Monday, April 19, 2021
Garden Dirt: Tulips in Hobnail Pitcher, a Swatch for Underpainting with Copic Marker
Monday, March 22, 2021
Inspire Me Monday: Easy Breeze Coneflowers!
GOOD MORNING EVERYONE! Well spring has finally arrived, at least according to the calendar. We spent last weekend at our local garden supply store to get ideas for our backyard. My husband is the gardener, but I get to pick out the flowers. It's a division of labor that I enjoy!
It's too early to plant anything here - our garden relies on a combination of containers and raised beds. We have a small water feature which my husband wants to redesign so we've been busy rearranging our equally small backyard to accommodate all the changes. But it feels good to be outside again and planning for what we hope will be a more normal future.
I plan on adding coneflowers into our backyard this year but it will be a few weeks before they are available in our garden store. In the meantime, I have to be content with coloring them so today's post features the Easy Breezy Coneflowers Digital Stamp Set in anticipation of my summer garden.
Often, I'll enlarge a digital image so that it takes up most of the card front, but I decided to downsize the image and color it on a smaller scale. But the smaller image didn't take up much real estate on the card front so I struggled awhile with the card design. I changed the card orientation from portrait to landscape and that change helped me view the layout in a different way. I've always loved the critters that Marcella adds to some of her drawings so I cropped out one of the bees in the Asters Abuzz Digital Stamp Set to add to the background and used one of the sentiments from that set. I added a honeycomb stenciled background inked in pale pink and suddenly the card came together.
Since the image is small, I didn't worry about adding a lot of detail into the petals. Instead, I stuck to a simple dark to light blend with my Copic markers.
That's all for me today! Be sure you get out and enjoy the sunshine!
Monday, March 15, 2021
Garden Dirt: Flowering Clover, a Swatch for Underpainting with Copic Marker
Need a quick bit o' luck?
Sometimes I color for realism. Other times, I color for fun.
Pink under Green makes a shady green
Let's color Flowering Clover together!
Have fun playing with gink and preen!
And I'll meet you back here next month with another colorful swatch of Garden Dirt.
Monday, March 1, 2021
Inspire Me Monday - Thinking of Spring!
I pulled out some colored pencils and started to color and experiment. I tried this pencil brand on that paper. I tried this color combo of green, and then that other one. I played and flitted around like a butterfly! I spent a lot of time planning, which is my normal mode of operation.
In the end, I settled on printing this image (Lilac and Lemons) onto kraft cardstock to color with colored pencils. This is as far as I got because, I continued to be bothered by the fact that this brand of pencils does not have color names! They each have a unique number, but no names! Because my brain cannot let go of something once I latch onto it, I decided to give each and every one of the 168 pencils in this set a name! Yes, I did! (If you are interested in such things, visit my personal blog on March 11th to see the end product.)
Monday, February 22, 2021
Inspire Me Monday - Party Essentials
HELLO POWER POPPY FANS! I'm back today with another Inspire Me Monday post. Hope you are keeping safe and warm during this blast of cold winter weather. Please keep our friends in Texas and the surrounding area in your prayers as they recover from the record storm that swept the state.
Monday, February 15, 2021
Garden Dirt: Bleeding Hearts, a Swatch for Underpainting with Copic Marker
Let's color one more heart project!
I know Valentine's Day is technically over but honestly, I'd color heart shapes all year if students would let me.
Last month, I shared with you the Vital Rose digital stamp, colored with red Copic Markers and die-cut into a heart shape. This month, let's tackle hot pink and one of the sweetest species of flowers I've ever seen.
Hello, my name is Amy Shulke and I'm the illustrator and art instructor over at VanillaArts.com. Welcome to another article in my color swatch blending combination series here at Power Poppy-- The Garden Dirt.
Why dirt? I know it's not the most attractive name but that's what we do in realistic coloring. We take beautiful colors of Copic Marker and colored pencil and blend them together to make yucky, dirty colors. You can't grow flowers without a bit of dirt and you can't color realistic flowers without dirty color.
