 Well, hi there. I'm Sandy Alnok and today I am going to color some beautiful vintage Easter bunnies with my colored pencils. I'm so glad you clicked through to see this video because there's so special stuff in it that I couldn't really figure out how to title it. But I'm going to be using my Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils on drawing paper. So this is the Stonehenge drawing paper that I love to use with pencils. And the cool thing about watercolor pencils is that you can use them as pencils or watercolor pencils. And I'm going to show you some different things that you can do. If you're doing this on drawing paper, you need to use very light water. But if you're using this on watercolor paper, things don't tend to come out so smooth. So one of the benefits of being able to do this on regular paper, drawing paper, is that you can kind of work with a smoother texture paper because watercolor paper is too bumpy for some people, so they don't enjoy it that much. And this is a great way to get that compromise between the two. Because you see how beautiful the texture looks on the rabbit. He looks really cool with pencil texture. And you might decide you want to leave just the pencil texture there. I'm adding a little bit of darker blackish pencil, not completely black, but darker blackish pencil on top of my gray, so that I can actually get a little more contrast in some of the areas. And all of this then looks much more like fur. If you're trying to do this on watercolor paper, that can be a challenge sometimes. For the rest of the image, I'm going to be using the watercolor technique. So I can kind of scribble any old which way don't have to worry a whole lot about the texture that I'm coloring. But I'm going to make him a little green jacket and blue pants. And he is stamped by the way in some MFT gray ink and I stamped it lightly. The one behind the girl bunny, I stamped her even lighter by stamping it off first a couple times. And then being really careful about how much ink went down. So it's not real even in her because I wasn't able to get that super even, but it makes it look like he's in the front and she's in the back. So the focus on this card is him rather than her. If you'd like to switch the focus, then you can of course stamp her darker. But with a barely damp brush, look how nicely that color moves. But I'm not letting any of the water puddle up. If the water puddles up, you're going to get super crinkly paper because this is not made for water. So you want to keep it really, really light and just use a barely, barely damp paintbrush. But coloring like this is really fun because it gives you the kind of the side benefit of being able to blend everything using the using a little bit of water instead of having to use the color pencil blending techniques you might use with regular colored pencils because the water sometimes gives it a different look. So now I'm going to color the girl and I was waiting on coloring the baskets so that I could figure out what both baskets would look like at the same time. So I wanted to have them have matchy, matchy baskets. And with the girl, I'm starting with a lighter gray. And since I want her to look like she's more in the background, I'm not using the super dark color for the shadow. I'm going to use a lighter gray. So I'm going to just use a couple steps back on all of the grays on her so that she doesn't end up as contrasty as the one in the foreground. Because that's just going to make her look like she's a little bit further back. And you could do this even if you don't do the lighter stamping, you can make something look like it's further back by just making it lighter that way. She's going to have a different bunch of colors, but their eggs are going to tie them together because I'm going to put the same color eggs in both of their baskets so that that's going to pull the color harmony together on the entire card so that it's all matchy, matchy. And one of the things I discovered as I was coloring this is that when you have an image like this that has a lot of little parts to it, it's really easy to forget some of the little places. So there's like a little part of her apron that I caught later on, but you sometimes don't catch those things until after you start filling in all the colors. So I've done all the coloring on all of her and then I can just go over it with my brush again just using very light water doing all the yellows first and then I can move into the the reds and the the pinks and things. If the colors are related you don't have to wash your brush in between, but if they're not related you want to wash your brush so you're not carrying color from one area to another and just kind of soften out the blending on all of those areas. This will also dry really quickly, it drives much faster than kind of using some heavier watercolor might. I decided to see what the difference would be, would she look like she's more in the background if I used water on her fur as well because in the background when you see something further away you're not going to see the detail in the fur. So I kind of liked that and that gave her a little softer look, color my couple of baskets and then I wanted to start working a little bit on adding some more depth because I didn't get any depth. I got that nice depth in the the boy bunny on his fur, but I didn't get anything there on my pencils or with my pencils in the clothing that he's wearing. So I'm experimenting and even though I give you the colors over on the the blog, give me the list if you're looking to replicate the colors, but I am playing with them. I found this first color didn't give me enough contrast, so I switched to a darker one and that's what I encourage you to do. Just try the colors you have, don't go oh my goodness what it's any use panic and try to use exactly what I've got. Just play with the colors you have and see how they work. You can even test them out on a scratch sheet to see if they give you enough contrast, but look how much nicer that looks since I added the contrast. Now here's a place where I experimented and it did not go so well. I used that kind of weird green it ended up looking like a little bit electric green, but I went in with the same dark blue that I use that adds again that color harmony so it matches some of the the rest of his outfit and I'm going to have his jacket end up just being a couple different tones of greens because that's how it went, but it you know it doesn't bother me all that much it's just one of those things where I learned maybe I should test my colors so I do recommend that to you. I also ended up putting some shadows under their feet so it looks like they're standing on something there's a really strong light coming from the right hand side got that from the a lot of people are starting to enjoy the casting shadows class so I hope you're seeing more people do some amazing shading on their cards. I did decide to put a little bit of water on the darkest of the gray colors on the bunny because I wanted to make them a little stronger and the water will actually increase the contrast on those a little bit. I added some contrast now to the girl bunny I wanted to have her stand out a little bit more and add some shadow underneath of her bonnet so it looks like her bonnet is a little more dimensional and then going over that again with a little bit of water just enough to smooth that out and keep her a little softer in the background. She is going to need a little bit more detail work because I did stamp her so lightly that I'm going to want to go back in and fix her eye and make sure you can see that just a few areas of detail on her but even adding the shading there made a huge difference in making her pop just a little bit more and then she's still in the background that way adding some contrast now onto the baskets so they can look dimensional more of the dark brown on the basket in the foreground because that pulls that whole thing up to the very front so that it's clear he's close up and of course he had to have a yellow cummerbund there and now for just a little tiny bit of detail added onto my girl bunny just her eyes and a few of the darkest places where a couple spots on her will actually be a little bit darker. My finished card I just did some die cutting so that I could get a beautiful stitched edge and did a little paper layering to pull out some of the colors that were in my coloring already and that ribbon was a really fun technique well I shouldn't say technique it's just a way to tie ribbon I folded the yellow ribbon across and I did not make a knot in it but I tied it down with a piece of really super thin twine so it's super flat in the mail but there's no knot in it which is really helpful when you try to not pay the extra postage to get something to go through the mail it has a lump in it so there you go that's my video for you today I hope you will try something like this with some of your stamps especially for Easter cards because they're really fun to do in a vintage style and I will see you guys again in the next video have a wonderful day go make something beautiful