 Well, hello there, Sandy Alnock here, and I want to share some colored pencil shading with you and a sketch that will be posted over on my blog. I wanted to color this really cute little stamp set called Huggable from Reverse Confetti, and I got out my pencils, but I didn't really have an idea in mind for colors. So I went to this stack of things that I had collected when I went to a paint store recently, which was Paint Store Trends, and all different kinds of people try to set trends for the year, and this is the book from Bear, V-E-H-R, and I chose to go with the colors that are in this particular little scene. I liked the yellow chair with the yellow wall and the gray as an overall color with a little pop of green, and just the combination, the ratio of those colors was really nice, and then I also saw this little flower picture, and that was inspiring to me as well. I wanted to have that dark green with the light green, and I went through their little color chart, and I just looked for colors near that on my Prismacolor hex chart. Really simple way to choose some colors would be just to find what somebody else says goes together. So I chose to start by coloring the heart. This is an odd pink color that I never would have chosen on my own, and it was kind of fun to just see what something else looked like, and I've done this on some other videos. When I go with somebody else's color combination, it just shakes up my thinking a little bit, and if you're completely stumped, it's a great little thing to have. So next time you're at a paint store or the hardware store that has a paint department, just check out the brochures I have and pick one up and put it in your stash for inspiration at some point. Now, the coloring that I did here, I left some highlights, and then I dipped a blending stump into this little cup that I have. It's a little container. I think I got them as makeup containers on the internet somewhere, and I put a cotton ball in there and then poured the fluid in for the Gamsol blending solution, and that just keeps it from spilling. So if I knock it over, because I am famous for knocking things over in my studio, at least that keeps it from spilling and making messes. For the rest of the color here, the little outfit I decided to make the light green, and then I wanted to add some dark green to it, but I didn't want to add the dark green until I got the light green smoothed out. So I did that first, and when you add a color on top of something that's already been blended with a blending solution, the color actually goes on more densely. I've often wondered if I just covered an area with the Gamsol first before doing any coloring, what would happen, and maybe I'll have to try that sometime, but it tends to prep the paper in some way that makes it more intense when it goes on. I wanted to add some shading to the little outfit on the left-hand side, and then right underneath the heart. I ended up actually going with my black pencil underneath the heart to really make it pop away from the little bear's arms in this outfit. And next comes the rest of the coloring of the bear, and that's all going to be done with this dark gray pencil. I said black earlier, but it's actually a dark gray. If you look at the color list, and the color list still picture is posted over my blog, so that if you want to pick up these colors and try them yourself, you can certainly do that. And so I'm going to color around the outside edges really hard pressure with the pencil, not like, you know, hurting myself kind of hard but heavy pressure, and then lighter pressure on the rest, getting lighter and lighter toward the right-hand side where the light would be coming from, so that I have more color on the left-hand side, and then right under his chin and on the left-hand side of the snout, if I put a little shadow that's going to make those a little bit darker. Adding the blending solution with the blending stump, then you can see really smooth things out. This paper that I'm using is a drawing paper. You can also use something like a hot-press watercolor paper. It's, you know, approximately the same thing. It's not drawing paper, but it's close, and will allow you to get some really nice, rich textures on it. I've used Nina before, which is what I normally use for lots of my other coloring, but I do find that Nina is a little bit on the smooth side, so the hot-press watercolor paper or drawing paper is just a little softer, and it just receives or accepts more of the pencil pigment, so you can get more intense color. Finish up his little arms and his little legs, and then he is a black bear. You could, of course, make him a brown bear or a polar bear, whatever you would like. I just like making black bears. And then the grass that I wanted to put around him, I wanted to make grass that's like the stuff that was in the picture that I was inspired by, so I put a layer first of the light green down and blended that, and then I added, on top of that, after it was all blended, I added some darker green and added the flowers. And notice that on that left-hand side there's a bluish of black. It's because I didn't scribble off on scrap paper with my blending stump first, so I ended up getting a little black on there, but I wasn't worried about it because I was going to be putting this really dark green as the shadows underneath here, so that I could make that real contrasty, like, flowery garden thing that was in the picture, because I really liked the intensity of that. And I really do like the little touches of yellow that this adds into my little vignette scene on this card. If you're interested in more information on how to color with colored pencils, there is a colored pencil jumpstart class, which is really excellent and teaches you how to do some basic shading, lots of different blending techniques, et cetera. So there will be a link in the doobly-doo to the colored pencil classes. And there's a sketch also and a little more detail on how I put the card together and where I got the sentiments and stuff from over on the blog, if you're interested in that portion. And I will see you guys again very soon. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, click that like button. It really helps out the channel. Share it with your friends if you'd like. And I will be back, of course, within a couple of days with another video, because that's how I roll. See you later. Bye-bye.