Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Wonderful Weekend

Well, I looked forward to taking Dave's Brethauer's classes for about a year, and I wasn't disappointed! I took his colored pencil and watercolor classes, and both were loads of fun. I just love coloring and can't wait to incorporate his techniques with my own.

The card above was one I did to practice working with colored pencils. There was a lot of open area to color, so I got a LOT of practice. I colored the poppy (Hero Arts) with various Prismacolor pencils (brown, two shades of red, orange, and yellow). One of the key things I have learned from Dave's classes is how well brown works for deepening shades of red. Instead of using Gamsol to "melt" the shades of wax together, I simply blended the pencils with each other. Gamsol makes blending go much faster, but the end result isn't as vibrant.

I thought I would share some close-ups of a couple of the cards I did in Dave's colored pencil class. I took close-up pictures so that you could see the colored pencil work. The stamps really aren't that big! The first one was a good one for me to do because I don't have much practice blending complimentary colors. I usually blend colors that are next to each other on the color wheel rather than those on opposite sides of the color wheel. I also liked the fact that he stamped the image onto patterned paper and then had us color in parts of the image with the pencil. My poppy card took a while to color, but the leaves card was much more manageable.

The second close-up is of a cute Christmas fox. I cut off the saying, but it says, "you can't out fox Santa." Too cute. This was the hardest one to color, but I enjoyed the challenge. I think we ended up using 8-10 colors on the fox alone. I will have to work on incorporating more shades into images I color. It really does make a difference to the finished project. I'm not sure I need to point this out, but all the images used in Dave's classes are by Memory Box.

On a personal note, I have to admit I suffer a bit from Crafter's Craziness. As I was leaving the house to go to Dave's classes, my sandal caught on a step, and I missed the bottom two stairs. I landed on a knee and jammed my right ring finger. My first thought was not how my sore finger would affect driving or using the computer. No, my first thought was, "not my drawing finger!!!" Sad. Just sad.

8 comments:

Penny said...

Ouch Laura! I hope your finger IS better now....and wow, what amazing colouring. The class sounds fantastic. Who would have thought there were so many colours used for the fox? Looks brilliant!

GiftsByHeidi said...

Your cards are awesome. I wish I would have gotten into those classes. Hope your finger is feeling better soon!

Chrisi said...

Freaking WOW. Really - this is a beautiful card. Great use of the layout challenge and the flower is amazing.

Unknown said...

AMazing coloring. Hope you finger is better.

Your recemt fall kind of reminds me of a toe in the tub faucet incident. :-)

Laura said...

Thanks Deedee. Thanks

Ashley M said...

That flower is AMAZING!

Anonymous said...

I love all your cards in this post (boy, is your squirrel ever so much better-looking than mine!) but I'm absolutely in awe of your work on the poppy. Dave better watch out! ;-)

Anonymous said...

Oops, and by "squirrel" I really meant "fox"!