Hello! Colleen here with another Copic Coloring Tutorial. This time I decided to tackle one of the things that I personally find most difficult to color… pastel!
Normally I’m a contrast girl… I like my lights light and my darks dark… but sometimes, I want to color up something a soft or pastel color. That’s a struggle for me, so today I decided to take you through my whole coloring process, from start to finish… as I try to keep Desiree soft and light.
Step1 – I like to begin coloring skin by placing some shading with BV20. I do this “under shading” both to help place the darkest shading and also to create a blue-violet undertone for the skin.
Step 2 - Base the skin with E00 and E51. (Here only E00 is shone. Adding the E51 helps tone down the peachy look and ages the skin a bit.
Step 3 – Begin building the skin tone by adding shades of E42/E43/E04 and E35. I do not blend between each layer; I layer all of my color on first and then go back and blend.
Step 4 - Blend skin tones together.
Step 5 - Accent the skin tone with cast shadows of BV23 and BV34.
Step 6 - Here is where I start having trouble! LOL I want to make her boots and her shirt a soft suede – sort of tan in color. I typically use 3-5 shades of each color and really get lots of contrast. The problem with that is that I tend to darken my color so much, I end up with a medium to dark brown instead of tan. Here I used E30/E81/E31 and E13. I was able to use a number of tones to help get the shading, but I kept them all under a “3″ shade to keep it light. I like it, but I still think I prefer darker shading.
Step 7 - Same idea for coloring the skirt. Normally I end up with really dark “jean” material, but I made sure I didn’t get too dark for this. I wanted a softer, more pastel look. I used B91 and B93. I didn’t think I had enough contrast, so instead of going darker like I normally would, I pulled out my Colorless Blender and tried to lighten up the highlights.
Step 8 - Next I move onto the hair. I’ve not colored dreadlocks before – so this was a “trial and error” process for me. I really just broke it down into many narrow cylinders and colored them each separately. I based them all with E70 and then added some shading with E74.
Step 9 - Added darker shading with E77. I tried to “scribble” the edges a bit to show texture.
Step 10 - I wanted brown dreadlocks, and I didn’t want them to get too dark (keeping with my theme) so I stopped there and then added a touch of scribbly texture to the edges and to the layers in back to help add definition. I used a Chocolate Brown Zig pen and a Black Multiliner.
Step 11 - Color up the beads to match the bangles! G21/G46 and B91/B93.
Step 12 - Finish up the image with dots and spots of Opaque White to help give contrast with bright highlights.
I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial. I know that this “coloring light” is going to be a challenge for me and I will continue to push myself to perfect it!
Happy Coloring – Colleen
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wow! Fantastic!!!!! Fabi xxxx
She looks gorgeous! I think you did a fabulous job and the sued colors on her boots and shirt is perfect! Great idea to use the gel pen to highlight the hair too. Great job! *Hugs
Love it Colleen! Looove how you coloured her hair and soft suede look of her boots and clothes. Hugs, Maria
WOw, that looks so great. Thank you!
Hugs, Uta
Fabulous tutorial thank you.
Omg Colleen she is wonderful! Thanks so much for this useful tutorial…i’ve coloured her up a pair of days ago for my next post…OMG now she looks orrible for me!
F.
wow Colleen – she is a stunner! Looooove the skin… Looove the boots… love the hair… oh I love everything! xo
Fabulous, Colleen! I love her skin and dreadlocks … and her nose!!! Thank you so much for sneaking in a tut on how to accentuate a nose on an image that has none
Very cool! Thanks for sharing the tutorial on how you colored her. I love the shading you do, and how you did soft coloring. The skirt looks great, as the white shading looks like when a jean shirt is well worn and you get the white lines. Her skin and hair is amazing.
Oh Colleen, you make it look so easy!! Great tutorial, definitely need to practice some based on this.
This is awsome Colleen. I will have to sit down and try this. Thank you for this tutorial.
amazing as always Colleen.. Hope all is great with you!