Tag: coloring for grown-ups

Purple “Autumn Cat” Tutorial

Ruby Charm Colors October 21, 2018

You may have seen the time-lapse videos of my purple cat (aka Autumn Cat) in progress on Instagram and Facebook, but the videos move so fast I thought I would break them down a bit and offer another tutorial that incorporates the wax-resist technique I talked about in Volume 1 of the Ruby Charm Colors Adult Coloring Art Journal.

Basic tools:

A line drawing with some open spaces for you to add your own patterns (can be the main subject or the background—I used page 99 from the RCC Art Journal, v.1)
A good white or light colored pencil (or Caran d’Ache Blender Bright)
Watercolors (can be Neocolor II pastels, pan watercolors, tubes, etc.) & brush
Your favorite colored pencils
Gel or metallic pens for embellishments if so desired
A decent desk lamp

Since I hadn’t yet charted my Neocolor II pastels in my book (which I took apart and spiral-bound, but that’s for another post), I used up two pages to swatch out all 84 colors. The top tray contains my favorite go-to colors and the bottom tray contains the colors I don’t use as often:

Color Charts from the Ruby Charm Colors Art Journal

I can’t say enough great things about the Caran d’Ache Neocolor II pastels, by the way. They are creamy, vibrant, and a little goes a long way. If you want to try them, I’d suggest grabbing a few single pastels from Blick to take them for a test drive before investing in a whole set. Also, make sure you get the Neocolor II Aquarelle (watersoluble) pastels if you want to use them like watercolors! I ordered a set from Amazon and received the Neocolor I Wax pastels (which are like crayons and quite wonderful, too, but not what I wanted for my work). Whoops. The set of Neocolor II pastels I have now were a gift from a fellow creative friend and I am still (still!) so thankful of her generosity and kindness.

Once I had my pastel colors charted, I had to figure out what kind of patterns I wanted to draw on the cat’s face to create the wax-resist. I started with flower shapes under the eyes, a few circles, some spiky shapes between the ears, etc. using a white Caran d’Ache Pablo pencil.

I mentioned this in a few other posts (Wax-resist Mouse and also Resist: Using Colored Pencils to Repel Watercolor) but the best colored pencils I have tried for wax-resist are the Pablos, Prismacolors and Holbeins. I have also used the Blender Bright stick and that works really well, too, though it needs sharpening more often. You’ll also need to have really good lighting so you can see what you are doing and differentiate between the shine of your waxy pencil over the matte surface of your paper especially if you are working with white. In the first video below, you can see how I needed to move my lamp around a bit—it is challenging, but be patient because once all your lines are down, the magic begins.

I scribbled a little Aubergine Neocolor II pastel onto the tray of my Winsor & Newton watercolor case, added a little water to mix up the paint, then quickly painted over the white lines I drew on the cat’s face. It takes a second for the wax to resist the water, but when it does, your designs will appear! Next, I added a little red Yasutomo Niji pearlescent watercolor to the Aubergine for the top of the cat’s head.

Important! Don’t make the mistake of coloring with pastels (or watercolor pencils like Inktense) directly over the wax-resist patterns you just carefully drew because it could destroy your design. Instead, mix your watercolors separately and apply them to the paper (and over your wax-resist designs) while they are wet. Also, I used a Caran d’Ache medium tipped water brush though you can use any brush you feel comfortable working with.

And … depending on the paper you are working on, be conscious of how much water your paper can take before it warps or possibly even tears. The paper my cat is printed on can take small amounts of water but it is fairly tough and I have never has issues with tearing. It will buckle a bit, but I’ve found it does smooth back out once it’s fully dry and I start coloring on it with pencils.

My travel-size Winsor & Newton watercolor sets on the left and the Yasutomo Niji pearlescent watercolors on the right. The Niji’s are quite inexpensive and they add such a beautiful sheen on their own or mixed with other paints.

