Coloring a flower girl

Little Flower Girl
Last week I had the pleasure of coloring all afternoon at a demo. It's so relaxing to just sit and color. sigh. I wish life gave us all more opportunities to just sit and color. Can you imagine how much nicer everyone would be if they spent an hour each day coloring?

Anyways, while I was at the demo I colored this flower image you can download from the Copic website.  Many of the flower images I drew to match tutorials found in the Coloring Flowers with Copic book we sell.

This picture I drew for our website to match the 4th project in the book, so, in the book you learn how to color this style of flower, using palette blending for the dark colors. While coloring at the demo, I only took step-by-step photos of coloring the girl because the flowers are discussed in the book.

Even though this picture is simple, I tried to keep my shadows consistent on the little girl, with the sunlight hitting her face strongest. The flowers are more of a design element, so I just colored those in, without much worry over shadows, except a little bit on the leaves.

I started by coloring her dress with a base of R81, and added shading with R85. I knew that the hearts would be a darker purple, so I just colored right over the pattern and didn't stress about coloring around them. The darker purple is V06, with shadows of RV69. Notice how I left a lighter highlight on the back of the dress, along with the stronger highlight on the front. This makes the shading stand out more. Be careful not to blend out all your contrast, or your work will look too flat. High contrast makes art more interesting to look at.

I colored her skin with E00, E21 then added shadows with E13. I added light layers of  B00, R30, and a hint of R31 to change the tone. Her basket was colored with E31, E35, and R39.

Then I worked on coloring the flowers. The yellow flowers are colored with Y32, YR65, and R05. Centers are E35. The pink flowers are R81, R85, R39, and centers are RV69.

Leaves are YG11, and YG17 (notice how much contrast I use in my greens, I jump straight from YG11 to YG17. It makes them more vibrant). I darkened the deepest leaf shadows with G28.

I finished with a pale B00 sky background that I faded out to the white of the paper using the Colorless blender.

I had such a relaxing time coloring this picture. It took about 2.5 hrs to color, since it is a full sheet of paper and I was also helping customers during that time. Coloring all those little flowers kept my hands busy while my mind wandered. I ended up staying at the demo an extra hour or so because I was having so much fun coloring!

(I'm sure none of you have ever stayed up too late coloring because you were "in the zone".)

I'll be sure to post some more tutorials, even though I am super busy writing my next two books. Have a great weekend!