I consider myself a beginner to colouring although I dabbled in art in school (mostly painting)...but never colouring.
Now that I've bought Johanna Basford's Secret Garden: Artist's Edition and Faber Castell's Polychromos colour pencils to bring her art to life, I couldn't wait to embark on my very first colouring adventure.
Now that I've bought Johanna Basford's Secret Garden: Artist's Edition and Faber Castell's Polychromos colour pencils to bring her art to life, I couldn't wait to embark on my very first colouring adventure.
Someone mentioned that I was such a tease in my previous blog post when I didn't show a piece of my coloured work at the end of my post, so here comes the first one.....
And where better to start than the very first page of her pull out and frame colouring book (which I think is very apt) as it happens to be none other than a picture of a door...one that I'd like to think leads to my secret garden....or my interpretation of it (through my colours).
I'll be sharing some tips (though I'm no expert) on the way I colour with you.
I'll share more tips as I move along and attempt more pieces.
I'll share more tips as I move along and attempt more pieces.
Tip #1 - Start with a light colour as your base and don't use too much force colouring the base. Colour over it 2 - 3 times (or even more) until you achieve the desired shade you want. Alternatively, you can also choose to use different shades of the same colour when you colour over them...this gives it a bit of texture (like what I did for the door where I used 4 shades of brown to achieve the desired effect).
Tip #2 - Shading is very important as it gives 'life' to what you're colouring (like what I did to the leaves). You can achieve that by shading with just one colour (the easiest way)...by applying different pressure or darkening certain parts. Or you can do it by using different colours of the same base colour (like different shades of green, for example) or almost similar colours that work together (like yellow, orange and red).
I hope I did (in my first piece) ^_^
And I can't wait to get started on my next piece.....I can see why it's addictive! ;)
Bravo, bravo!
ReplyDeleteI can't do this. The moment I see the first picture in this post, I already given up. >.<
I'd expect you to give up....colouring is and should not be a common pastime for men...haha! :D
DeleteWow, it's lovely! You are very good at this and I love the effect of the shading technique you applied. Gosh, I'm so inspired! Wait lah, one of these days when I am free I am going to look for color pencils and coloring books :)
ReplyDeleteSo you finished this over a few sessions. Very patient of you. I have this tendency to want to finish everything in one go.
If I had done this over one session, I'd probably have a big headache and very sore hands.
DeleteOne of the greatest rewards of blogging for me is when I hear someone says he or she is inspired to eat, cook or do something that I blogged about. Ok, I'll be waiting to see your colouring work one day in the future! ^_*
nice! i especially like the colour and shadings for the door/entrance - it's quite gently textured. the work as a whole has a very classic feel - like something that could have been painted or coloured by someone a century ago :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sean, you always say the nicest things :) The door was actually my favourite part of this artwork.
DeleteI like the way the grey stones around the door are shaded. It would be nice if you have a few of this same picture and you colour it asymmetrically to see whether it would makethe picture more interesting instead of using the same colours for the symmetric designs. that time you coloured for 3 hours, did your hand or wrist hurts or feel tired?
ReplyDeleteYeah, my hands were tired...and my wrists would probably have hurt a lot more if I applied more pressure on the colouring. I don't think I'd like to colour the piece asymmetrically coz I feel too many colours will make it look like "rojak"...hehe! ;D
DeleteFor the asymmetrical colouring you use exactly the same colours that you have used here so it won't be too many colours. You just colour it so that the same colours are diagonally across each other and not directly mirror image left-right. So upper right corner colour same as lower left corner and vice versa. That way it wouldn't look as if all yellow are on top and all red at the bottom making it bottom heavy. Maybe the diagonal colouring will balance out the yellow and red.
DeleteThanks for your suggestion....I know what you mean (diagonally with the same colours) but I still feel the piece will look off balance, so I'd much rather colour it symmetrically. As for the colours of yellow and red, they were deliberately chosen as I wanted to showcase hues of yellow, orange and brown at the top and hues of pink, red and dark red at the bottom.
DeleteI guess since you don't have another exact piece to colour diagonally, we will never know for certain whether or not it will look off balance despite the feel about it. Too bad. :(
DeleteNothing regrettable as far as I'm concerned. Even if I did have another exact piece, I don't need to colour it diagonally (+ I don't want to) just to find out if it'll be off balance or not (coz my gut feeling tells me it would be).
Deletewow i looks really stunning i adore your work:)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your kind words. Do come back and visit if you'd like to see my other pieces of work :)
DeleteWow, you really have some talent with colouring - the way you've shaded brings the picture to life.
ReplyDeleteI try to....and thank you very much for liking my work =)
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