Coloring Exercise

Can you believe it? I haven't done any stamping since I got back from the Spellbinders Retreat last Sunday night!  I think I have "stampers block"!  I'm hoping to get over it this weekend........hasn't happened yet but I still have tonight and Sunday to go!

In the meantime, I have a coloring exercise to share that I did at the Spellbinders Retreat last week. We were privileged to have Marianne Walker from Copic speak to us on Saturday.  She is a very talented artist as well as a Copic instructor. 

When she suggested this coloring exercise, she asked if we could each stamp something to color.  Well, this was Saturday afternoon.  We were all leaving early on Sunday.  We had all packed our stuff!  No one had any stamps or ink.  So with just a little encouragement from all of us, she sat down and drew a sunflower for us to color.  After a quick trip to the hotel business center to make copies, we were set to color.

.....this photo shows the sunflower taking shape.....

We each had 2 sunflowers to color and we were each given 2 letters of the alphabet.  We were to choose a word starting with one of the letters showing feeling or emotion, write it down and tuck it away.  Then, out came the Copics.  We were free to color one sunflower any way we liked.  The 2nd flower was to be colored depicting the word we had written down.

......here Marianne puts the finishing touches on her creation with her signature and a title.....

Everyone was so quiet once we started coloring. How relaxing it was!

Here's my first sunflower.  I chose to make it more orange than a traditional yellow sunflower.

This is my 2nd flower.  I chose a word starting with "R" to influence my color scheme.  Can you guess what the word was? What kind of emtion does this color portray versus the color of my first flower?

My word was "restful".  I chose softer pastel colors to portray that emotion.  Do you think it seems more restful than the orange one?

It was so interesting to see what the rest of the DT did with their sunflowers.  I wish I'd taken a photo of all of them on the table.........but I didn't.  Marianne laid them all out on a table and talked about each set of flowers commenting on techniques and colors used to portray each word.  There was a very wide variety of colors and styles.  Each one unique!

Here you can compare them side by side.....

It was a fun exercise.  Color does make a difference in the emotion or mood portrayed.

Margie just sent me this photo of all the DT sunflowers!!! Thanks, Margie! ...so you get to see all the flowers after all!

Margie is on the Spellbinders Blog Team. We met at the Retreat.  She's so fun!  And as you can see, she always had her camera!

                                         (added April 25, 2010)

Hope you enjoyed this little exercise!

Happy coloring!

-judy