We are elated to welcome Debbie Olson back to The CLASSroom today! Debbie is a hugely talented designer and Copic certified instructor. She is a CLASSroom alum and we think she's pretty darn amazing! Wait until you see the awesome Copic coloring lesson she has for you today!
You can see more of Debbie's stunning work on her blog, Thinking Inking. And while you are there, make sure to leave her some love by commenting on her blog before June 29th for a chance to win a $50 coupon to use in our store!
Thank for sharing your talent with us Debbie!!!
I am delighted to be a guest today on Ellen Hutson blog. If you have ever sat in one of my Copic Certification classes, you’ve probably already heard that Ellen was the person who introduced me to Copic Markers—something that I still appreciate today! While I enjoy coloring cute stamped images, I am also drawn to rendering realism with my Copic markers. Today I’d like to share three textures found in nature and how to achieve those with your Copics.
We will start with a simple texture: honed marble. Honed marble is marble that has been cut into a smooth slab but not polished to a high sheen. I am including a handout at the end of the post that has printable photographs, as well as simple line work for two of the three textures if you’d like to play along.
I began by loosely scribbling veining lines with my Copic Sketch N4 and darkened up a few places with a Copic Sketch N6. These values were darker than I needed to end with, but I knew that I would be using a generous application of Colorless Blender on top of the veining lines to both soften and lighten them.
Next I used a Copic Wide Marker filled with Colorless Blender to saturate my entire square. TIP: Always keep a blotting paper behind your work; you are pushing ink through the paper with the Colorless Blender, and you need an absorbent surface behind your work to accept that liquid. My veining lines were still quite pronounced after one coat of Colorless Blender, so I repeated the process twice more, and then used a Copic Sketch C00 to add a light gray tint to parts of the marble base color. After it dried, I used the super brush nib on a Copic Sketch Colorless Blender to break up my lines and add more texture.
Are you ready for something more challenging? The picture reference for this wood texture is a piece of the cedar fence surrounding our garden. I love those aged wood tones! I provided a simple line drawing for this one so that you could focus on the marker rendering rather than structure.
Here’s our starting point, unless you prefer not to use the line sketch. (You could simply fill your square with the texture of the wood if you’d rather.)
On the fencepost, I started with blocking in some initial values. (Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color.) Getting the value right is important—more important that getting the color right! The values above aren’t dark enough yet, but I will keep darkening them as I work. Use you flicking stroke—just as you would when rendering hair. Always flick in the same direction as the grain of the wood.
Next I began adding some of the mossy greens as well as darkening my values.
Now we’re back to the warm grays again, adding more texture with our flicking stroles, and continuing to darken crevices and shadows.
The fence was a cool gray, looking almost blue in places. I used my cool grays initially, then decided to deepen and cool the grays further with my Copic B97 and B99.
Here I had added the greenery behind the fence. I kept it loosely focused just the way it was in the photograph, but I didn’t darken it as much as it was in the photo because I didn’t want it to detract from the fencepost by being higher in contrast than the fencepost.
I have one more challenge for you! We have a retaining wall of boulders in back of our house; I am intrigued by the different colors and textures of the rocks, as well as how highlights and shadows play on the rocks.
Here is a basic line sketch if you’d feel more comfortable starting with lines. You can always just pick one rock and work on its texture rather than working on all of them if that many shapes seems overwhelming.
I began with the rock in the lower left corner, working in its peachy tones first and them neutralizing them a bit with neutral grays. (I will add more texture later.)
Fast forwarding here: I worked next on the rocks that had reddish and purplish-brown tones, saving those cooler gray rocks in the center for last. First I blocked in all of the outer left rocks with my Copic E50 to establish a warm base tone, and the outer right rocks with my E70’s. Next I flicked or stippled more colors and values on top of the base tones. It needs a LOT more texture, but just getting some color and value established makes the piece go a bit faster.
Here I have started adding some of those textural details on the center left rock—mossy green tones, color variations, and plenty of stippling for a rough texture.
Here I have added more texture and detail to the rock on the upper left as well.
I have finished the top, adding greenery in the left top corner, and worked my way across to the top right rock, deepening value and adding texture to the rock. Stippling works well for adding texture. If your colors seem to solid, try stippling with your colorless blender—making very small dots.
Here I have added detail to the rest of the rocks on the right, as well as working my cool gray rocks into the center of the pile.
Adding the cool gray rocks really changes the look! I think it was the interplay of the warm tones and cool tones that drew me to this rock pile to begin with.
Look around for interesting textures and try to replicate them with your markers; even if you don’t have the perfect color, you can still create convincing texture. The challenge is to figure out how!
And don't forget to download this handout to practice!
