Colors Galore! Diva Challenge 222

Isn't it just wonderful when things in life collude, coming together like they were meant to be? It just so happens, this past week or so, I've had my prismacolor pencils out, playing with them, layering, learning what they feel like at different saturations, and how they look when applied with pressure, or lightly on the paper.

burnishing blends colors

 I got out ALL the pencils! I scribbled, made lines, blended, laid it on thick, lightly brushed the tips on the paper, layered primary colors over each other to get secondary colors, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

 There's a whole spectrum of color, and I delighted in it. Prismacolor pencils go onto the paper like cream. They are wonderful to work with.

the shadow is the complementary color

In a tutorial, I learned that the shadow of a colored item should be the complementary color. So if you have a yellow item (like the little cup in the picture to the right) you make the shadow/shading purple. which I did, and liked it.




The blue is all burnished with powder blue.

It practically glows!

This is a little drawing I did of a pot of flowers in the backyard at Wylie's place. I loved the color of the petunias so much, I wanted to draw them and color them. Now...while the petunias still need a little something, I must say, the pot makes me very happy to look at. I LOVE how it turned out. I want to do it again, only with better flowers.







Not bad, for a first try at really going for the colors and shapes I was seeing. Well, first time in a long time, anyway.







So imagine my delight when this week's Diva Challenge turns out to be a focus on color!
I had been doing spheres, shadowing them with their complementary colors, when I found what the Diva wants from us this week...and when I looked at the page, it just cried out for Nipa, which I did in various blue micron .05 pens. A little bit of shading around the wavy lines, and some thickening here and there, for interest. The one drawback to prisma pencils is they don't just blend with a stump, but there is a blending pencil by prisma, and evidently a pen with some substance that works well. Maybe that will be my next little treat for myself.

Pattern used: Nipa. Prismacolor pencils, sakura micron pens.

 
This complementary shading thing...I am definitely going to be exploring that a lot. In my opinion, the spheres with the lighter or brighter color as the main color, and the darker, or maybe cooler color as shadow, work best. So the shadowing on the green and orange balls is the most natural looking, while the yellow isn't *quite* as good. The purple is too abrupt, I think. I might choose a more blue-violet for shading yellow, and apply it with a subtler touch.

Now, looking at the red and blue spheres...I think as natural shading, the complementary colors of green (for the red) and orange (for the blue) don't work, but there's something eye catching about them. The shadows right on those spheres sort of glow, don't they? It's odd looking, and I'd want to explore it some more, but it's interesting enough, I think. Their shadows seem to glow, as if the spheres were uplit. Especially the blue one...that orange shadow makes it look like it's got glowing coals under it. Very cool, though not REALLY shadowy.

It's not so scary anymore, this thing called color.