CopicArt – Illustrating with Markers

Archive for February, 2009

Wow, my humble site got 1670 hits this month. Last month I got 1260, I’m glad to see that people find it interesting enough to pay so many visits. Also, we got 97 comments this month alone. I know they aren’t as many as other blogs receive, but to me each one is really important.

Thank You for reading my blog and for your comments.

About two weeks ago I was in my local Wal-Mart, just browsing the paper area, and saw a laminating machine on sale. Just thinking it may be a cool gadget to have I went ahead and purchase it with some extra films to play around.  Once at home, I fired up the machine and laminated some of my recent images, and placed them on a binder.

            Well, I haven’t used the machine since that day. Today a relative of mine decided to visit me, and after a long talk she asked me to show her some of the images I colored (I want her to learn to use Copics). The binder that she was looking at contained the laminated images, and before I could even notice it, she makes a sudden move and spills her drink all over my table, and the images. Yes, the plastic protected them, and only two images got ruined by the soda.

            So 10 images were saved by the purchase at Wal-Mart, and for the looks of it, I will start laminating my work more often.

Up to this point we have our image fully colored, but there is one more steep needed to make it a complete illustration. No matter how careful I color my images, there is times when my color just bleeds out of the outline, and using the colorless blender may not be an option. A few weeks ago, I mentioned my purchase of a Copic Opaque White, and that is the product we will use for our final touches.

            First let me explain a little bit better what the Opaque White is. The Copic Opaque White is a water based pigment ink, used to add details or to correct mistakes on an illustration. One important thing to take in consideration is that you should use it only as a final product, as you may ruin your tip if you try to color over it, remember that it is a water based product, and the Copic ink is alcohol based. It comes in a small container, and is really thick, so much that it looks like a paste instead of ink; don’t worry as that is how it’s supposed to look.

            For some weird reason I haven’t been able to find much information on how to use it, so it was trial and error learning on my part. First thing I found out is that you need a really small brush to properly use it (I bought a round 3/0 and a flat 0), using big brushes will result on wasting, and you will end up with a mess. Second thing, you need to work slowly on small areas at a time, remember this is not a marker, trying to cover a large area may result in a mess. Third, have a container with clean water and a rag next to you, as you will need them to clean your brush.

Here is an image of the opaque white and the brushes I used to do my corrections on my anime girl.

            On this close-up of her head, you can notice how my coloring went outside the lines on her hair, and more noticeable on the eyes. As you can guess, it is too late to use the colorless blender (especially in the eyes), so it is time to use the Opaque White.

            Now, how much do you use at a time, not a lot as you can see in the following image, and remember this is a really fine brush I’m using.

            And here is the result of using the Opaque White to correct my mistakes, and to add a little reflection on her eyes. She does look much better, right?

            Here are more images of the areas that needed correction and how they look once the Opaque white was used.

            Final image, my project was finally completed.

Note: Opaque White may not be one of the must-have products on your list, but it is worth a consideration I you want to add special touches to your images.

 I hope the visual addition I made to my posts is noticeable, and the button adds a little bit more professional look to my blog. We are almost done with this drawing. The two earlier posts handled what I think are the two more important visual elements of my image, now it is time to add some skin and boots.

            Now it’s time to work on the bottom of the image, the boots to be exact. I picked four colors for the boots, “100” for the Sole, E29 for the hard shadows, E57 as my base color, and E39 for my soft shadows. As in the previous posts, the first thing to color was the E57 base color, and while still wet, add the E39 for soft shadows, and finally colored the sole and hard shadows of the boots.

             The hair was colored by using the following colors, E13, and E35. This was made quite simple, as I didn’t want to draw too much attention to the hair. The skin and eyes were colored with the following colors: Skin E00-E02, Eyes 100-YG03-G17. The following images illustrate how I colored the hair, skin, and eyes.

            At this point the image was near completion, I colored the Copic on her hand with an YG17, T0, and W5 colors. And then I decided to add some glitter to the image, by coloring her nails and the shoulder straps with my pink Atyou Spica pen.

            And now we can happily call this image finished, right? Wrong! There is one more step that needs to be done to call this image a complete work.  But that will be told on the next post.

Time to continue with yesterday’s project. One sad thing about using Toner grays is that is so hard to photograph. You can see the result on paper, but as soon as I used the digital camera, most of the details were gone. So you’ll have to thrust me that it looks really nice.

            The next step on my image was to color the shorts of my character, and following the same idea as with her top, I wanted to created a washed-out look. So I decided to make her wear faded blue jeans. Making jeans is quite easy; we just need two colors (B32 and B24) and the colorless blender.

            If you take a close look at any faded jeans, you will notice that it has a distinct pattern, the darkest color is at the edge of the jeans, and it fades to an almost white area at the middle of the fabric. Of course not all jeans fade to white, but to have a consistent look, I will color the faded jeans.

            On this case my first step was to color half of her shorts with the B32, this is my base color (Step 1). Then I followed by coloring the shadows of her shorts with the B24 color, look how I added shadows around the whole previously colored area (Step 2). And finally, using the Colorless blender I added the faded look to her jeans; this was made by coloring with the blender from the middle out, this means I started using the blender at the middle of the fabric, pushing the color out, to the sides (Step 3).

