Surprisingly enough, you can use just 3 colors from your collection of Gansai Tambi watercolors to develop a wide range of skin tones! Watercolor is my favorite coloring medium, and it was fun to experiment with custom mixes. This card was actually inspired by some recent designs by my friends (and creatives extraordinaire) Lisa Spangler and Jessica Frost Ballas! I loved Lisa’s use of watercolors on her Mini Voices In My Head Designs, and Jessica’s minimalist approach with a basically black and white color scheme, accented by a pop of red.

You’ll see in the beginning of the video that I used the three colors shown above, and diluted them down with water from my waterbrush, and then played around with mixing the colors—I suppose I could have made a color chart, but honestly, when I have to mix colors, I tend to do so on the fly—and if I should need to repeat the mix down the road, I oddly enough remember the colors I worked with. What can I say? It’s a gift.

KIDDING.

I AM KIDDING YOU.

Also, I have to mention that I LOVE using the Waffleflower Mini Media Mat as a palette—it is just sooooo handy! And if the colors dry up while I’m working, I just rehydrate them with a couple drops of water by squeezing the waterbrush.

In one part of the video, I use a “thirsty” brush to wick up wet color from an area where I got a little heavy-handed; “thirsty” just means dry. I swipe my paintbrush against a clean paper towel to soak up the water (if I need, to, I might even pinched it with paper towel to get it REALLY dry); when I apply the dry brush to an area that has too much water or too much paint, it wicks it up into the bristles (hence why they call it a “thirsty” brush). I off load that onto paper towel, then I can go back and wick up more, if needed.

As you can probably tell, I had increased difficulty getting those rosy cheeks I was after when I tried to do them on the darkest skin tones; I’m going to need to practice. Rosy cheeks are a thing for me. I literally can’t help myself from painting rosy cheeks. Weirdness.

That expression from Brandi’s “You Should Know” set just seemed to suit my design nicely, so I had to borrow it. Seriously, this turned out so cute I let out a squeal when I finished! •all the heart eyes•

Hope you are continuing to stay safe and I appreciate you stopping by!

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