Day Seven

This is a book that I have been very excited to use. The artist is an illustrator from the team that produces products for the company of Linda &Harriet.. The illustrations feature some of my favorite broad/thick line styles for coloring. I purchased my copy at Blick but it is also available from Amazon.

After yesterday’s experiment with the crayons, I wanted to see what effects this type of paper would have in terms of color saturation and coverage. Because the paper is a deluxe watercolor paper, it has a texture or tooth. I think that it is possibly a cold-pressed paper which will have some effect on how the waxy crayon will distribute across the page.

I used a variety of blending and layering techniques to try and see how they would be affected.  The red peony was colored using five different shades of red. Because of the lack of color value between the colors used, there is very little shading or effects. The darker colors were added first and the lighter colors were added on top.

The yellow peony was created differently. Five colors were used as well. The darker color was added on the outer petal and the lighter colors were added until the petal was fully colored. The fifth and lightest color was applied over the entire petal as a general wash.

The leaves were all colored using the same six crayons. Each branch was colored using a light, medium and dark value. The variation occurs in the sequence in which the colors were applied. The colors were rotated for each separate branch of leaves. To get this variation, colors were applied randomly with the last color applied as a wash.

I also wanted to see if I could create an ombré effect for the background. You can see the clear delineation of the three colors but the colors would not blend at the lines of separation.

I highly recommend this book and to be honest it will probably be the only adult coloring book that I will complete in its entirety--although I would prefer to call it a DIY Artist’s Book. I will continue to experiment with the book to see how wetter media including all types of markers and watercolors will do with this paper. I will probably order a second book to have on-hand so once the experiments are concluded I can color a copy for my personal use.