Coloring cards

I've been doing a lot of coloring.

Not in adult coloring books either.

On cards. I've never been a good colorer, though I am a decent oil painter. Each medium has a learning curve, and those kids crayons made me feel like less than an artist. And although I've developed some proficiency in oils as an adult, both colored pencils and water colors have proven harder for me to use.

The only way to get better is to color, and so I have acquired some stamps and images to practice. The tool of choice are Faber Castell water color pencils. They are what I have, so they are what I'm using.

My first one is for the Casual Friday CFC180 Challenge with a Friends theme.

 I am hoping I didn't get too carried away, as this is supposed to be a clean and simple card. I only used 4 colors, orange, yellow red and the grass greens. My favorite part of this card is the sentiment and bee pun.

I love stained glass, so I've been searching for a good stain glass stamp. I created this one from a website with free stain glass images, shrunk down with a photo editing program. I'm working on learning how to shade to give the picture dimension. 

                                                                        

                                                          

    This cute little girl just kind of tagged along with the stain glass irises, along with a jar of daises. It gave me an opportunity to work on skin tones.

There is an excellent video by Sandy Allnock on skin tones, so if you are struggling as I was, pop over to Youtube and take a look.