How to Color Flowers

With the sun coming out a little more each day and buds starting to peek their green heads out, today's blog is in honor of the coming spring; how to color flowers! As usual, there is a lot of room for creativity here as flowers come in so many varieties, so I'll just touch on a few options.

As a general rule I color the center of the flowers yellow, sometimes with orange shades thrown in.

However, if I want to mix it up, I may make the flower itself yellow, and then make the center red or purple for a nice contrast.









The flower petals themselves can be any color you choose. I choose my petal color based on if I want the flowers to stand out, compliment the scene, or fade into the background. Sometimes I'll just throw in a blue flower because my poster needs the color blue in it...







If the flower is a focal point, I like to use similar or complementary colors to give the petals some variety and depth. For example, I'll add shading to the center of the flower (such as a darker pink/purple) to create a more 3-D appearance. I'll also add lighter colors to give it highlights...

I may also just switch up the colors of the petals to make it more visually interesting...


However you like to color em, I hope you get to enjoy the beauty of these spring blooms both in your posters and in nature! Happy (almost) Spring!

Erin

Coloring puppies!

Welcome back to our Stuff2Color blog! This week's blog is in honor of my new puppy, Emma! We're going to cover a couple different coloring strategies for these adorable posters.

• As you can see from my examples, I often like to use a bright warm color that makes the puppy draw your attention. Yellows and light browns (often with orange tint) are great for this.

• Like the previous blog about coloring hair, I like to leave high-lights and low-lights to show variety in their fur. I often outline the visible tufts of hair a slightly darker shade. 

• I generally color the muzzle a lighter shade. This fur is often shorter and finer, and gives definition to your puppy's face.

• And finally, you always have the option to color your puppy with different patches of color. Dogs come in all varieties, whether its white spots, dark spots, or even three different colors on one dog!

Here's my example of my own puppy. However you choose to color em, they're are going to turn out adorable :) Thanks for joining, please let me know of any coloring ideas you have for all these puppies.  Take care!

Erin

Coloring Hair

Hi again, hope you all had a great holiday season! A great time for family, friends, coloring... :) So let's dive right back into it, shall we?

Today's blog covers how to color hair. Now we all know the variety of colors that hair comes in, so this blog is more about adding highlights and lowlights to the characters in your Stuff2Color posters.

Check out my examples below. You'll need 2 to 3 shades in similar colors.... so if you're going blonde you may want a yellow, light brown, and maybe just leave some strands white (if you don't have a lighter yellow color to choose from). Brunettes-light brown, dark brown, and black. You'll want to color the majority of hair in your middle tone. Then add lighter tones to the top of his/her head and darker tones to the hair underneath.

Or as in the case with "Cat Lady" I also like to alternate between 2 similar colors just to give some variety and depth to her hair.

Finally, in some cases like "Wizard", I like to add strands of gray to age him a little.

 Any other tips for creating colorful, realistic hair? I'd love to hear em! Take care and keep on coloring!

Erin