In the video, you may have noticed I painted the cat’s nose a seemingly weird and bright green (Winsor & Newton Sap Green) but I knew that once I added a little purple to it, I would get the hue I was aiming for—a sort of brownish purple with hints of green I could later emphasize with my pencils. Using a flat brown just wouldn’t have given the nose the same depth and interest. I dabbed the same green over the eyes and added brown on the inside of the ears ( Winsor & Newton Burnt Umber). While my paint was drying, I used Prismacolor Light Aqua, Polychromos Cobalt Turquoise, and Holbein Naples Yellow to shade the eyes, and then a Luminance Buff Titanium pencil to give the eyes some lift. Faber-Castell Pitt pens (S and XS) were used to blacken the eyes and make them pop.

After that, I used a big mix of colored pencils to start refining the cat’s face. Luminance, Holbein, Polychromos and Prismacolors for the larger areas, then my Irojiten pencils for the smaller areas and for redefining some of the lines. I flit through a lot of different colors and pencil brands but try to stay in the same range (more or less).

The nice thing about coloring over lines that are more grey than black (in printed books or pages) means you can add new color over your lines a little more effectively. Why do this? It can make your colorings look more dynamic and artful and less like pages from a coloring book.

It is okay to color over and outside the lines and put your own stamp of creativity on a coloring page! Don’t be afraid to experiment!

I used a few blue and purple Irojitens around the cat’s face and ears. I keep them pretty sharp, and each time I draw a section of line, I have a habit of rotating my pencil so I am always working with the sharpest edge.

I kept bouncing around with my pencils, pulling more colors into the mix and enhancing the wax-resist shapes I had created earlier by coloring around the white lines and not over them. I added a touch of green to the leaves, for example, and a bit of red to the flowers, etc., and just kept working my layers around and up to my white lines. Little touches of color that add interest and variation but don’t overwhelm the overall purpleiciousness of the cat. I used Luminance white and Buff Titanium to smooth out the lighter parts of the cat’s face, and also the Blender Bright to do a little blending and final burnishing in places.

More blending and burnishing in the video below in addition to finishing the left ear with Irojitens (Mulberry, Iris and Plum) and Polychromos Bistre so it would match the other ear. A little more work on the eyes with a Pitt pen, plus I added a few dots of embellishment with a Sakura Souffle gel pen (turquoise) and a Gelly Roll white.

After the face was done, I started working on the body of the cat. Instead of white, I used a Grey-Lavendar Prismacolor to draw my wax-resist shapes (mostly flowers so the body would compliment the face). It was so much easier to see what I was doing while drawing my patterns, but the pencil left a lot of crumbs on my paper. It helps to have a dry brush handy for whisking them away.

Instead of just scribbling a little of the Aubergine Neocolor II pastel on the palette, I used my x-acto blade to scrape pigment off the pastel itself into the lid of my Yasutomo Niji pearlescent paints (because I planned to do a little more mixing with them).

I wanted the body of the cat to be a little darker than the face because 1) it would bring the face forward and give it more emphasis, and 2) it would give me enough contrast against the Grey-Lavendar Prismacolor designs I drew. I mixed a bit more of the Aubergine pigment with water, then added in a few dabs of the coppery-red Niji paint to give the Aubergine some depth and luster. (Unfortunately my camera doesn’t pick up metallics very well, but it looks so rich in person.) I put down a quick layer then went back over the flowers with a touch of the gold and coppery-red Niji paints to enhance them a little.

Now for the funky stripes … lots of Holbein Ice Green and Sky Blue circles and then Neocolor II pastel (Night) over the top.

I didn’t take a time-lapse of the final steps—more pencil work to enhance my colors and adding more gel pen embellishments—but here is the end result is all its purpleicious glory.

If you give this wax-resist technique a try, I would love to see and hear how it works for you.

Comment below, and /or if you post your work on Instagram, please tag me so I see it!

I am @RubyCharmColors on Instagram and you can also use #RubyCharmColors. You can find me and my coloring team on Facebook, too, where we host a private coloring group – just ask to join!

Ruby Charm Colors Art Journal Flip-Through, Volumes 1 & 2

Ruby Charm Colors October 16, 2018

I wanted to share two videos today—both flip-throughs of my latest books on Amazon done by Steph Johnston (aka @red_tifa on Instagram) on her wonderful Red_Tifa YouTube channel. Steph goes through each page in both volumes which is especially helpful when it comes to seeing and understanding the structure and purpose of the books as well as all the different pieces of art you will have to play with.

