 Hi there, it's Sandy Alnok and today I'm going to show you how to use markers and pencils to draw some mercury glass in the form of a vintage ornament and it sparkles and shines in the light. Let's get started. I have always loved anything vintage and especially when it comes to Christmas ornaments, all those old vintage glass ones that my grandma used to have, they had like two balls on them connected and then a point at the bottom, they had all kinds of elegant shapes to them. Well I decided I wanted to draw one so I got out just a simple compass, you could also use like shot glasses or something, find things that are round that you could trace and then give it a circle top so it has something to tie on with and a point of some kind on the bottom. For the things that go around, those little divots that they put in these glass things, there are some that are like triangles, very complicated shapes, but I'm just going to stay with straight lines down the front of the ornament, but they go around. It's kind of like the globe, you know the globe has curled lines as it goes around, you want to do the curled lines that are wider in the middle, those shapes are wider in the center and closer together around the outside edge and it starts to make it look like it's rounded. But I marked off where the highlight would be if say there were a big rectangular picture window reflecting on this ornament if it was flat, but it's not flat, it's going to have all these grooves in it that go down the ornament and that's what I kind of sketched in with my lines first. I'm using an R43, I'm going to darken it with lots of other colors, but I wanted to kind of sketch it in without committing too much so a lighter color allows me not to have to make a decision that I'm going to regret later. So I'm going to leave a few other spots open with white. When you're coloring something that's going to be red, it's easier to leave the white open if you can because it's really hard to have a medium that's going to cover it completely and not bleed through. So leave it white if you're able. So I've left that rectangular shape on both sections so that those are going to be the focus of where those highlights are and I've left a couple other little dots, little places. I can take them away if I decide I don't need them later, but I just wanted to maybe have something in there for a little tiny highlight from something else that's reflecting on it. So now commitment. R89 is commitment. It's a nice dark red marker and I'm just putting the grooves in. Again, with the center ones being wider as it moves out to the outside edge, they get closer together because they're going around the back. That's called perspective. If you missed my pumpkin perspective lesson, you might want to go back and see that. I'll put a link in the doobly-doo so you don't don't miss out on that one because I talked a lot about perspective on round objects like that. Same principle applies here. So I'm going to do the same thing in the top section and the bottom section. For now, I'm just indicating where those grooves are in the glass as they move down the whole ornament. The bottom, I'm just going to kind of throw in some lines. Not really too worried about it. The section at the top, it's like a donut. You're going to put the shadow on the left side of both halves of it. And then comes the creative part. I was looking at a couple of pictures of some mercury glass and you could see some really dark areas within it and then medium areas and light areas inside the glass because it's hollow. So I wanted to have those spaces kind of appearing. And the only way I could figure out to do it was to take an R37, a medium tone, and start to darken in some sections just to figure out where the heck those dark spots would be on my ornament. I wasn't following anything exactly, but you can look up some online if you want and just put in mercury ornament and whatever color and shape you're trying to do and follow it. But what I noticed, there was just, you know, a lot of red showing through. But then there were some really, really dark areas. And I was trying to make sure that the areas I left open were the areas that I wanted to have some light shining through. And that's where the pink and the white come in. Those are going to be the pops of highlight. And I can still take away more and more of them as I go. But I'm just going to build that slowly. It's, you know, like I said, it's easier to leave it now than to try to paint it back in later. With something else. You can use like a pH Martin's bleed proof white, but even that on red, anything tends to bleed through eventually. So now I took an R05 and started knocking back some of the pink because I didn't want this to feel like a pink ornament. I wanted it to feel like a red one. But I left a few of those little slivers on the right-hand side of each of those sections, those ribbed sections. I left those just that sliver of pink. So I have just a little bit there. And then I decided, okay, I'm getting out the black marker and I'm going for it. And I went bold. And I started putting in some of those deep, rich shadows. The reason I think they're there, I don't know the science of it necessarily, but I think of them as like the really thick parts of glass. If you look at glass, the areas that you're going to see the darkest sections often is when you're looking through several layers of glass. And like at the bottom of glass that has a thick bottom and thick sides that all meet, that's often where you get some of those deep dark colors. And this glass is thicker than regular glass, I guess. I'm not really sure how it's made. And what the difference is, I just know it's pretty. So I started then softening some of those edges because it was a little too harsh. I wanted a little bit of blending. So I started feathering out from some of those black edges into the red areas and using the pencil, since I had the ability to make small fine cracks in some of those ribbed sections, I could add that kind of detail with a pencil that I can't get with a marker. So it's sometimes helpful to work back and forth between the two. If you're coloring with pencil and you wanna go over it with marker, just make sure you scribble off on a piece of scrap paper after you're done because the pencil is gonna potentially damage the nib of your marker. So I tend to save the pencil part for last so that I'm not planning on putting marker on top of it. So then the black felt really bold, nice and bold and yet maybe too bold. So I grabbed a scarlet pencil and I started coloring over all of it to try to bring all of it now back to a red ornament. I wanted it to feel like it was all kind of one red but I wanted the red to have darks and lights in it. If I had just tried to use this red pencil, I wouldn't have been able to do that because the red pencil only has one depth to it and it would only be just little tiny shades of a pinkish to a reddish color. But when I do it over all these other colors, I've got all of that coming through but there's a slight opacity to the pencil that really helps in kind of lightening up some of the dark areas and darkening some of the light areas. I was also able to go in and break up some of the white highlights, that white section because this glass is so, I don't know, lumpy. It's kind of just, it's imperfect with all those ribs and edges in it and so it has a lot of reflections and grooves and things. And of course then I had to go back and add more black. You know me, I have to make sure I haven't lost all my contrast and I was making sure that the area where the two globes join is rounded in those corners because glass doesn't end up being pointed that way or else it would break. So you want rounded shapes in there and then all I had to do was add a bow. So I drew a very simple bow and then just thickened up, you know, had some thick, thin sides to them so that it looked more like a ribbon that was twirling and getting thinner and thicker as it spun around. So I, you know, think this is a really great project for a card, for a journal page, you know, for a scrapbook page for Christmas. You can make decorations out of this, make one of these and just frame it in the hallway. It would just be absolutely gorgeous. Not pretty, just so, so, so pretty and so quick. I got it done really quickly. So anyway, thank you so much for joining me. I'll see you again next week. I'm planning some spectacular fun. I've got an extra bonus video that I hope you will enjoy and I will see you then. Have a great weekend. Bye guys.