Tools On My Desk: Fineliners & Technical Pens, Which are Safe for Copic Markers?
Big Marker, Small Details?
Have you ever tried to color butterfly antennae with a Copic Marker? Ouch!
Whether you are adding twigs to a tree, dotting a delicate ladybug, or picking out long flowing stray locks of hair, there are many times when a big fat Copic marker is too big and too fat for the job.
Never fear! Grab a fineliner pen.
But it can’t be just any pen, it must be a Copic safe pen! That’s right, not all technical pens work with Copics…
Copic Marker Highlights: When Dimensional Coloring Technique Fails (Dark Pulling)
Do you use standard Highlighting techniques?
C’mon, most people do.
Every Copic Marker class teaches it. Most beginner colored pencil classes do too.
Let’s use our lightest marker at the end of this petal. Now look at how dimensional our flowers look! Wow!!!
Highlighting for dimension is all over the internet. It’s rare to find a free tutorial that doesn’t use this coloring method.
And it’s wrong. It does’t always work.
What happens when the magic trick stops working?
Layering Technique: Realism Doesn’t Come from Blending (Copic Markers, Colored Pencils)
What are the best colors to use on a duck?
You’ll see this kind question on all the online coloring discussion boards.
The Copic Marker groups all want the best blending combination. What’s the best combo for a fire hydrant? What’s a good G marker trio for grass?
The colored pencil groups ask the same question, but a little more subtle. I’m coloring a shiny Black Lab. Should I be looking at the warm grays plus a black pencil or the cool grays?
Everyone wants to color-by-number.
Using someone else’s color recipe is why your coloring looks fake and flat.
Want to know the artist’s secret to realism? It doesn’t matter which markers or pencils you use…
Tools On My Desk: Favorite Colored Pencils for Creating Depth & Realism (Pulling Pencils)
Do you want to color realistic highlights?
The problem with traditional Copic Marker blending technique and a lot of craft based colored pencil instruction is that they teach students to highlight everything. EVERYTHING.
They treat highlights as if they’re magical.
Add a highlight and voila! Now it looks dimensional!
All this over-highlighting… and your strange addiction to white gel pens?
This is why your projects look fake.
Real highlights are not white. And folks, not everything has a highlight on it!
Realistic depth and dimension do not come from slapping white comma shapes on everything.