Ruby Charm Colors Adult Coloring Art Journal, Volume 1:

Ruby Charm Colors Adult Coloring Art Journal, Volume 2:

Steph also reviews books by other adult coloring book artists and has a number of inspiring videos about coloring, so I would highly recommend following her channel!

Volume 2 of the RCC Adult Coloring Art Journal is now on Amazon!

Ruby Charm Colors September 27, 2018

Volume 2 is finally done and residing on Amazon as a link you can click to purchase a book full of coloring goodness—especially when paired with Volume 1 (see a review of V1 here). I ran into a few issues during this project and they set me back in regard to time, but I think it was worth the wait. The books are done and I am ready to work on an Art Journal companion that should dovetail nicely with the adult coloring books.

The upcoming Companion will be more like a journal (similar to a bullet journal) with plenty of room to write, calendars, and lists for those who love coloring and art in general. There will also be lots of little illustrations to color and doodle around with, so stay tuned! The tentative release is late October / early November—definitely in time for the holidays!

Volume 2 of the Ruby Charm Colors Adult Coloring Art Journal

Paisley Fox page from the Ruby Charm Colors Adult Coloring Art Journal, Volume 2

Ruby Charm Colors Adult Coloring Art Journal, Volume 1

Ruby Charm Colors September 7, 2018

If there were a space for a subtitle, it would read: The Making of a Book – How I Nearly Lost my Marbles

The past few months, I have been diligently working on producing a two-volume collection of the art I created especially for coloring over the past year or so, and I can finally hold the fruits of my labor in my hands—the very first proof copy of Volume 1.

It is equally exciting and terrifying.

Exciting to feel the velvety, matte black cover and finally be able to flip through a professionally bound version of my book instead of the messy draft I cobbled together in a 3-ring binder. Terrified because my work is headed out into the world, and what if I missed a stupid typo, or what if there is a quality problem with Print-on-Demand I can’t control? What if people hate the paper? So many what-if’s, yet an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment holds me steady and keeps me moving forward. I finally did what I set out to do, and I can now offer my art on Amazon to a wider audience as a less-expensive version of the locally-printed, hand-made books I currently sell on Etsy.

Mapping out the draft of the book took a lot of time and loads of paper and printer ink. My poor old Epson was put to the test this summer and it’s tired. And I used an awful lot of tape. In addition to each of the 22 plates (full illustrations), I recreated isolated parts of the plates to build the art journal pages. I could have used simple boxes or circles colorists could use as swatches to test out their colors, but thought it would be even more useful if people could experiment with the actual parts of each illustration before working on the plates if they wanted. In the video below, you can see how I built mock-ups of the pages. The ring-binder and tape method worked pretty well because it allowed me to move things around as needed.

Once the draft was in good shape and I knew the final page count would be at about 140, I used Adobe InDesign to build the file I would need to submit the book to the publisher. I had to keep Illustrator and Photoshop open on my computer (and keep my iPad with all my illustrations on it handy) since I was adding in so many smaller designs to my pages and they all needed a little fussing and nudging. I work on a small MacBook Air I’ve had for ages and it’s plugged into a second monitor, but it’s not very big either. I think this is partly why I felt I needed a physical copy to work with so I could see whole pages at their actual size.

The cover design went through a few different iterations and I finally settled on a black cover with a circle of colorful art in the center. I also spent a ton of time searching for the perfect title font and found it through Emily Spadoni. And then once I committed to and paid for it, decided to go back into the interior of the book and change all my headings to that playful font, too. Seemingly little changes can sometimes take hours of work.

Once the interior and cover were done, I submitted my files to CreateSpace and held my breath. The digital proof came back with errors. So many errors. A bunch of my graphics had somehow converted to a lower ppi between Photoshop and Illustrator before making it into InDesign, and the margins and bleeds were mucked up in spots. I had to redo a bunch of graphics and fiddle with the margins and bleeds which was tricky for some of the graphics since they overlapped and purposely fell off the pages in areas. And I intentionally rotated some of the images so that caused even more chaos during the review process. It was a lot of excruciating nit-picking to get it all right. When the proverbial light turned green after a few more rounds of submissions (days and days of back-and-forth), I ordered physical proofs with expedited shipping. Whoo-hoo!

