 Well, hi everybody, it's Sandy. Welcome to my YouTube channel. Today we're gonna color a nighttime cityscape. I've done similar things to this both on cards on my blog and on Magical Monday, but I haven't actually talked through them So I'm gonna talk through at least a bit of this as much as I can for this video And I want to apologize if you hear jingling of a collar or some heavy purring. That's my kitty Suki She's got her head actually laying on the computer here while I'm doing my voiceover and she's kind of distracting me But she does not seem to want to give up and this is many attempts later into doing a voiceover for this So I am using a brand new stamp from stamping Bella and her name is Haley. Isn't she awesome? She's just got the the serious superhero stance and She has a friend with her that I'm introducing her to because I thought she and Parker the pig needed to meet Parker the pig is also from stamping Bella drawn by Christine Grove and he's just so dang cute that I felt the two of them needed to be friends So I introduced them and they are going to take over the world together I'm doing this on a five by seven card five by seven because I want to have more room to do My crazy background on this one and it's also a card for my niece My niece my second of two nieces is graduating from high school And this is her graduation card But it's a little more of a go out and take over the world kind of card because that's what I think she's ready to do She is really into protecting the environment and I think she's gonna just go change the world I really do think she's going to because she's one determined young lady So I am coloring these two characters in the traditional red blue and yellow primary colors for superheroes And I'm just laying down my first coat of each one of them with the lightest color That's kind of my routine as you know and I'm going to add my shading and I'll talk a little bit about some new colors that I've used as I'm doing this because one of the things that's really changing for me as well as I keep hearing it's changing everybody's coloring is the hex chart and There will be a link in the doobly-doo if you want to go see the hex chart I did a video on it recently just a few days ago with another Stamping Bell image and showed you how I was using it but I just want to talk through it this time because there are some colors that I picked that I wouldn't have if I Didn't have the hex chart in front of me and that's with me knowing all that I know So it was kind of fun to discover that even I am learning like massive things while I'm Creating hex charts and things like you would think I would know these colors inside out and I somewhat do I have a real good gut instinct For what colors that I want to pick and I know which ones blend But looking at the chart just shows me some Interesting different things that I might not normally have thought about and that's really helpful So I'm adding her little details and now I wanted to go in and add a dark shadow I'm gonna have seriously strong lighting like seriously severe strong lighting on this so I wanted to use a color for the shadow inside the cape and Let that left-hand side look like it's fluttering out into the light But the rest of it is gonna be good and dark and I'm using RV 9 9 instead of my usual R 8 9 If you watch a lot of my videos, you know R 8 9 is one of my favorite colors I'm gonna use it with this so you're gonna be able to see how the two work together This one is darker and duller than the R 8 9 So it's gonna give me just a little bit extra depth That I wouldn't be able to get if I was using just the R 8 9 I'm even coloring over the RV just because it's a little bit on the not so red side But you can see there is a difference between those two colors It's just very subtle and then I used another red to blend all that together and soften it and Look at how that cape looks like it's fluttering into the light The light is gonna be coming from that be your own hero of sentiment And you'll see how that plays out in a few minutes But I'm kind of trying to keep my eye on that as I'm doing my shading so that I keep the light parts out to that side and I'm not having super highlights on her right side because Parker is blocking the light from her So I'm going to color the stockings I was going to do some stockings with white stripes in them or different colored stripes But hello, Suki Kitty kitty. I decided I wanted to have something a little less prominent because Anything that's gonna be light colored in this is gonna really stand out like a sore thumb And I don't mean sore thumb in a bad way, but it's gonna stand out like crazy And I don't want her legs to be the thing that get attention I want it to be like that yellow cape and the red cape and her hair and that kind of stuff So I wanted to dull those socks down a little bit. So I just layered some colors on to do that And when I was doing my blues and looking for a color this little color that I'm using right now the B06 This one is a little more on the teal side even though I know it's a B06 but it it has a little more green in it and It allowed me to pull that blue into just a little bit of a different color frame and then for the hair I decided to go with like a light red head and Y35 was the color that I picked now I could have gone with a Y17 because these colors are close But the Y35 if you know the numbering system Y3 means it's a duller color than Y1 So I wanted to go with something that was gonna feel different and that I could also use for the shadows for the Y17 color So I'm gonna use some of the YR27 and then a little tiny bit of the E19 that I used on her hair and Add that to the Y17 areas Because those colors especially when I get that Y35 in there that's gonna add some dullness to it So it's gonna feel more like it's in shadow and then it'll separate it out from the Y17. I hope that all makes sense It makes sense when I say these things in my head and then I know if you're not super familiar with the colors Sometimes it'll sound like gibberish But you can see here the difference between What the Y35 is doing and where it adds some depth and roundness to that Y17 area and the Y17 is just then the highlight Now here is where it gets a little crazy and loose because I wanted to sketch in the city in the background So I took a light gray and I'm not gonna mark. Oh Pardon me. I think I have a hair ball from my kitty in my throat here I am going to use just a whole bunch of grays So I didn't write down all the grays because I switched back and forth so many times The cityscape in the background. I'm using mostly the cool grays toners that kind of thing I will add some warm gray later But the ground that they're standing on is actually a rooftop and that one is gonna be in the warm grays So that it separates out from the city in the background But I'm just sketching in some color and trying to get the paper wet Because the wet colors, you know, the wet paper is gonna blend everything better And I'm just giving myself kind of some general buildings and I'm just drawing blocks It's not rocket science to draw blocks to create a building Just, you know, whatever shapes you can take a photograph of your