Another day and another brightly colored addition to my in progress coloring – a nice bright Spring green shade.
Do you ever have one of those days where you really want to use certain colors, and then when you do – you aren’t at all convinced that it was a good idea? I think I may be having one of those days!
At this point I’m just winging it. I’m really not sure that I should have added either of these greens, but it’s just coloring and I’m going to keep on coloring this picture and see what happens.
Ooh! Now that’s nice. I’ve suddenly gone from momentarily not liking the direction this picture was going to really loving it. So now I have a completely different problem than I had one photo ago. There are things in the way that these colors are interacting with the shapes and lines that are so pretty – and are a lot of ways I could “ruin” this. The very best thing to do right now is to remind myself that “ruining” isn’t a fair way to think about my coloring no matter how it may turn out. If I plan on coloring in all of the empty shapes, this picture is going to change. I’d like to preserve the feeling that it has of being almost backlit – but it’s really not going to matter whether I do that or not. I’m going to try to do it, recognizing that I’m not coloring in one of my very familiar coloring zones. The next step in this picture has to be a learning step if I’m going to try to preserve that backlit effect – and I don’t need to have a perfect result. But I do have to learn a little something about trying to create a kind of backlit effect that doesn’t even exist yet as a clear picture in my mind. OK – deep breath and let’s just see what happens.
The big, tough decision right now is whether I stick with the colors I’ve used so far or if I add a few more. My greens have the feel of sunlight filtering through leaves. Do I add a dab of pale sunshine yellow, or different shades of backlit leaves, or a hint of pale sky? There really is no wrong answer. This is the time when you just make your best guess, or pick a favorite color and find out what happens.
And bit by bit the coloring comes together. Each step involves taking a chance. You can spend a lot of time wondering how things will look if you use this color or that one – but until you see the color on paper it’s all guessing. The big secret, though, is that there are many, many ways to color the rest of this picture and most of them are going to look really nice. Just color in the shapes and see what happens.
Well, that turned out quite nicely! Could it be? Yes – a new personal favorite and a great set of colors to re-use the next time I want to try to create a coloring with a soft backlit effect.
Today’s picture is from Balance For Crayons And Wide Tipped Markers, colored with these Copic marker shades.