 Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube, and today I got my Inktense pencils out and some MFT stamps for a lesson packed with tips. First the supplies, I had the little doctor and nurse from MFT and you can stamp them in either direction, left or right, and they will interact differently and you can see a different orientation of them on the blog. Inktense pencils, this is my set that I have and I swatched out a few colors that I thought I might use. Got out my quiet sharp pencil sharpener that sucker needs empty big time and my brushes. There's a 12 and an 8 and the 8 is the one I use the most in paper crafting so I think that is the one I will be using throughout this entire video. So there are the colors and I don't use them all in this but I decided for some skin tone one would start with a 1720 and one would start with a 1740 and see how that goes. I stamped one of them, the one on the left is on the Kansen XL and the one on the right is on Arches cold press and I wanted kind of a direct comparison of the two. I knew that the Kansen XL cold press and they still call it cold press in some on some websites that that paper is a student grade paper and it's I don't know if it's not made of maybe as much cotton as the other one but the regular Kansen cold press has a bumpier texture to it. You can feel the cotton, it's a much softer surface but it's bumpier and it's just more fibrous. You can really tell the difference when you touch the two of them but I know that for a lot of people who have trouble with watercolor pencils and watercolor sometimes the cheaper paper is easier and sometimes it's harder and I wanted to have a real direct comparison to see both of them. So I did my coloring onto their skin tones just to see that I got both of them about the same with the same colors and then using my brush to apply the water I'm pushing the color toward the shadow area and allowing that to be kind of that's where my brush ends so it doesn't dump a lot of color in the highlight area and the little girl I put the pink in before I started applying anything. Sometimes we try to put the pink in afterward in the cheeks if you want pink and that can end up actually being a little bloopy on top but if you end up doing it while you're water coloring it and while you're doing your original coloring it sort of blends in a little bit nicer. The XL paper is easier for blending you don't end up having to work at it quite as hard and you'll see the difference as we go but the Kansen XL paper also takes the color differently and here you can see it's a different tone on the one on the right-hand side on the arches cold press. The reason for this I think this is the reason for this is because of the texture of the paper. The cold press will hold more of the color on the paper itself because it has those nooks and crannies to hold it all in there and it also scrapes more off of your pencil because it's got all those bumps on it if that makes sense and it's just going to hold things differently than the smoother paper. The smoother paper however is going to give you less of those little bumps and for some people trying it on that will work better and it's entirely up to you what you decide you want to do on your cards. If you have both papers try them out and see just see what the difference is but I found throughout this whole project all the coloring that I did the colors were definitely richer on the arches cold press even if some of them blended more easily on the Kansen XL. So I put that out there for you to just think about whatever you're interested in doing or what your struggles are. If you want that color to be really rich then use your your cold press paper instead and look at the difference in that one I mean it's not that much more pencil you saw when I colored them I didn't press really hard on that one but look how much more color is on the cold press than was on the Kansen XL. I even can take my brush and lift off some of that so that the face doesn't get too dark. One of the big differences you'll be able to see here too is in her little outfit her little nurses scrubs and the kinds of color I mean even just look at the color on the paper and then look at the color on on the Kansen XL versus the arches it looks purplier it just has this look because of that surface it is going to be about the same color when we start watercoloring it but that is one of the reasons for the difference between them is is the texture of that paper and again it will be easier to to blend it over here on the XL but a lot more of that pigment is going to leave the paper and be on my brush so you're going to see how much lighter that one's going to come out than the one on the other paper same as the skin tones on the face and that sort of thing and so I'll just spread that color around a little bit and you can compensate for this of course if you want darker richer color by putting more pigment on the Kansen XL and trying to be more intentional about really loading it up with color you get a similar effect with other brands of watercolor pencil but I find that I have the most trouble with these inktense pencils and trying to water them out a little bit more completely because they tend to hold the lines more so the ones that I find that I like the best I think are the Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils they just seem to work really great for me and there's a video either just happened recently or coming up soon with a fine art piece that I did in the Albrecht Durer so you'll be able to see what those look like on cold press so finishing coloring out these guys you probably noticed I did her shoes a little bit I used the pink the paint or the pigment that was already on my brush to add pigment to her shoes rather than actually coloring any on there and I'll do the same thing here with the shadows on the jacket I already have color on my brush and so I can get this really soft grayish color to put shadows on a white coat by picking up pigment from the pants that are there because the pants are really heavily laden with color and while they're still wet I can pick up some of that color and use it almost like a little palette and so rather than jumping up to do the hair right now I decided to do the jacket because the pants were still wet and I was waiting on doing the hair by the way so that I didn't end up touching the hair and having it bleed into the faces so just tried to jump around to different areas of the picture and I'll have some dark hair for the little boy I'll do some lighter hair for the little girl of course he needed a nice dark tie to go with his nice dark pants and notice how that dark color makes the white jacket pop and be more of a white jacket because it's got that contrast same thing with his pants if he was wearing white pants his he wouldn't be standing out much at all he would just be disappearing into the paper I used a dark bark brown for his hair and gonna watercolor that out and again the same thing with the other the other colors it's just gonna be much richer and darker on the right hand side on that at Canson arches Canson arches I can't they own both of them so I try not to use the word Canson when I'm using the word arches because it gets confusing Canson XL and Canson arches are both manufactured by the same folks so I used the lighter colors some of the color that was used on her face for her hair as well just in different proportions and again it will get much darker on the one on the right hand side and it takes a little more scrubbing sometimes to get the color to fully move and get rid of some of those little little bits if you struggle with some of those little bits not watering out let them sit for just a second don't let it completely dry and then go back and try to move the color again scrub around because sometimes just that water will allow it to break up a little bit and here's another one of those areas where you're going to be able to see the difference between the two papers and how they react by looking at this shadow that I'm putting behind them drawing the shadow out from their feet going out behind them and then creating a shadow that kind of has the shape of that shoe and then just goes off into the distance in a very generic kind of flat shape behind the two of them but look at how dark this one's going to get just immediately it is much richer in color than on the kanson xl the last finishing touches since i now have some of that black pigment still left on my brush is to add a shadow here on the left side of the jacket which i realized i had forgotten and trying to pick up some color the one on the left dried too much by then so i picked up some from the card on the right helpful to have two cards going at once and then just threw a tiny bit of that color onto the clipboard itself finished off the card by die cutting it with an a2 stitch die from mft putting it on some pink card stock and then i also decided to stamp the card with the opposite orientation of the two little doctor and nurse so you can see how they interact differently whether you're doing the left to right or right to left and that card as well as all the other cards are over on the blog all that good stuff as always if you need to pin something to your pinterest page to remember it and i will see you guys again later have a really awesome day go out and make something beautiful and i will see you later on thanks bye bye