CopicArt – Illustrating with Markers

Archive for March, 2009

Well yeah, as the title mentions it, this month has been a real pain, lots and lots of work (I can’t complain about that with the current economy, can I?). That sums in two things. One, I got not time to sit down and color, and as a result of that no posts here either. Two, I had worked my thrusty-old Toshiba Laptop to death, really, it died on me today after some good years of hard work.

So what does that have to do with CopicArt? That Toshiba is where all my scans, and documents are made while I’m commuting to work. Fortunately, it is not the end of my computer world, since I have a desktop machine at home, but it will be a little more wait for my blog to revive since I won’t be getting a new laptop until the weekend. Until then, Thank You! For your patience on new posts.

      While browsing the net I found something quite interesting on the .Too website (the manufacturers of Copics), and although the Google translation of the Japanese text was a little bit off, there was one part that got my attention; the Downloads section. They have the complete Copic color palette that can be used in Photoshop. This palette will help me to show you the actual colors used on the projects, not just the numbers.

     Continuing from my last post, I want to show the difference between a non-shaded image and two shaded ones. Coloring an image with no shadows or highlights is what I call a flat image, they are boring unimaginative drawings that anyone can do. Shading turns that boring image into a pleasant illustration.

Depending on the type of blending (Wet or Dry) used to add the shadows, we can get a Cartoon look (Dry), or a more realistic one (Wet). Here are a few images with samples of the two shaded illustration, and the flat one.   

 Time to break the writer’s block, and type something useful here. Shading is one of the subjects that I have been avoiding writing so far. Not because it’s a boring topic, but because it’s such a large topic, so big that may take a couple weeks worth of posts to explain.

Shading is the part of the coloring process that turns a flat image into a three dimensional “Real World” image. This will be achieved by adding lights and shadows to our projects. There are three basic tones in a shaded image: Highlights, Mid tones, and Shadows. Depending on the type of image, and source of the light, we can just have two of those shades. Using only one tone will make our image look flat and unreal.

Highlights: These tones are the whitest and brightest areas of your image, they mark the place where the surface of the object is reflecting the light most efficiently. In other words it’s the actual reflection of the light source.

Mid Tones: This is the actual color of our object, it’s shade is in between the highlights and the shadows. The highlights are brighter than the mid tone, and the shadows are darker than the mid tones. The Mid tone generally will cover most of the object, the highlights and shadows are usually a smaller part of the image.

Shadows: The darkest area of the surface, and at an opposite direction of the highlights. Shadows can have sharp edges between it and the mid tone, or can gradually blend. All depending on the type of object and the type of light.

These are the basic concepts that will be used to shade our images. On the next posts we will learn how to implement those highlights and shadows to our images, and some different ways to do it.

I haven’t got time to do any new project, quite surprised to see me busy at times like these. I won’t complain about it, as the extra income is always welcomed, I need more Copics.  One of the first Art things I bought years ago was a set of 12 colored pencils, and like many Art things, they stayed untouched on a box stored deep inside a drawer.

             I want to write about how to combine Copics with other media, but first I need to get comfortable with the color pencils first, using solely Copics make me rusty on other mediums. So here is a set of photos of an image colored with pencils, nothing fancy, just a simple coloring test.

First I want to apologize for skipping yesterdays post, as my intention was to write it down after a family’s day out, but it got prolonged more than expected and I couldn’t type anything. I am in need of a new digital camera, for about a week now my dear Olympus Digital Camera has been working weird on me. Some of the images I took for this part of the project didn’t got saved.

For the flower where my bird is standing I used the following colors: E39-E33-G94-Y17-YR24. To obtain the shading I layered some petals (Top ones) first with my base color on the petals, and then while still wet colored with the darker yellow from the inside out, then the lower petals were colored with the darker yellow only (layered three times to make it even darker).

For the Bird I used the following colors: R46-E07-E31-BV000-B63-B32, the layering was a little bit heavier than with the flower. I started by coloring the entire body with the pale purple, then used the darker purple for the tail and wing, then layered those same areas with a baby blue (Sorry I didn’t wrote down the actual number), then back again with the dark purple, this gave it a bluish color to my shading. I used the same baby blue to color the face, and the R46 to color the crest. In the eyes I used my “100” color, and the Opaque White to create the light reflections on the eyes.

Finally I took a BV000, and colored around the three images as background, note that I didn’t colored a full background just the outline of my images. That gave it the look of a Nature Book that I was looking for. I hope you like the image.

Once again I have a multi-post project, this time we will use a couple of Martha Steward’s clear stamps purchased at WalMart. I don’t have too much experience in coloring birds or plants, so I did some small research to at least get some of the colors right.

My image was stamped on Georgia Pacific Card Stock, with Versa fine Onyx Black ink. Here I wanted to create one of those images found in nature books, where the flower, or animal was fully colored, but the background is just a silhouette of the object. This is the image to color.

One of the things I noticed while looking at rendered images of leafs, was that most of them had a combination of two greens, and some kind of pale brown. The two greens serve as base color, and shadows. Here are the colors I selected for my first set of leafs, E39-E33-G12-G85-G17. Notice how I added the brown to the Leafs.

For the second set, I used the same colors as before, but with the difference that this time I didn’t use any browns on the leafs itself.

On the next post I will color the bird and flower in the middle, as well as the addition of the BG color.

Last month I mentioned some reorganizing of the place at home where I work. On my apartment there is one extra room that over the years was used as some kind of warehouse. During last year I started taking my drawing and Copics more seriously, and as the marker collection and supplies grew bigger by the day, there was a clear need for a designated space for my illustrations.

So the only logical place was the spare room, and with that in mind, the room was rearranged, most of the “junk” collected over the years was either sold on a yard sale, or thrown away. I know this studio pales in comparison with mos of yours, but it’s a nice, quiet, and comfortable place where I can do my coloring and drawing in peace.

Here are some images of the little corner in that room where I work. You will see my Copic collection, as well as some of my other tools and organizers.

This is my most recent project, like on all my previous drawings, I did a test image first to get an idea of the colors to use. This time was a little bit different because at the time the test image was finished, I had a couple of changes in mind that overall helped the final artwork,

As in previous works my paper of choice is Georgia Pacific Card Stock, and strangely used used Copic markers to color the image . My first intention with the image was to have her wear a dark dress. Here are the colors selected for the test image: Skin E00-E02-E51, Eyes B05-B18, Hair YG11-YG03-G85, Pants B00-B02, Shoes 110-E57, and for the Dress T0-T1-T3. Here is a picture of the test image, and a close-up of her dress.

The test image came out decent, but there was two things that got me unsatisfied, the clothing colors, and the fact that her dress was just plain. To solve the first problem I just inverted the colors of her dress and pants. The second problem needed a little bit more work on my part, like erasing some of the fold lines on her dress, and then adding a flower on her right side, the colors used for the flower are: G85-YR24-Y15-Y17. Her are the images that show my final project, and a close-up of the modified dress.

I hope you like it.