Quilt & Color: Session 4: Adding Color: Painting, Inking, Marking, Shading & Highlighting

Well it's really, really time for the fun stuff where we get to do the coloring. I'm gonna start with markers. They're the easiest. And one would think, well we don't need any instruction to markers, but they can be a little bit problematic sometimes. So I'm going to do some wet blending with markers and talk a little bit about how to save our markers so that they can function well for a long time and not damage them. And so I'm going to be using this dark violet on the outside of this flower, and I'm going to move into this red violet on the inside of the flower and this pale violet in the flower center. So I'm going to start with that pale violet in the flower center. And I'm just going to fill that area in and you can see right away that this marker is pretty darn empty. So I'm gonna see if I can get any better color on this backside here, which I can, nice. So I'm just going to fill that in and I'm going to go a little bit past the center cause I want that to wet blend into the next color. And the next color is going to be this red violet. And I'm going to pull that away from that violet center, just like that. And I'm going to let it go into all of the petals. The little inner petals and the outer petals. And that wet blending, so I'm getting a little bit of that violet, red violet into that light violet. And then I'm going to go back with that light violet again and pull it into that red violet. So you can see that very cool blend. And I don't end up with a harsh line between one color and another. And now I'm going to come back in the opposite direction with my dark violet, and I'm going to come to these tips. Let's use the other end I believe. There we go. Come to that tip, fill in the tip and then pull it down into the red violet. Start at that tip, pull it down in. And we're getting this wonderful blending of color instead of a hard singular color. And anytime you wet blend, that means that you're blending while the ink is still wet. You're going to want to go back with that very first color and reblend again or that second color after you've put on a third and reblend again. So I've got this pretty filled in with my violet, now I'm going to go back with this red violet, and pull that out of that center again. And I can make this as much of a complete colorized fill as I want to, or I can have little low lights or highlights of the white. It's up to me, there's no right or wrong, as long as I'm consistent, as long as everything that I do looks like I meant to do it. Okay, so there's my wonderful wet blended flour. One color moving into the next color, kind of a realistic look. Now I'm going to take this metallic silver and I'm going to color in the background of that flower. This is not something I could do if I had used ink on the flower, because it would be too wet. I always keep paper on hand, paper towels, whatever to use as a cleanup tool, but also as a palette because I want to saturate my little Fantastix with this ink. And one of the things you'll find when you're working with the inks is that the metallics aren't as fluid as the regular inks. And I'm going to use this to come in here and color this background. You can always add more ink. You can't take it off. So always work with a less is more attitude until you get a feel for what you're doing. And then if you feel like you can handle putting on lots at one time, go ahead, but I've done lots of these and I still don't want to do that. So I always go with a little bit, add more if necessary. And I'm always thinking about where I'm going to repeat color. So right now this is becoming the silver is the negative space or the background of this flower. So there's another place on this set of circles that I have background, which is around these circles. So I'll probably use this silver there too. And it will essentially be my background color. If you get little bits of fluff on your Fantastix, take it off cause it will move that ink around. I'm trying really hard not to touch my black threads with this silver because the silver will color those threads. The rest of the inks will not, but the metallics will. This ink dries, the marker itself dries in arid weather, in about an hour, and the ink is dry in about two hours completely. And then you can heat set it with an iron. Dry, hot iron. If you have more humidity, it can take a little bit longer to dry. So I'm not going to do any blending in this background. It's saucy enough by being a metallic silver. But I am going to take a little bit of this silver while it's somewhat dry, meaning I'm not going to put it back in there and I'm going to get as much of it off. And I'm going to pull some highlights just here with this flower, just to add a little bit of glitz around that inside. There we go. And like I always do, after I'm wet blending, go back to the color that I just put that on and I pull that in there too. Just so nothing looks chunky or like it's sitting on the surface. I want it to amalgamize together. I think that's a made up word, but I want them to pull together and look like they just grew that way. And as soon as I did that it makes that silver just kind of set inside and look really yummy. Okay, so that's our first portion of this. I'm going to bypass this right now because this is