Let's Draw! Illustrating with Copic Book

For those of you who haven't given us feedback about our catalog yet, don't forget to download it from the Copic Library and tell us what you think on Thursday's post. We'll be drawing winners at midnight next Friday.

A little bit about the artwork in the new Catalog:
Overall design: Courtney Stubbert, he's done a fabulous job, way to go!
Cover art: Jane Morgan - this is her first published artwork, she was very excited and didn't believe us at first when we told her we were going to use it
Marker girl on contents page: Mitaka Masafuji, from the book "Let's Draw! Illustrating with Copic"
Sketch Artwork: K. Haruka, a Japanese artist we had in our booth this summer at Anime Expo. Her work is Amazing!
Copic Artwork: I drew this one, I was pleasantly surprised to see it in here, since I quickly drew it for something much smaller and I see a lot more mistakes when it's this large
Ciao Artwork: These cards were made by Cambria Turnbow, go check out her blog for more beautiful cards
Wide Artwork: Marylin Reeves, she's a fabulous Calligrapher, teaches workshops all over the Northwest, and loves our markers
Various Ink: This is the backside of a thin, glossy paper that Courtney dripped inks onto then scanned. It looks cool.
Wide Color Chart artwork and Airbrushed Chair: These were done by the president of our company, Ken O'Connell (who also happened to be one of my professors in college). Right now he's in Italy teaching a sketchbook drawing workshop for two weeks.
Inside back cover: Artwork by Ran Mutsuki, another illustration from our book "Let's Draw! Illustrating with Copic"

Let's Draw! Illustrating with Copic
You may have noticed that two of the pieces of artwork in our catalog are from the book "Let's Draw! Illustrating with Copic" What is this book? Would it be useful to beginners? What's inside?

I strongly suggest that anyone who uses Copic markers and is desperate for a book, get a copy of this book! It is particularly important for people who draw comics and Manga, but the coloring principles inside carry over into any kind of illustrating and coloring with Copics.

The book was drawn by 9 artists in Japan. About 4 years ago it was my job to digitally erase the Japanese off each page, clean up the artwork, and re-type the English translation into something that made sense (for those of you who keep suggesting I write a book, I already have- this one. I didn't really write it though, just typed it). At the time there were no in-depth books on using Copic markers, so I learned a LOT from pouring over each page and methodically explaining what the artists were doing in their step by steps. The artwork throughout speaks for itself (in more ways than one).

Sometimes the translation made so little sense that I had to actually work until I could recreate the effect the artist was showing then figure out how to explain it (the pages on Photoshop were a nightmare!). I learned a bunch of neat tricks about the blender marker from this book, as well as ways to get smooth blends and ideas for working with pencils.

The first main section on coloring is drawn by our good friend Kaoppe. She has come to Anime Expo with us for the last 4 years doing illustrations and autographing the book. Kaoppe is a fun artist who always wears the craziest clothes (one year she dressed me up in her full Kimono, did my hair, and everything!). Her illustrations are amazing, as are all the guest artists we've had over the years. She does a great job of simple explanations for clean Copic work.

If the pages don't make sense it's because you're reading left to right. It is published in authentic Japanese style and reads right to left, back to front.

Anyways, the directions are drawn in a very fun, easy to follow style. Each chapter is drawn by a different artist. They cover basic coloring, blending, adding colored pencil and watercolor, inks, papers, refilling markers, and the entire process from pencil to inked art, to final colored work.

I can't really show too much from the book, but for the beginner comic artist the part I find most useful is in the back. They interview each artist and show the rough sketches of the main illustrations throughout the book. They ask questions like: What paper do you use? what did you use besides Copics? How long did it take you to color? and so much more.

Best of all, the book sells for about $10 US. When we go to Anime shows we strongly encourage everyone who gets a marker set to take the book as well because it really is a perfect book for beginners.

I hope all of you have a great weekend and leave lots of comments and feedback about our brochure. Negative feedback is just as useful as positive, so tell us what you really think or what you'd like to see more of. This helps us in our goal to continue improving our brochures so they answer all your Copic questions.