Two Adult Drawing Pages

The second of three posts for today.

I have done a couple more adult drawing pages, both downloaded from here.

I wasn’t that thrilled with the first one, to be honest – not such an interesting picture, and I did it with coloured pencils which didn’t come out very bright. Being poppies, I think I would have done better to use my Sharpies to get more intense colour.

Here is the original printed drawing.

This is what I did with it.

The second one, however, I was very pleased with. For starters, I much preferred the picture, which had lots of potential for shading and different colouring.

This time I decided to use my Inktense pencils, which, true to their name, have intense colour. Being ink, once dry, they do not run and you can add more layers on top if you want, without re-activating what you have already done. Not that I did that in this case, though. I love the way they blend so well together with the application of a little water on a brush. They are quite sticky and waxy to use, and don’t run on as smoothly as regular coloured pencils and I certainly wouldn’t use them if I wasn’t going to add water afterwards. Adding water with the brush reminds me of another favourite childhood activity – magic painting! Who remembers that (or am I giving away my age!)… You had a greyish looking page with outlines drawn on it, and you would paint it just with water, and the colours would spring to life!

If you look carefully, you can see that I added some lines to the drawing, to make the trellis weave over and under, and added some little nails to hold it together! I think that makes it look better, particularly with the shading.

For the butterflies, I used a combination of Twinkling H2Os and Perfect Pearls. I bought a couple of little packs of the former at Hobbycraft recently and hadn’t yet tried them. Frankly I was a bit disappointed, after reading raves from people about them online. For starters, the packs I got seemed only to have pinks and browns in them which wasn’t terribly useful for butterflies. When I started using the Perfect Pearls instead, I think I was getting more intense colour and more shimmer from them than from the Twinklings, which surprised me a lot. Maybe I need to experiment further.

After I’d added the shimmer colours to the butterflies, I went around the outlines again with a permanent black marker because some of the lines had become indistinct where I’d gone over them.

Anyway, I was very pleased with the results – the butterflies are really shimmery! They stand out in contrast against the background. Of course, most of this doesn’t show up on the photos, but I’ve done my best to do them justice.

I am having fun experimenting with different media for these adult colouring pages. I must try good old-fashioned watercolours, acrylics, mixed media, foiling, embossing, pastels and chalks… the possibilities are endless! One thing I have learnt, especially from my experience with the poppies one, is that you need to choose the correct medium for the picture, so that you do it justice. Soft, subtle colours do not work on an image which calls for bright, vibrant shades.

Chemo and Rapunzel

Today I went in for my seventh, and penultimate chemo treatment. Yesterday I saw Dr. Lo, the oncologist, and as usual she was particularly concerned about the peripheral neuropathy – if one is not careful this side effect can become permanent, and the only way to reduce that risk is to reduce the dose of the chemo. I have already had two reductions of 10 percent each, and thought she might suggest this, but she said that as I was so near the end of the course, she could reduce it to half the original amount for the final two sessions! I was very surprised (and delighted) at this, and asked whether it might not compromise the effectiveness of the treatment. She replied that some research has been done on patients receiving chemo after the removal of their cancers by surgery, and it has been suggested that those whose dose is reduced, or whose treatment is shortened, do just as well as those who have the full dose for the full six months, so she was confident that I would be OK. I am looking forward to seeing if this affects how I feel over the coming fortnight – I should notice a huge difference!

The Ricky Grant Day Unit phoned this morning while I was still in bed, to ask if I would come in earlier than my 1.15 p.m. appointment. I was half expecting this, because it happened before when they’d made me rather a late appointment. Because the treatment takes four hours, they are anxious to finish before the unit closes for the day. Why they can’t think of this when they make the initial appointment is beyond me! Last time I had to rush around and was still late, but at least this time they asked me to come in at 12 noon, so I still had time to get up and do everything that was necessary, and have a bit of time to myself in the morning before setting off.

All went off OK, except that the place was absolutely heaving with people today! For the first couple of hours there wasn’t a recliner chair available for me, even though I specifically requested it because I find it uncomfortable to sit in a normal chair without having my feet up for any length of time. The chair they offered me was the same as the one I’d had on the ward after my operation and it was very uncomfortable! After a short while I transferred back to my wheelchair which was at least more comfortable and supported me in all the right places, but I really did want to get my feet up. It was rather annoying that the man sitting opposite me was sitting on a recliner but in its upright position, so he would have been just as comfortable on a normal chair, freeing up the recliner for the likes of yours truly!! Eventually, though, this recliner became available when the man left, and I sat next to a delightful couple (husband having treatment) and we had a nice chat.

