Art doesnt need to be complicated. I’ll show you how to make a ACEO of a cute  elephant in about 20min.

Ok…now for the first in the process.

You can see in the pic that I have a few basic doodles of animals. These I had doodled about a year ago for something else entirely.

I decided to go with the elephant.

Cut an ACEO size piece out of watercolor paper. Put a light wash

randomly on the card. Here I used pink because that was left over from a previous painting.

Now with a graphite pencil cover the entire back of the image you
want to trace.
Flip the image over, insert the watercolor card underneath.
..And trace the image onto the card. The graphite on the back will transfer onto the card.

…You will notice you have a faint tracing on your card, so you will need to darken it so that when you color it you can still see the line art.

You can use a waterproof pen if you like (because we will be using water). Or as I prefer, use a non-water proof pen. The reason is that I like the effect when the ink runs. It give a sort of random shading.

Here I’m using an Artline fine 0.4.

…it should like something like this, very basic….but it gets better…

…there are many ways to color, many techniques. But for this tutorial I want to keep it cheap and nasty. For this step I’m using Faber-Castel connector pens. I bought a bucket of 100 for $30. They have a good range of tones but on the down side they don’t color very nicely. They darken when overlapped and its very hard not to overlap.Generally its a good idea to start coloring with light colors first, so that the dark can cover any error. Here however, I begin with the darker tone.  I’m not going for realism…just fun!

…choose a lighter color and fill in the rest with that.

It looks a bit silly at this point but we will fix that. As mentioned earlier I will add some water.

In this step im moving the ink with water to get rid of the marker lines and create a more random interesting color.

You can use a paint brush or sponge. In the pic you can see me using a new tool i bought. It called a BrushH2o, made by Zig. You use it buy filling the barrel with water, which comes out the nib when squeezed.

Just go over the image with your brush moving the marker pigment into desirable areas. Use your judgment, take guesses. If it doesnt look good, remeber not to do it again. If something looks good, remember it. That way to build and improve on your skills.

…now we will add some definition. Grab a thick permanent marker (black) and trace over the original lines.

I’ve created my own stamp monogram. I like the look better. Cover the stamp with a black permanent marker

….TA DA !… Stamp on the back. Notice that imprint isnt solid and not easy to read. That is the result of using the marker instead of an ink pad. But thats the look I’m going for anyway.

Well, thats the end of this tutorial. What would you like to see next?