 Well, hi there, my name is Sandy Alnok. I'm an artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and today I bring you some cartoon fish I'm coloring these using some stamps as the base and these are from Avery L And the links are in the description down below if you have some other fish stamps You could do the same technique or if you draw your own fish You could certainly do this on a card or on any kind of drawing yourself because fish are really easy to Create because they're just like weird shapes with fins and eyeballs and when they're whimsical fish like this Very cartoony. It doesn't matter a whole lot what they look like shape-wise. They don't have to match reality So I'm coloring around the edges first on this fish. I'm Trying to give myself a framework to get started with my highlights I want to have in from the edge a little bit because it's gonna make him look a little more dimensional If the highlight is on a place that's not at the very very very edge so I'm penciling that in and Giving myself the shape and then I'll go in and soften it with pencil It's very forgiving. You can go in and adapt things as long as you keep your touch very very light My pencil is barely touching the surface of the paper what that does for you is Keeps the pencil the wax color from the pencil keeps it on the ridges of the paper if you picture a paper having Mountains and valleys. There's these top ridges where your pencil will touch and then you're gonna try to fill in those spaces in between those valleys But doing it with a sharp pencil works a lot better than it does using pressure If you just use really heavy pressure with your pencil You're gonna get a wax build up and it might fill in all those areas But it's also going to make it so that you can't layer colors. You can't get this soft look So that is why I love having a super sharp pencil And there will be a link at the end of this video to a short video about the pencil sharpener that I use You can see exactly how sharp it makes things Using two colors of this pinky purpley kind of color here to create some real depth And I did go around and add a little bit of linear work around the edges and I'll emphasize that a little bit more later on But I'm trying for a no-line look which means I basically want to make the outlines disappear all those stamped lines and Color right up to them and over them so that they don't look like they're there anymore And this looks like something that I just drew by hand even though I did stamp the images the inside of the mouth or that upper lip is Receated so I want the teeth to look like they were forward and the eyes forward so I put some shading underneath of there and Took a lighter pencil then to extend that shading out and expand it across the whole shape I've got another highlight on his chin That you can start seeing as it appears But I still have as you see the ability to adapt what that shape looks like Where does it start how far down does it go because I've got this really light touch with the pencil and I'm Showing you this video at about 200% so twice the speed of normal or else We'd be here for an hour and a half because that's how long it took me to do the entire piece when I was doing the filming Next up are the fins and I'm just going to add my shading right along the areas where the stamped lines are If the stamp lines are the exact same color as the base color of pencil that you've put down Then you might want to have your stamp set handy so that you remember where those lines were going to be or else Just go ahead and adapt them yourself. It's a fin You could just make some little lines in the fin and make it all work out just fine. So No big deal when you're doing something this whimsical Next on the eyeballs these are small eyes So I just kind of made the shading the blue shading all the way down You could also leave a white edge around it and that makes them look even glassier But he was tiny enough that I didn't do that. I Used a dark violet pencil to add just a little bit of detail to the Centers of his eyes underneath of the eyes the mouth and then I'm going super light over some of the details on the Rest of them just to sharpen areas But I'm not going around the entire image with the dark pencil because that would Defeat the purpose of no line coloring to really give it a heavy outline So I just am doing it in a few areas to emphasize it This little fish who I just I love the shape of this fish. He's just so funny with this little antenna I was at first thinking I was going to add the same kinds of highlights on the bottom that bounced light and I was going to do it along that bottom side and then maybe along his upper lip right underneath of his eye as you can see But then I was thinking I'd rather have him look like a flat fish And in order to make him flat the highlight needs to only be on the top so that he doesn't look like he's rounded like the other fish Because the other guy has both highlights So he looks a little chubbier and this guy wanted to make him look skinny So I removed those and since I have the light touch with the pencil. I was able to make that change on the fly That's another reason for trying to be real soft with your pencil marks so that you can go in and adapt a little bit as well With the second color of green just going to add more of the shadows And you can start to see him Flatten out as I work on this because the shadows are going to be fairly flat along the side And then just get dark at the bottom because I don't want a whole lot of Roundness shown on that until it kind of hits that bottom edge With the technique that I use I really do as you can see just go back in over top of things and try to fill in those white spots it's Time-consuming but to me it's worth it There are some people that use gamsol or baby oil or something to blend the color But for me I used to do that for a while and then I decided I liked the look of pencil I like the fact that this looks like something that was drawn with a pencil and it gives the card a different look But I'm going to put this