Copic Markers for Card Makers - Day 3

Wow! Day 3 already!  I am completely loving this class, specially because I am taking it at home, working around my own schedule AND I'm learning a lot!

Today we learned about working with gray and blending it into our colors to really extend the colors we already have. As I mentioned in my day 1 post, Copics are an investment, being able to stretch the colors really makes a difference.

Here is what I worked on today:

First the mugs, I really thought I would enjoy working on these, after all I love my coffee...

In the first green mug, I only used variants of green to do the blending. In the mug next to it I used two colors and added in a gray tone to give depth to the shadow on the left side. 

I didn't have the colors I wanted to use in the pink mugs and found the colors very difficult to blend. You can see on the right most mug that I really had to saturate the paper to get them to blend despite using gray. As a result the ink bled outside the lines of the picture.

I had better luck with the umbrellas. 

The both of these umbrellas I used the same colors, but added gray for shading on the right umbrella. I really like the difference it made in the final picture.

For this pastel umbrella, I started with one color and added a lighter shade of gray,  it worked well with the BG11 and B41, but the Y02 could have used a darker color.

My final umbrella, in my favorite color red I tried an experiment. I first colored all three panels in the same color R29. On the left panel I used N2 to shade, in the center panel I used R39 and the right I used N4. I think I like the right panel the best, what do you think?

Today my daughter is having surgery to repair a torn retina in her eye, so my post may have to wait until Friday. I hope you check back to see my progress.  In the mean time, please let me know what you think of my practice sheets and feel free to give some input. 

Thanks!

TC