still wet and I don't want it to risk going in there and I'm gonna move out here and I'm just going to color in a few of these circles and then show you how I'm going to do those with a basically a variegation of color. And I'm going to do it in blue. And I'm going to have blue in this container. And then I'm going to have blue in this container with water added. This ink, when you add water to it, it makes it a lighter version of itself. And depending on how much water you add it gets lighter and lighter and lighter. So I'm going to want three lightnesses, the pure that is out of the container, a little bit lighter, and even lighter still. And I don't know if these are the perfect thing that I need yet. I will check it out. I'll mix it up there and just see what it looks like on my paper towel, see how light it is. I like that. And then I'll grab another. And I want this one to be darker than that, which it is. And then I want this one to be the darkest and it is, very good. So I've got a dark, a medium, and a light and I'm going to do a verigation in these circles. So I'm going to start with my lightest color, not my darkest. And I'm going to have my lightest color be on the outside edge. And you see how, this has so much water in it that all I have to do is set that down and it's going to move. So I'm going to keep it away from that stitch line so that it doesn't move too much. There's a chance it might move past that stitch line. If it does, I can thicken up the line. Or, because I know I'm going to be using silver in that background, that silver will cover it because the silver is opaque. So I've got that lightest blue out there. And while this is still good and wet, I'm going to go to my next blue and I'm going to put it right next to that and let it just move into it and bring my light in here and kind of put it where those are coming together so that they move into each other. And then I'm going to get my darkest and put it in the middle. And again, go back to my medium now and get it wet so that where those two come together, they blend. And now I've got this great, wonderful circle, that's got a variegation here, from darkest to lightest. Let's do that again. And you don't want to do one portion of one and then move and do it the same portion of another. You're not going to like that in that outcome. You're going to get hard lines. We don't want hard lines. Wrong color there. So we're just going to have that really great gradation. And as I do that all the way around here. Now, when I get to these smaller ones, this is going to be a little bit tougher to do. So I'm going to do the whole circle with the light, then I'm going to go in with the medium and kind of just put that in there and then let it move a bit and then finish with that dark dark right in the middle, and then let it move, and the whole thing will bleed out a bit. And that's how those little tiny circles will be done. Now, what I can see here is happening, and this is going to happen a lot, when we have a really thinned out ink, is that it's going into that negative space, that's okay. Don't freak out or anything because that negative space is gonna be filled with the more opaque silver, and that's why I chose that silver for the negative space. So we're going to let this dry for a little bit and then I'm going to fill in that negative space and show you how you can get that coverage of that pale pale blue. But while this is drying, I'm going to go ahead and go out to one of these background areas and give it a wash. And so that you can understand that idea of a wash. A wash again is going to be a thinned out color. And I think I'm going to go with greens in my negative space out there. So I'm going to take this particular green and put just a little tiny bit of the green in the container. I'm gonna say it's probably an eighth of a teaspoon. And then about a tablespoon of water. And then I'm going to use one of these calligraphy brushes, these soft brushes, and you're going to see what happens when the color just moves. So this is really, really thin, can test the color here. It's very bright. I don't know that I want it that bright. So I'm going to dull it a little bit by adding a little bit of it's direct compliment. And all I'm going to do is dip my brush in here and get a little bit of it on my brush and put it in here until this is the dullness I want it to be. Much better. So now, there we go. Okay. So there's a one of our background colors. And I'm going to try to be careful, but I can't promise anything. I just know that I can fix it by putting an opaque color here if this bleeds too far over, or I can thicken this line quite a bit with the sewing machine, but I'm going to come in here with my soft brush and I'm simply going to lay that down. So I just lay it down and let that ink move. After I've watched it move for a while, then I can go in and get things a little bit closer to the lines and see how it moves to that line and stopped short of getting it right on that line. So we had a little bit of bleed through right here and then I just touched it, so it bled through even more. But again, like I said, it's something that can easily be fixed. So everything that has a stipple in it is going to be this color of green. Now I can come over here and decide whether or not I think I can get just little tiny bits of ink in