As usual, I took a bag of things in to do, but ended up not touching most of it, because I had printed out some free downloads of adult colouring pages, and decided to work on one of these. The nurses were very interested and loved what I had done, and enjoyed seeing it progressing. They are all so friendly and lovely.

This is the finished drawing. After using my Sharpies for the Koi Carp drawing I did before, this time I decided to go for a more subtle effect using my coloured pencils, which blend beautifully for shading.

Here is the original printed drawing.

My c9lored pencils, which fit very nicely in one of Dad’s old cigar boxes! Beside it are the other bits and pieces I thought I might need – pencil sharpener, paper stump for blending, pencil-shaped eraser, Zig Millennium archival pen, soluble graphite pencil, water brush. In the end I didn’t use the pencil sharpener, the graphite pencil or the water brush,  but everything else came in handy.

Now for some detail shots. Here is a detail of the hair. I had fun shading this!

Detail of the prince. Note the shading on his hat.

Detail of the trees and towers. I like the roofs on part of the castle, that I decided to colour to look like terracotta tiles.

Detail of the top border. The lattice didn’t look like a wooden one to me, with its cross-shaped pieces connecting the bars – it looked more like metal, so I coloured it as such. This suggested to me the fact that Rapunzel was imprisoned in her tower. The top border has a slightly art nouveau flavour to it.

Detail of Rapunzel’s face. You can’t see it very well in the photo but she has a delicate blush of pink on her cheeks, and blue eyeshadow. Note the shading under her arm.

Lastly, a detail shot of the bottom of the picture. I love how the hair spills out beyond the frame of the picture. The whole picture has a lovely fluid feel to it.

A final glimpse of the finished picture again. You will notice that I added a drop shadow which gives the picture a bit of dimension. I hope you enjoyed it!

Edit: You might be interested to visit http://www.coloring-pages-adults.com/ where I downloaded this drawing – they have got literally hundreds of amazing adult colouring pages for free download, arranged in categories. More than enough for a lifetime of happy colouring, I should think! Have fun.

WOYWW 327–Adult Colouring

Well, better late than never! I wasn’t thinking of joining in WOYWW this week because there’s nothing on my desk to show, and I’m feeling rough in week 1 of my 6th cycle of chemo.

However, the other day I downloaded a free pdf taster for an adult colouring book and today I decided to try my new Sharpies and colour it in. My hubby kindly printed it out for me on his laser printer.

This is more WOYSRT (What’s On Your Sitting Room Table) than WOYWW this week lol!

Here is the original printed drawing.

Colouring in the fish.

Colouring in the water.

Forgot to photograph any further intermediate stages, but here is the finished picture. I coloured the waterlily leaves with different shades of green, and added a touch of pink to the flowers. The final touch was to colour in the edges of the background with grey, shaded to black at the edges, and to add a tiny touch of shading here and there.

Quite fun, eh? Hope you like it.

I know that we on WOYWW have all been thinking a lot about Shaz this past week. She went into hospital a week ago today for major surgery, and has been having a tough time since. Just in case you don’t get to see the link elsewhere (I know that Jan – LLJ – has posted it, and she has very kindly emailed me with some updates over the past couple of days), Shaz’s hubby has started a blog about her journey, so that we can follow her progress.

http://birdshospitalstay.blogspot.co.uk/

We are thinking of them both so much at this difficult time, and wish Shaz a very speedy recovery, but it is going to be a long stay in hospital. We send our support to her hubby too – it is so hard for them as they feel so helpless, watching what is happening and feeling powerless to do anything, but as I told my hubby today, just the fact of their being there and being supportive and loving is enough. Shaz and I are both so fortunate in our hubbies – they are cast in the same mould, and have wanted to be fully involved and supportive throughout our respective cancer journeys. I count myself very fortunate that my journey has not been as arduous as Shaz’s, and I can never forget the amazing support she has been throughout this year, as she has trod much of my path before and has shared the wisdom of her experience. Get well soon, dear friend!!

Happy WOYWW everybody.