Friday, March 4, 2016

More experimenting with Polychromos pencils

Good morning.

Today I'm sharing a card that I made this today during my morning coffee infusion.  (I really wish there was an IV for that. Both hands would be free.)

I experimented with my pencils and I learned a lot this morning.

I had this idea...  I swear I dream about these things at night.

I wanted to experiment with the white and ivory Polychromos pencils.  I had the crazy idea that perhaps I could use my Papertrey Ink Fine Linen card front as part of the color in my image.  It didn't work as I'd hoped.

My image and sentiment are from Large Peony 2 from The Ton.  I stamped it in these colors onto my Fine Linen card front:  The Ton Vanilla Frosted Cupcake for the bloom, and Papertrey Spring Moss and Kraft inks for the leaf and sentiment.





Then I started coloring in what I decided were going to be the brightest highlights with the Polychromos pencils.  The first thing I learned, was that my card front color choice was a little too light.  The white was not as pronounced and bright as I'd hoped.  I should have used Kraft paper.



I realized quickly that I wasn't going to get enough depth by using just the white and cream pencils on this card stock.  I needed to bring in more color.

Second thing I learned?  I definitely need to swatch all these pencils.  The pencils I grabbed were not quite what I was expecting.  LOL

And I learned that this 120 set is missing a nice neutral tan color.  Wish there was one.  There is a flesh color, but it's quite pink.



I was not loving how this was turning out.  But I hate to give up on an idea, so I kept trying.  I tried pink, and yellow, and brown...  finally realized I should have just gone for the warm grays.


Here are my choices...  There definitely should have been less.  LOL



I kept working with it.  I kept adding more shading with the grays, and worked in some more of the ivory to try to mute the pinks, yellow and brown.  (FYI, these pencils do erase - which helped, but did not erase completely.)

In the end, it was salvageable.  Had I chosen more wisely, this would have been completed in 30 minutes.  These pencils are fabulously easy and quick to use.  They blend and cover beautifully.  Instead, this took me an hour.  I'm not thrilled with it, and was a little disappointed that my idea of using the Fine Linen as part of the petal colors didn't really work, it still turned out kind of pretty.  I'll mail it.  I'm really quite late on sending a sympathy card.

11 comments:

  1. Wow these is gorgeous, love your shading!

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  2. You are you're own worst critic! I love the sublety of it, especially for a sympathy card

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  3. Chris this is stunning. I'm losing my mind. You should send that to me for sympathy.

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    1. Marci, I am laughing out loud at your comment and I TOTALLY agree!!!

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  4. Abso-lut-ly Gorgeous! saw on FB, had to come see.

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  5. SO SO SO beautiful.. i love the hints of pink and yellow :)

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  6. This is incredible!!! You do amazing work!!

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  7. This is lovely. Thank you for sharing your coloring process.

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