there to move to that line. And not make it go past it. Doing pretty good. And this one here. Little tiny bits. Okay, we're going to let this dry now. And I'm going to come back here. This is relatively dry. And I'm going to attack this background area with my silver, which again is opaque. And the rest of these have a transparency to them. And you'll see that I get pretty good coverage of that light blue that's seeped into the other area. So this is about knowing your products and what your products are capable of doing and choosing to go with an opaque in your background or negative space to take care of any issues you might have with the inks that go into your positive space. If I get paint where I don't want it I use a slightly stiff brush to feather it so that it doesn't look like it's there nearly as much. Again, like I said, there's a way of fixing any issue that you have, anything that comes up, you just kinda have to make it look like you meant to do it. Shading something into something else, covering something up. Look how pretty those blue orbs look in the silver shiny background, with their variegation of color. And we have to do these little guys in here. And these guys did not variegate as well. They're tiny. I had things a little too wet. But that's okay. All right, so I like that silver back there too. All right. So we've gotten some great fill and we've been able to cover up some mistakes with some opaque paints or inks, some nice wet blending here. So out here, I don't want to touch anything here until this is totally dry. I don't want them to blend and do that wet blending unless I want them to do the wet blending. So we're going to put this aside for a few minutes and look on taking care of this bird. And we're going to be using a lot of the same colors we already have going here. I'm going to start with doing the leaves with markers and the reason I'm going to do the leaves with markers is because they're small and it's easier that way. The marker, I can get into a tighter area. And I'm going to do two colors on each leaf. And I'm going to start by simply coming in and filling in the whole leaf with this green. And I think this is the apple green, pea pod green And each leaf I put a vein down the middle. And so I'm going to take this marker and I'm just going to cover up that vein and let that kind of, it'll start to blend into each other. And it's going to be very, very subtle. You see that if I hit the other part of the fabric where I don't want it to be hit, I don't panic because I know I can always go in, if it's that important to me, I can always go in and thicken up that line. So this is going to give these leaves a sense of depth by having that dark center line. And it's going to show up even better when they're dry. So there is a few leaves. I'm going to keep this green handy because I'm going to be using it in my tree trunks and my stems. And go to our browns and gather together a few more greens. Now, the two browns that this company makes are very different from each other. One is called chocolate, and it has a very red cast to it. I do not consider that chocolate, but that's what they're calling that. And then this one is the one that they call truffle and it's more of a traditional brown. And then we also have a nice rich black. Here. And we're going to be using those along with some of these greens in our tree trunk. And I'm going to start with the greens and I'm gonna pick these up and I'm gonna pull some of these greens just ever so lightly into this textured area and into some of the nooks. And I'm just going to try to be consistent with what I'm doing so that it looks like this is what it's supposed to be like. And just doing a little bit of shading. And I'm going to do something different with each green. So I did that with that green and this green I think I'm gonna pull along some of the left-hand sides of my bigger stems and trunks. And this is kind of a really springy green and a springy green I'm going to keep more on my little stems. Cause those are newer growth. Trying to be somewhat realistic, but you know. One more green and we're just going to use this to kinda pull some of our greens together. And it doesn't really matter what you use for what, just so long as you use it in a similar way throughout the piece. Now you're saying, tree trunks are not green. Well, you're not going to see a whole lot of this green when we're done. It's going to be a low light which is something that's coming out from underneath. Now, remember that this one that we call truffle is the darker brown, Even though it looks like it's packaged lighter. And this one that we call chocolate is the redier brown. So I'm going to come in here and along the left-hand side pull in this redier brown with all of these greens. I'm going to do it along the left side of everything that's a stem or a piece of wood, basically. All right. And now we're going to come in with our final color. And it's what's gonna fill up the bulk of everything here. And you see I'm using kind of a, a sketching type of movement. I don't mind if there's little bits of white showing in this trunk because it's just going to give it a bit of a more realistic feel. And I definitely want some of my other colors streaming through. So I want it to be, you know, not this, you know, pressing down hard and getting tons of this