Colouring with Pencils..No Joke ;)

It is my friend Lynne's birthday.
Actually it was last Friday, but I wasn't here.
So I altered this $1.00 kraft gift bag to put her gift in.
I stamped the butterflies on the background and then added designer paper, some flowers, butterflies and my image I coloured up with my new coloured pencils :)

This is the first time I have tried using coloured pencils and gamsol.
If you know me, then you know that when I try something creative, I go all out.
I want to use what I make, even if it for practice.
So not knowing what I was doing, I coloured her face…it looks a bit on the yellow side for the shaded areas, but all in all, I think it is usable.

For her hair, I used only 2 colours of brown.
I left some areas uncoloured as that would act as yet another colour or a deeper highlight.
I then blended it all with my Gamsol and blending stump.

Then I went on to the other parts of the image.
Not to bad if I say so myself ;)
If any of you pro's out there have any tips for me, I would love to hear them :)

Here is a close up of the finished image on the bag.

I know most use Prismacolor pencils, but the artist at Blick's told me she preferred the Blick's brand of pencils.
I had a bit of a dilemma when choosing which brand, as I know I could find beautiful colour combinations on YouTube, where if I bought the Blicks brand I would have to figure out on my own, which colours would work good together.
So, I asked to try both brands. I found the Blicks brand to be more smooth when I coloured with them.
The price was quite a bit cheaper as well, but the deciding factor was the smoothness of them.

To help me decipher the coloured pencil colours, I am planning on making a colour chart.
I don't usually do this, I just normally wing it.
But I thought I would with these coloured pencils.
I made a grid on the type of paper that I will been using for the pencils and then I stamped this open image on the grid.
I will add the colours as I go along. This way I don't have to clean my blending stumps after each colour as I would be using them for whichever image I am colouring at the time.
I think I will be copying this chart as it took a few tries to get this perfect and without smears, lol.

Onto My Day:
Ashley had an appointment early this morning and wanted me to come with her.
We had a storm last night, and her jeep doors and windows were frozen. She had to pour hot water on the windows for them to thaw out.
When I went to open the door, the handle (and the whole door) was so frozen, Ashley had to open it from the inside.
When I got home, I stayed in the rest of the day.
Tomorrow is suppose to be more of the same….sadly, this isn't an April fools joke :(

I hope you all had a very creative Tuesday :)

Tracy :)