Hello coloring friends! I am still in the process of sharing some coloring projects that I completed over the past year to 18 months. The end of the week is packed with paper crafting posts, so I decided to share this one today, rather than on Saturday!
And for those who looked at this and said...RELAXING?!? Well, maybe this type of project isn't relaxing per se, but it is fun and challenging! I had this picture on my "must color" list for a while, but was waiting for inspiration to strike. It finally did when I re-watched Avatar! The "glow in the dark" colors in that movie really inspired me to try a glowing, night setting!This book is available in lots of places, but you can find it on Amazon HERE for about $11 (24 images). The page size is approximately 10" x 10", so a good size. And the pages are single-sided so you can use lots of different mediums and not wreck the back-side of any of the pictures!In order to create a night scene, I painted the background black, using black acrylic paint. I used cheap Apple Barrel matte black acrylic paint. For the tiny areas I did use a Posca paint pen, but it was a slightly different shade of black, and was a little shiny, so I eventually went back over those areas with a tiny paint brush and the black Apple Barrel paint. Talk about NOT relaxing! I am not very good with a paint brush, so this process was a little stressful!
I decided to use Faber-Castel Polychromos colored pencils for this picture. It was a huge risk because I had never used them before! They were a new purchase at the time, and I was itching to break into them! I have the set of 120, which costs around $180 on Amazon and Blick's. I got mine a bit cheaper at Jerry's Artarama, but their prices are higher at this writing.
I am not going to list all the pencils I used because it won't matter if you know that information. I used so many colors, with so many layers to achieve the look I wanted, that unless you mimic my technique exactly, you won't get the same results by knowing which pencils I used.
This process was painstaking and took me a long time to achieve. The beauty of this paper and these pencils together was that I could layer and layer and layer the color to get the depth and shade I wanted.
I made sure to color the lantern prior to coloring the flowers to make sure I remembered to show a bit of glow.
Since I had so many shades of metal, I didn't want a clown party of colorful flowers. I looked at a lot of pictures of flowers and of phosphorescent plants (is that the correct term?) before choosing my colors.
I chose blue and purple for the flowers. There is just something about blue and purple that makes me think of glowing flowers, so that is the route I took! I decided on two different blue combinations and one purple/pink combination.
Again, getting this all colored and shaded, with highlights and shadows was "a job of work" to quote Ralph Moody's grandpa (The Fields of Home by Ralph Moody). I spent many happy hours listening to TV shows or YouTube videos, sermons, pod casts, and some music while working on this during our moving process last year.
To me, the secret of finishing such a large and complicated piece is to bite off small chunks at a time. I like to work on single items, and in sections. For example, I colored all the metal first, but worked on it in sections. I then colored the leaves, then the flowers, and so on.
I finally finished all the coloring! Then I decided I wanted a bit of a "firefly" sparkle around the outside. I added dots of paint all around, and I confess that I HIGHLY REGRET doing that now! I think I came pretty close to ruining the whole thing! Sometimes, I should walk away sooner!
You can see here I tried to make the dragonfly blend into the metal and almost disappear. Bug camo, if you will. {smile}
If you are a long time Follower, you know I love metal gears and clocks. Coloring all these cogs and gears was indeed my HAPPY place. Working to make them look metal and dimensional was so much fun, and I learned so much about my abilities and how my pencils work!