'd managed to start the Suzanne Dean ones. In fact it has all worked out very well for I've had a chance to obtain the Copics colours for Suzanne's classes & make a few discoveries whilst working through the Colouring 101 Week 5 exercises giving an overview of alcohol markers (more specifically Copic Markers) plus their blending techniques whilst consolidating the information from the first four weeks.

my sketch book page for Week 5

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