color down there. And what you really can't see as I'm doing this is that I'm not rubbing it back and forth this way, I'm going, I'm kind of picking it up, so the slow motion looks like this. That way I'm not roughing up the tip of it and ruining the marker almost instantly. Okay. So here you see, you have these wonderful little highlights of these greens that are peeking through and that little bit of that red or brown that's peaking through there too. And so this will end up looking like this. And we have this kind of very natural looking wood surface of our tree trunk and our branches. We're going to do some wet sculpting, wet sculpting, wet shading here with both ink and marker. And I'm going to do that on our flowers. So I'm going to take the ink and I'm going to use it coming out from the center here because you know it wants to move. So we're going to let it do its movie thing, move, move, move, where it wants to move to. And then I'm going to come in with the marker and pull from the edges with this red. So we've got red playing into burgundy. And remember, we always go back with that first color and bring it back in which will help those two kind of blend together, which we don't want them to be totally blending together, but we want them to do some nice blending. So that's how our flowers are going to look. We like having some of this mottling that shows where things aren't entirely filled in. Again, it gives it a more naturalistic feel. And now I'm going to move up to the feathers of the bird and show you a very fun wet blending technique that is a little bit scary when you first do it but I think you'll like it in the long run. So I'm gonna use these two blue-greens, this gray, and this light green. And I'm going to use them all in the wing, this portion of the wing here. And I'm just gonna do, put some lines of color in. And I'm going to fill the bulk of that wing up, like so and then I'm going to come in with my gray, and I'm gonna take that gray and run it along the edge of the wing, and define those edges. Then I'm gonna take the side of it and I'm going to come in here and just hit those raised edges, like so, and then I'm going to do it again. And this is going to put these colors in a different spot this time. Not necessarily right back where they were the first time. And this top color, I'm going to really kind of push all those other colors together. And then we have that wonderful, wonderful, almost like a rainbow effect of those colors that are analogous to each other so that they just kind of blend, And we can almost imagine that they're individual pin feathers with all sorts of wonderful colors in them. Again, I want to let these things dry around there so that they don't touch each other. And I'm going to come in here. I like the way this flower is looking. I like this little kind of highlight that it has against this bottom edge here. So I think I'm going to try to make the most of that. If I have a marker that can do what I want it to do. If I have something pointy enough is what I'm looking for. Which I may not. Well, let's see. Nope. Okay. There we go. See, I didn't even really care what color it was at this point. I just want to put, just right out here, on the outer part of that pedal, just a little curve of a highlight. Ooh, that looks really good. I'm glad I had a pointy yellow. That really added some fullness to that color. So this is being willing to play, being willing to make something you're not so excited about, but then saying later, oh man it looks wonderful when I'm done. We're going to go to this bird's head now and I'm going to do the head and I'm probably gonna do the head with this orangy color. Yep. And the sandy color. Yep. So this color is called sand, which I think is a pretty good sand. I'm not going to do his beak. It's going to be a different color. And then I'll take this orange, and I'm going to run it around that outside edge. And that's going to give my bird's head a greater sense of roundness, like it's more realistic. Just around there. Kind of highlight that brown and it just makes him rounder looking, so it gets that full three dimensionality of the head. So all these different types of shading, how you learn them, I am not a trained painter or a trained artist for that matter. I learned them from trial and error. So I've always kept a little bits of paper next to me or a quilted something or other that I really really screwed up and I know I'm not going to finish it so that I can try new things. How does this work? What happens when I do this, what happens when I do that? And that's how I figure out what happens when I do that. So I think this is a good blue. Yeah. So this is a brighter blue than we used here. And I'm going to take this bright blue and I'm going to come into this back end of this birdie's tail feathers here and I'm going to pull this bright blue from that end. And I'm gonna make his little belly blue. Okay. This right here I'll make some other color, but I'll pull some more blue along the bottom here. So if you see that I've got, oh, I've got ink right there, oh, darn, oh, I don't care. I'll thicken that line up, if the background color doesn't fix it, then I'll worry about it later. It's gonna happen unless I painstakingly go really, really slow, which is not my forte. Then I'm going to fill in the rest of this wing