Pencils & Marker part 3- more Colored Pencil

In yesterday's post I explained why people would want to use colored pencil with the marker, today I'm going to explain How to use the pencils with Copic markers.

Just yesterday I got a very common call. It was from a mother looking to find out more about Copic markers for her daughter who likes to draw Manga (Japanese Comic style). Her daughter currently uses colored pencil, but now needs something that looks more professional for coloring. This brings up a very good point:

Q. I already have a good selection of colored pencils, how should I start picking Copic markers?
A. Start with some good skin colors. Then you can build your collection based on what you color.

Skin is something that we expect to look smooth and clean. Colored pencils just don't cut it. And, there are too many skin colors out there that it is hard to find colored pencils to match all the tones. So unless you NEVER color people, I would strongly suggest getting at least one, if not two good skin colors and build from there (see the post earlier this week).

Q. How do I know what colors of pencil to layer over marker areas?
A. Follow the same process as when you are matching colored inks to marker colors.

In this case though, the colored pencil is going to be layered over a marker color, so pick marker colors that will be lighter than your colored pencil but in the same family.

Colored pencils are different than markers, in that you get lighter areas by coloring less. In this case I'm testing to match marker color by coloring with my colored pencil from dense then fading out to white. My dense area matches the BG09, so I'm going to pick a lighter shade in that family as my base marker color- BG02.

Now look at when I layer the pencil over the BG02. See how much richer and cleaner the pencil looks with marker than when you had pencil by itself? And, it looks like you used more marker colors than just the one light color. If you don't have the exact match it's OK, since you're using such pale colors anyways, you just need to feel similar, not exact.

When you try this on a whole picture what a difference the colored pencil makes. Here I'm using a few light marker colors (note that they all end in 0, 1, or 2). I'm coloring very smooth, but it looks pretty flat. Now look at the final piece. Wow! The pencils add the dimension and shadows but it looks really good together. Also, it's easier to get the pencil to look smooth when you blend since you have a smooth base color underneath.

Image: Something I drew just now onto Color Laser Copier paper Ink: Multiliner 1.0mm Other: Crayola colored pencils (I forgot my Prismacolors at work).