            Note that on the third step on the previous image I went too hard with the blender, so it could be picked up by the camera. I repeated the previous steps on the opposite side of her shorts and used the “100” color to illustrate her belt, and used Y17 for the belt buckle.

            Not bad, we now have a faded black top, and worn out jeans. On my following post we will finish the coloring of the image.

Well I got drawing again, and like the previous time, a test image was made prior to the final coloring.  This time I want to elaborate a little bit more on the coloring part, especially on the clothing part of my Anime Girl. I think this whole project will be divided into two (or more) posts.

                To start let’s speak about the image. The sketch was made on regular copy paper, then used Adobe Illustrator to outline the image, and finally printed it on a sheet of Georgia Pacific Card stock with a laser printer. To me the most important elements of the image are her shorts and her tank-top, and a simple plain coloring, won’t do this time.

Coloring the Tank-Top Dark

                By dark, I didn’t meant dark green, dark blue, or a dark pink. I wanted a black top, with textures and shadows. Bring in the “100” marker and color the image as black as possible, right? Wrong!

                One of the most misunderstood topics of the Copic markers is the fact that they have so many shades of gray. By having so many grays, we can correctly illustrate a great variation of dark elements on our images, and in this case, we will use some grays to color our top.  The colors choose for my dark top are from the Toner Gray family and will be T0, T5, and T7.

                I started by coloring the top with my base color (T5), and then added the shadows (T7). At this point we have a nice shaded black top, and either we can leave it this way, or color on top of the light areas with the T0 to make it look washed out. Here is the result.

                Next post, we will color the Shorts and belt.

It has been some time since I last posted a real project. This image was created with a couple stamps recently purchased at Michael’s. My ink pad does not work with Copics, so I need to make a photocopy of the inked images so they don’t smear. This time I did something different, I used my multi liners to ink the stamped images, and to draw the basic shapes of the grass.

Once the imaged was inked, I colored the sky with some random strokes to try and make it look cloudy. The color used for the sky was B00.

Next I used my G00 to color the base of my grass area, and then added some random grass lines with my E33, G07, and G12. 

My final step was to color the tulips and the little chicks with the following colors: Chicks Y06, Y15 – Tulips YG17, YG17, and G12.

I really like the end result, simple and fun to make. I may note that this is the first time that I use the original image for coloring.

It is no secret that the North America importer of Copic markers will implement a more strict MAP on their vendors. This means that vendors like Oozak and Carpe Diem will no longer be able to sell their markers at highly discounted prices, so a higher price for the loyal customers of there two companies. I don’t work for none of these companies, nor do I have any relation with Imagination International, so this opinions are my own and personal only.

Yes, this MAP implementation means no more super-low price sites, as all vendors will be ruled by a minimum sale price, but it also means the reduction of an unfair advantage over the small shops. Companies like Oozak, and Carpe diem get their product at a much lower price than the small shops, why? Because of the volume they handle, the more they purchase the lower the price. With this, they can pass the savings to their clients without sacrificing profit, but the small shops, who don’t handle that higher volume can’t compete to the big companies prices, not without sacrificing all profit.

As a customer, I want to pay the lowest price possible, but as a loyal fan, I also want to see more Copics on the street, with more brick and mortar stores offering them without the fear of loosing customers because they can find it cheaper on the Internet. I can only assume that .too and their NA importer think the same way.

With that sentiment in mind…. I went and bought the 72-D set, and some Toner gray colors before they went up on price… I know I’m bad, but my wallet told me to do so…

There is a couple more basic effects that can be achieved with the colorless blender, both quite simple and fast. Now, I have to mention that the results will vary, depending on the paper used, and the color as well.

Let’s make a Wall

If you think that the chisel tip of your colorless blender is useless, think again. One cool effect that can be achieved with that side is the creation of a brick wall. Just color your area with the base color, then start touching it with the longest part of the chisel tip. Each time you do this, you will create a brick on your wall, so continue doing it until your wall is complete.

Stone-like texture

Another texture can be achieved with the brush tip of your Sketch or Ciao markers. Just tap your colored area randomly with the brush tip of your colorless blender. This will create a kind of stone /ground texture.

As I mention earlier, the results of these two technique will vary depending on your paper. Here are the same technique, with different paper, and colors.

     Well, a few days ago I went to my local swap met just to kill time, and found a lot of 20+ stamps on a plastic bag, I asked the lady how much she wanted for it, and said 50 cents apiece.  She was a little bit surprised to see a big and bearded man purchasing all of them, especially when I told her; I would be the one using them.

     One of those stamps is the one that I will use for this project; it is called “A Bounty of Beautiful eggs,” by Laurie Campbell.  The paper used is Georgia Pacific card stock. Colors: G21, BV00, Y17, B24, YG06, YR24, YR07, RV11, B21, R29, YR04, Y13, E00, RV34, and E02. That’s a lot of colors.

My first step was to color the bunny. I did this for a reason; to have a texture on the bunny’s fur only, and not in the eggs. So I colored the bunny, and then applied my color less blender with a rag to give it that furry texture.

Once that part was done, it was time to color the rest of the image, kind of a pain, because of all the small details and shapes.  For some of the shadows I used the same color, I only layered the area where I wanted my shadow once the first coat was dry (One of the wonders of Copic markers is that you can make your colors darker by layering over and over the same area).

And here is the finished piece, and my first time coloring Easter eggs.