with this blue. And I definitely don't care if I get any of this blue on that part of the wing there, it's not going to hurt it. It's made out of all kinds of blues anyway. Okay. And I'm going to go back to my sand and I'm going to pull some brown. And then I'm going to go to this weird pinky color, pull that in there. See if my other end is any better. Yes. And this color calls itself apricot, I think it's a decent rendition of apricot. And come back to the sand again. And there we go. So there's our beautiful bird, our little highlights of those orangy colors in there, wonderful blues of his wings and his tail feathers. All that's left is going to be his eye and then his beak. And surprisingly enough, their beaks are all sorts of different colors, they're not just, you know, they don't just come in one color. I'm going to go ahead and use this chocolate that has this red cast to it for part of his beak. And then I'm going to take this yellow. Pull just little bit of yellow in there. Like so. Cause sometimes they have that little ridge where the beak meets the feathers of their face. And I kind of liked the way that looks and I would never draw an eye on him but I'm going to do that for you right now to kind of show you positioning. And I know it's something that I can cover with a bead. So, there's a little eye for him. And I'm also going to dress up his head just the tiniest bit. With some blue. And there we go. So birdie is done. Lots of different techniques of bringing color together and making him look not necessarily like a real bird, but making him look like he has some realism to him. Then the last thing I want to do is I'm going to do a little bit of filling in negative space here. I was feeling to see if these leaves are dry and they are. I'm also seeing that the wet blending that I did with darker color on them didn't give me the darkness I want. So I'm going to go back in here and add some more dark. Now that it's dry. And you can see right now that that's so much better. So they blended together a little too much when they were wet. And if I come in there and add accent when it's dry it's better, but that was in the middle of the leaves. And so I should be okay to fill in this background color here. And I think that the background color that I'm going to do is going to be a somewhat mottled blue-green with yellow in it too. So a big play off of some colors. And so the only yellow I have, I don't have any liquid yellow, is yellow marker. So I'm going to come in here and just put some yellow highlights. And I'm only going to do this one small section where these leaves are done, but I want you to see how I do this. And then I'm going to come in with several blues and you see that I'm making linear movements that are moving across the sky. That's important because I don't necessarily want the sky to have a movement this way that would read as rain or something. I don't want too much of the blue on top of the yellow because yellow and blue make green and that's not my goal. Okay. And then I'm going to come in with my really, really wet ink in a light color and a soft brush. And I'm going to be so very careful. These brushes, if you roll them on the edge of the container that has the paint in them, they will come to a bit of a tip or a point. And I'm gonna come in here and I'm just gonna set that down and let it move. And it's going to move itself along with the colors that are laid down underneath it. But only as long as they're slightly wet. So that's why we do such a small section at a time. So this is going to give us what's called a painterly sky The sky that looks like it's been painted, which it has. So this section is almost done. I'm going to try to keep this blue out of this flower as much as possible, but if a little gets in there, it's not going to kill it. By the time it's dry I can go back in there with the color of the flowers and it will give me decent coverage. Okay, so that's going to be a very, very pretty sky. When I come in here to do the bird, I'm going to want to put a lot of the yellow around the bird so that it shows up well in this blue sky color, but it's going to work really well anyway. So now we're going to go back to this guy here and look and see what's happening. We can feel them. You can see how much lighter this green is now than it was, how much lighter these blues are than they were when they were wet. The colors change quite a bit. I can also see everything's given me the coverage I need it to. And so I'm just going to use this as a pointing device. We can see that we can't see that blue through here anymore where it was coming through because that silver gave us the coverage that we wanted it to give us. And that's a good thing. At this point, I can go in here and finish these and then let that dry completely. And I can work on that while this is drying. I don't want to work on this while this is drying. I don't want to work on this, but while this is drying, I can work out here. So I'd never want to work in an area right next to an area that's wet. So this is the gist of working with the ink and we're going to use it most of the time, like 99% of the time, I use the ink for all of my fill and all of my little delicate work. I use the Shiva paintstiks to go in and add highlights and or to cover something that has a dark background. And we'll do that next.