Color-Color-Color!

Long time no write, right?  Been occupied with various selling sites.  I have taken "lighten the load" to the extreme!  I sold my Cricuts, Cameo and Big Shot Plus.  I sold ALL my 12x12 papers, my Derwent watercolor pencils, my Polychromos pencils, ALL of my wood mounted rubber stamps, some of my unmounted stamps with dies, and a BUNCH of beads and I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting.  For the first time since I moved into my craft room, I have more ROOM than I have STUFF.  And it feels great!  I have weeded and reduced until I can't think of any craft stuff to get rid of.  Don't get me wrong, I still have my Big Shot, and stamps,  dies and ink until I die, but I feel free.  I got to the point that all my STUFF was weighing me down and so I was LESS creative than I was when I had LESS STUFF!  What I HAVE decided to acquire a reasonable collection of Copic markers.  Yep, I have jumped on that expensive band wagon.  But I am not going to go nuts with my collection.  I am going to form a workable collection, this many greens, this many blues, this many reds etc etc.  One of the main reasons that I decided to do the Copic route is that my favorite stamp line, My Favorite Things, has a store a couple hours away and they have a REFILL service!  So just take your dry marker over and get it filled up.  MUCH cheaper and more reasonable than owning every damn refill for every damn marker.  So there's that.  Also I am in LOVE with the Copic work of Jane Allen and I want to be able to get the results she gets.  So for a few hours today I have been practicing eyes and working with various media (medium?).  With Prismacolor pencils, with Stabilo markers, with inks and brushes and Copics and every darn thing I could think of.  Jane does the most amazing things with no line coloring and I am so totally in awe.  And I am taking another class with her over at MFT in October so I am going to be ready for this one by God! The last one was pretty much a wash for me because I HADN'T worked with my pens.  Yeah I know, silly.  But I just figured "how hard could it be?".  So I am going to continue working on my Copic technique, TRY to get better at them and for that you need practice-practice-practice!!!  So here is some of my practice:

Eyes have always been so hard for me.  They're so important, windows to the soul and all that.  But I think I made some good progress today with my eyes and my Copic confidence level too.