I went shopping for a new adult coloring book
and instead stumbled across what turned out to be not just a new favorite,
but also one of the most underrated adult coloring book artists in the world.
And with very little experience in coloring skin and hair myself,
I'm taking on an ambitious double spread today with some of my favorite pencils.
These pages are gorgeous,
and for the more advanced colorists, there's a lot of potential to color these
any way you want and really make these faces and illustrations come to life.
If you've ever come across this artist before, these pictures will be familiar.
And you'll know I'm talking about the amazing work of Hannah Karlzon,
and if you follow Hannah on social media, you'll also know the health challenges
that she's facing right now, which I will talk about later in this video.
But more than anything, my Hannah fans will understand why I
thought it was crazy when I discovered how underrated she was.
In comparison to some of my other favorite
coloring book artists like Johanna Basford and Kerby Rosanes,
Hannah's books have a great combination of decorative details and overall great
page designs that look good even if you're coloring them as a beginner.
But in the hands of a more advanced
artist, her pages take on a whole new life.
She leaves so much room for interpretation, which can make these
a little more intimidating, but also opens up the opportunity
to completely transform her pages into works of art.
I've seen the same page colored
in completely different ways, and I feel like her books allow for more
creativity than even some of the best artists out there.
I search the adult coloring book category
on Amazon, and while books like this somehow qualify in the top 100,
Hannah's books are nowhere to be seen. Even in the many subcategories of coloring
books, I was only able to find one of her nine books, lower down the list, compared
to hundreds of books, many of which weren't even coloring books.
I was even more surprised to discover
that the number of people searching for Hannah Karlzon on YouTube and Google
is significantly less than artists like Kerby Rosanes and Johanna Basford.
I've seen Hannah's art around since I first started coloring,
and like I'm sure you probably felt at some point I was intimidated for quite
a while at the idea of coloring some of the beautiful faces in her books.
I get asked to do skin tutorials all
the time, and you'd think that after all this time I'd have plenty of experience
coloring faces and skin, but honestly, I don't get time to practice coloring or
learning new techniques outside of what you see on this channel.
Every video on my channel since I started
is quite literally my process of learning right in front of you.
So how many faces have I colored up to this point?
I mean, if we're not counting all the little faces, that's kind of it.
So that's my excuse for not doing a property tutorial yet.
So instead, let's talk through my process because this is how I approach any new
challenge and how I tend to hack my way through a lot of these coloring pages
that are new topics or a little overwhelming at first.
If you've watched my previous videos about
coloring skin with markers, drawing advanced shadows,
or even my episode about drawing gold, you'll know that I use reference images
a lot when I'm coloring something unfamiliar.
And for faces,
I would definitely recommend using a reference photo every time.
First, a reference photo can help you
to find the colors you need to create the best skin tone without reverting back
to the same skin tone on every single image you color.
Learning to identify the light and dark
colors in your reference images and match them to your pencils is a great activity
that will help you more than anything else when coloring something like a face.
No matter what the skin tone is. Then you can use the same photo or
a different photo to help with your shading.
The goal here is to choose a photo where
your subject is facing a similar direction to your coloring page, with the lighting
that you want to recreate in your final piece.
Then you can look at where the darkest
areas are and use this as your guide to color with your darkest skin tones.
The same goes for the lighter areas.
From there, it's a combination of light
pressure, keeping your pencil sharp, and doing multiple layers,
and you might surprise yourself with what you can create.
The eyes are a wonderful opportunity
to really bring a picture like this to life, so I found a different reference
picture with some really colorful eyes and some clear highlights.
Although as soon as I started putting down
the yellow and orange, I'm not so sure about this.
This is definitely one of those trust the process moments.
I know the eye in my reference image has yellow and orange, even though this looks
really weird right now, so I'll just keep going.
Adding my dark colors will help, but the final touch is what really makes
this eye come to life, and that's the highlight.
A white paint pen or white gel pen is
essential here and look at the difference it makes.
As we move on to her hair.
I'm trying to think of the perfect color for an underwater Princess here.
Hair like this, with its artistic style,
makes it hard to find a suitable reference photo.
So when I come to something like this,
I just start in the areas that feel the easiest and most obvious to me.
Any hair that is hidden or covered by something is probably going to create
a shadow, so that's always a great place to start.
In fact, I have a whole video about
the basics of shadows, that can help you to get started on learning what to look
for if you're feeling stuck with your shading.
So you're probably wondering,
with nine books to choose from, why did I choose this book?
I wanted my first Hannah coloring
experience to be with her first book, which was released back in 2015.
But Hannah now has at least nine books
available in a bunch of languages on Amazon and Book Depository.
Plus she sells extra printable coloring
pages directly from her Etsy store, that I'll link to in the comments below.
I've been thinking about buying one
of Hannah's books for a while, but it was her recent health news
that prompted me to stop putting it off and to show my support to this amazing
artist who has a very difficult journey ahead.
On the 22 January 2022, Hannah posted on her Instagram that she
had an epileptic seizure and that the doctors had found a brain tumor.
Since then,
she's been flooded with support from her fans and has scans and surgery.
Coming up soon, a hashtag has been started support Hannah Carlson,
where fans are sharing the coloring pages and thoughts for Hannah.
If you're wanting to show your support for Hannah, check out her books,
visit her Etsy store or just leave a comment of support on her social pages.
