Colouring – how do I colour stamped or digital motives?

Colouring of a stamped image can be a nice feature of your card. There are so many images, digital and stamped. They can be coloured quite simple or advanced with all the foldes and shadows. I often say that a good colouring make the card. But how do some of these card makers colour all these fantastic images?

For some people, good colouring is like a little bridge to get over. The first important rule is to get some simple shadows based on where the light is coming from, in your image. To get there, you need some colours in different shades of the same colour, that you can blend together. Some motives are easy to colour, like small critters. Other motives are harder, if they have dresses with folds or lots of hair. Colouring the hair and the dress with folds can take hours. A good colouring is not done in a hurry.

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What kind of colours should I use?

There are lots of different paints, pencils and markers you can use. Some of them are water based like Distress ink, water colour pencils or water colour paints. You can also get markers like Copic, Promarker, Touch or different oil based pencils. The mail difference is if the colours are water soluble or alcoholic soluble. This would would be important in choosing the ink you use for stamping, and the paper you chose to use. The different type of colours will give you different styles. If you are unsure, look around to find the style you like, and try to figure out what they have coloured with.

Water colours:

Distress ink and water colours are good choice for those dull and soft colours. You may colour with your distress ink refillers or the ink pads. You can stamp onto a plastic surface or have a drop of ink on the plastic surface, and paint with a thin pencil or water pencil. I have used some water colour paper where I have tested my different colours and named the colours. Then I have laminated the pages. This makes it easy to use the laminated pages for collecting colour later. Just wash the rest of the colour of with water when you have finished painting.

You can also use distress markers or water colour pencils. You can also blend with a thin paintbrush or water pencil here. Use ink pads like Archival Ink or Hybrid inks, and water colour paper in a good quality and minimum 200g. It might be useful to know, that the bright red colours do bleed a bit, so you might want to colour red at the end. 

Alcohol markers:

Some markers have etanol as the solvent. The most usual ones are Copic, Promarker and Touch markers. But there are also others. Promarker and Touch work like normal markers. You used to be able to get extra thin tips for the Promarkers (really useful), but I don’t think they are for sale any more. Copic has a pencil tip, and you can refill the markers. Copic are more expensive than Pormarker and Touch. The best of these markers really depends on what you like. I would say, it is more down to the user and how you colour. You have to use water based ink pads, like Momento, Adirondack or Distress Ink. You can also use hybrid inks. The best paper to use (according to Copic Marker Norway) is Perfect Coloring Paper. You can read a papertest in this blogpost (in Norwegian) Paper test for colouring with Copic.

Pencils:

There are lots and lots of different pencils. Some are better than others. It’s important to get pencils where the colours can blend. I colour with Derwent and Prismacolor. Prismacolor is wax based. You can blend them with turpentine (choose the one without smell 😀 ).  Luminance are pencils that works just like Prismacolour, and are also good pencils. They are also wax based and produced by Caran d’Ache. Colour on thick colouring paper or Kraft cardstock.  For Derwent, Prismacolor or Luminance pencils, use water based ink pads like Memento, Adirondack, Distress Ink or hybrid inks. For water colour pencils, use Archival Ink or Hybrid inks.

The most important thing: Blending and practicing

The most important thing (other than colouring inside the lines), is to be able to blend the colours. If you use markers, you do need some different shades of markers in the same main colour, to be able to blend them.

It’s important to practice. A good good drawer is not made in an hour. I started card making a long time ago. I remember I admired the fantastic Magnolia colourings in the beginning. The two colourings below is from two different stages of my colouring. The one on the left is from 2011 i water colour. I have always coloured and I have been drawing. I am not new to water colours, and I did take drawing classes at school. Although, I had not worked so much on folds and bends and shadows in my colouring. The colouring is quite simple, with some shadowing at the edges of the image. The other colouring is from 2013, coloured with Prisma colors on Kraft.  The fun thing here is also to see the difference between the old Magnolia stamps and the newer ones. The newer ones have a lot more details. Here, I had practiced a bit more, on colouring Magnolia motives. Trying to get more of the folds and bends in the image. Even though I have been a designer, and also designed for stamp manufacturers that do coloured images, I have not finished learning.

Critters – simple shadowing

If you are going to start colouring, or you don’t really want to spend hours colouring one motive, start with critters. You can find a large amount of motives, that are really simple to colour with some shadowing. These have been coloured with markers, but the shadowing is the same for any colours you use. 

You can also build up your own motives, by stamping several motives together.

A you get better, try also som more advanced animals. Tim Holtz has several nice stamps with animals.  It can be useful to se a you tube tutorial of colouring the image that you want to colour, to get some inspiration.

You can also keep the animals simple, but add shóme shadows on small elements of your colouring, like a hat.

Another fun effect is to colour with invisible stamped lines. Stamp with very soft brown or light gray. The stamped lines will almost disappear from your colouring.

This tutorial is showing how to make the beards come alive on these gnomes. The same effect can also be used on fur on animals or teddys.

Colouring people

Then it’s the big step from animals to humans. It is quite a difference, what people like. Some like Magnolia stamps, and other can not stand them.  Some like motives with simple and proportional humans, and some like simpler drawings. Mo Manning’s stamps are also very popular. If you are unsure, start with simple shadows of the face and clothing, like the video shows below. Distress Ink is used in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTe0wec4YT4

This video shows simple colouring of hair with markers.

Magnolia

It dosn’t really matter if you like or don’t like Magnolia motives. You can still learn a lot by the colouring. Here are three sweet colourings of Magnolia stamps.

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Colouring hair

Colouring hair is not that simple with the right shadowing. Here is a simple colouring of hair. If you colour hair with markers, do in general use three to five colours to create the shadows. 

Here you can see a bit more advanced colouring of hair with Copic markers.

Also try untraditional hair colours:

Folds in dresses:

Folds in dresses and clothing is one of the more advanced colouring you can try. Here are some tips:

Simple colouring of folds with markers:

Advanced colouring of folds with Copic.

I hope you got some ideas to start or to develop in colouring. Wishing you a good week.