Week 19 Challenge - Digi Colouring

It's Friday and time for another Polkadoodle Challenge! This is my (Ruth) last week for setting the challenges and I hope you've enjoyed them!


Before I tell you about this week's challenge, I need to announce the winners from week 17 - Anything But A Card:

In Third Place: Aquarius

In Second Place: Dolly

And The Winner is: Lisa B

This was a really tough week for the DT to pick our top threes - a lot of entries and some stunning ideas so thank you all for joining in! I'd have picked you all, but sadly we can only pick three! Congratulations to our winners and please contact Nikky for your blinkies.


Don't forget that there is still time to enter challenge 18 - DIY flowers as it is open until noon on Sunday 27 September.


So this week, I have set the Design Team the challenge of:

Digi Colouring

Basically, they could pick any Polly or Jack image from the Polkadoodles range but they had to colour it themselves, using what ever techniques or medium they wanted. Just before this post you will find two tutorials on digi colouring - one using felt tips (yes, remember those?!) and one using watercolour pencils.


I hope the following samples will provide you with plenty of inspiration!

Boni has created a wonderfully pink princess Polly card! The image is from Jingle Jangle Christmas but as you can see, can be adapted to suit any occassion! Backing papers are from Candy Doodles.



Claire has used papers from Candy Doodles and added Polly from Sugar Birdies. She's coloured Polly with copics and a little Sukra stardust. Great way of adding an image to a double fold card!

Enfys has created a spooky but sweet Halloween card using elements from the download - both Polly and Marmalade are from the collection. I do like the drippiness of the frame and how Polly seems to be menacingly glowing!

And here is another spooky Halloween card this time from Kath! A glittery spiders web taken from the Halloween download along with Polly who has been coloured using watercolour pencils and her most favourite brush!

Kerry has used Sugar Birdies papers and Polly is also from the cd. With some subtle embossing and eyelets (I do like eyelets - they are very underated in my opinion) this is a great card.

Now I'm hungry! Kris has coloured Jack with Prismas and OMS with the sentiments being computer generated. Now I do like funny cards and this one made me laugh out loud! Kris has used the Halloween download and also Candy Doodles.

Saskia has created a very cute Christmas card using the elements from Jingle Jangle Christmas - the holly stamps are from the rubber stamp collection. Polly (lets hope she doens't lean too hard on the gift!) is coloured with copics.


I've used the Halloween download for both my samples - a tutorial for each card precedes this post so if you want to know more, scroll down! Polly has been coloured with watercolour pencils and Jack with felt tips. Both cards have a little wobbly eyed fimo spider attached!

Hope you've enjoyed the challenge for this week and we all look forward to seeing your creations! Just simply leave a comment on this post with a direct link to your blog post. You have until Sunday 4 October at 12 noon GMT to enter.

**Edited to add: Any digi image is fine but would love it if a Polkadoodle one was used!

Good luck!

Tutorial for Challenge 19 - Digi Colouring with Watercolour Pencils

And here is the second tutorial to accompany this weeks challenge!

My equipment is very basic! These are the watercolour pencils (24) that I use and also the brush felt tips (30). The watercolour pencils can be used as ordinary pencils, but they really come to life when a tiny bit of water is added.

For this tutorial I am colouring Polly Polkadoodle from the Halloween download. I've started with a light and pale layer of colour.

I've now added more definition to Polly's hat by dipping the nib of my pencil into water - I can now spread the colour more easily and also choose which areas I want to leave as highlights.

To build up more intense and darker colours, I've used not only the blues but also greens and purples. I would not use the black at this point as to go too dark too quickly may spoil the overall effect.

The same technique is then applied to her cape. Colour is built up slowly with greens, browns, blues and reds.

Other smaller areas are now coloured.

And only now (below) have I added a tiny bit of black here and there to provide a darker contrast to the colour. However, it is really the colour and it's depth that I want to portray which I feel provides a richer and deeper colour than using black as this can be a very flat tone.

And here are the two images together that I coloured for these tutorials. Same technique applied to both images but different results due to the medium used.

And this is the card I made with the Polly Polkadoodle image. Papers are also from the Halloween download and the little fimo spider is made by me!

Hope you've enjoyed the tutorials and that you'll be able to join in with the challenge this week!

Tutorial for Challenge 19 - Digi Colouring with Felt Tips

Here is a tutorial to accompany this weeks challenge. There will be another tutorial published just after this one which uses a different medium to colour a digital image.

My equipment is very basic! These are the watercolour pencils (24) that I use and also the brush felt tips (30). I use the brush felt tips as the hard nibbed ones tend to 'scuff' the paper and are not as easy to blend with the different shades.

My two images that I'm colouring - Jack and Polly Polkadoodle from the Halloween download.

I've started off with Jack and the felt tips. By using a pale blue felt tip, I've coloured his jeans. This is now my base colour upon which I will add darker colours for shadowing.

I've then 'dotted' darker shades of blue on top of the initial block of colour - this is now providing shadows and form and it also helps to stop some of the hard lines that you get when using felt tips as they don't blend too well, but with this technique, its not quite as noticeable.

Once the jeans are completed I started on Jack's cape. Again, I added the lightest green I wanted as my base colour.

And slowly built up the shadows - the paler green stays as the highlights.

Once I'm happy with the cape, I then start on other smaller areas - I've coloured his t-shirt and started on his creepy gloves. Again, I've used the same techniques.

I've started to add different colours such as purple, blues and reds to build up more definition and to extend my colour range.

Next, the hair and mask is coloured.

And for extra highlights, I've used a white gel pen and loosely but carefully scribbled over the top of the felt tip where I want highlights. This provides more definition.

I had a little helper whilst I was colouring the two images - Samuel was on his school holidays and sat with me and coloured his own Halloween Jack with his felt tips! Even though I've enlarged the image to fit an A4 sheet, there is no loss of quality - so you can make the images as small or as large as you wish!

And this is the card I made with the image - I cut around Jack, leaving a fine white border and layered him onto papers from the Halloween download. A bit of inking and doodling and he is complete! Plus the wobbly eyed fimo spider, of course!

The second tutorial on digital image colouring follows this post. Hope you enjoyed this one, and go and re-discover felt tips (these were half price in Tesco's - £1.25!)