Coloring Sky With Prismacolors

Hi Guys!

Well for a long time now I have admired artists such as Annika who create such lovely sky backgrounds to their images and have wanted to try it for myself. I don't know why but it really intimidated me. Which is strange cos I have painted sky and clouds on several ceilings in our house, 10 feet up in the air! But to color sky on my cards....well now, the butterflies in my stomach get fluttering.

Now if you're a copic artist you'll want to check out Annika's FAB tutorial here . You really can't beat it.

But if you're like me and prefer to use pencils, you can follow my very simple steps outlined below:

First of all I am using only one pencil which is:

Prismacolor Non Photo Blue

I am also using goo gone and a blending stump. That's it.

(You can see the supplies above)

I start off by making random circular strokes with my pencil where I want my clouds to be. You can see that it's pretty rustic at this point.

here's a closer look below so you can see the pencil movements

Then I get my blending stump, dampen it with a touch of goo gone (you can also use baby oil if you prefer), and softly blend in circular motions until you've softened the blue shapes.

It will look something like this when you're done with this step:

It's looking pretty nice but it can look even more realistic if we go back in and add just a touch of blue pencil at random spots. This suggests depth. Have a look and see what I mean:

Now soften these darker spots with just a feather light touch to the blending stump. You're not blending per se now, you're just touching the spots with the dampened end of your stump.

See?

And that's it!

You can make your day as cloudy or as blue as you want and you can even make it a bit stormy by adding a bit of grey to your blue when you blend.

I hope this helps someone!

*If you are looking for ideas for coloring AA Hair and a multicultural skintone, (mine is only one of many out there!) please see the tutorial section of my blog.