Dragons Lair Design Inspiration: February 2014

Hello, Debbi here and welcome to my first tutorial for Stamping Dragon Designs. which will be all about the basics of shadow and colour layering.

I love colouring and I am always learning. So I hope you can join me each month on our colouring journey together. I will be using Promarkers (and the odd Flexmarker), but please feel free to use whichever marker pens you prefer.

Today we will be using Jiggy's digi stamps

With this being the first I thought I'd start at the very beginning.
When I am colouring I always imagine where the light source is coming from, which helps me decide where the shadows will be and where it will be darkest. Also keep in mind if something is on top of something, for example the arm on top of his belly, there will be a shadow below it too, as illustrated in the image below.

Now that's a quick explanation of shadows done, lets get to the colouring. Click on any of the images below to make them larger.

I always tend to work with three colours, a light, mid and dark tone Promarker as I find it works for me (but I will let you into a little secret fourth colour later on). Also keep in mind that when the ink dries the colour will become a bit lighter.

The colours I will be using for the skin are
Meadow Green-Light Tone, Leaf Green-Mid Tone and Grass-Dark Tone.

[Pic 1] Firstly, colour in the whole of the Dragons foot with Meadow Green.

[Pic 2] Then take the Leaf Green and start to add the shadow area as shown in fig 2..

[Pic 3] Now take the Grass Promarker and colour over the top, but not as far out as the Leaf Green as shown in fig 3.

[Pic 4] Go back to the Meadow Green Marker and lightly colour over the whole area you have just done to blend the shades together. (Repeat this technique on the other foot).

[Pic 5] Take the Meadow Green Promarker pen and colour in the leg.

[Pic 6] Take Leaf Green and add the shadowed areas, which are alongside the belly, under the leg and behind the foot as shown in fig 6.

[Pic 7] Now take the Grass Promarker and colour over the top, but don't colour out as far as you did with the Leaf Green as you can see in fig 7.

[Pic 8] As we did with foot, take the Meadow Green Promarker and lightly colour the whole leg to blend.

[Pic 9] Using the same technique, continue with the same three coloured Promarkers from figs 9 to 32 to take you through the process of how to colour the rest of the skin.

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[Pic 21] Now onto the tail

[Pic 22]

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[Pic 32]

Now here's where the forth colour comes into play. I couldn't be with out my Grey Promarkers and here I have used Cool Grey 1 to darken areas where I feel there needs to be a little more shadow. Doing it this way tends to give a subtle difference that it is a shadow, but without being too obvious. You can darken any other areas you have coloured that you feel needs a bit more depth. But remember less is more

[Pic 33]
Add more shadow to the left of the nose and underneath

Now for the tummy :) Again, the same principal applies.
The colours I used were Buttercup (Light) Lemon (Mid) and Mustard (Dark).

[Pic 30]
Colour the whole area with Buttercup.

[Pic 31]
Start adding the shadow with Lemon. I colour according to the shape, for example the tummy is rounded so I colour in a curve to follow the shape rather than in straight lines which helps to give a more realistic shadow.