Quan Yin - Goddess of Mercy

Above, as you can see, is Quan Yin (AKA the Goddess of Mercy) although often thought of as transcedent of gender. I colored this beautiful artwork from Bennett Klein's "Colour my Sketchbook 5." Below, I would like to show you my work in progress shots so you can kind of see how this went along in my mind. Originally was not planning for as much yellow but ended up really liking the effect, so I went with it. It all started with the red and went from there.

I used a lot of different colors and mediums to get the colors I wanted. From fineliners, gel pens, pencils, and a fleshy tone marker for quan yin's porcelain like skin. I used oil to blend with either use of the paper stumps you see below or my fingertip in a thin sock.

As far as brands of pencils/pens/marker go; I feel every artist has their own go-to brands. That is not to say you NEED to spend a fortune on various art supplies as I have seen colorists create amazing work with "just" crayola pencils. For myself, I greatly enjoy:

• the consistent quality I receive from the oil based pablo caran d'ache pencils. I have tried the less expensive faber Castell pencils and thought their leads were too hard
• the color variety of the wax based prismacolor premier pencils. I tried the more expensive holbein AND caran d'ache luminance based pencils and thought they were too "smudgey"
• I also enjoy the sturdiness and color variety in the oil based koh i noor pencils, I use the tri-tones and they work great! (In this picture I used a tritone "earth" koh i noor for the rock)
• the Staedtler fineliners are great, though the stabilo 88's are comparative
• as far as gel pens go, I am an extreme snob - either has to be smoovs or sakura gelly rolls or I pretty much won't use them!
• i frequently (but not always) "cheat" on skin tones. I will use one of the six shades found in the copic ciao six pack skin tone set. The ciaos are cheaper than their "sketch" counterparts but are just as good quality. They simply hold less ink and are shaped differently.

Coloring is a very peaceful fun pastime of which I highly encourage. Colorists are artists too as they bring works of art to life!

Hope you've enjoyed this post. If you're interested, hop on amazon and check out Bennett Klein's coloring books! They are all in the $8 range and worth every penny for the countless hours of enjoyment you are guaranteed!

all photos and opinions are my own
quan Yin was colored by me by artist Bennett Klein