Ladies and gentlemen, I’m thrilled to present to you my most popular art and coloring course COLOR THEORY, and it’s now available on Udemy.
LEARN TO COLOR LIKE THIS!
Understanding color isn’t just an art form, it’s science, and it dates back to antiquity. Upon completing of this course, your coloring will get a facelift. Those who see your new coloring pages will assume you went to an art university and know all the secrets of the masters.
The four long lessons that make up this course are presented in many short segments.
PRICELESS CONTENT
In this course, I will teach you University-level material, and A LOT of it. I went to an art University in New York City to get my degree in fine art. There, my class on color theory lasted four months, and the content was applied to the rest of my art journey until graduation.
I’m offering you the same level of education, all packed into four easy-to follow lessons, with course material that you get to keep.
After completing this course, you will never stress over picking colors again. You will gain confidence in your art that only comes with knowledge and practice. You will learn everything there is to know about the science of color, including various color models, ways to group colors, value, saturation, tints, tones, shades, mood and how to set it.
Together we’ll study the works of masters for reference, and review your own creations. Together, we’ll make YOU a master.
SO! If you’re ready to step up your coloring game, I’ll see you in class.
In all my time drawing coloring pages and teaching coloring techniques, I learned quite a bit about the psychology behind skin tone coloring and why so many people struggle with it.
Click on the picture to join my course Realistic Skin Tone Coloring on Udemy
Before we jump into why skin tones give colorists the most grief, let’s examine human faces and how we interact with them.
After all, without faces we wouldn’t have skin tones to worry about at all.
Research shows us that human beings have by far the strongest emotional reaction to human faces over anything else out there. Yes, even over puppies.
Regardless of how you feel about people, regardless of whose face you’re looking at, if it’s human your emotional response will spike dramatically compared to the response your brain exhibits when you look at even the most beautiful of sunsets.
This means two things for artists and colorists.
1. Using portraits in your art will get your work more noticed and interacted with.
2. Improving your portrait drawing and coloring skills is essential.
But why would we struggle with drawing and coloring a subject matter that’s so near and dear to our hearts? Shouldn’t we be experts at human faces if we’re so connected with them?
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Because we’re so familiar with the human face, we no longer see it for all that it is, but rather see it in caricature. There’s a huge element of recognition, rather than observation, at play.
When you look at another person in front of you, you rarely (unless you’re a face-obsessed artist) study their bone structure and the way the shadows happen to be playing on their eyelids as they move and blink. Instead you see – young, old, tired, goofy, attractive, awkward, smiling, frowning, etc…
In our minds we reduce human faces to the very basic classifications that are relevant to the current interaction.
For instance, if you’re pulled over by a traffic cop, you probably see a towering, intimidating, and frowning individual, and you probably won’t recognize him should you run into him days later at a baseball game.
Your mind just turned him into a caricature of a scary authority figure.
However, if you’re out on a date, you’re probably seeing a warm, happy, smiling face, and are trying to imagine all the other positive posibilies of continuing the interaction.
Obviously, some of us have had quite the opposite experiences, but you get the idea.
In either case, you’re NOT studying the exact shade of the skin tone on the left side of the face as the sunlight casts a shadow on it. That’s just not how our minds naturally work.
We see people, not skin tones.
When drawing and coloring, we revert to our natural perception of human faces – the emotional perception, forgetting all about light, shadow, and color.
In the coloring world, the biggest mistake I see colorists make on portraits is not using enough color variation. Many people try to find that one perfect pencil to match the desired skin tone, and that’s just not how it works.
In my 6-hour video course Skin Tone Mastery, I provide students with my personally developed color palettes for a whole range of skin tones, AND teach them to build their own color schemes for any skin tone out there.
Click on the picture to join this course on Udemy
If you’re a colorist, YouTube color-alongs will only get you so far. There simply isn’t an exact guide for every possibility out there.
I believe in teaching a student how to fish, rather than giving them a fish.
Come join one of my professional, university-level art courses, and arm yourself with skills that you can apply to any kind of skin tone coloring. Once and for all.
How would you like to make your coloring pages or drawings look like they actually glow?!
Now you can!
My new 6.5-hour intensive art course on Fantasy Glow Effects will light up your colored pencil work forever.
TOP NOTCH CONTENT
The course is divided into four sections: bioluminescence, potions, lanterns, and fairies, to cover all of your glow effect needs.
Each of the four lessons consists of several bite-sized video lessons covering shading technique, color selection, and offering three separate demos.