I've got a whole series of artistic coloring articles here at the Power Poppy blog. Here's a link to read more.
Bleeding Hearts are one of my favorite flowers!
My yard is tree covered and almost full shade everywhere; I can barely grow grass. For years, we had nothing but Hosta, random ferns, and scattered Lily of the Valley but then a little pinkish-greenish scrawny looking weed popped up, out of nowhere.
If something's brave enough to try living in my near-night conditions, I'm certainly not going to tell it no, so I let the weird little guy grow a while. Eventually the stalk bent over and sprouted the cutest little heart shapes.
BEST WEED EVER!!!!
When I found myself looking for something to color for this month's Dirt article, I thought of my beautiful little weeds and wondered if Marcella had ever drawn them.
I'm a digital stamp girl, so I isolated the Bleeding Hearts from the Spring Meadow Bouquet to share with you today.
She also has a few Bleeding Hearts tucked into the Springtime Love Roundel stamp here.
Today's swatch will work with either version.
Green under Red Violet makes a shady pink
Let's color flowers together
Have fun experimenting with green under magenta and I'll meet you back here next month with another colorful bit of Garden Dirt.
Monday, February 1, 2021
Inspire Me Monday - Happy Birthday
Since my birthday is in February, I decided to make a fun birthday card to showcase several Power Poppy images! The only thing missing from this scene is a new book...but perhaps there is a book in one of those pretty packages! This is my ideal birthday...cake, a warm drink, and a pile of gifts! Plus...chocolate AND strawberries...yes, please!
For this project I have combined three digital images: the cake and tea from the Tea Cake with Strawberries digital set (also available in a clear set called Tea in the Garden), the gifts from the Party Essentials digital set (also available as a clear set called Party Time), and the sentiment from the Layer Cake digital set.
If you want more information on how to put a digital scene together, please see my Power Poppy post HERE.
To get started with a scene, you first need to print your images to the size which fits your card front. (Or, stamp them if you are using clear stamps instead of digital images.) My finished card is 6" x 8", so I printed the image as slightly smaller at approximately 5" x 6".
A color tip: When you are coloring a busy scene like this one, try to plan out your colors ahead of time so that you don't end up with a hot mess of every color in your marker collection! I call it "avoiding the clown party"!
I started out with the red, because...strawberries are red! I chose to "spread the red" around my picture to give the whole scene a balanced look. I then colored the leaves green, but did NOT add more green to the image. I did not want this to stat to look like Christmas!
I knew I needed to color the slice of lemon in the tea cup yellow. That became my second color, which I sprinkled about the scene. I felt that aqua blue would look nice with both the red and the the yellow. To tone it all down, I used brown. Making the cake frosting and the cake stand brown, rests the eye. Creating three white items (the cake doily, the napkin, and the largest box), also helps give your eyes a bit of rest.
I think the picture is bright, but not clownish. I admit to being a bit sorry about the large ribbon bows, but...once they were glued down, I decided to keep them! Plus, every birthday needs a few big bows!
Here is the list of Copic markers I used. I did NOT use any colored pencil this time.
Background, napkin, cake: E0000, E000, E00, E21, colorless blender
Doily, box: C3, C1, C00
Ribbon, boxes, lemon slice: Y08, Y06, Y02, Y11
Cake, cake stand: E79, E29, E27, E25, E23, E35, E33, E57, R83, R81
Leaves, stems: YG03, G43, G99, YG21, YG05, Y11, YG01
Cup, boxes: B04, B01, B000
Strawberries, boxes, cup, cake stand: R14, R27, R29, R89, YG21 (strawberries only)
I selected some matching paper from my vast stash of printed paper to create a finished card. I will use a padded mailer to mail this card to a special someone....or I will keep it on my desk to enjoy for the month of February!