It’s finally here! It’s celtic knot Friday and my collaboration series with Rose Rambo at vitruvianart can be found here on YouTube! Thanks so much to Rose for her support and the feature in her video!
Part one is my star knot tutorial :
Part 2 is Amanda’s amazing gem tutorial:
Hi everyone! Welcome to The Tireless Tangler! This week is crazy busy preparing for challenges and with this week’s final video in the March Celtic Knot Series! I have something really exciting for you this week! You may have seen my posts on extraordinary gem artist, Amanda Rose Rambo, and her techniques for creating realistic and fantastic gems using colored pencils or watercolor. This week we are meshing my Celtic Knots with Amanda’s amazing gems for a video collaboration.
Three weeks ago, I sent Amanda a copy of my heart knot video so she could give me some feedback. She came back excited, saying she’d never been able to draw knotwork and was intimdated by them, but she thought she could do the knot. A few minutes later she sent me this beauty!
For me, this is why I am making the videos. To see my tutorials used to demystify the knot process is so fulfilling for me!
That’s why, for this week’s video, Amanda and I have done a video collaboration for the gem enthusiasts out there! Part one is a new knot video. We’ll be doing a star shaped knot. Part 2 will be Amanda’s gem tutorial. I can’t wait to bring Knots to her audience and her amazing gems to mine! Be sure to come back tomorrow for our videos!
Also this week, I’m preparing to join the #100daysproject! This project is meant to inspire and strengthen creativity by committing to 10 to 15 minutes a day of focused creativity. I’ve wanted to participle for a couple of years now but worry about my staying power! For this year’s project I’m planning a knot based idea I saw on pinterest. I’m planning to create a knot with 100 sections filling them in with different tangles each day. The goal being to become more familiar with existing tangles as well as learning new ones. I am hoping to involve those of you who’d like to follow along! I’ll have another post and video coming out Sunday and the project will begin on Monday, April 1, 2019. No fooling! 😀 look for the hashtag #100daysproject, #100daysofzentangle. See you on Friday for the knot/collaboration!
This week I am honored to focus again on the Gem Queen, and my friend, Amanda Rose Rambo! This artist never stops producing quality products for teaching gem art. The above gem was done with watercolor! It’s one of the loveliest gem renderings I’ve seen done free hand.
In the artist focus I did on her a few months ago, I learned she had a Facebook group dedicated to those passionate about gem drawing. I immediately joined because well, her art is amazing. She frequently adds video tutorials and exclusive content just for her “Gem Ho’s”, and I am happy to be one. Amanda’s new Gem Coloring Book is getting ready for publication, and we’re currently having an exclusive coloring contest, the winner of which will have their art published on the cover, runner-up may be featured on the back cover. I’m totally focusing on gems for the next week!
In this post, I wanted to highlight her Faceted Gems, Master Class. It’s on etsy.com here. Amanda graciously allowed me participate in the master class and it is terrific! Below, find the art, both before the class and after, of several of Amanda’s “gem ho’s”, including myself!
Amanda’s Faceted Gems Master Class is a 3 part series of videos accompanied by a short ebook that includes links to the videos and material lists, as well as some really great coloring pages for practice. Amanda takes you through 3 different gems types using her technique for faceted gems.
I found the first video the most important as to the techniques used. I’ll admit, my first try was disappointing but, practice makes everything better and after the 3rd try they started to improve. The 2nd and 3rd parts talk about shading and highlighting incorporating different shapes, colors and facet configurations. These are my weakest areas for sure and I feel it’s intimidating to most people. Amanda and I have agreed to disagree about which pencils rule! I am a Prismacolor Premier Soft-core pencil lover (but I own both) and she swears by Faber-Castell’s Polychromos oil-based colored pencils. Amanda recently borrowed a full set of Prismacolors and used them exclusively for a month, so i can’t truly complain about her preference. For me, my Prismacolors are soft and smooth on like silk. Using odorless mineral spirits helps to dissolve the binding agents (here it would be wax or oil) and unlock the pigments on both but the Prismacolors seem much richer pigmented to me. This is an ongoing disagreement among colored pencil artists and one that wont be solved today! Here’s an example of both pencils in similar colors blended with odorless mineral spirits.
Here is my practice page for the gems covered in class. By the time I did the last green, I felt I was getting the hang of it. It’s not very good but given it’s copy paper (the cheap kind) which limits the amount of layering it would accept from the pencils, maybe you can understand.
