 Why hello there. My name is Sandy Allnock. I'm an artist and paper crafter here on YouTube And I'm bringing you cute little stinkers and I want to remind you in this video It's a hot mess until it's not that is something a lot of people say about my stuff And I want to show you a couple of places where it looks like a hot mess for a few minutes And if you keep going you can often fix those things that seem to go wrong and sometimes I do do things deliberately So that they look a little mushy so that I can then fix them and I'll explain to you how that works as I go. This is a real-time video So for those who want to see real-time coloring this one goes out to you This is a new stamp set brand new from art impressions, and there's a couple images I'll show you a little bit of each one in this video But this is my favorite with this cute little couple and it's two little skunks I had to look up on the internet exactly where which parts were black and which parts were white and where the Stripes fall and all that kind of stuff and I recommend you always do that if you're going to color an animal or something Go get some resource information Because one of the things I noticed was that skunks seem to have a little stripe on their nose, too So I'm just going to add a stripe by not coloring it on their noses And I think it actually helps make them look more skunky That makes sense And I'm coloring with an N5 because I'm going to do black and I want them to be really good and dark And if I were to start with a really light gray marker that wouldn't necessarily work because then I'd have really light highlights I want them to look like they're actually black in the black areas But I want to have some definition there So what I'm doing now is adding some actual black marker and I'm doing kind of little furry marks fur goes in the direction of The object itself so you can see it kind of goes away from their face and it helps also to direct the eye to point toward the face and In some of the areas down like on their arms and things I can go solid I don't have to do texture everywhere, but on the faces. It's really going to help and It is going to be one of the places that's going to look messy for a little bit And I'll warn you of that because some people say what is she doing when they're watching my videos and This is how I color quite often And actually when I'm coloring just by myself I do it even more because I'm not worried about trying to explain to somebody that it's going to look like a hop Until it doesn't I think one of the things where people do tend to Have an issue is they don't wait long enough. They don't keep going and when it starts looking like a mess They think oh I've ruined it and they start over and they stamp again or they give up on that stamp set So I'm going to encourage you to keep going and keep trying it and see if you can make something work So that was the light and then the dark color and now I'm going in with a medium color I'm adding more little free lines and If you want them even thinner than this just hold the pen even more vertically and it will get you'll get a little thinner thicker free lines, but I'm You know, I'm not really worried about it because I want to have a good bit of color in here I want to have a really rich looking dark For each of these little skunks because they're so cute I'm adding a little more emphasis around the face You know around like the mouth and the cheek and cheek and things just so that I get some real dimension there but this is one of those places where it probably looks like a mess to your eye and Don't worry. Please hang with me and as they say wait for it Because the next step will clear a lot of that up But I'm just extending all those black shadows until I go back in now with my number five marker So I I'm returning to that base color again And this is my routine I do with all my coloring as I return to my base color And if there were areas that you wanted to have really light you could leave them with one coat of that base color and it'll give you a fourth kind of color to To expand the range without having to use another marker So I'm coloring right over top of all that nicely scribbling now Look at the one on the left compared to the one on the right and you can see It definitely smooths out, but it looks like there's some texture. There is some fur for my little skunks And you can do this on any animal with whatever colors you're using Just put your fur in the under layers and then when you put that top layer on it's just gonna Smooth it out enough. Now if you want it to be perfectly smooth You don't want to have all those lines in there, but I think on critters having a little bit of fur really helps Now here I'm trying to figure out which end is the tail of My little bow and I decided yeah, just a little bit of a darker red Not it not going crazy with my usual three reds that I like to use just a little bit more And Then I decided to work on the background before I go back and see if I want to add more color to my skunks I was debating whether I wanted to add any grays in the white parts of the skunks But what I was realizing when I squinted I saw all the black areas But I didn't see the white ones pop out if you look at your artwork and squint at it as you go You'll see things you'll see Where there's enough contrast where there's a knot not enough Is there an area where you need to add another color beside it and that's where I decided to add a little bit in the background And this is also going to help me to make them look a little stinky at the end So you'll get to see some Some little fun that I create for them since they are skunks, you know gotta have a little skunk humor But I started out by working with you know bunch of these light colors I wasn't sure how dark to go. It's better to go lighter than darker And just start there and see if that's enough see if squinting at it starts to Pop out that white and make the white look really white and it's starting to work I'm starting to get the feel of of the fact that there's some white in this image, but still not a ton and I Figured well, let me see if I smooth out all of this all the way out to the outside edges Will that help? And it did help a little bit But not a ton and again I'm I'm just gonna work in layers and keep going and I'm not worried about making it too super smooth at this point because I Had the feeling I was gonna go in with more colors And that's where I decided to go in with a layer of w3 because I was a juicier marker than my w4 So I wanted to add a little more depth on the inside and that's starting to work for me much better starting to really get that white to pop out and Then I just started fading it a little bit more as it got toward the top Now this marker is getting a little bit on the dry side So I did go back in and use a little w0 and the camera turned off on me So I didn't get to show you that part, but we'll get back to the background in a moment But I went in after I saw how all of that black and gray marker dried I went in and added a little bit more with a Copic multiliner if it's gonna be your last layer You don't even have to have a multiliner. You can do it with whatever color you want to And then I decided I needed another color for them to lay on just something on the ground I didn't want another gray. I wanted something with a little bit of color to it And here's where I decided to go in and add some craziness To make them kind of stinky and I'm basically drawing like sort of an S curve like a reverse S I start out with a darker color and just kept going in with lighter and lighter ones just kind of pulling that color around and Making little little swirly's to make them look like they're stinky. That's just to get it started And then took a lighter color and just softened all that out And this is one of those places where you can actually fix any Any of your weird blending if things didn't blend quite right I'm gonna put little dots with my colorless blender and little hearts little hearts You can make with just a V basically and hearts and dots in the background And I thought that would be really fun. They're you know little bubbles of gas from the stinky skunks my dog that I had when I lived in Montana used to go out and chase skunks and Come back to the house smelling all nasty, but she loved it. She just thought it was the best thing in the whole wide world Dogs don't seem to understand that skunks are not a friendly smell for the rest of us After I was done I added some dots of glossy accents to it and that made it even more fun I think on the finished card just mounted it on some Some black and red paper tied some ribbon around it links to all the supplies by the way or in the description down below As they always are and this is another image from the same stamp set did the same kind of coloring Set the little fancier heart on there It's this little guy is hugging the heart and I added again coming up from his tail some bubbles And you can do just straight old bubbles or you can do the hearts here I decided to try just the hearts and Added lots of glossy accents to make the candies and his little heart shine the candies are actually a separate stamp from the hearts and Then finally this one Since the air was the thing that was moving I decided not to make the tail stinky on this one and I made the bubbles in the air itself and Here I don't even I don't even need to do the colors blender underneath I just made bubbles going across a little swoosh of sky in that blue-green color So here's a couple more videos if you're interested in seeing some more from me Be sure to hit the subscribe button if you have not yet. There's always more coming from me three times a week There's more information on this on the blog and a special announcement that's there So you want to go check that out and I will see you guys next time You can find me on social as Sandy on look and I will see you out there on the interwebs Have a fantastic day. Go create something wonderful