August 4, 2020

Amy Shulke

Colored Pencil, Advanced Coloring, Improve Your Coloring

Colored Pencil: Do You Have Time & Patience for Slow Coloring? (plus Tips for Efficient Coloring)

August 4, 2020

Amy Shulke

Colored Pencil, Advanced Coloring, Improve Your Coloring

Colored Pencil: Do You Have Time & Patience for Slow Coloring? (plus Tips for Efficient Coloring)

Colored pencil is slow!

The sharp point on a colored pencil is teeny-tiny. If that’s not bad enough, colored pencil painting requires many layers for vibrancy. It takes forever to complete even a small pencil project!

Do you have the time for colored pencil? Do you have the patience?

I picked up my first artist grade colored pencil in the fall of 1984 and I’m still working with them today. That’s decades of working at a turtle’s pace.

How have I survived this long without going crazy?

Hmmmm… How about if I share some efficiency tips that I’ve picked up over the years?

July 21, 2020

Amy Shulke

Advanced Coloring, Copic Marker, Improve Your Coloring

Tools On My Desk: Stretch Your Copic Marker Budget by Shading with Underpaint Colors

July 21, 2020

Amy Shulke

Advanced Coloring, Copic Marker, Improve Your Coloring

Tools On My Desk: Stretch Your Copic Marker Budget by Shading with Underpaint Colors

Underpaint to Save Money?

Underpainting eliminates single-use markers, allowing you to buy 2-marker blending combinations instead of trios.

By using the same gray, violet, or even blue marker to shade everything from yellow to purple, you save money by eliminating the darkest marker from every trio!

Today, let’s look at the Vanilla Team’s favorite all-purpose underpainting markers— what they use them for and why you might find it handy too.

June 30, 2020

Amy Shulke

Colored Pencil, Advanced Coloring, Improve Your Coloring, Glass

Tips for Coloring Realistic Glass (Lemonade tutorial; Colored Pencil Magazine)

June 30, 2020

Amy Shulke

Colored Pencil, Advanced Coloring, Improve Your Coloring, Glass

Tips for Coloring Realistic Glass (Lemonade tutorial; Colored Pencil Magazine)

Do You Struggle with capturing realistic glass?

You’ve tried it a few times and man, glass is just not your thing!

You’re pretty good with colored pencils, Copic Markers, or even watercolor. You can breeze through any tutorial. If someone’s guiding you, everything’s easy-breezy.

But coloring glass on your own? What a headache! It looks flat. It looks fake.

Feeling hopeless?

Hold on, there’s help!

June 23, 2020

Amy Shulke

Colored Pencil, Advanced Coloring, Copic Marker, Improve Your Coloring

Tools On My Desk: Color Wheels and Useful Color Tools (Copic Marker, Colored Pencil)

June 23, 2020

Amy Shulke

Colored Pencil, Advanced Coloring, Copic Marker, Improve Your Coloring

Tools On My Desk: Color Wheels and Useful Color Tools (Copic Marker, Colored Pencil)

You have a color wheel, right?

Yeah, we all have one or two of they lying around… somewhere.

We all have a couple of color wheels or tools because we think we’re supposed to use them. But we don’t actually ever use them and to be honest, we don’t understand why anyone would.

Pssstttt…