Chameleon Pens and Colouring Books! By Karen Ellis
Okay, it’s official. I am stating for the record that I, Karen Ellis, love to colour!
I have jumped on the adult colouring book band wagon and have come to appreciate the zen time it offers. Combine those books and Chameleon Pens… Oh yes!! I’m in heaven.
If you haven’t tried Chameleon Pens yet, I invite you to do so. They are alcohol based pens (like Copic and Spectrum Noir) which allows great blend ability, but what makes these pens special is the built in charger that allows you to change the saturation of the pen ink while colouring. Brilliant! Instant highlights, gradation, and shadowing!
I love “hopping” the colour, and creating colour gradations with my Chameleon Pens to create depth and highlights but I wanted to show you here how I used the pens to change the colour’s tone to expand the pen colour palette.
On this page I thought the Bubble Gum Pink ink was a little too pink so I wanted to tone it down. I did this by adding another colour over top of the pink roses. I chose to colour it with NU1 Bisque to create a more peachy look. I loved it so much, I added it to most of the other flowers too (all but the blue hydrangea) creating a very even toned look to the page. I love it. Here’s how it was done:
I coloured the roses by “hopping” the colour with Bubble Gum Pink. Hopping: do a long fuse with your pen so that there is lots of toning medium in it and then colour randomly by hopping from section to section.
Then I took the Bisque pen and coloured over the rose. If you wanted to, you can fuse this pen as well to gradate the colour. The sample below uses the pen as is – at full strength.
I just love how the colours blend together creating tertiary colours. Just think of the possibilities and how much fun you can have experimenting with colour. For example:
Here I used the yellow (Summer Sun) to change the Bubble Gum Pink to various shades of orange and the Sky Blue to change the pink to various purple hues.
Take some time to experiment with tertiary colours while working in your colouring books – or even colouring your favourite stamps. It’s fun and you’ll be amazed how far your 20 pen Chameleon colour palette will take you.
Have fun and a super creative day!
Visit Karen at the Art House Studio to see more of her work – CLICK HERE
NOTE: The page I coloured for this post is from Jamie Dougherty’s THE BLOOM BOOK being released to stores this week! I’m so fortunate to have had a little sneak of it to share with you here! I love Jamie’s Bloom Girls – I’m sure you’re familiar with them (distributed by Prima Marketing) – and her colouring book looks like oodles of fun! The images used in this post are used with permission.
