Noah's Ark

I have to say the weather is crazy today!  I have a little heater in my craft room (loft conversion) to prevent any of my card becoming too cold.  When it's on I'm too warm but when it knocks back off within minutes it's gone cold.  Raining one minute, overcast then sunny!  Oh we do love the English weather lol.
Well anyway, I coloured this image while having my coffee yesterday morning.  Quite fiddly to do but really enjoyed colouring it.  I definitely think I need to invest in the brush nibs for the finer areas.

Pens used:
Elephant IG2 & IG3
Frog DG1 & DG2
Giraffe TN2 & TN3
Lion and Monkey TN3 & TN4
Zebras IG5, IG8 & IG1
Lamb CG1 & CG3
Rabbits IG1
Ark GB7, GB8 & GB9
Chicks CT1 & CT3
Buterflies and Umbrella PL1 & FL8

Sorry! Not the best of photo's. 

Simplest of colouring!

For this image I kept the colours simple.  Took a minute to colour so think it would be a good image to practice on.  All images have been found on free colouring pages via Pinterest.

Dress: CR3 & FS8, I chose to go in with the darkest pen over the black lines of the dress before using the lightest pen to saturate the areas I was working on.  Then using the darkest pen I added the shading where I thought it might be.  I did this several times until I was happy with the result.  I'd suggest working on smaller areas at a time on the skirt of the dress.  I think I could have done better with this image but I'm still in the experimenting mode with the Spectrum Noir pens.
 Stand: TN4 & TN5 and IG1 & IG3.  Such small areas but think I found the shading much easier.  Noted!

Hehehehe, the pen marks to the bottom left shouldn't be there! That's my carelessness thinking I was checking out the colours on my scrap piece of card.

Oh dear!  I found the blue inks (TB5 onwards) very wet!  I'd say there's no need to saturate the area first with the lighter colour using these pens. I got quite a lot of bleeding using these pens despite being very careful.

Pens used.......
Hair:  TN3, EB3, EB4, BG6 & TN8.  I saturated the hair with the lightest colour (TN3) before going in from the darkest to the lightest with flicking motions, going over it several times until I got the desired effect.

Dress, Bonnet, Shoes & Umbrella: TB5, TB6 & TB7 as I've mentioned, I found these pens very wet so be careful!  This time, after discovering how wet they are, I started with darkest colour where shadows should be (in my mind) then moving on working towards the lightest pen (TB5)

Ribbon, Lace & legs I chose IG1 to try and create a shadow as I wanted to keep these white.  The dress just gave me he impression of a sailors dress, hence the blue hues.

My blending pen has dried out, hence the 'scratching effect' on the hat!

Here's the watercolour I did, made into a card, again very basic but least I've done something with it lol.  Backed onto black card then onto a white card.

Card made using above image!

I haven't done very much since my last post!  Mostly busy with school and nursery runs picking my granddaughters up.  Shopping but boohoo not for crafty stash but oh dear!  I couldn't sit on my hands when I discovered The Works hda sale on and spent just short of £40 online with them.  Hubby won't know until parcel arrives oops!
What I have done is create 2 cards using 2 images I coloured a week or so ago.  Very basic cards, mainly because I just wanted to do something with the finished images.

Card made using above image

More images coloured using Spectrum Noir pens

Hi!  Well what a complete mess I made if this little girls dressed.  Silly me chose a cheaper type of card.  This image shows just what happens if you don't use the correct card for the right job!  It bled everywhere!

Hair: OR1, OR2, EB4, GB7, TN9  Lightest to darkest: OR1, GB7, OR2, TN9, EB4
As I always do I decided where the light would shine on her hair.  I don't know why as I always seem to choose the same areas for each image of a person!  I used OR1 as my highlighter then went in from darkest to lightest using flicking motions.  I think I'm improving with the flicking motions.

Skin:   FS3, FS4, FS5, CR3, CR1  Oops! A complete mess I made of her face!  I got to clumsy when using the darker shades and struggled to blend the darkest, as you can see in picture below the poor girls has some kind of dark ring around her face lol.  Hands a mess too.  I'm not blaming the pens here, I do think it's the cheap card I used.

