 Hello there and welcome to my YouTube channel. My name is Sandy all knock I'm an artist and an art teacher and I love to share my knowledge with you I work in all kinds of mediums and I work in all kinds of sizes from small and mailable things Which I'll be doing today to large frame a bowls and everything in between and I have a question that was asked in two different ways from two different people at two different levels I thought the new release from Colorado craft company would be a great way to answer both of them at the same time One was a Facebook messenger request from somebody who said I'm a new colorist I just want to get started, but I want to know what supplies I should get and What medium should I work in and I went back and forth a little bit and Turns out she wants to draw animals and color animals. So I made her some recommendations There was another person who wrote something on YouTube and she said I Know you have nice supplies But I also know that if I had saved and not had a lot of mediocre supplies I could easily have nice ones It's just hard to know how to get started when everyone recommends different things and boy Is that true every artist has their own opinion? That's just the way things are But I will give you my opinions and let you know what I think of the different mediums and what my favorite Supplies are within each on my blog is going to be a clickable link list So I'll write all of this out there So in case I forget to say something here on YouTube that it'll be on my blog for you the arc I'll be doing for you today is using some stamps from Colorado craft company. They are designs by Anita Jerome I love my Anita Jerome and it's all dogs and cats So let's get started coloring these images the same ones in three different mediums So you can see some visual differences between them. Let's get going Let's begin by looking at the new release itself This first set is the one I'll be using for the lesson today And the rest of these are all dogs and cats So who's a good boy? My little g and my little v are going to be colored in today's project Anything else from these stamp sets that I get colored before today when you see this video will be posted on the blog I just don't have anything else colored besides that one stamp set Not ready for this yet. It's been quite a couple of weeks. I've had So let's get started with alcohol markers Now these are generally not my top recommendation for new people simply because they're expensive They're a specialty marker and most brands You can re-ink with with them put more ink into them when they dry out. You can replace nibs on them That sort of thing So they're meant to be a marker that you keep forever, which is great But I have known a lot of people who have sold their collections because they didn't end up using them Or they found they didn't like the way they applied or they didn't like the smell of them Then I don't find them to be a really strong smell, but some people are sensitive There's lots of things that people have had issues with after having spent a lot of money on them So I'd recommend if you have a craft store nearby or an art store or something Ask if you can play with a few sample markers and get an idea of what you'd be getting into I do have a list on my my website of a bunch of colors I would recommend if you're just getting started you want to get a few markers to start coloring with And I recommend only getting things that you think you're going to use don't get every color in the rainbow Just because there's a rainbow out there Don't necessarily need to do that But colors in alcohol markers tend to be very bright very strong And they do fade in the light. So they're not light fast. They're not considered to be an artist grade type of material So if you were going to do fine art, then you would have to tell anyone that You're selling something too that they need to keep it under archival glass and keep it out of direct sunlight because it would fade But they're a heck of a lot of fun. They're great for cards And for things that are going to be short term or if someone's going to not leave it out sitting in the sun But if they put it in their window after they receive your card, it may start to fade after a bit But I do love these. I've been using them for Just a long long long time. Yeah, we'll just call it a long time and let it go with that but you can see these stamps are Specific dogs my golden retriever and my great Pyrenees and then that's my kitty who's the latest one last fall the last one to pass away And vienna used to just love to lick her on the ear So that seemed a perfect stamp for me to use for this sample today Now watercolor is one of my favorite mediums to work with but it can also be incredibly difficult to learn There's a big learning curve with it because we're not used to wielding a brush that wiggles on the end We're used to a pen or that sort of thing and a brush can feel very soft And that sort of thing there's all kinds of water management issues That you run into and I solve some of it by Dabbing things off with a paper towel or with a baby wipe like you saw me do And layering colors on But it takes a while to learn to mix colors and too many people tend to buy all the colors as if they were buying markers With watercolors you can mix your own colors You really can you can start off with a very simple six colors Daniel Smith has a set of what they call the essentials And it's three warms and three cools a red yellow and blue in both warm and cool And you can mix so many colors from it And even though it is a learning curve if you learn that at the very beginning And then later on you expand and add some maybe some granulated pigments or I add in some of the colors in my palette that I just got tired of mixing after a while Because I use them a lot I live in Washington. We have lots of trees So I put a bunch of greens in mine so I don't have to mix them as much But you don't need 36 48 colors in a palette I know lots of people have many many palettes But really I have a palette of 18 colors and that's it. That's all I really use for the most part I mix everything that I need You need some good paper. I would definitely recommend getting good paper Don't waste your money on getting student grade paper because It's not going to look the same when you move to good paper And you're not going to get the same kind of beautiful edges that you can get in watercolor If you start using cheaper paper and I know it seems counterintuitive. You don't want to spend much money But I highly recommend it Then