I'll leave all of her links
in the description below and because I know someone will ask and I don't know
that I'm making this video and I wasn't asked to.
So I will be the first to practice what I preach.
And I've gone ahead and bought a few more of her books on Amazon right now.
Let me know in the comments if you have
any of her books already and what page or both you think I should come next?
As I continue working on the hair, I feel like my confidence is improving
and my technique is getting a little better the more I color.
And this is why I don't agree with the idea of waiting until you're
a professional until you color your favorite books.
You won't improve if you don't pull out your supplies and have a go.
It's never going to be perfect the first
time you color something, but coloring regularly and trying new
things is the fastest way to learn and to grow your skills.
So I challenge you, if there's a book on your shelves that you've been saving for
when your skills get better,
get it out today and choose a page to just have a go.
It doesn't have to be your favorite page.
Maybe start with another page that you
don't mind messing up to take the pressure off.
But don't let your best coloring books or
your best supplies go to waste because you're too afraid to use them.
The goal should always be to just have fun and be creative, not to be perfect.
I'm finding that the Polychromos pencils
are great for this hair, and keeping them sharp produces the best results.
I found a good flow going back
from the light to dark colors, using thin strokes in the direction
of the hair, focusing on keeping some areas lighter and the shadows darker
as I move to the ribbons in her hair,
my original plan was to use a red as well, but I'm actually thinking of something
completely different, like a green or a blue, basically a teal.
At first, I didn't know what attracted me to the idea of teal,
other than it being my favorite color of all time, but with red,
why did I think it would work with red?
I like how this color combination is working, and layering the Caran d'Ache Luminous
pencils on top of the Faber Castell Polychromos is
allowing me to change the color more easily and create a really nice blend
between the warmer Greens and the cooler Blues.
And I'm finishing off each area with some
white highlights - just because I like any excuse to add white highlights.
Speaking of excuses,
if your subscribe button is still red and you're not subscribed right now,
do we need to have this chat?
Do I need to give you a spiel about why you should subscribe?
Or can we just keep coloring and you just do your thing?
You think of subscribing, pushing the subscribe button?
Okay,
this is weird now, right?
This page is taking longer than I expected, and you know,
it only just occurred to me why I'm covering two pages here.
Okay, yes, this is a really silly thing to not have noticed until this point.
Okay, I know, and this is a really bad
week to be doubling my workload because I'm supposed to be halfway into my unique
100,000 subscriber artwork by now so that I can show you next week.
Do you want to see how much I've done?
There is actually something there, but I need to start over anyway,
because I decided that I wanted to do it this way instead of this way.
So its...
Meanwhile, Shane is replacing the floor
in our entire house right now, Yay for deadlines and pressure!
When people suggest that we should do more than one video per week, I just
just ... no. Okay, the hardest part is done,
and the rest of this page should be easy from here, but I want to make sure
my colors work well with what I've already started.
So I found this color palette from the color catalog that already has
a red, Greens, and Blues and is an underwater theme. From here
I've just chosen a few objects at a time, and I'm keeping my coloring simple.
Well, mostly simple.
I'm still blending a few colors together by layering a dark and light version
of each color, mostly keeping the darkest colors in any areas that might be shaded.
And I'm using my wax based Luminance
pencils to add some variations to the colors on top.
I really like the effect of the green luminance on top of the teal Polychromos.
It feels like there are a lot more colors
mixed underneath and it's a really simple effect to pull off.
It's also given me a chance to really feel
the difference between these two brands of pencils.
The Faber Castell polychromos are an oil based pencil.
They work best with layers,
but you can press really hard straight away if you're not planning to blend
the colors and they do keep a really sharp point really well.
They also don't cover up the black lines so you can color over lines on an object
without fading lines as much as the wax pencils do.
The Caran d'Ache Luminance are less forgiving on the lines and will leave
a waxy coat with too much pressure, but they are much easier to blend.
They are wax based, so blending is their specialty.
They work best sharp as well,
but can handle a double point more than the polychromos.
I really love the combination of these two brands together.
These are definitely two of my favorite
pencil brands of all time, but the price definitely matches the high quality.
So at this point I've been coloring 7
hours and so I decided to call it a day but - had insomnia.
So what did I do?
I came back to color more at 01:00 a.m. My
own mum used to have insomnia regularly during her own cancer treatment.
She was a lot of the inspiration for me
to create coloring books when I first started.
She used to take them into the cancer Ward to color during her chemotherapy session
and it was many of her own sayings that ended up in my Coloring Through
Cancer coloring book that I created back in 2016.
Unfortunately, we said goodbye to her while I was pregnant with our youngest
son, but her joy and survivor spirit will always be an inspiration and it's one
of the reasons I wanted to make this video for Hannah today.
Cancer is a hard journey and I know so many people use coloring as a form
of therapy to get through hard times like this.
So this is my small way of supporting one
of our amazing and underrated artists who already deserves far more recognition
for her art and whose books I wish I had bought sooner.
And this? I might be saying this for every
page lately, but this is probably my new favorite thing that I've colored.
It really pushed me to try new things
and I feel more confident now to take on another face and hair instead
of avoiding those pages in my coloring books.
If this feels like ten steps ahead of your
skill level, then here is a video to give you step one in this guide to shading.
I show you exactly how to know where to put your shadows and explain
the different kinds of shadows in a way that you can apply to any coloring page.
Click here to watch it now.