Much Ado About Colored Pencils

If you have absolutely no interest in colored pencils, just skip this post. I am completely obsessed after taking Terry Medaris' class yesterday. I learned how to color with prisma pencils the way that Debbie does in her gorgeous cards. I have been admiring her pencil work for a long time and she told me that Terry's class is how she got to be so good at coloring. Well, it was Terry's class and a lot of color theory and practice. I do have hope now that I can color and shade and blend and practice enough to do a decent job. Terry teaches art at a college in Arizona and designs wonderful stamps. In the summers he travels to teach. I highly recommend that you take classes from him if he is coming anywhere near you this summer. The schedule is on the link at the beginning of this post. You can also buy his stamps at that link. They really are unlike anything else I've ever seen and his prices are fantastic.

More about the classes yesterday. I took class #1 & #2. The first class was all about blending. He showed us his technique for laying down a heavy layer of pencil using 3 shades of the same hue. There is a ton of blending going on. It takes time, but the vibrant and gorgeous results are worth it. He gave us coloring sheets of his designs to color and practice our new found blending skills. This class was 3 hours long, and I needed all 3 hours to practice and then color one image. He gave us several large sheets of his designs to choose from and practice with at home. The large image of the woman wrapped in the blanket is what I completed in the first class. I'm a little slow, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

The second class was using our new coloring skills to make some cool goodies. We prepared and stamped on a domino, a 4" x 4" tumbled marble tile, and a piece of shrinky dink plastic. All of the images were stamped with staz-on and colored with prisma pencils. I was able to complete the domino & tile in the picture in the 3 hour class. The best part of this class was that there were only 7 of us in the class and he came around and gave individual instruction as we were working. He sat down with me on each project and showed me amazing ways to add interest, shadow, and light to my projects. The 2 projects posted here are colored by Terry and me. I stamped them both and laid down the base colors and then he showed me how to shade and layer and highlight. Then, I continued to use the techniques he showed me to finish them. It was fun to work with his stamps and to see all of his samples and the work of the other students. Everyone had different skill levels, but all of us walked out with gorgeous finished projects. The uncolored cactus is the shrinky dink piece that I still need to color. The stamps on the bottom are the ones that I had to bring home with me.

So, now if you feel the need to buy prisma pencils...run don't walk to Joanne's. They have the open stock prisma pencils on clearance for 50 cents each. They are regularly $1.49 each or come in sets that can be purchased with a coupon. I bought a set of 24 and filled in with a ton of the 50 cent pencils. I think I have over 60 pencils now, and I spent under $40 for the lot. You have to go to the bigger stores to find pencils and I found them in the clearance section at the Redlands, CA store and at the front of the store at the Ontario Mills, CA store. They may not be marked as clearance, but take one to the register to have them check. I found a huge selection at the Ontario store because there was no signage saying they were clearance as of last night. Go there quick for a good selection.

I'm sure I'll be posting more pencil coloring in the near future. Oh, and I'm calling these three projects May cards 16, 17 & 18. I'm behind on my card a day project, but I think these will count. I hope you have a creative Sunday.