 Well, hey there it's Sandy artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and this video is for the birds Actually the video is for bird lovers not for the birds themselves because they don't really care about stamps Do they but you might these are new stamps from Colorado Craft Company? Thank you to Amy for sending them to me but before I color those and I'm gonna color all three of them I Wanted to say another thank you to someone else Which is okay a lot of someone else is It's to my patrons over on patreon a bunch of absolutely fabulous people For whom I have spent a ton of work this week writing out envelopes and getting everything stamped and Now I'm doing the ceiling and yes I am not licking envelopes just so nobody worries about that when you get mail from me You can open it So I've washed my hands before I even started the process But I wrote out over a hundred cards and a whole bunch of them are going domestically a whole bunch of them are going Overseas as well because I have people around the world and I love you all and I just wanted to say that and Say watch your mailboxes. Lots of you are going to be getting cards and I have a bunch of them that needed the extra postage and I have the group that is set for International as well as the Domestic ones so yay for everything ready to go out in the mail All right now let's get on to the coloring because I know that's what you came here for most likely Although if you want to be one of those patrons you can join there's a link in the doobly-doo always is in case you want to Maybe get a card from me once in a while It's one of those things where you can put in a buck you can put in five ten bucks twenty bucks Whatever you want for a variety of rewards including coupon codes for classes And you get sneak peeks of things and I show you other stuff and I ask you questions and I get your feedback Yeah, my patrons are like my sounding board and I love all of them for being such wonderful people All right on to the coloring What I have done for each one of these they have a floral element of some kind in them And I made a background out of it using some no-line ink and then I stamped in a Copic friendly ink, which is my my normal my jet black Lawn Fawn ink and Then started the coloring I did this because I couldn't fit this bird's head and Figure out how to get the flower and the bird's head onto an A2 size card a regular size card And I know some of you have been wondering like with these big and bold ones. How do you get them on a card? Okay, this is how it fits on a card. I figured instead of just showing it on a big old piece of paper Then I would show you on a card. I considered since these are three beautiful birds doing sort of a vintage looking I don't know bird scientific page kind of thing with all three birds on it and Do little writing in it and doodle and all that and I was really gonna get crazy with it But I didn't because I wanted to show you how to put them on a card Now what I have done here is just pick some colors out based on a photo that I found on the interwebs and For those who are always asking well, how do you see the shading? How do you know what colors and all that? This is one of the best techniques I think that you can use to teach yourself how to see color Which is to find something to try to replicate in your stamp And you're not gonna be able to do it exactly because the stamp is not the same picture But when you're looking for a way to match colors to something Practicing doing it by looking at something else is going to train your eye to see And I don't know how else to tell you to to learn that skill because it's a really valuable one when you're trying to select colors In this particular one. I saw all these colors in the feathers underneath kind of shining through and then there was this dark sort of outlines for a bunch of the feathers and that defines some of the feather groupings and I knew that I wanted to Have all that that dark outline match across the whole thing Because when I looked at the bird it wasn't like I saw a chunk of blue and a chunk of green I saw all the colors mixing so I put layers of all the colors underneath and then added the detail on top with the dark blue color and That kind of pulls all of it together and I can add all the beautiful feather textures But not have to figure out how to color all those colors on top of all that line work Just creating it But in seeing which colors to choose that is something that you need to train yourself to see I know a lot of people come here and they're like, you know I want to see the colors that you're putting on the screen and yes I put them on the screen for you most of the time not all the time because it's a lot of work to do that But if you can train yourself to start to look at a photograph and match the colors to it I mean there are dozens of different kinds of hummingbirds. That's a great stamp to work with this This little guy this this peacock is another one. There's a bunch of different colorations you can choose and I just found one that had interesting markings on it that I wanted to to put on my bird and The by the way the little eyeglass thing sort of made me chuckle because Monicles and this is just like in my head from watching cartoons I think a monocle is held in place between a person's cheek and their Eyebrow like it's just like a thing that sits there. There's not there might be something that holds it I don't know and I don't know if these are chains that hold that are hanging down from it Or if that's a handle and then the bird has to have Like a hand to hold it. So there's a lot of unrealism. I decided to put that in there as a monocle But yeah, there's that Yeah, just laugh at me laugh along with me, please Because sometimes I make myself laugh when I do stuff, but I thought it would be kind of fun to add to this Anyway, I am doing the same thing with this one as I did