 Hi, I'm Sandy Allnock, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube with my 24 tags of Christmas for 2019. Today's tag uses this giant Santa head, brand new from Colorado Craft Company. Really fun stamp, but I'm going to be using my super color watercolor pencils. And they have three trays in them if you're used to the Albrecht Durer. These are about the same quality, probably a little higher maybe. They might be a little more pigmented possibly. It's hard to judge apples to apples necessarily between watercolor pencils, but both brands are really good. I still love my Albrecht Durer, so I'm just playing with these because I bought them and they're fun. So there you go. And I wanted to make my Santas really strong in contrast, like there's a strong light coming from the right hand side. So I'm going to be just coloring the faces and making the color really strong using a darker color to add a really contrast color here. With the brush, I can move the color then, the brush and water of course, and blend it together. And what I want you to notice is for a lot of people seeing this is going to be like, oh my gosh, that's way too much color on here. When you're doing something that is going to have a strong shadow in it, you'll be surprised by how dark you can go with some of the earlier stages because the rest of it's going to get really dark too. It's only looking dark because it's against a lot of light. So I took this dark reddish purple color and dropped a bunch of that in using a little tea strainer because I didn't want a color on top of the wet pigment. So I just dropped it in using the tea strainer and then I could add darker color to it. And now I've got a real strong contrast between the light side and the dark side of Santa's face. Also notice he has very little color in his glasses. So they end up looking like they are glass. The colors up here using a regular red and then that purplish red is the same red that I dropped into Santa's face, that purpley color. And then blend those together. I love good quality watercolor pencils because they blend really quickly. And if I were trying to do this with inktense pencils, I would probably have a bit of trouble with it because I'd be constantly fighting trying to get the color to move. But with good pencils, it melts everything out beautifully. And I'm really excited that those who have taken the new watercolor pencil jump start class have been exclaiming the glories of, oh my gosh, I didn't know what the difference was between getting good watercolor pencils because they bought good pencils to take the class with and found out I was right. So not that I like being right. I mean, you know, well, okay, I do like being right. What I love hearing people say that they took my advice and it was good advice and they learned something from it and have good supplies. So I'm adding more color onto Santa's white beard. Yes, white beard has color in it and especially when it's going to have a bunch of shadow in it because I have that strong shadow coming from the right hand side. So lots and lots of dark color mixed in here. The colors that I'm using specifically are over on my blog. So I took a picture of my little swatches so that you'd know what colors I'm using and then I can move it with my brush. His cheek, I didn't mention when I was doing the hat and I had all that red pigment on my brush. I dropped a bunch of that into his cheek and his nose and his lips so that I could use that color while it was on my brush. And there is some purple in here because I had the purple from the face. Remember when I had done the little shavings on his face? Apparently, there was some of that left on the purple beard. So he's got a little purple on his beard and I decided I'm going to take advantage of that and use that color some more in this picture and then it's not going to look so crazy and purplish. I thought I'm trying to leave more of the white on the right hand side of him and then I just wanted to get darker on this left hand side so I started grading in more color. And there's the purple that's in the graded thing because I didn't clean out my tea strainer but there's also this black color now that I've added some of that into or it might have been a dark gray color. Trying to darken that up and increase the contrast because I'm looking at that face because I pushed the face to be darker right away so that I would make myself do everything else with higher contrast. So now I'm going to use more of a regular purple and at the top I'm going to mix in the same color so you can see a little more directly of what that color is that I dropped into his face and into the hat. It's the reddish purple and then I'll blend the two of them together with the water. So see how reddish, like pinkish reddish that is and then goes down into the purple. Now I had an art teacher once that told me something really genius that when you're trying to make something look like it's really white then put dark color next to it and look at how all of a sudden Santa's beard looks super white and that is why I put that nice dark color in there. I still wanted some more contrast in the beard though. I was not seeing enough now that I went crazy with everything else. I wanted to really add some super dark color so while it was still wet tapped in some of that using a little tea strainer and then whatever's left on my brush I'm adding a little bit more color to some of the other areas to brighten those up. So I made four of these to add to my 24 tags of Christmas collection. If you'd like to have a chance to win one of my tags this year leave a comment here and a comment over on my blog to double your chances and I will be picking winners and sending all of these out to wonderful people as a little treat during the holiday season. Thank you so much for watching click that like button and give it a good old thumbs up and I will see you again tomorrow. Thanks for watching.