A Caturday Colored Pencil Tutorial

Happy Caturday!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, little one, Caturday! Of a three day weekend! People were practically skipping on my walk this morning - yelling hello from across the street, grinning. Amazing what an extra day does. Are you listening America? How about a standard four day work week? Shouldn't we be this happy every week?

Now speaking of my walk, something came to me today, as, from a long way off, I heard the tags of a dog jingling behind me. I listened as the dog got closer, and the jingling louder. He sounded like a janitor. His pace was fast, and judging by the jingling, I knew he was big, which made me a little nervous. When he got right behind me, I turned a little to see him. He was a stunning greyhound. Beautiful animal. He jingled loudly past me and it hit me how mean that jingling is. It was bothering me from a long way away - what was it like for his sensitive little ears, hanging around his neck? Why don't they cover the leash fittings and tags with neoprene or something? That loud rhythmic noise has to drive them nuts, poor creatures. Just a thought for your Caturday. I'd appreciate one of you fixing that problem.

Here is a little more info on how I did the latest colored pencil creation for the Card for Heroes Blog Hop (above) card. Many of you have asked for a tutorial on my pencil techniques, so I'll try to do that.

First, you must know, I'm less than precise when I color. I like to work quickly with pencils and get layers and layers of color. So the first layer is often just a sketch, and subsequent layers finish the look.

For this card I first stamped the daisies from Inspired by Nature in bleach on black. I hate waiting for that to dry - I'm so impatient. But that was my canvas for color.

Then you can see I just did a very very rough sketch with the base colors. With the exception of white, I used two or more colored pencils on each flower to get depth & the shade I wanted. For the red I used a very orange red and a more rosy one. For the blue, a ballet blue shade and then a very light and a very deep turquoise.

After the flowers were colored, they had no detail. I remedied this with my black Sakura micron pen and a white gel pen. Again - very quick, imprecise strokes, as you can see in the closeups.

The ticket with using pencils like this is to keep working!! Believe me, this card was UGLY at various stages of it's development. But pencils are very forgiving, and if you add other implements, you will like what you see. Just be patient, and let go of precision. To me, adding the ink and white gel pen here made them look like paintings.

It's different every time.

This tutorial was sponsored by one of my favorite blog readers - Webster - who owns Jayne - or possibly vice versa. He was nice enough to get Jayne to send me these pics of him checking out Maddie's shirt, which he apparently approves of, (see him kissing Maddie???)and also, relaxing with his pet/nap pad - Jayne - in a somewhat indelicate pose that indicates his satisfaction with life in general!!What a gorgeous beast he is!

Thanks Webster & Jayne - Happy Caturday!!

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