To celebrate the release of a new PDF Bundle of Shih Tzu illustrations, I am running a contest on Facebook and Instagram! There will be one winner on each platform, so visit soon – contest ends Sunday, June 10, 2018 at noon ET. And you may enter on both platforms – twice the chance to win!
The Shih Tzu bundle started out as a challenge. One of my favorite colorists, Lora, asked if I had ever thought about drawing a Shih Tzu (she has three) … and before too long I was happily sketching this cute little dogs. With my crazy swirly twists, of course. I sent a few to Lora to try out, and she posted a lovely coloring of her rescue dog, Lilo, on Instagram and FB. She used grey paper, and it is just adorable! My sister has a rescue Shih Tzu, too, and so I had plenty of photos of the dogs to work from. I ended up with four drawings to complete the bundle on Etsy.
I feel very lucky to have seen African wild dogs (also called painted dogs or painted wolves) at the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe over twenty years ago. Even then, their numbers were perilously low and the park rangers said we were very fortunate to have seen them in the wild.
I love how unique each dog’s splotchy-spotty coat is, and their rounded upright ears. The dogs I drew somehow morphed into leafy, flowery specimens … but I like to let my imagination run where it wants to more often than not.
After the black and white illustration was completed (about 14 hours from idea sketches to final product), I printed a copy on grey card stock, then got out my watercolor pencils to give the sky some color using Albrecht Dürer 154 Kobalttürkis Hell (aka Light Cobalt Turquoise) by Faber-Castell.
Kobalttürkis Hell.
I was a little sloppy with the turquoise, but once I add more color with my regular colored pencils, it will all come together. I used Caran d’Ache Luminance (I get mine as open stock through Blick) as well as Faber-Castell Polychromos and Tombow Irojiten pencils for the dog so far. As much as I dream about having full sets of my favorite pencils, I prefer purchasing them “open stock” so I can get the colors I use most. I have quite a few pink pencils that have been used only once – to make a color chart. I don’t dislike pinks necessarily … I just rarely think about using them.
Does anyone else love the Luminance Titanium Buff pencil as much as I do for blending and highlighting?
It will be a while before I have time to finish this piece. In the meantime, the illustration is now available in my Etsy shop as an instantly downloadable and printable PDF if you would like to play around with whichever color scheme appeals to you. And if you are not sure about colors (or which pencils or papers to use), print a few copies and play around until you are happy with the results (the beauty of PDF coloring pages).
Less expensive than a bag of chips and far healthier for you. 😉
Oh why didn’t I title this one March Hare when I had the chance? Too late now … it’s up on Etsy and ready for your coloring enjoyment!
I spent about 12 hours on this illustration from rough sketch to finished black and white line drawing and it was an enjoyable piece to work on … though all the curls and leaves of the fiddle-head ferns caused my hands to cramp up last night. Oh to be young again with better eyesight, too. My glasses are getting a little loose and I am tired of continually pushing them back up my nose.
I was thinking about the Easter bunny the other day and how rotten it is that I lied to my daughter about the Easter Bunny (and Santa for that matter) yet try to teach her that lying is wrong. What’s wrong with that picture? At any rate, I’ve been wanting to draw fiddle-head ferns and thought this would make a good composition for a coloring page – Easter and Spring themed without the plastic eggs and candy.
I started to color the illustration in (partly to test out the design but also to have a partially colored piece to show in my Etsy listing) and used a base layer of Caran d’Ache Museum, Faber-Castell Albrect Durer, and Staedtler Aquarelle (though mine are very old) watercolor pencils. I blended with a water brush, and then once it dried, started refining and blending with layers of colored pencils (mostly the same brands plus Prismacolor and Irojiten pencils). I also hit it with a few dabs of Sakura Souffle gel pens. It will be a while before this one is done – too much on my plate to play – but it was fun to get a start on it. And this rabbit’s face just makes me giggle.
Going Digital: First coloring book now available as a downloadable, printable series of PDFs!
The cover of Ruby Charm: 25 illustrations for coloring enthusiasts, collection no. 1
I was a little worried about making my first book of illustrations available for download, mostly due to stories about other artists seeing their work appear in places they never authorized and having their hard work stolen. Either people who steal the art don’t realize how many hours go into a drawing (plus the added expense of materials, marketing, etc.) or they simply just don’t care. Either way, it had given me pause and I’ve been reluctant to give it a go. Until now.
I’ve gotten to know a number of people in the coloring community over the past year and have faith that people will do the right thing. And I believe in karma. So I took all of the illustrations from my original spiral-bound book and put them into a series of 5 PDFs (plus two of my newer drawings, Autumn Cat and Paisley Fox) and made the digital version of my book available through my Etsy shop. Exciting times! This will benefit my overseas customers who have found that shipping the physical book is almost as much as a copy of the book itself!
The original spiral-bound book is still available through Etsy as the “Artist’s Edition” and each one is personally assembled and signed by me. My first batch of copies had sold out, but my dear local printer ran off another batch (on high-quality 80# Lynx card stock) and I assembled and bound them at home–just like the first batch.
Heading to Amazon!
I am also in the process of creating an expanded version of my original book through CreateSpace on Amazon. It has been a time-consuming process and I am running a little behind the schedule I set for myself, but I am pretty happy with the draft. The primary illustrations are plates (printed on one side of the page only since bleed-through can be an issue on lower quality papers) but there are pages in between that will contain stories, new small drawings you can use to plan out your colors for the actual plates, coloring tips and a collection of color charts (I think about 10) that you can fill in with your own colors at the back of the book.
I asked colorists on social media about their thoughts related to CreateSpace paper and was surprised to hear how many people really liked it. Far many more than I imagined. Others said the paper wasn’t ideal, but that they copied illustrations from their books onto the paper of their choice anyway (and kept the books uncolored), so paper quality wasn’t a big deal. That surprised me, too–how many people kept a copy of a book untouched so that they could make new copies of drawings they wanted to try again. Smart! And then there were a few people who said they absolutely hated CreateSpace paper and completely avoided books published through CreateSpace. Which was what I expected would be the overwhelming majority of responses to my query. But since the mix seemed all over the board, and since I wanted to be able to get my books overseas more easily and affordably plus have more exposure through Amazon (a girl’s got to make a living), I decided to add the CreateSpace book to my collection.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be putting the finishing touches on the book, creating the cover, and wrapping up a number of small new illustrations to add into the mix. I’ll post an announcement on my blog as well as on my Instagram and Faceboook accounts when it is ready!
Each individual (and bundled) PDF includes a black & white illustration as well as a bonus grey-line version for those who want more emphasis on their colors and shapes, and less on the black lines.
All art is saved in vector format, which means you may resize the images (without loss of quality) to fit larger paper formats if your printer can accommodate over-sized sheets of paper or card stock.
Note: The Ruby Charm “Black Magic” coloring book has officially sold out! This special, limited edition book was printed on black card stock pages for those who wanted a new and different coloring experience. Each cover was hand-embossed and personalized with the colorist’s name.
ABOUT THE DESIGN: The black & white illustration this design is based on was originally drawn by the artist, Susan Carlson, for the Ruby Charm collection of coloring pages and books for coloring enthusiasts. This illustration was completed with a mix of watercolor and colored pencils, plus a number of pens for embellishments.
