Colouring Quest Part 3:Coloured Pages

It's time for another installment of 'Colouring Quest'! I've been looking forward to sharing my finished colouring pages for a while now so I'm super excited to share some today! I haven't started to colour in all of my colouring books yet so I may write several blog posts in this series showing you more of my colouring! Let me know what books from the first post you particularly want to see me colour in! Okay let's get started!

 This was the first detailed colouring page I completed! It's the first page in the Day of the Dead colouring book drawn by Thaneeya McArdle. The colouring on this page isn't as complex as ones I have coloured in more recently but I really enjoyed colouring this in. I coloured this before getting my prismacolour pencils or blending pencils. What I did use was sharpies, bic colouring pencils and stabilo felt tips. The sharpies brought a vibrant colour but I can't use them in colouring books that are printed double sided. The Day of the Dead book isn't printed double sided though, it has lineart on one side and a quote on the other side so I can use pens in this book! I really enjoyed working on gradients in this picture. I definitely have developed colour application skills after discovering adult colouring! What I need to work on now is using watercolours, I guess I'll get better at that when I use the 1960s fahsion colouring book!

 This second colouring page is also from the Day of the Dead colouring book by Thaneeya McArdle. I loved using different tones in the hair, I think it created a really great effect. I used the same materials as I did on the last page in this book. I think the metallic bronze coloured sharpie made this page really stand out! My favourite part of the colouring of this page (apart from the hair) is the lips. The delicate red to write gradient looks very effective in my opinion because it looks like the lips are shiny. Although in this book you can use whatever colour you want anyway, I still feel that I am much better at coming up with colour schemes now than I was when colouring in this book. The tips in the front of this book were really helpful. I recommend that you should take a look at one of Thaneeya McArdle's books because there's an introduction section at the front of every book with tips on how to use colour and there's examples of fully coloured pages to inspire you. It's really useful to know your way around the colour wheel if you're interested in art!

 Moving onto another book now, here's some colouring from Lost Ocean by Johanna Basford! This isn't from a colouring page in the book but is a design front the dust cover flap! I only used gel pens for this because the white spaces were very narrow as you can see. Also, the gel pens give a fluorescent effect and really contrast with the black background which I think looks great! I have started to colour some actual pages but haven't finished them yet. The thing about just using gel pens is that they are quick and easy to use for fine details whereas using coloured pencils takes a lot longer, especially for me, because I like to create gradients and smooth blending with them. But once I've finished pictures with prismacolour pencils, they have a great impact! I love the Lost Ocean book but lots of the lineart in this book is extremely detailed so difficult to colour and will obviously take a while. I'll try to finish some of the pictures I started in this book for you guys to see when I next share finished colouring pages!

 Now I'll move onto the Secret Garden colouring book by Johanna Basford. Out of all the books I have, this is probably the one I use the most. When I got this book, I was starting to colour more often and then from that point on I kept getting more colouring books! I love this lineart of a well. It was really nice to colour a little bit each day until it was done! I think it would look better with a background but I haven't learned how to make backgrounds with pastels yet. When I do I'll let you know! If I learn would you like to see a tutorial/tips? I used primacolours for most of the colouring on this page but I also use gel pens for a few small details! This page has lots of colours in, I'm not sure if it would look better with a colour scheme like some other pages I've coloured!


The next page from Secret Garden was this page. It isn't entirely finished (I was meant to colour the watering can in with silver before taking the picture) but it's pretty much done. As you can see, it has a very limited colour scheme of all the shades of blue and some silver details. I chose blue so that the foliage and flowers look like water flowing out of the watering can. I used prismacolour pencils and gel pens for this page! I prefer colouring in pages with more room in them for blending than this but I still enjoyed colouring this page too because it was nice to flow with the twirly lineart! It was a bit of a challenge for me to limit myself to just blue and silver for this page! Before colouring this page in, I was used to using any colour I liked!

The last piece of colouring I have to share with you today is also from Secret Garden. It is possibly my favourite picture from this blog post! It is a sunflower that I really enjoyed colouring in! The reason I love this one so much is because I used such warm, bright colours for the petals! I used red, orange and yellow in different shades to blend together. I think that I blended it really smoothly in this picture. I also like the leaves, to start off with I just used different shades of green to colour them in but then I added some yellow in the centre which I think really brought out the colour on the leaves and brought life to the picture! We get a bunch of flowers in my house every year on my birthday because when I was born my Dad brought my Mum a bunch of sunflowers. So I thought about that whilst colouring this! Again, I think that this would look better with a background. I might add backgrounds to some of the pictures I've already coloured in the future once I've learned how.


So I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of my coloured pages today and hearing a bit more about how I colour! Sorry that some of the photos are a little blurry, it was hard to focus because there was so much detail on some of these pages! I'd like to hear your opinion of my colouring so I can improve! To see all of the previous posts in the 'Colouring Quest' series click here to find the colouring label!

Let me know what you think in the comments and tell me what book you want me to start colouring next that I haven't featured in this post (A Whimsical Woodland, Vogue, 1960s fashion, Enchanted Forest)! I love reading all of your comments!