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Friday, June 3, 2011

Playing around with different way to color images

If you have been reading my blog for very long you know I tend to be quit eclectic in my paper crafting. One day I am scrapping, the next I am mass producing cards, another I am whipping up a paper crafted gift. (And I will even throw in some fabric or wood crafts every now and then. LOL)
 Today I am doing some different- yet again. :-) I want to show you the results I got from using different coloring options.
I used Papertrey Ink's Stamper Select paper and Memento ink for the following images-
Here I used Prismacolor pencils and OMS. Because the pencils are waxy I colored the flowers with a couple of different colors before blending them with the OMS and a blender stump.
Pros: Various shades and colors, bold colors, easy to work with, you can use a white eraser to clean up any stray color.
Cons: sometimes the leads in the pencils can be very soft- and breakage can be an issue

This one was done with Copic markers. 
Pros: you can layer your colors, will not "pill" you paper, nice selection of colors, coloring light over dark will not contaminate your markers
Cons: markers can be pricey, there is a learning curve with the Copics, not as readily available as other means of coloring
Next I moved on to water-coloring

Tombow, water based markers.
Pros: inexpensive, nice selection of colors, easy to use, you can buy single markers
Cons: colors tend to become muddy instead of layering, markers will transfer darker colors onto little ones, they have a tendency to leave streaks 

Here I switched to Cold Press watercolor paper and Memento Ink-

Watercolor crayons (because some of the areas are so small I used a damp paint brush to pick up the color directly from the crayon.)
Pros: reasonably priced, crayons last a verrrry long time,  you can vary the intensity of color by varying the amount of water used
Cons: more difficult to add extra shading and colors without muddying your colors, I wasn't able to use as many colors as in the other samples
** For whatever reason the ink wanted to bleed on this paper, I used the same ink and technique on Papertrey Ink paper and had no bleeding**

Watercolor pencils and blender pen (I colored directly on my image with the pencils and then used the blender pen to blend the colors. It is easier to lay down all of your colors before you start blending.)
Pros: Inexpensive, available at the Big Box stores, nice select of colors, various size sets to meet your needs
Cons: Adding more color once the colors have been blended, keeping the colors looking "clean"shading id more difficult
As you can see there are lots of ways to add color to your stamped images (and there are many I have not shown!) so have some fun and see which way works best for you.
Thanks for stopping by!!
Until later~

1 comment:

AmethystCat said...

beautiful job coloring and love all the different mediums. great examples!