I am a firm believer in arming my students with skills to approach all kinds of coloring in a given category, rather than just showing you how to color along with me.
The students who have already go through this course are doing just that. I see my coloring technique light up different pages by various artists, and it’s the best reward a teacher can ask for.
I can’t wait to share my secrets with you as well.
Do you like to sketch, doodle, and draw? Would you like to mingle with other doodlers, and learn from a professional artist along the way? Great! Join The Doodle Club. as one of my Patreon tiers.
WHAT IS THE DOODLE CLUB
The DOODLE CLUB is a monthly subscription to a virtual classroom, with advanced content that I never share on YouTube or other public platforms.
Every month in Doodle Club I share a newly recorded drawing video, with emphasis on free-hand technique. My pre-med background and general obsession with anatomy allows me to dive deeper into the structure of my subjects and explain WHY something looks the way that it does, rather than only presenting a set of step-by step instructions. When I teach how to draw big cats, for instance, I want my students to be able to draw ALL big cats in any situation, not just to be able to copy one of my drawings.
Video lessons are recorded and uploaded for students to watch as webinars on their own time.
“I’M JUST A BEGINNER. CAN I JOIN?”
Absolutely! You are welcome, you’ll have a great time and learn a lot. In my lessons, I focus on approach above technique. This is a place to learn to let go, to loosen up your hand, and to learn to see objects and subjects in a different light, which will allow you to draw more freely on your own. This is a great place to get started if you don’t have much experience.
You will see noticeable improvement every month. The longer you stay, the more you will learn.
“I ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DRAW, WILL I BENEFIT FROM THIS?”
It depends on how advanced and how comfortable you are. Are you a pro who can draw anything, free-hand, and then perfect it to look photorealistic? If so, you probably already know everything I teach here.
If however, you draw often and you draw well, but your proportion on animals just seem off, or your portraits don’t really resemble their real-life models, or you would like learn to be able to draw more without the aid of photography or relying on tracing – THIS CLUB IS FOR YOU.
HOW TO JOIN
Simply click on the button below and select the Patreon tier called Doodle Club.
This is a collection of my hand-drawn pen and ink illustrations, based on Inktober 2021 prompts. Inktober is a yearly word association drawing game played by thousands of people all around the world.
This year I approached Inktober in a unique way: I offered my audience a chance to actually appear in my art as characters. For instance, a colorist named Crystal Miller booked the first day with an assigned word (prompt) “Crystal,” and she volunteered her two girls to be featured. I drew the kids growing out of a crystal cluster. In this way the entire book was created with actual people (and in some cases their pets) as characters.
The trickiest part was to make every participant somehow reflect their assigned word. Some people knew the exact prompt they wanted, while others just gave me a general idea of their self image, and left me to make it work with the available words. As an extra challenge I set out to do the whole collection in a steampunk style.
For every day of October, I released a photo of a drawing, done in markers and fine-liners. That is thirty one drawings. The photos below are of my original drawings and a teaser for what will be inside the colorable published book. Enjoy the pics.
Remember that time I thought it was a good idea to not just create a new free-hand pen and ink drawing every day for a month, but to also produce a high-quality time-lapse video for each of them? Yeah.. that was Inktober 2020.
2020 was the first time I joined Inktober. I was hesitant. You may have heard.
But it turned out to be an extraordinary experience, it helped me deal with a severe case of burnout, inspired me to create and publish my now best-selling adult coloring art book Inkandescence, and today I’m finally ready to let go of the original drawings as well.
Are you the true fan who will get your hands on it? If so, I’d love to hear from you. If you buy this very personal work of art, please shoot me a message and say hello.
I discovered Corel Painter over a decade ago when I was still a tattoo artist. I wanted a faster and easier way to manipulate, twist, and shape my designs, and to be able to present the proposals to my clients mapped onto actual photos of them.
My digitally painted tattoo proposal.My proposed design in the process of being inked on skin.
I’m not a vector gal. Never have been. Never will be. I’m a painter, an illustrator, a tattooist, and much more. I’m very hands-on. I needed a program that would allow me to use my drawing hand the way that I use it with brushes, pencils and a tattoo gun. Corel Painter is the closest thing to actual painting that I’ve been able to find to this day.
Sometimes I just paint for fun. I created this character just for practice and as a vacation from work.
My first purchase after Corel Painter was a designated drawing screen. I went with a Wacom Cintiq. I use it still.
