More about the colorless blender

I am still sloughing through past e-mails, so have patience if I am a couple days behind. Also don't worry, I will post sometime this week the features that make a Sketch or Ciao marker different from the Copic original.

Meanwhile, I still have a bit to say about Colorless blenders.
So far, we've figured out that the colorless blender marker does a few things, but it still might not work the way we anticipate. That's because it's called a colorless blender, we expect blending, but it really does the following best:

1. It lightens colors
2. It pushes colors
3. It fades to white
4. Great for special effects
5. It blends colors (note that I list this last- in my opinion this is a side-effect of what the blender does best- lightens, pushes, and fades to white)

We've made bricks and we've fixed mistakes, but there is so much more it can do. I'm not even going to touch on all the blender can do right now, but I will show some more ways of using what we already know about the blender to color images better.

Fade to white by pushing colors
This example is almost exactly the opposite of what we did yesterday. Instead of pushing color from the outside into the stamped area, we're pushing color from the middle of an area out to the edges. Same rules apply as yesterday though.

1. Start with an area that you've only colored the edges. In this case I'm using BG93 that I haven't colored very smoothly. Make sure you have good scratch paper under your work for this technique.

2. Color from the lightest spot, out towards the edges. Don't stop in the middle or it will give you ugly lines/streaks. In this case I'm using a lot of blender, so it's really juicy and is shoving that color around very strongly.

3. Color almost to the edge, but not over. Remember, you color is getting pushed in front of your blender, so if you color up to the line it will go over. Also note how dark the color is around the edge. This is at least 1 or 2 shades darker than my original color, so try this technique with lighter colors until you get an idea of how it will react. If you need it lighter then let it dry and repeat (just like erasing). Keep a swatch in your swatch book to remember what you did.

If you want a nice subtle shadow that fades out from your image like you'll frequently see on Debbie, Trudee, or Michelle's blogs, then try the same thing, only use a lot less blender and a much lighter touch. Debbie mixed her own B0000 marker a while ago (note that it has 4 zeros, making it super-light) because she is always fading out from pale blue to the color of her paper.

Here are some examples I shared on Splitcoaststampers a while back. This is a page from my swatch book. Note that the pink frosting on the cupcakes fades to white and the ground shadow fades from color to white as well.

Color Note: I chose these shadow colors to show that not all shadows have to be gray. These are supposed to give you the idea of light bouncing off the cupcake cup and reflecting a bit of color on the white background.