image on Rather than just looking like a copic blended image if I was going to really get it blended I would use my Copics to do that So when I use other mediums, I do try to let the medium shine Now here I'm doing the same thing adding that little dark violet detail and on this eyeball You can see that I did add that white outline around it because his eye is bigger said more room to play His teeth I wasn't sure at first whether or not these were just the upper teeth showing or just the bottom teeth and I realized It was probably both So I gave him a little bit of blue shading and then some random sketchy lines in between the teeth because if I went You know heavily outlined each one. It wouldn't look as dimensional as it does Little more in the fins and the little antenna Yellow and purple in his details and on the antenna I wanted to make that outside edge that little that little fat part look even fatter So I'm going to put a nice highlight on that and there is a little bit of a highlight all along The curve of it as well And I'll add darken that up and add in a little bit darker shadows to really emphasize that So you can see how it really starts to pop when you add some contrast to it I'll do the fins kind of the same way as I did on the other one Just a little bit heavier with the orange give it a slightly different look And if you if you lose your lines again Just remember you can draw them back in because nobody's going to see the stamp lines underneath of this hopefully Well, they won't know whether or not you followed it exactly if you wanted to even Completely change the shape of the tail at this point. You could do that with the pencils Be perfectly fine so now speeding up even a little bit more because This video is going on forever and ever but the same technique for this little pink fish as the one above I love the fact that I made him pink because he's the sort of snarky-looking fish out of these guys I thought he's gonna be a girl So she is the snarky-looking fish here So I'm Developing the shadows or the highlights shall we say on both the left and the right hand side The outside is a sharper edge than the inside so I blended that a little softer And then I'm going in with a darker pink to add some shadows at the bottom But I'll do the same kind of a thing on the upper lip that I did on the fish above To make that recede you can just almost watch it start to sink back into the picture Next up I wanted to make the fins yellow I used a different base yellow, but you could use the same yellow and just use green shadows Instead of orangey shadows and change the color of that But I wanted it to sort of reflect a little bit more of the other colors in this So I'm using the same greens that didn't have any yellow underneath And you can see how different they look when you just have that little bit of yellow Layering underneath of the other color. It just changes the flavor of that green entirely Makes it look even a little bit on the neon side Same technique with the eyes Just gonna go under the bottom edges and then I'll add a few details here and there Just add a little bit of sparkle to it I'll zip through a little bit of this background and what I did was stamp the bubbles You could certainly draw little circles and draw your own bubbles in there But I'm coloring in vertical stripes and not letting them be completed If you were to try to do this entire background and fill it all in it would take forever So I'm giving just a suggestion of it by coloring the negative space around the bubbles And before I got too much further I apparently wanted to kick the camera and I stamped one of the sentiments from the stamp set turned that frown upside down I stamped it at an angle deliberately because I wanted to make it look like this was Floating and hanging down underneath the water. So I gave it a real soft and I Mean like crooked edge didn't even worry about it Don't stress over it and then I drew just a little hook So it's a half circle With a point on the end and then a line going up just to make make it look like this is something that is hanging down from the surface of the water telling these fish not to be unhappy and A little bit of the colors from the card and the rest of the picture into the sign And then I took a little bit darker of a teal color and I emphasized a few areas especially around the sign itself and then around some of the fish areas that I wanted to highlight and If you were to try to go all the way out to the edges again It's gonna be a little bit of a challenge to fill all that in So just let it be sketchy leave some vertical stripes And it almost looks like it's water and the sunlight the dappled sunlight coming through the water. I Finished up my card by die cutting the panel with the Avery L dotted rectangles die to add a little detail And I popped it up on some dimensional adhesive on my card base and called it done Well, okay, I didn't call it completely done because Yeah, that's me. I decided I would decorate the envelope as well and This is going to hopefully start the giggles at the mailbox rather than waiting till she opens the card Because my friend couldn't really use some encouragement I'm celebrating my patreon anniversary this week and wanted to say a huge thank you to all of those who support me and Give me advice and receive goodies in return I love you guys so very much if you're interested in finding out what it is to be a patron and get some bonus content Etc. Then please feel free to click on the link in the description down below or the annotation on the screen and And Finally a few more videos if you're interested in seeing some more the pencil sharpener video on the left We'll talk a little bit more about that sharpener and show you just how pointy they get and there's a couple other Pencil videos since you might be interested in seeing some more you can hit the subscribe button if you would like Find more on the blog you can find more here on my youtube channel lots of playlists for each medium and Yeah, I'll see you guys next time. Take care. Bye. Bye You