To transform all of my pen and ink art into colorable adult pages for my newest book Inkandescence, I worked in Corel Painter on a Wacom 24″ drawing monitor.
The first version of Corel that I got was Corel Painter X. I used that version for about eight years before upgrading to CP18, and today I’m enjoying Corel Painter 2020.
“Wish you were here” – one of my first digital paintings done in Corel Painter X
These days I create a lot of line art and grey-scale colorable art for the adult coloring community. Frequently, I actually create a full color digital painting, and then transform it into a coloring page.
One of my recent digital paintings that later became a coloring page
One of my favorite things to paint in Corel is portraits. Here’re some of my latest that I’m preparing for a new Udemy course on skin tones.
My latest portrait work in Corel Painter 2020Another portrait done in Corel Painter 2020
As much as I love it, I don’t always work on my giant Wacom screen. Some nights I like to curl up on the couch with a cup of tea and an ipad, and work on my designs on a smaller scale.
There’s a popular misconception that making art digitally is somehow cheating. This way of thinking comes from a lack of knowledge. People who are not familiar with digital painting software assume that to create digital paintings we punch in a bunch of computer commands, press some buttons and BOOM – art appears. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When I paint digitally, I use all the same skill sets as I do when drawing on paper, painting on canvas, or inking on skin. What the program does is it gives me a boost in magical powers. For instance, I don’t need to wait for paint layers to dry, yet I can customize my brushes and even pressure sensitivity. I can work on a virtual canvas of any size, while in reality I’m limited by physical space. I can work in media forms that are not available to me in real life. And my ultimate favorite – I NEVER have to clean my brushes.
I started using a painter program when I was already an accomplished artist, as a means to speed up and fine-tune the delivery of my art, so that I can spend more time on the creative process and less time on, well, watching paint dry.
Working digitally did not prevent me from continuing to make classic analog art. I draw and paint daily, and find that the two ways (digital and analog) only strengthen one another.
If you’re a creator, give digital painting a shot. There’re lots of programs out there. Find the one that’s best for you.
Setting my very personal and vulnerable art, Inkandescence, into the world as an interactive art book was, to say the least, terrifying.
“Lisa, this could be your best book yet. I think it’s genius!” – Dee Myles (fan and artist)
I was fully prepared for trolls, haters, and critics, but am pleasantly surprised by the warm reception.
Dune Dancer colored by Tiffany Kleinsteuber
“I’ve watched you bloom from your very first book all the way through to now. It has been a privilege and a trip to watch and to take part in it. I always knew you were a great artist, but you only grow better! Exquisite art! Bravo Lisa! Bravo!” – Madame Laurie (fan, colorist, art student)
The people who are already coloring the pages, have much praise as well. I found that many colorists enjoy working with colored pencils directly on top of the dark photographs that are featured in the book, while others prefer the grey-scale line art versions of the pages. Likewise, my digital colorists are having a blast.
I’m a realist though. I fully understand that this book is not for everyone. For some it’s too racy. For some it’s too dark. For some it’s just too detailed. I’ve learned a long time ago that if you try to please everyone, you will please no one. My aim with Inkandescence wasn’t to release a popular and “safe” book. There’re plenty of those out on the market already. My book is for those who are like me: artistic, daring, different, somewhat on the dark side but not stereotypically gothic, and ultimately positive and energetic.
I’m thrilled that those who don’t fancy this work, just walk on by without leaving hurtful comments, while whose who appreciate the work take the time to let me know. Granted, it’s only been a week since the book’s release.
I’m thrilled to see how new audiences react in a few weeks when Inkandescence will be reviewed by multiple YouTubers. Stay tuned for those updates and announcements.
Hide and Seek colored by Tiffany Kleinsteuber
Most of all, I enjoy seeing the colorings and reading about your interpretations of my drawings.
I hope to hear from YOU.
Join my free private community TALM, and share your art and thoughts with the rest of us.
Join the TALM family
Eye Candy colored by Mel Flay
Stay dark. Stay humorous. Stay positive. These attributes don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
My new book, Inkandescence, is not for everyone, and that’s just the way I like it.
Harebrained – “If all this stuff in my head was audible instead of visual, it would be very loud in there, all the time.”
This is the first adult coloring book that I didn’t design to be a coloring book from the start. All of the art in this volume is based on the drawings that I did during Inktober 2020, and all were greatly influenced by 2020 itself.
For me, this book is a way of getting closure on this very difficult year and punching my way out of burnout. I hope that my audience also finds comfort and resolution in its pages.