Once I finished the videos and practice sheet I was ready for something more challenging. Here’s my work in progress on one of the contest pages. There is a huge difference in my confidence and understanding of how faceted gems are drawn. They attracted me but intimidated as well. I have put off learning this for some time and now wish I’d done it much sooner! Of course, now I want to learn the watercolor gem at the top!
I love Amanda’s tutorials because her presence is so relaxed it reminds me to have fun and take my time. I’m pretty pleased with this one, though the white lines are a true challenge for my shaky hands.
This next art is by colorist Sonya Griffin, also in Amanda’s Facebook group.
This last one will be stunning when finished! I love the ice blue gem!
Next is colorist Kim Henderson. She is really good at these!
Lastly, we have colorist Mara Lula, who definitely has a talent for these gems!
Thanks to all the artists in the Gem Ho’s Facebook group who allowed me to share their art with you! Amanda’s Faceted Gems Master Class is a perfect course for the gem enthusiast!
Being in Amanda’s Facebook group is a great way to get advice, see exclusive content and videos and even receive discounts on her merchandise. I was also was given a sneak peek at some of the coloring pages from Amanda Rose Rambo’s newest book, Color a Creation, Gemstones Volume 5 being released soon at Amazon.com. These pages have an elegant look and lots of creative room to explore.
Here is a preview of some of the pages.
You can find Amanda Rose Rambo on facebook at facebook.com/vitruvianart
On Youtube at http://youtube.com/c/vitruvianart
On Etsy at etsy.com/shop/vitruvianart
Now newly on Patreon/vitruvianart
And on Instagram @vitruvianart
Dont forget to come back to see the contest entries!
About a month ago in my Facebook group Tangle It! Pattern Club, they featured an amazing artist named Amanda Rose Rambo.
She was focusing on creating faceted gems with setting patterns provided by artists within the group. Faceted gems were something I’d wanted to try for awhile so I took a chance and tried it out. I could show you my last try but no. Best to learn from the mistress of gems, the talented, Amanda Rose Rambo. With a great YouTube channel, coloring books and and tutorials, both online and in books, Amanda’s star is on the rise. Looking at her work will give you an idea of just how talented she is.
Here is Amanda’s bio and links to her YouTube channel and etsy store. If you are crazy about coloring or tangling, Amanda’s books are a great place for information and exquisite art!
“Hello to all you lovely people. My name is Amanda Rose Rambo and I am a Gem-aholic!
It has been a life long dream of mine to be an artist and to do what I love as my career. With the incredible support of my amazing husband I began doing my art full time just under 2 years ago.
Although I am not a tangler by heart my love for art and the constant work I began doing with art again led me to tangling, when I was looking into the craze of Coloring Books for grown ups. Traditionally trained as a painter and 2 dimensional artist I fell in love with tangling for a short while and did my first Coloring Book for Adults in the Zentangle style, (Color a Creation, For the Artist Within) After that my love for making coloring books took off and I joined the craze, creating books every other month or so. After a few coloring books were made I found more than a love for creating them I started really coloring and found that Colored pencils were a really versatile medium and began getting into the art of it, not just the illustration.
A few months later I found ZenGems and a new obsession was born!! I couldn’t stop, I made gems and settings and doodled like a mad woman and then began creating Coloring books just for gems! I became pretty good at them and began getting asked if I made tutorials and such. Since I love to teach and help and see others grow I thought it was a lovely niche to be in! So now that is mostly what I do, I still create my Coloring books, just finished the 3rd one in my Gemstone series, and am currently working on the fourth but everything is gem focused now! There is so much I hope to create and so much beauty that I want to show in the world.
I have created follow along tutorials for gems, all kinds of them from basic ones to faceted.
Tutorials on youtube, written ones on etsy. Color alongs and follow along sheets. This is my whole little world of gemminess and I love it!
For you lovely people I have even created some step outs for how to draw your own faceted gemstones!
You can find me on facebook at facebook.com/vitruvianart
On Youtube at http://youtube.com/c/vitruvianart
On Etsy at etsy.com/shop/vitruvianart“
Amanda’s gems are amazing and I would encourage you to watch her tutorials if you are interested in learning to create these gems. I will definitely be working on my faceted the gems again soon! Whether you are into coloring or tangling, Amanda has something for you.
The Tireless Tangler 