Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Spring Pink Flamingo

Happy Springtime!
The other day my husband was joking about putting out a pink flamingo among our bulbs that are starting to sprout. While I didn't want one in my yard, it got me to thinking about drawing one, so today I am giving you your very own free digi pink flamingo, and some tips about coloring it.

Please enjoy this image for your own personal use, and not for publication. You are welcome to upload finished images to the Copic Facebook page :)

Green and Blue
This image has a beautiful row of tulips, and a lot of blue sky visible between the flowers. However, many of you who know me know that I am impatient and always looking for a faster/easier way of coloring. I wanted the sky to fade behind the flowers, but I didn't want to take the time to be picky about coloring the sky perfectly.

Many of you, in coloring this image, might start by coloring the leaves with YG05, as shown in A. However, that would be tedious once I went in and tried to blend out my pale blue sky.

So, I started by coloring the sky, as shown in figure B. I colored with my BG10 and blended it all pretty with my colorless blender, without worrying about the leaves, since there is blue in green. The BG10 is so pale I knew that it wouldn't really affect the bright green that will go over it. See how much quicker coloring is, once I didn't worry about the leaves? I tried to keep the bulb tops white, as those will be pink and the BG10 would not make the pink look as pretty.

Next, I colored my basic flat colors. I started with RV52 for my base pinks, YG05 for the leaves, N7 for the black beak, and E13 with E44 spotted on for the ground.

Then, I went back and added my first level of blending. What a difference it makes! I added RV55 to all the light pink areas. Then, I added YG63 to the vibrant green.

For my final layer of contrast, I added RV66 to the pinks, and a hint of Opaque white to the highlights on the plastic flamingo. I darkened the contrast on the leaves with G46. I also dotted in a few more spots of color into the ground with YG61 and some more E44.

Overall, a very simple image, and coloring was really quick (scanning and writing the tutorial took a lot longer than coloring the image!) I hope you have as fun and easy a time coloring it as I did.

On Thursday I have a great announcement, so stay tuned!

11 comments:

robin cox walsh said...

Cute flamingo! Thanks for the tutorial.

Michelle said...

Thanks for the cute freebie!

Moi said...

Thanks so much. Always nice to have something to color. And even nicer with the addition of pointers from a pro.

Michelle Quinno said...

Thank you for the cute image and the tutorial! I definitely would have started with the green leaves.

Laurie said...

Thanks for the great tutorial and flamingo to practice on! I love Copics!

Jan Hunnicutt said...

Thank you for the flamingo and the coloring tips, I can't wait to have time to color this :)

I have a fun story about pink flamingos for you. Our youth group at church used to rent pink plastic flamingos. You could rent a flamingo to go have put in someone's yard for $5.00, if the person wanted it removed they had to pay to have it removed (to the youth group) and if they wanted to know who it was from they had to pay to find out too. It was a fun way to raise money for our youth group :)

Clare said...

Thank you for the image and instructions on how to color it! Very nicely done!

Ellen Taylor said...

Thanks for the tutorial! I didn't know you could do it that way, Thanks for sharing!

Melanie said...

Thanks Marianne, another technique for coloring I'd never have worked out myself!

Edna Siu said...

It is a lovely flamingo, and your tutorial is so helpful to get me to learn how to use Copic. and thanks for the chance to win your candy.

Salmi said...

I like your inspiring tutorials.........One question i ask that you which colors that you can use in here and are those colors appear on the backside of the paper card....
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