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Color layers
I was making a birthday card for someone down here at Copic, and I thought you might like to see a few steps in the coloring process. I drew this image with a 0.3mm Multiliner onto X-press It Blending Card.

The lucky birthday guy grows plants in his office that eat bugs. He has quite a few little plants that eat things, so a natural topic would be Little Shop of Horrors. This card is totally inspired by that musical!

I started with the flowerpot, colored with Y21, then I blended in Y19, YR18, E35, and R39 for the deepest shadows. You can see I didn't color very evenly with my base coat because I knew that I would be soaking in a lot of layers of color, so there wasn't a need. I tried to keep my shadows consistent, with the light coming from the upper right.

I colored his tongue with R24, Y00, and R39

Next, I added the palest yellow to his lips and the tips of his leaves. I blended this into YG06, as this is a very vibrant, rich, bright green color. For the shadows, I added YG63 and G28.

On his head, I dotted onY00 over the YG06, to give it a slight texture. Eventually, I also dotted on some YG03 and YG06 as well

The deepest, darkest shadows, or leaves in back I colored first, so I could better define the leaves in front. You'll notice on the bottom left leaf a hint of red/brown. That's because I added R24 to those shadows, since red is the opposite of green, and when the two mix it makes nice shadows. It also helps to tie the red tongue and flowerpot colors into the plant.

As you can see from the next step, you don't notice the red as much as I layer on the darker greens, and start defining the veins on the leaves. The vine holding the cake needs to stay the lightest area, as that gets the most light.

I colored the chocolate cake with E35, R24 and R39, and the candle with YR18 and Y00. While those two colors are really far apart, on an area this small, it works. Don't catch yourself getting locked into having to obey color "rules". Many times I just go for whatever markers are handy, and just make them work. To make the leaves look more textured as well, I dotted Y00 over the darker greens to fade and wash them out.

Sometimes I go outside the lines while coloring. On this image, I know that I will be coloring around it with a light blue, so I don't bother cleaning up my pale green mistakes. Once I go back with my blue, it will push the mistakes back into the image.

Here's the final card. I added B41 as my blue, with dots of G12, BG01, and Y21. I also added dots of greens throughout the rest of the plant. The little yellow border was drawn with a Y19 marker.

The birthday guy loved his card, and I hope you enjoyed it as well. Happy Spring!