As soon as I got the proofs in the mail, I sent copies to my trusty coloring team so they could take their own book for a test drive and help me with a little feedback. Their comments were incredibly useful and reassuring, and I’ll be forever grateful to them. Paula, Lora, and Lucia—you are a dream team—thank you!

Since July, I have put in an average of 8 to 10 hours a day planning the layout, writing text for the introduction and “coloring tips” pages, creating smaller versions of my illustrations to build the art journal pages, and designing the cover. It’s been a long process and I’ve learned so much along the way. Not only about how to create a book, but about what makes me tick and how dedication and hard work can turn into something tangible—something to be proud of seeing through from inception to reality, start to finish.

Notes and binders during the planning stages of the Ruby Charm Colors Adult Coloring Art Journal (with Starbucks – coffee was a critical part of the work process)

This book is a little different from other coloring books. A lot of thought went into the concept and layout. I didn’t want the book to be a simple collection of drawings to color, I wanted it to be an art journal—a place where colorists could play and experiment and exercise their creative muscles. I am fairly new to coloring (I really only started when I began creating line art specifically for coloring last year) and admittedly have very few coloring books.

What I noticed about my coloring habits, though, is that I always needed a few scraps of paper nearby to test my colors. I would jot down notes about which pencils I was using, and had lots of scribbles and color swatches. A lot of times, those swatches and notes would get lost, so if I went back to finish a piece days or weeks later, I’d have to try to retrace where I started and what I used. I knew that others had the same issue and this is where the idea of a coloring art journal came into play.

My marked up proof of the Ruby Charm Colors book showing the art journal page on the left and the full plate for coloring on the right.

I want colorists to have a place to keep their ideas together—all those little notes and blended color swatches. A go-to journal that can store ideas and coloring discoveries that can be applied not only to my art in this book, but to other pieces of art in other books as well. Each art journal (or worksheet) page is a little different from the others and directly relates to the illustration from the full plate. And colorists can fill these pages out however they see fit. There are no rules for how something is colored, what is tracked or what is scribbled—it’s all up to the colorist.

Since I knew going into this project using CreateSpace meant the book’s paper would not be ideal for everyone (some love it, some hate it) I decided to back each plate with a black page to help obscure color bleed-through. It’s not an issue with colored pencils at all, but some markers (especially Copics and Sharpies) can make a huge mess. I had my daughter try her Copics in the book, and though the effect of the bleed looked pretty cool through the black back, it’s probably not ideal.

So fair warning: I do not recommend heavy markers for this book at all. Watercolors can be used sparingly. It’s thin paper, and there is not much independent coloring book artists can do about it until CreateSpace hears our pleas for thicker paper, perforated pages and spiral-binding (which in my opinion would be ideal).

Here is a sample of Caran d’Ache Muesum and Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils using a Kurtake waterbrush (easy on the water). The paper warped a little, but not terrible. And while it was damp, a little of the black from the page behind it showed through. But once it completely dried, it was fine. Coloring over it with regular colored pencils helped flatten it back out. I wouldn’t recommend washing an entire page with water, but in small doses, it seems to be fine. This is partly why I encourage colorists to copy plates from the book onto their favorite type of paper or card stock if they would like. It also saves them a clean version to copy again if needed.

Each plate has a dark background on the reverse side and includes the name of the plate and room for you to add your name if you like to give your art away, or if you like to cut it out of the book and store it in a binder.

While testing out different media on my proof copy (I really beat it up a bit) I discovered that though thin, the paper has decent tooth and is actually pretty tough. Even while applying pressure while burnishing. No rips so far. I spent about an hour coloring the beetle (above) and was very pleased by the way my pencils put down color and blended. I used a mix of Caran d’Ache Luminance, Prismacolor Premier and Verithin, Polychromos and Irojitens, plus a few Sakura Souffle and Gelly Roll Moonlight gel pens.

I also tried coloring a fiddlehead fern design on the back of one plate and yes, coloring on black works pretty well and is a lot of fun. Don’t be surprised to see a Black Magic Art Journal before too long.

I couldn’t resist coloring on the black page

The final book proof should arrive in the mail any day and I am anxious to go through it one last time before bringing it to life on Amazon. In the meantime, I am working my way through Volume 2 (same format but with 24 full illustration plates to complete the collection, and new, more advanced advanced coloring tips) as well as ideas for a Journal, a “Just the Plates” companion (with all 46 plates), and a Black Magic volume. Will I make it for the holidays? Only time will tell!

