Coloring Challenge

Hello, Coloring Fans! I promised a long time ago to share more of my coloring book projects, but then never seemed to get them photographed for you! I will try harder to share more of this type of art form. I am still taking a break from paper crafting, but I am spending more time coloring and playing with some of my other art supplies!

I just finished this page, as part of a coloring challenge on Facebook and YouTube. Pamela at Pamela's Passion for Pencils is hosting a limited palette coloring challenge on her YouTube channel and Facebook page. (Yes, adult coloring has a HUGE culture on social media!)

We had to choose a picture from one of Hanna Karlzon's books with the theme "Mystical." I only have one of Hanna's books, this one called Seasons. (You can find it HERE on Amazon. I am not an affiliate, so feel free to purchase where you choose.)

We also had to choose a color palette (Pamela gave us two to choose from). 

Since I chose a picture that had flowers, I thought this palette would work best. I figured I could combine the colors to work for the idea I had for the page. Once I decided on a palette, I had to choose my pencils bu matching them to the colors. I chose 3-5 pencils per color blend.

We were supposed to have about 18 pencils, but I "cheated" a little bit as some of my blends have four colors rather than three. And I added some neutrals (black, white, brown, bronze). But considering I used the 150 Prismacolor pencil set...this is pretty limited! {smile} I ended up with 23 pencils, plus the 4 neutrals, and a blender pencil. So, 28 pencils...since when do I ever do as I am told?!

The pencils used:

Aqua/Green: Light Aqua, Light Green, Peacock Blue, True Green, Spring Green

Blue: Indanthrone Blue, China Blue, Blue Lake, Sky Blue

Red/Pink: Crimson Red, Pomegranate, Mulberry, Hot Pink, Deco Pink

Coral: Process Red, Pink, Salmon Pink

Yellow: Yellowed Orange, Spanish Orange, Deco Yellow

Purple: Dioxazine Purple Hue, Violet, Lilac

Neutrals: Espresso, Bronze, Black, White, Blender

The background is a little streaky, but colored pencils can give you issues when it's a big space to cover! I tried a blending solution to smooth it out some, but, oh well. It is supposed to be "a bright summer night" and I think I hit that pretty well.

Each item in the picture was colored with a combination of the colors listed above. I added some of the yellow and blue to the aqua and green to get the various leaf colors. And so forth. 

Notice the little circles in the artwork? I just colored right over those little "sparkles" as I knew I could go back an add paint, gel pen, Stickles, Wink of Stella, or anything I wished after I had finished the coloring. I ended up using a white gel pen to make little dots on the page to mimic...stars or sparkles or lightening bugs (fireflies to some of you). 

I love how the bottle turned out. We were supposed to add bubbles to the bottle as one of the techniques, but my bottle had so much bling on it, plus it's pretty small, that I just decided to NOT do the bubbles this time!

I really wanted to play up the glowing of the bugs and leaves, and such. I had fun trying things and just having a play! And, yes, I sort of ignored the butterfly. I really dislike coloring butterflies, so he just got "left behind" in this picture!

I love how the purple flowers turned out. Such a rich color!

Now, the red flower I am not as happy with. I really struggled with how to color this one, and left it until last. By then I was sort of ready to be finished with the project! It shows in this flower!

All in all, I love the rich, deep colors of this "bright summer nights" picture!

The last step is to spray the picture with a fixative to keep the pencil from rubbing off on the previous page. This book has double-sided pages, so there is a page to color opposite this one.

I hope you enjoyed this coloring post! I will try to do some more soon!

Coloring book: Seasons by Hanna Karlzon

Colored pencils: Prismacolor Premier (150 set) - see the list above

Gel pen: Signo white

Blending solution: Gamsol (with a flat brush) - used for the blue background only

Spray fixative: Prismacolor Final Fixative