 Hello there, it's Sandy and I'm going to talk about going from cartoon to reality a little bit. I'm going to use a stamp set from MFT and I'm going to choose one of these critters. They're doing all different kinds of crafting, but one in particular is doing some painting, which is what I would like to be doing right now instead of doing computer voiceovers, that color this raccoon and talk about transforming it by looking at actual photos of raccoons because when stamp designers draw things they draw simplified shapes. They try to make it easier for you to color whether you're painting or using markers and some of these shapes are not what I'm seeing in the stamps so I'm going to change some of them and you can do that depending on the colors that you're using for the image itself. You need to use dark enough colors that they can counteract the weight of the black lines or stamp it in a lighter ink, so you can do that. I started by creating a shadow for the whole head. Sometimes that's easier than thinking through where all the shadows will be on all those other parts, so if you put that shadow down first then it just tells you when I do this section of the eyes the shadow is going to be on the bottom left side of that when I go in with the black later and same with the color on the top of the head, but those two lines across the top of the head I didn't like where they were. I wanted thinner white areas above the black eyes so I'm going to use some other colors to counterbalance all of that dark that's in those lines that are running right through that warm gray color. For the eyes I'm going to use my tip of my marker to create just some very very lacy edges. That's going to make them look furrier so that it looks more huggable because that's always a good thing. Add in some shadow colors and I will add the eyes back in with a pen later and the ears in and then start working on the top of the head. The direction that you would go for any of the lines you're trying to make to create fur. Think about if you were taking a comb or a brush and brushing the top of a raccoon's head and you would go from the front to the back of the head so that's the direction that you put the lines for the fur whatever that direction is and what I do is start off with a little darker color go in with maybe one or two numbers down in a in the same kind of colors but a little bit just slightly darker. I made that right around the top of the head leaving some bounce light on the very top and then putting a little more down the center because I saw some markings on that raccoon picture that showed a little bit darker in the middle and then used an even lighter color to start to soften some of those other areas so it didn't look like I just had lines all over the raccoon. But I did notice this one has a few markings on it that I could try to mimic a little bit because there's areas where the top section joins the eyes area and I can do that with markers and notice how those lines that were already on the head have disappeared because they're covered up by these other dark colors so you need to have an animal that you're coloring in dark enough hues or else just switch to stamping in a much lighter type of ink either a no-line ink or a light gray of some kind. For the tail I'm going to do the same thing as I did with the head put the shadow in first but this time I decided to put some warm gray and then cool gray and then start working on the stripes and the stripes I'm going to do in the same colors as the eyes the body is all in the same colors as the top of the head and got all that of course from the photograph with the raccoon you could actually use some browns in there too lots of different things you can do but when we're talking about a stamp this is a very tiny animal and it's really hard to get some of those details in such a fine area so I try to just go for something that's going to make it more realistic than the stamp had begun in the first place and then I'll add some white highlights onto the tail all these little lines are making everything look fuzzier and then I'll look at the picture again to see the same colors on the body that were on the top of the head so I'm going to use those same marker colors to do that while I do the rest of the coloring I thought I'd engage in some story time I haven't had story time here in a while and story time of my life right now is oh my gosh the heat it has been crazy hot we've had a crazy hot spell a couple of times throughout the spring season and now it is full on summer crazy hot and I don't do well in the heat and we are actually in triple digits yes triple I'm in a place where when I moved in 10 no 20 years oh my gosh has it been over 20 years yeah it's been over 20 years when I first moved here we had maybe 10 days of really solid heat and I mean solid heat like low to mid 90s was hot for us so nobody really had air conditioning I don't have air conditioning I still don't some people have added it because over these last bunch of years the climate change has gone nuts so's and made everything so much hotter so a lot of people have done the investment I just keep thinking it's kind of get better it can't get worse and it's getting worse I can't afford unfortunately to overhaul everything and put in the whole duct system and all that that I need and my house does not have rooms that accommodate having an in window type of air conditioner so I'd have to do restructuring and rebuilding putting walls in and stuff in order to use an air conditioner and that doesn't happen either so I spent a lot of time in the dark I sit in the dark and I try to work on my phone or do some sketches under very low light or that sort of thing because I can't have all the big lights on and the house just gets too hot the studio has gotten in the last couple days up to 87 degrees inside which is crazy and one of the reasons that there is not a full video of this entire scene we only have the grasses it's because of the heat so you're going to get to see the finished card but not the how it was colored the grasses here by the way if you are interested in learning how to make more of these kind of clumped grasses take the Copic enchantment class that one has a lot on it in grasses and trees I am planning in coming six eight months something whenever whenever I get all my schedule nailed down to do more of the enchantment type of series of classes with more elements that we can start adding to them so having the first Copic enchantment is going to be good for you if you're looking to do some epic scenes and I mean epic is in terms of really more interesting trees than you might have been thinking you could do with Copics as well as fantastic skies on my social media I've been sharing a lot that have crazy wild amazing skies in them and even though I'm not doing tutorials with them I'm learning how to do them and trying to experiment until I have enough to do a class and be able to show you how to do those so Copic enchantment would be a good start for that and hopefully sometime during I don't know I'm hoping during July if it cools off a little bit then my plan to release three new classes will come to fruition and if you want to be the first notified then go to our dash classes dot com and click on this the subscription in the menu because that list is going to be the first one to be informed if my classes go live these are going to be a colored pencil a Copic and a watercolor all coloring ocean waves so it's going to be one form or another of that I have not filmed them yet again I'm waiting for the heat to break hoping that happens in July because it's World Watercolor Month and I want to have everybody coloring water and those are going to be advanced classes so they're not going to be just making a card we're going to make be making a large drawing or painting and so you need to be at that level but sign up for the email list because I will be sending out a note to those folks first to find out about the class and hopefully of course notifying all of YouTube that it is available as well but whether has to cool off so cross your fingers that mother nature relents because she's driving me nuts right now so here is the finishing of the grasses at least you get to see that much appearing a card with just these grasses and nothing in the sky would even be amazing but when I added the sky and this big beautiful tree it was just magical and I'm really enjoying creating these kinds of very dreamy scenes and that's what I want to build a few more classes around doing that sort of thing but first hopefully I'm going to get to those water ones for World Watercolor Month because I'm raising money and you'll hear about that in a vlog that's coming in a couple of days so stay tuned for that and yeah I will see you again soon y'all take care stay cool I hope we all stay cool and I'll see you soon I'm melting over here bye