This year I’ve made a lot of videos about the stuff I’ve personally been avoiding in coloring—but for this one, I wanted to make it all about you. I asked which techniques you tend to dodge, and we’re working through the five most common answers: backgrounds, light sources, hair, skin, and gel pen embellishments. I’m coloring in Wondrous Folk by Christine Karron, using a mix of colored pencils, alcohol markers, and gel pens, and the whole goal is simple: make these techniques feel less scary and more approachable (not perfect, not overly complicated). For backgrounds, I show how starting with a light base layer can help you plan gradients and cover the white tooth of the paper before you commit. Then I tackle alcohol marker backgrounds with lots of layering, blending, circular motions to reduce streaks, and yes—put something behind your page so you don’t learn the hard way like I did. For light sources, I map highlights first (usually with a pale yellow marker), blend them out, and then focus on contrast—because deep shadows are what actually sell the glow. And for portraits, I lean on grayscale as a gateway: follow the illustrator’s mapped shadows, build your color combos in light layers, and finish with subtle gel pen highlights and a few “visual band-aid” dots to pull everything together.