Below is a quick flip-through of my first proof if you want to take a peek. It shows the color charts at the end of the book, the plates and art journal pages, the tips pages and the front matter. I may have skipped a few pages—I am not the best flipper. 😉

Volume 1 of the Ruby Charm Colors Adult Coloring Art Journal is now available as of September 13, 2018!

Give my blog a follow for updates, and I promise I won’t fill your inbox up with spam. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook @RubyCharmColors and, pssst! My coloring team is hosting a Color-Along from September 7 to October 7 if you want to get your hands on an excerpt from the book to color … Autumn Cat! Join the RubyCharmColors FB group, look for the Color-Along event, download the file, and happy coloring!

Making a Handcrafted Coloring Book: the Ruby Charm Artist’s Ed.

Ruby Charm Colors March 20, 2018

Hard work & attention to detail makes happy customers & a happy artist

The original edition of Ruby Charm: 25 Artful Illustrations for Coloring Enthusiasts started out as a simple concept. Illustrations aside, I wanted to create a book that serious colorists would appreciate and use. Though dreams of being picked up by a publisher were (and still are) appealing, I wanted my first book to be made the way I envisioned it: spiral bound at the top (so it’s easy to flip through the pages, the book lays flat, and the binding doesn’t discriminate between left or right handed colorists); a thick and sturdy back cover so it feels more like a sketchbook; illustrations on one side of each sheet; and a plastic protection sheet that could be inserted between pages. I did some research, ordered supplies, and got down to business.

The first run of my book (as well as my Black Magic book which has sold out) has been a success on Etsy. I’m not cruising the Caribbean or anything, but I managed to sell enough books to cover some of my costs, pay a few bills and justify a second printing. And perhaps more importantly, it has given me confidence and momentum to keep moving forward.

When I received the latest batch of pages from my local printer, I took some photos and a few (amateur) videos to show how I put the book together since it doesn’t come mass-produced from a store, but instead, my hands and humble (and usually very cluttered) little studio. Here’s how the Artist’s Edition is made …

Printing

It took some time to complete all the illustrations (months and months of drawing all day, every day) and after I had them all done, I converted them to vector images through Adobe Illustrator, then formatted and saved them as PDFs. This can be a time-consuming process involving many hours staring at the computer screen and repetitive clicking. Plenty of technical details I won’t get into here.

I copied all of my PDFs to a thumb-drive and quite happily brought it over to my local printer. They helped me choose a high-quality, acid free and archival card stock for the main pages, and tinted card stock for the last three pages in the book. The plan was to print 50 copies of each of the inside pages, plus the cover and introduction page.

The naked, unpunched version of the Ruby Charm coloring book

A few weeks later, I picked up several boxes of my pages and was super excited … until I got home and reality smacked the smile off my mug. I made a really dumb mistake. Instead of giving the printer individual files to print, I should have put all the of pages together in order, in one PDF, so that they could have printed a collated version of each book. What was I thinking?!

Live and learn, yes?

Assembly

After getting over my moment of stupidity (and wiping the crumbs off my kitchen counters), I laid out all the stacks of pages in the order I wanted the book to be assembled, including the cover page, introduction page, and the black cardboard back cover. I ran out of counter space and had to use the dining room table and a few chairs, too. Fortunately, my sister was here visiting from North Dakota and she and my daughter helped me pick up one page from each stack until we had 50 new stacks of now collated books. Assembly-line style–team work does make the dream work.

Punching holes

Once the books were collated, I then punched holes in the pages with the used Alpha Coil-E machine I bought off of Craig’sList. What a lucky find that was! Though the machine can’t punch holes through the thickness of the entire book, I could punch about 7-10 pages at a time. And though it did save me time, it still took a while to punch all 50 books. The cool thing about the machine is that it not only punches the holes, it also helps zip the spiral coil through the book once you get it started. Still a lot of hand work despite the hard work of the machine.

