A New Journey - Pencils (picture heavy!)

Happy Sunday all!  I began a new journey yesterday which has been inspired by lovely Mel who manages to bring her stamped images to life using pencils.  I have sat gazing in admiration at the magic that Mel uses in her images and, like soooo many times before I've sat here thinking "I really want to do that!".  So yesterday I decided to take the plunge.  It's not the easiest thing, for me anyway, but I decided to give it a go and I wanted to show my journey so far in just one weekend.

First up was this:

Hmmm.... As you can see, I definitely didn't get it right first time.  I could see I wasn't going anywhere with this so I gave up and moved on.  This was attempt no. 2:

Again, it's not right, but at least there is a sign (albeit very small!!!) of progress.  So, nothing for it, I sat at the computer, went into Mel's blog and blatantly copied her shading for attempt no 3 (sorry Mel, I hope you don't mind!):

Oooh, definitely signs of improvement here.  Having achieved this (I love her hair!!) I am spurred to have another go, this time on my own (but using the above pic as a guide!):

My first finished one!   OK, there's still a lot of room for improvement, and I didn't have any skin tone pencils so I used Copics for the skin.  This time I've attempted the "No black lines" thing as well, but I haven't quite achieved that, and poor ol' Tilda has the scariest face!!.  But I'm getting more excited and more determined by now so I decided to have a go with a different image (bored with this one now! LOL!)

Now we're getting somewhere.   I'm actually starting to feel like I'm making progress now so time to have a go with another image:

Woohoo!! Now I'm cooking on gas!!! LOL!!  I am really pleased with this one - so much so that I got adventurous and used a 'tan' coloured pencil to enhance the skin tones!  NEXT......

I am definitely enjoying this journey so much!  Up to now I have used Derwent Inktense pencils, which are actually watercolour pencils, (but I've not added water!).  I used the same smooth cardstock that I use for my Copic colouring.  I am pleased with how much progress I've made in just one day (the ironing is NOT getting done!!).  However, lurking in the back of my mind is a feeling that somewhere in the dark murky depths of my craftroom, I am certain that I have some Faber Castell pencils that I've had for years, unsused!  So I ventured up there and went through every drawer until at last I came across a box of 24!  So I took them downstairs and proceeded to sharpen them to a very fine point.  Another bonus was that they are Polychromos which means that they are very soft and blend well (apparently!).  I had a couple of go's on the smooth cardstock but that just didn't work at all - too waxy - so I used plain white cardstock and produced this:

I've got a long way to go before I achieve the level of magic that Mel produces (if I ever do!) but I am so thrilled to have made such a lot of progress in just one weekend using my colour pencils. 

I wanted to blog this because whenever I see fantastic colouring on another crafter's blog, I always like to go back through older posts to look at how far they have come with their colour journey's and it's lovely to see how we all improve.  Hopefully I can look back at this one day and think "OMG, that was shockingly bad!!" LOL!!!

Thanks for stopping by, and please feel free to leave (constructive!!) criticism (or encouraging feedback!).  Thanks ***Mel*** for your inspiration!!