Coloring progress

Hi… today I want to just post a few snap shots I took while I was working on a image. I am aware the photo quality is poor and I really did not spent any time getting the photos lighter.. I was not intending to actually write a coloring tutorial.
The process of this specific image was a bit different, so I would just like to share a few thoughts or remarks on it.

The images you see are by Hanglar Stanglar.. the focal point image is going to be very large – therefore I had to choose a patterned paper that gives me on very small areas enough colors so I can tie them in together with my image. I liked with this image along with the “Get Well” sentiment a rather vintage look. The pad I decided on is a old one from Basic Grey called “Sugared”

Usually I would start with the face and move from there on clothes, hair etc. etc...if I have a larger image I want to make sure that I distribute my colors in the right spots – by example the pinks… what happened to me in the past was that I would neatly color a image in.. just to notice at the end when it came to the last few areas that I ran out of colors or the balance was not even.

Most of the time I think you will be told that Copic ink needs to be wet in order to be blended out. This is of course correct, I have found … if I just lay one shade of my medium colors onto the image – it gives me an idea if the areas with the colors work together and I can still move on adding my shades. It does take time and work but it will be smooth and there are not going to be harsh lines.

I always color the face in first, it is just the start for me and it helps my eye to get used to the image and the vision I have of my image. Next I colored the frame of the window in brown – still leaving lots of white space. The inside of the window frame became grey.. from there I went to the shoes, I wanted them to be grey as well.

I decided on a piece of Design paper to see where the colors of my pattern would be.
From there I decided that the curtain needed to be pink (large area), trim in green and than small areas like socks, bows and shirt pink as well. Since the large area on the curtain was pink, the next larger area is the dress and I would need to be the second dominant contrast color. Hope this makes sense? To this point I did really not spent much time on the coloring process… it is just laying colors down to see if I like it, i would not mind at this point to start all over again.

Next you see a little more color come to the image. I like to color with the YG91 range however.. there are not the colors available that I would love to have so it takes me a bit to blend those colors out. Usually what I have to do is add deeper or richer colors to my other areas.. as you can see the balance on the curtain does not fit quite right with the greens. The green is too heavy. Window frame, wood.. has not depth to this point.. Just added a few shades of browns to the hair.

a little bit more blended moving on to add more colors to shoes, curtain etc.. I let the ink dry in between and just carefully add more color over it with a light hand.

Still not finished…adding my background to the image.. the wall in French Grey and the Window in Slate Grey. Now that I have all my colors on my image I can see where the image needs more color or depth. Adding the backgrounds to my images PRIOR to working on my shades on clothes makes a big difference for me. It just helps me personally to find the balance of each colored area – sometimes I might used a too dark background and I need to adjust all over the image again and make it darker, so it works over all.

On my finished card you will see that I worked with greys, black and darker pinks to create my shadows and folds – I went much darker around her legs and on the window bench.. her hair becomes more shades of brown and the folds on her bows get defined.

Here are the colors I used on this image:
Face: E000/000/00/13/R21 (Henna)
Greens: YG91 I always use this color for the first base moving up to 93/97/ W5 blending with YG0000
pinks: R81 blending with RV000 adding R85 blending with R81 and RV 0000 – it is a constant progress of adding colors and keep blending it out to create the folds
Window: First base is E31 adding E34/33
Hair : E50/ E37/25 black
shoes and window: W2/3/5/6/7/ 8 E44/42
accents on curtain: Y23/E99

Multi pen in 0.1 to connect lines after masking, white gel pen,