Setting pages into the machine for hole-punching

Here’s a quick video of the cover being punched. Machines can be super helpful but the process is still slow as there are a few steps to follow: make sure your pages are flush to the top and sides of the stack, make sure your machine settings and page guides are correct, and keep all of your pages in order!

Snipping the plastic protection sheets

Yep, this part of the process is really stinkin’ tedious, but I wanted the book to have a decent sheet of plastic that colorists could remove and reinsert under whichever page they wanted to work on. Colored pencils don’t pose a bleeding threat, but I use watercolor pencils a lot of the time in my own work, and I know that many like to use markers, too. The card stock I chose for the book is fairly thick (and each illustration is printed on one side only) but I still wanted to be sure bleed-through would never be an issue for my customers no matter what they used.

Using Fiskars nippers to snip

I found a great little pair of Fiskars nippers at Joanne Fabric and use them (after the plastic sheets have been punched) to snip a small notch above each hole. Two snips per hole, and I can only snip two sheets at a time otherwise they will slip out of alignment. It takes some time.

Inserting the coil

The most important thing you need to do to make sure the coil goes in smoothly is to be sure all the holes are lines up properly. So each book gets a bit of a smack-down on the top and side edges to be sure there are no rogue pages that have slipped out of alignment. Once I do the smack-down, I start twisting the coil through the holes.

After I twist the coil in about an inch or so, I take it over to the binding machine, lay the coil edge against a spinning rubberized cylinder, and if all goes well, the coil just zips right through the rest of the holes. It works perfectly about 1 out of five times. The other four times, I have to force the end of the coil through a few more holes, then try the cylinder again. It gets the job done eventually.

When the coil is all the way through, I then kink and clip the ends off using a special pair of nipper-pliars that came with the binding machine. It took a little time to get the hang of this. I accidentally snipped instead of snipped-then-kinked plenty of times. It is supposed to happen in one fairly fluid motion and you have to firmly squeeze the handles together at the end to get the kink. The kinks keeps the coil from coming off.

Notice I keep the tissue paper (which comes between each sheet of plastic) on the book while I am working on it? This helps keep my smudgy fingerprints off the cover. 😉

Signing the book

The last step, after the book is bound and checked for issues, is signing. I hand sign each book before it gets packed away in a box for safe keeping. Most all of my first batch of books were signed with an olive Triplus fineliner, but I started using Moonlight Gellyrolls recently. Fun stuff!

Book signing!

My apologies for my mediocre video skills (it’s not my thing, yet) but here is a flip-through of the contents of the Ruby Charm – 25 Artful Illustrations for Coloring Enthusiasts book. It is now being referred to (and sold as) the Artist’s Edition since I also have a full digital version of the book on Etsy (in addition to single pages and bundles) and am coming out with an expanded CreateSpace version on Amazon before too long. The paper quality will be inferior to my handmade book, but it will still be fun and it will make my book more affordable for my overseas customers.

Here’s the flip-though of the Artist’s Edition:

That plastic really likes to cling to the cover. The wonders of static. Oh, and if you are curious about that plastic cover / insert, here’s how it works!

You can use the tip of your fingers or the tip of a pen or pencil to push the little plastic tabs back onto the coil. Or you can snip them off completely and just let the sheet float around between the pages of any of the books you are coloring.

You can also snip the little bent piece of plastic at one end of your coil and untwist it so that all the pages fall out if you prefer. Good for working on pages one at a time, or for taking pages out you might want to frame or give away. You can always twist the coil back on by hand, but I haven’t discovered a great way to secure the book again. Maybe a small piece of tape wrapped around the cut off end of the coil? A really small rubber-band? Hmmm.

Now that I’ve been at since for about 8 months, I think my hard work on this book is paying off. The most satisfying part of the whole experience has been getting to know my customers through Etsy, Instagram and Facebook, and enjoying a creative collaboration with them. I may design the pages, but they bring those pages to life with their own visions of color and pattern and their own techniques. It’s a collaborative effort that not many other types of artists get to enjoy, so I feel blessed. And my coloring friends have been so supportive of my artwork – it keeps me motivated to keep creating and pushing myself and my small growing business even further. So thank you, friends! Cheers to past, present and future creative adventures!

Very proud of the reviews I’ve been receiving – thanks, everyone!

rubycharmcolors

Tag: coloring for grown-ups