Reactive Inks + Colored Pencil With Koi Bunch

Hi friends! I have been on a colored pencil kick lately, so I thought I'd bring that to the blog today.

Koi are one of my favorite types of stamp images, because in real life, there's an endless variety of colors and patterns on koi, so you really have limitless coloring potential. At our botanical garden, there is a long, winding koi pond where you can see hundreds of these beautiful fish in all sorts of wild colors - my favorites are the ones with grey and black on them.

Today I thought I'd show you an easy trick for making your koi from the new Koi Bunch set look like they are under water.

First - use a blending brush to blend Splash and Pool Party Reactive Inks all over a card panel. You do not want this to be smooth - you want color and tone variation to give the look of water.

Next, stamp the koi in Contour Ink - this will react with the Hero Hues and give you a light outline to follow. 

Finally, color them with colored pencils - I used Luminance.

You'll notice that even the white spots don't look totally white, they are faintly blue from the ink underneath, which gives you the illusion that the fish are beneath the inky water on your card. I added a few little highlights with a white gel pen here and there.

Here's a closeup of some of the fishies. So fun and relaxing.

The sentiment is also from Koi Bunch.

I hope you have a great week!

CM591 Koi Bunch | Hero Arts [ HA ] AF428 Splash Reactive Ink | Hero Arts [ HA ] AF426 Pool Party Reactive Ink | Hero... [ HA ] AF468 Contour Ink Pad | Hero Arts [ HA ] MI003 Ink Blending Brushes | Hero Arts [ HA ]