with the other bird I'm just putting down a bunch of colors underneath that I'm going to add all that texture on to you later Now with the glass area when you're coloring glasses It's generally lighter colors than what is around it because you're seeing through a glass So it's it's gonna warp both the shape and the lighting and the color and everything So I went through after I put the color down and did some colorless blender over it to just lighten that area up and Then on this one you need to add more of the bird's eye on the hummingbird I did do a little bit to it by adding some white White pen to it, but this one has an open space that you can fill in with whatever color eye you want So again, I'm gonna go through and add all of the little bird texture on here with my dark blue marker Now when you're when you're creating things like this and you're trying to figure out what to do with the feathers The way that I think about Making the lines for the feather textures is partially by of course looking at the picture But in the picture, I'm looking for if you can you know picture in your mind if you were combing The feathers on the bird and running a counter at what direction would you do that? That should be the direction the lines go and There are some areas where the feathers might turn a different direction because of the angle of the bird or whatever And you can see that in the feathers you can see the lines change and you would change your color your your direction on your lines You can also change the color on the lines I'm using the dark blue right here But I was starting to feel like if I started doing all of those dark blue lines in that big empty area With those light colors where the highlight is it was going to be too dark And I wanted the lines to help me continue to round the image So I switched to a lighter color so that I would care carry through more of the dimension Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense Sometimes I do these videos and I'm like nobody's gonna understand anything about what I'm saying because It kind of a lot of this stuff would require an entire class to really get into the detail So these YouTube just feels like a summary sometimes of the concepts Now one of the things I did right there was when I discovered what adding the gray to the beak did I also grayed out some of that white highlight behind the glass and That also made the white pop out more on the glass And I was trying to figure out how to make it look more glass-like and just going over it with some gray Marker didn't work So I went through with my white pen and while it was wet just mushed it with my finger a little bit to get some soft edges to it and You know made some random shapes in there. There's not really a Science to figuring out exactly how that should go in order to make it look like a glass, but there you go And then there's these things on the top of the head that I found myself thinking What on earth are they for? Is it just for show? Is it just so the peacock can show off that it's got this little thing on its head? Or do they have a purpose? Is there do they like whack each other with those? I don't even know. I know nothing whatsoever Except how to color a card, so there you go Now on this one I decided to show you first if you're one of those people who likes to make really pale soft flamingos This is a color combination that you can use But I didn't find that to be particularly Inspiring because it's kind of the same color as all of those feathers that I stamped in the background It's the same overall hue and I wanted some contrast. You know me. I love contrast So I added contrast and I jumped into a color that I think most people would be afraid of with flamingos Because you think of them as pink But if you Google flamingos and look for what colors flamingos come in There are some that are like intense red orange kinds of colors and you can suggest that this is Maybe just the shadows on him or that it is one of those dark colored ones And I don't know whether it's just the lighting or whether flamingos actually come in those But there's enough pictures of them out there that I think it's I think it's worthwhile to try something like this So I used a couple of pinks pinks and reds to do those basic colors I saw in the picture almost some purplish on the shadow that was going across the white of the beak So I used it. There's nothing wrong with using just jumping in there with purple it works just fine and then I left a little highlight on the black part of the beak and colored that in with a Medium gray so that it would knock that back. I didn't want a white highlight on there But the rest of the bird was feeling not contrasting and And as we know sandy likes contrast so I went in there with some gray and then went over that with a slightly darker red And it was just because the first red didn't feel dark enough So why not add more dark red and then go back in with the lighter red and then go back in with some pink and Just keep working at it until I had darkened all of it enough But also leaving some of those nice highlights that I had so I've got really nice contrast on the flamingo So there is my quick three colorings of the birds. I hope you enjoyed this and got something out of it the Stamps are all of course over at Ellen Hudson and she is having a 4th of July sale There's details over on my blog about that if you want to find out what the sale is on etc And I am going to give away these three cards So go over to my blog sometime this weekend and leave a comment over there I asked for it on my blog just because then I can find you I can email you and say you won't give me your address Because I'm in the mood to send cards out So I'm gonna send these three out next week to three lucky people. So that's about it I will see you guys later. Have a safe weekend and I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye