Colouring with Distress Inks

I use a mixture of re-inkers and pads. Personally I prefer the re-inkers but it's only a matter of personal preference. I use three brushes, size 6 for larger areas, size2 for medium and size0 for finely detailed work

My palette is a smooth kitchen tile.  I use an egg cup for water and change if often - I was taught, ages ago, to use mineral water as tap water has chemicals in that can affect the paint. Now we're painting images for cards, not masterpieces to I hardly think this matters but I still do it from force of habit.

I printed the image on Fabriano Classico 5 paper which is 300g/ms (140lb) on a draft/quick print setting.

Firstly I start by deciding where your light is coming from, with this image I've decided it's coming from the front right.

I started by lightly colouring the skin areas with Tattered Rose.

Mixed with a tiny amount of Antique linen for the shaded areas.

Clean the brush wipe, remove most of the water and gently blend the two areas of colour.

I use a little Victorian Velvet mixed with the Tattered Rose to add 'roses' to cheeks.

Here I start to colour the hair using Weathered Wood. I hardly ever use Black Soot as I find it harsh and unforgiving, but do use a minute amount mixed to deepen colours. I mixed colours with water at different strengths - see above. Start with the lightest and slowly build up the colour constantly blending.

Here I used a tiny brush point of Black soot mixed with Weathered Wood on the darkest parts.

I decided to do a green scarf this time using Peeled paint - again mixing little pools of varying strengths.

I started by laying down a layer of the weaker mix where the shadows would be, using a brush with quite a bit of water I quickly blended the green over the whole of the scarf.

Slowly, little by little I built up the depth of colour, constantly blend in between each layer of ink.

Next I started to build up the colour on the jacket using Vintage photo.

I put a light wash with my size 6 brush

Again I built up my darker shaded areas slowly and constantly blending.

With larger areas I use the wet in wet technique. I wet the area I wanted to add the shadow to, picked up a fair bit of dark ink on my brush and dropped it into the wet area. You can see how it spreads itself out, making it easier to blend.

You will also see water marks where I've wet the paper, these will blend easily.

I decided to use yellow Mustard Seed for the earphones and Tshirt.

I finally added colour (Weathered wood plus a touch of Black Soot) to the sunglasses.

At this point I looked and decided some areas needed more shade and depth. I added these and blended any part that need extra blending.

Here we have the finished image. There are parts where I've gone over the lines, I found the inks were drying very quickly in the heat, plus stopping to take photographs didn't help but these will not show on the card.

I would suggest you use decent quality watercolour paper and brushes. A good brush will return to a point making it easier to use.

Colours I find the most useful   Tattered Rose  -  flesh coloured

                                          Antique Linen   -  slightly greeny brown, good for darker skin tones

                                          Vintage Photo - a nice warm brown

                                          Peeled paint  -  green

                                          Faded Jeans - blue

                                          Dusky concord  or Milled lavender  -  Mauve/ lavender/Purple

                                          Dried Marigold - orange

                                          Mustard seed  -  yellow

                                          Weathered wood - bluey grey

I hope your find this tutorial use and if anyone is interested I have in my file colour wheels that show you the results of mixing colour etc. I could either do a tutorial or email you the colour wheels.

Any questions please feel free to ask, either in a comment or email me.