It was a very different experience for me to take my ballpoint pen and ink drawings and transform them into colorable art. It was especially tricky to take the leap of faith and share art that is so personal. After all, none of these images were intended for coloring. They were my way of interpreting the Inktober prompts while dealing with stress, and also practicing my ballpoint pen technique.
The Storm Within – “I kept having this reoccurring dream where I’m in a room full of people. I scream, and no one hears me. Only this dust comes out, and I just feel cold.”
In the end, it was a great decision. This is the book that I’m most proud of. Is it perfect? Art never is. But I’ve learned to accept and embrace imperfection, because chasing a flawless outcome is a guaranteed way to never accomplish anything. It’s honest. It’s beautiful. It gets you thinking, and you can interact with it.
So, how “adult” IS this book?
Watch this behind-the-scenes INTERVIEW and decide for yourself.
“I grew up on classical art. I grew up on marble statues and Michelangelo’s bodies all intertwined. To me, artistic nudity is just natural. It’s obscene that we have to drape our women in drapery, and hide nipples and curves.”
Swing by my private community TALM, and share your thoughts and feelings about this volume, and also show off your colorings.
Is Inktober truly dead? Am I late to the party? What’s all this noise and drama?
These were my first thoughts when I started seeing articles and YouTube videos with titles like “Did Jake Parker ruin Inktober,” “Is Inktober cancelled this year?,” and “Jake Parker plagiarised my Book.”
The kind of ink work that I do.
SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel and follow my daily Inktober 2020 uploads.
Year after year I’ve been watching other artists and friends post their daily pen and ink doodles for the October challenge known as Inktober, and every year I made a pledge to myself that “next year will be the year I join for sure.” The trouble has always been that October is my busiest month, with all the Halloween content that I produce for my adult coloring following. Ironically, this year being the busiest of them all, I suddenly decided that THIS is finally the year! But lo and behold, what do I find? Controversy! Drama! Noise! Ahhhh….
Run awaaaaaaay!….
Wait. Hold on. It’s YouTube. Of course there’s drama.
So, I took a few days and did some reading and watched some videos. And …
I’m not going to go through all the dirt on Jake Parker with you. Sorry. You can find it all on YouTube if you’re into that kind of thing. The truth is, a month ago I didn’t even know who Jake Parker was, and I didn’t care.
Inktober, the event, has been on my radar for years. Jake Parker, the person, has not. I stopped an analyzed all the reasons that I’ve always been excited by this challenge. Have they changed? No.
My additional challenge to myself is to do the whole 31-prompt list with female subjects. Since the list is already public, have a test character already drawn, filmed, and time-lapsed.
I still find the concept of a drawing bootcamp extremely appealing. I still want to have the pressure of a deadline and the discomfort of an assigned subject matter to push me to create something out-of-my-comfort-zone. In my experience, all the best art is made under pressure, and with collaboration.
We get cozy and lazy by ourselves. When we’re alone in our studios we draw and paint things that are easy and obvious. We may even think that we’re challenging yourself, but we’re really not.
I truly need an outside force to push me off my balance, and it’s the attempt to get back on my horse that inspires me to create art that is unique and risky, and opens new doors. Maybe not perfect, maybe rushed, but the concepts that pour out of my head when I’m under pressure are way more interesting than the stuff that I come up with when I’m relaxed and stress-free.
That’s just me though. A pressure-driven creative process is not for everyone.
Having determined that my interest in the Inktober drawing challenge has not changed, I asked myself the following questions?
Am I able to organize a multi-thosand participant event that will challenge me to draw something new every day? No.
Am I able to simulate such a challenge by myself or with a handfull of friends? Absolutely not.
Did I care about Jake Parker, his cause, or supporting him in the previous years? No. Inktober has always been its own beast in my mind. To me, Inktober is a game. I love games. Will I stop playing Borderlands if I find out that its creators are involved in some YouTube controversy? Hell no.
Will NOT doing Inktober improve my art skills? No.
Will DOING Inktober improve my art skills? Yes.
So, after writing all these thoughts down, I came to a conclusion that I just don’t care about the drama.
I’m going to do Inktober 2020.
Follow me in on Instagram for daily posts and subscribe to my YouTube channel to see my drawing time-lapses.
If you’re on the fence about Inktober like I was, I encourage you to ask yourself these questions as well. Your answers may be different, and that’s fine. But whatever you decide to do, do it for yourself, not for Jake Parker, not against Jake Parker, not for Inktober, FOR YOU.