my number one suggestion almost always has been colored pencils because For one everybody's used pencils their whole life since you were a kid You've held a pencil in your hand. There's no learning curve there Number two, they're inexpensive You can actually get a full set of 150 prismacolor pencils 425 like you can't do that in any medium and get that many colors The pencils are going to last you a fair amount as long as you treat them nicely and you know, keep them nicely sharpened Etc. And you can replace them one by one as you get down to nubs because there's a few colors I use a lot and turn into nubs But you're also going to have a huge variety of techniques that you can deploy right away Like instantly you can get out some gamsol in a blending stump like i'm doing here And blend your colors using a simple solution that's not expensive You can use powdered pigments And do that using something to grate the powder with and then spread it using a cotton ball very simple These are things that are not expensive in terms of additional tools The paper that I recommend for them is a nice Sketching paper. It's called stone hinge And their drawing paper is just fabulous for colored pencil And I love using the blending solution on that paper Because when you start building up your layers and you get those first layers down Then when you start adding the darker layers And then blend those you get deep rich Contrasting color, which is fantastic for creating realism And if the person who messaged on facebook wanted to do realism this seemed like a really good option for that It takes some time to learn of course, but everything does But the pencils I think give people the quickest way to on ramp into getting something that they can be successful with And I really feel like when you're starting out you need to have some successes right off the bat So that you're able to move forward and you don't feel like oh my gosh. I'm never going to get this And pencils also layer nicely I can turn a red into a pink by just putting white over it like I did for the tongue just now There's just lots and lots of things that you can do with colored pencils Now as I said on my blog I'm listing a description of The kind of basic things that I think you need if you just want to get started with something These are the good quality materials That I think will give you a good start There's always more you can buy there's always more hard supplies out there And I have too much in my studio as is But I put the essentials in there that I use all the time with these mediums Because I I just love the way that they work And I love the fact that they're not expensive for the kinds of things they are I mean like my favorite pencil sharpener is like five bucks It's a handheld little chubby thing And it's just the simplest thing simplest tool in the world So you don't have to spend a fortune on art supplies to do some nice work But you just need to avoid getting those mediocre things because I had a lot of mediocre stuff here in the studio for a long time And it ended up getting donated to local schools because I found it was not worth what I had bought And once I moved on to getting artist quality supplies, I was like Why did I buy all the beginner stuff when I knew eventually I was going to get there? It's a little better to save up if you can And purchase some good quality materials If you're getting started in any of these mediums I have jumpstart classes in each one of them where I cover the basics of the techniques and that sort of thing But I also go through Very basic color theory and color theory is going to help you to be able to Mix colors and kind of have an idea Of what you want to do to a color if you want to desaturate it. Here's what you do What happens when you add two complementary colors to each other? How do you choose colors overall for your project? That's all color theory and it's really helpful to know that when you get started so that you can make some reasonable and educated types of choices Now another thing about pencil that I absolutely love is you can get a lot more realism than you can with other things Notice that these stamps are stamped with a gray line So I'm using an ink that's called a no line ink, but you can get any really pale color Or you can take a color that may be a little darker and stamp it once And then before you reink it stamp it a second time that you're going to color that will give you a lighter impression of the line Because now these lines are really soft and they start to look more realistic because they're not those big hunk and Black lines that you saw in the other two that had different inks used And I will list the inks that I use for those stamps as well in the supply list down below as well as over on the blog So if you're looking for any resources that blog post will be a really good one for that But I was really happy with how these came out and I had an idea for finishing these off as cards I had a stack here in the studio Of diy patterned papers that I created during the pattern stamping class It's a brand new class That is so much fun using art impressions watercolor stamps And making patterns out of them using a template that'll give you so you can kind of follow along and make a whole sheet of something That looks like patterned paper There's all sorts of patterns in it and then a million adaptations you can make I use distress inks to do the stamping with Instead of markers if you're used to using ai watercolor stamps And I colored the ground on each one of these to match one of the papers so that those would coordinate To do the bows I thought I'd save this little piece of footage where I punch two holes In the panel that has the image on it on top It's got some dimensional adhesive under it and then that allowed me to tie the bow right through the holes on there I'm trying to decide if I want the Sentiment to be on the card fronts or on the inside leave me a comment Let me know what you think I should do And that is about it for right now Thank you so much for joining me for this video If you enjoyed it, please click the like button share it with a friend and make sure you're subscribed So you don't miss anything next week Colorado craft company information is over on the blog So if you want to get in on the party that they always have going for every new release Check that out as well as more information on the supplies that I talked about because anything I forgot to say We'll be over there. Alrighty, I will see you guys later. Go out and create something every day. I'll see you