This week’s challenge is to use only shades of greys to colour our main image with one colour as a background pattern. I chose an image and sentiment from the Gamer – Little Dude set. (Linked below)

I used two inks by Hero Arts and a stencil by Catherine Pooler. You get the two-tone pattern by first inking then once you are happy with the colour you shift the stencil up and then ink with another colour. I added a little more of the darker tone around the edge of my panel.

Choosing a single colour is a great way to practice your shading because you have to really concentrate on each separate area; when you haven’t got a bunch of different colours to rely on for differentiating the shadows & highlights.

I used two types of Greys: warm & cool and between this and the shade I chose I was able to get all of this detail without adding any additional colour.

I love this little dude, he is great for teenage boys’ birthday cards for example. I used my Cameo to draw out this sentiment from the same set and then I added cut lines round it so that it was shaped to the sentiment. This kind of cutting of a sentiment always makes me think of Mary Polanco; she calls it bubble cutting in her videos and I think it’s a great technique!