Dress: LV1, PL2 & PL3.  Rubbish attempt at blending again but makes a good point about how important it is to use the correct card!  Am I repeating myself lol

Shoes: I dropped the PL3 and just used LV1 & PL2 going in with the lightest first followed by darkest then back over the shoes again with the lightest.  Somewhat better I'd say!

Pears:   Cg1 & CG2, again going over with lightest, shaded with darkest and back over to blend th two colours using the lightest.  I don't know why I thought pears lol.

Bag:  CR3 & CR4  same as with pears, light then dark and back over with light shade.

Chick:  CT1 & CT3 as above light, dark then light again.

After the ink had dried on the dress I went back in with the darkest pen to create little spots, same with shoes.

Here are a few more coloured images using SN pens and same techniques.

Pens used: Hair: TN1, EB1, EB2, BG3, BG5 & BG6  Dress: IB1, IB2 & IB3  Skin: TN1 & TN2

Pens used for image below:
Hair: OR1, OR2, EB4, TN9 & GB7  Dress: CT1, CT2, CT4 & GB1 Shoes and lace: CR3 & CR5  Skin: FS1, FS2 & FS8 (cheeks)

Pens used for image below:  Girl... Hair GB1, GB2, GB4 & GB6 Skin: TN1, TN2, FS1 & FS2.  Dress: CR2 & CR4. Pinafore, shoes & bow: BT1 & BT3
Boy.... Hair GB6, GB7, GB9 & GB10  Jacket BT4 & BT6.  Trousers LG3 & LG5.  Shoes and shirt: TB1 & TB3
Chairs and legs of table plus hearts on tablecloth: EB1 & EB2  Tablecloth HB1 & HB2  Ice-cream: PP1 & PP2 then spotted over using FL1 and FL3 Base of ice cream: TN! & TN2

Business trip?

Loved colouring this image.  Everything just seemed to fall into place.  Makes a change for me lol.

Hair:   TN1, TN2, GB1, GB6, GB7 & GB9.  Imagining where the light source was I used the lightest pen first to colour where I thought the highlights should go. In this case I chose GB1 as my highlights.  Slightly more colour in than TN1, which looks on my key to be as light as GB1 but slightly duller.  After putting my choice of highlights down I started from the darkest to the lightest using flicking motions in an attempt to get some movement in the hair.  Not sure if I succeeded but I like the finished result!

Jacket, garters  and bows in hair:  CR4, CR6 & CR7. I lay the darkest colour first following the lines in the image before going onto lightest colour to saturate the card before using the middle shade (CR6) to create shadow then going back in with lightest colour, using small circular movements to help blend the 2 colours together.

Skirt:  Oops!  Yet again I didn't write the pens down But I'm quite sure they were from the TN family.

Skin:  TN1, TN2 & TN3 I left the centre of the face white but using lightest colour I did go around the edges using TN1. Once I'd added the darker shades I then went all over the face with TN1.  I do think leaving areas white until the end gives more shading and highlights the centre of the face. (If you know what I mean).

Headband & Boots:  Yeah! why not, I felt the image needed some vibrancy so I chose pens: BT1, BT2 & BT4. Starting with lightest shade (BT1) then working around right side of boots and both sides of headband I went in with BT3 followed by BT2 then blending them together with BT1.  For the small flower I just used BT1 & BT2

Suitcase: Okay, I decided to go a bit wild here and chose to fluorescent pens, FL3 and FL1.......just because I can lol.  I used EB1 to add some shading.  Once the inks on the suitcase were dry I stamped over it with a small cluster of flowers stamp using Adirondack ink pad colour: Pool.

Blouse:  Very small area but nevertheless still needs to be coloured.  although it could have been left white.  If you want to have part of an image white just go around the edges with IG! or IG2.  Instead I used FL1 and FL2 then went in with the blender pen to lighten the left side of the blouse,  Thought it matched her outfit lol.  Looking at it now, it could be mistaken for skin....oh! Rude woman!