city and follow it if you want to but I Didn't and you see I didn't even worry about getting anything straight until now I'm using this ruler that has rollers on it because the rollers allow me to line it up with the edge of the paper and Then make a straight line that lines up with the edge of the paper across my card front and That just helps to do it without having to get a ruler out to measure So I wanted one thing on this thing to be straight And I decided that the edge of the rooftop was going to be the one thing And that's gonna help me to gauge the straightness of everything else on the card as I sketch in buildings and that kind of thing The light is generated like I said from the be your own hero sign that's gonna be a billboard and I wanted that light to kind of spill over top of this rooftop and you're probably gonna think gee whiz Sandy You're using like a W5 or a W6. What do you mean? There's light there Well, you'll see how dark it's going to get as I go So I colored all that in just to add a base layer and now I want to add some shadows And I'm looking at the sign and kind of starting from her feet because you always have shadows by feet and then figure out just generally Where are those shadows of the bodies are gonna be and here? I've left a little gap in certain spots so like her leg looks like it's sticking out past Parker So there's a lot of little things someday if I ever figure out the science of explaining Shadows and doing those. I'll let you know, but there's no real way to explain it as far as I know Except just do it so I wanted some purple in the sky and not a ton so I added just a little bit of it at the base of the buildings and Then I went over it all with a BV. I think this is a BV17 That I used and it looks pretty dark here But by the time I'm done it's gonna look like a pale BV and I want you to just mark that in your brain Because it looks dark for right now Everything in Copic markers or in any kind of coloring is relative to what's around it So if you have things that are high contrast if you're using a pattern paper that's super high contrast your coloring should also have some contrast in it because you want to Compete with whatever is it in behind it and since I want these two characters to pop out I'm just really coloring heavily with lots and lots of colors And I'm getting darker and darker successively I sped this like way up because we could be here forever with me drawing boxes But you can see I'm just adding darker and darker and darker ones and smaller boxes and smaller boxes as I go And changing out to even as I get to the end here. I'm doing Nines tens I didn't use any straight up black But I am using a lot of nines and tens in all of the different grays You could do the whole city in in one kind of gray You don't have to mix them up like this But I think mixing them up if you have the markers just makes it look like a more interesting city since buildings are Kind of different different shades of gray depending on what kind of stone or metal or whatever that they're made out of But you can also tell I'm not really worrying about making all of my blending smooth on the buildings I'm just trying to get shapes in there Because I'm going to do a lot more detail to them as I get further on on this card And every time I think I've got it all dark enough then something else happens to To make me think I need to add more dark So with the be your own hero sign I wanted to show you I'm going to do some special lighting on this one since it's the focal point of my light and What I took was a tee I think it's a tee for and I created these little Triangle points so that there's lights coming from the top of the billboard You know how they shine down and then I blended it out I think it's a T2 or T1 something like that just to make them look like softer light I wanted to have some at the bottom and then I decided that I wouldn't do that I just blended it out so that it looked like the light was just at the top of that sign because it looked dumb to have lights on both sides Then I went back to the sky and here you can see that looks pale now remember how dark that looked This is BV 08 so I added really dark color on top of it went over a few times They try to get a little bit smooth But I'm gonna be adding so much else to this that you know I'm just coloring it in just filling it all in and I'm gonna add stars and All kinds of detail in the building so I wanted this this sky to just really drop back And I think that this BV 08 really did that for me, but now look how light some of the buildings are looking again Ah Every time I did this in and went back and forth it was just like can I can I ever get to the point where I'm done and I could have probably gone over all of this several more times But I decided not to because this is a video and we can't be here forever So I just did a couple more just to make myself content at least at least with it and then I started in on the windows because this is also going to add some Depth and darkness to it, so I'm using my 9s and 10s in the different grays to add windows And I'm adding some that are going to be horizontal some that'll be vertical some that'll be big fat ones Some that'll be long tall skinny ones if you make each building look a little bit different than they look a little more Realistic I'm not sure these look actually realistic But they look more like a city and you really get that feel of a city because every building has its own flavor So you can have some with all different kinds of windows You can even create some little signs on them and that sort of thing But on this I just wanted all that to recede to the background even though it's gonna look nice and realistic as well So I'm not gonna bore you with watching you Have you watched me make all of the windows in everything either so we are going to move on with more on this card I decided I wanted that yellow to look like like it's coming from the sign like there They're lit in yellow, but I also want yellow on the sign I almost wanted it just on the word hero, but I decided the whole thing would have just a yellow cast to it So I did that right over the top and then realized I've forgotten some windows down below because I was adding detail around the sign just kind of cleaning up the edges a little bit to To really sharpen that slightly more and Then the next step is going to be to add some stars You know me and my Signo pen we just always have to have some stars in our little skies or little white details of some sort So I added in there as well as a few on the sign itself kind of sprinkling down from the be your own hero lights So I hope you enjoyed this video it was a lot of fun to make and I will see you on Tuesday with a very special special video my friend Kathy Rikusan is going to host the 30-day challenge for the second time and so you can see her blog There will be a link to hers on mine on Monday So you can get to all that but here are a few other videos that you can watch in the meantime another cityscape on the left and another stamping Bella image on the right and I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend I will see you Tuesday on YouTube and Monday on my blog. Bye. Bye