Oddball Art Stamps December Challenge + Coloring Tutorial!

Welcome to the Oddball Art Stamps December Challenge! You can read all about this month's challenge HERE; it's Anything Goes with Optional Twist of Christmas Lights! There are plenty of prizes up for grabs!! One project I have made to showcase this challenge (it follows this month's theme - so fun!) also comes with a coloring tutorial! This is a step-by-step coloring photo tutorial, as I have yet to master video tutorials. Maybe I can get my kids to help me with the editing in the future?! I hope it's easy to follow and that it can be helpful to some of you lovely stampers out there. We are going to do a step-by-step breakdown of creating and coloring this project:

Sounds fun? Let's get started!! 

One reason I chose to work with this image for a coloring tutorial (aside from DYING of CUTENESS and the fact that it follows this month's Christmassy theme) is that it's not an overly complicated image. When I was new to coloring with my Copic markers, I was highly intimidated by them. I didn't understand blending or layering colors or shading AT ALL. I would shy away from complicated images or scenes because I didn't want to have to try to color them without knowing that I could do them justice. SO, the last time I did a coloring tutorial it was an entire panel scene with merged images and backgrounds and EVERYTHING. So this month, I'm stepping way back and showing you how to take a cute image, a few colors of markers, and make a great project out of it with little to no complicated know-how needed!

We are coloring Bobby, Image No. 133. He's printed on Neenah Solar White cardstock.

I used a handful of markers in complimentary colors for shading and a soft look for this Christmas card.

I started out by laying down a base color for the ears, toes, cheeks and heart design on his leg. 

We are going to do some shading of all the areas with a darker blush pink, and then we're going to blend with our base (lightest) color.

Now I'm going to put down a base color for his body. I chose shades of Cool Grey for this. We are using C-0, C-1, C-3 and C-5.

  

 

 

Blend all the layers with the lightest base color...

Reindeer elephants need antlers!

We're going to shade them and then again, blend with the lightest color.  

 

 

Instead of making a complicated background, I just added a puddle of shadow underneath him to "ground" him within the image. I eyeballed it using my light aqua color. After I cut the image with my die cutting machine, I touched up the blue so it conformed to the circle shape I chose for the finished piece.

Put it all together on sweet Christmas card and you're all set with an easy-peasy hand-colored but NOT intimidating project!

That's it for me! Thanks for stopping by today! Be sure to enter your gorgeous creations into our challenge, you have until the end of December, so get creative!