 Hi there. I'm Sandy. Welcome to my YouTube channel. And before I get started coloring today, I want to share a little excitement over on Ellen Hudson's YouTube and blog. I'm part of the Meet the Maker series that has just begun. And you'll get to know a little bit about me over there and how I work my thought processes and stuff on the video. I'll talk to you a little bit about what you do when you don't have any mojo left, because I've got some suggestions on that. There's also a sale going on just for two days on Colorado Craft Company stamps at Ellen's site. And I've got a coupon code for classes. So if you want to get a class and you want a discount, then go over there, because that's the only place where the coupon code exists. And it's all just for a few days. So if you're not here during these days, then you've missed out on the opportunity. Sorry about that. But there is still coloring to be had. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about how do you get started when you create? What do you do? And for me, sometimes I come to whatever the project is that I'm going to be working on with a specific idea in mind. I look at my calendar, because a lot of times I have things that have to be done for a particular day. And I try to rotate my mediums. So there's sometimes when I know that that day is going to be a Copic day, or that day is going to be a watercolor day, just because of the rotation. Other times, though, I don't really know what day it's going to post. I just know I want to use a particular stamp set, or I want to do a particular technique, or sometimes I don't want to use a stamp set at all. And I just want to get out a blank piece of paper. I just go with whatever the gut says to do. Because if I don't have Mojo for the medium, I'm in trouble. And if I'm on one of those days when I have to use this stamp set, and I have to use Copics, and I don't feel in a Copic mood, I put that off. And that really helps when I work as far ahead as I do, because it's yeah, sometimes I just have to wait a couple of days for the Mojo to come back. And once I get going on that, and I stamp the image off center in some way, usually, because if I try to put it right in the middle, it blocks whatever scene is coming out. If I leave space around it, and leave some room either at the top so that there's a tall scene coming, or there's something off camera so that the figure is not right dead set in the middle, then usually that starts the ideas going for telling myself a story about what the stamp is doing, what else is happening so I can create a scene for it. So that's a little bit about how I get started. And with that, let's get started on today's project. I was flipping through this sketchbook recently, and I saw this scene, and I had done it on YouTube previously, and thought I wanted to use it with this stamp set. It's a Valentine stamp set by Colorado Craft, but you can use it for other things, because it's just bunnies in love. It can be in love anytime. And you could stamp it without the background, the ground that's underneath of it by simply wiping off the stamp while it's got the wet ink on it, and then just stamp it without them. But here I'm using the version that had it with the flowers. Just to show you, you can do that. Just put lots of other plants and greens and grasses and stuff. Even if you're doing a fall scene, there's going to be some remnants of things left over, little twigs and that sort of stuff. I'm using different colors than I used in the tutorial, because guess what? You can use different colors. You don't have to use the same colors. And if you get any color from the cotton ball work onto the bellies of the rabbits, it's real easy to get rid of with a Tombow eraser. And this is my bigger one, but there's also a teeny tiny one and a flat one that Tombow makes. So I will link all three of those in the doobly-do in case you need an eraser like that, a stick eraser. It's just a really good thing to have when you're working with color pencil, because you can get into a really controlled area quite nicely. So now I'm going to do a Christmas version or a winter version of this particular scene. So I'm flipping it left to right, so I put the bunnies on the left, and the tree will be on the right. But I'm going to use some soft colors for the background. There's two different very, very, very, very, very light blues in the Prismacolor collection. The ones that are in the Polychromos are just not this light. And I love the fact that there are two of them, because one is desaturated, which is the one I'm using now. There's also a saturated. And desaturated just means it's a gray or blue. So I'm going to have a different kind of blue in the very distant background than I do in the foreground, which is going to help to pull different parts to the front of the scene, and then push other parts to the back of the scene. So this is the second color. And you can see a little bit of that color difference here. It'll appear much more when you start seeing the Gamsol with it, but you could leave it just with this color itself and not go crazy with the Gamsol, because that does make it quite bright. But I'm adding some shadows in another blue. I just had picked out a couple of blues that I thought would work together just to see how they go. I test things out all the time. I never know whether something's going to really work until I try it. So if you're ever wondering, you know, Sandy's put out something and she didn't have a color listed for such and such, just try something that's easy enough to do. I'm using my Gamsol, which is in a little container so that I can touch a cotton ball to a cotton ball and then control how much liquid I pull out of it. And the top part, the background part, I use the cotton ball, but I did not use it with Gamsol, just so you know. But I can rub on top of this pencil that's been drawn on with the pencil itself. It doesn't have to be done with the tea strainer, which is how I did the background. You could just do it by going over pencil itself. And then I added some detail to it. I wanted it to look like these two bunnies came running from different places and met in the forest. So I'm making footprints in the snow that you can see. They get bigger as they get closer and further apart as they get closer. So the ones in the distance under their feet are going to be a little bit tighter and closer together and smaller. And they'll be more of the size of their paws. And then I wanted to make a couple little hillsides off in the distance. So I've darkened the base of it and I'll put some darker color for little branches sticking out. And you can use several blues for this, make it look more interesting, that kind of thing. I'm putting the background in first because I am going to add that big tree in. But I wanted the background part to be there first so that the tree can be dropped on top of it. If you're going to do like a white birch tree, then you'll want to color around it so you can have that white birch base. But I started off with a brown color. This is the color that I'll be using for the rabbits. And I also used a blue with it. So I'm going to add blue both on top of the brown. So it starts to brown that out. And some of the branches will be in blue. Some of the branches will be in the brown. And that just gives us a little more interest. And then a few random leaves that are just left still hanging onto the tree because they have not escaped to the ground quite yet. And it's a matter of the rabbits finishing those guys up. And I'm going to use the same colors for both of them. I'm just going to put more of the darker color on one rabbit than the other so that they don't look like they're identical rabbits. Now I don't know whether rabbits look at each other's color and say, oh, you're my breed, you're not my breed, or you're my, you know, like, do all breeds have the same amount of brown on them? I don't know. I don't know enough about them. But I wanted them to look a little different so that they could be in love and not be accidental brother and sister. So I'm using a lighter kind of color in order to create a secondary hue of bunny on the left. And I'm using a little bit of that lighter color on the bunny on the right so that they both share colors just in different amounts. So maybe that keeps them as the same breed. And yet they're different enough that you can tell the difference between them. They don't look all the same. I overthink things. I know, I told you, I tell myself stories about the stamps and I just got into a weird place with this one. So there you go. Using my Uniball Signo pen for the snow. And it doesn't show up much on that really soft background, but it does show up on the darker snow in the foreground. So another plug for putting enough contrast in your snow that you can actually have the falling snow show up on it. You could use these same colors to create the tutorial that I did over on Ellen Hudson's channel with Copic markers, but you could use these colors to create it in pencil if you would like. And you can also go pick up on her website the coupon code to use for a Colorado Craft Company sale for just today and tomorrow. And a sale on my classes all week long. So all of that's on Ellen's blog. I will see you guys later. Take care. Have a wonderful and most awesome day. Yeah, I'll see you again next week with some more creativity. Bye guys.