Wax Resist, part 2

I heard different suggestions from a few of you about other resist techniques that you can use with Copics, but this post was specifically about WAX. There are lots of ways to achieve the resist technique, I was just covering the ins and out of one way (this gives me an excuse to cover other methods in-depth in the future). One nice thing about art is that in most cases there's no right way or wrong way, just a different way.

Here is the picture I was going to show yesterday, but I didn't want to overwhelm you by covering too many things all at once. The reason I chose wax resist is because I wanted to use my son's crayons to color part of the image.

The stamp image today is a fun one that was given to me as a gift by dear, sweet Peggy Ward after my Charleston class a couple weeks ago. This is a picture of "Rainbow Row" a historical section of downtown Charleston, SC where the houses are vibrant colors. Usually when coloring a picture of something real I go look it up to see what it really looks like. This time I purposefully wanted to color it in a whimsical, almost childlike way so I didn't look at what it really looks like.

First, I added crayon over small details that I didn't want to be colored with marker, but I wanted them to be a color- the trees, windows, ground, clouds, etc. This second picture shows how I added Copic right over the top of the crayon. I wasn't too careful, because the whole image is kinda loose and fun. It's actually a good way to add color if you don't have very many markers, and you want the freedom to color imperfectly without worrying about small details.

Next, here is the almost finished step. See how I scribbled in the sky with my wide marker? On the center chimney I added some crayon over the marker just to protect it a bit from my rough coloring job. I also scribbled the swirls and streaks to the sky to add to the rough, whimsy of my coloring.

Last, I went back and gently scratched off the top layer of wax to really get my clouds and windows on the purple building to pop out a bit more. Someone yesterday suggested that I could iron off the extra crauon when I was done, but I wanted to be a little picky about which wax to melt and which to leave. This is where you have a bit of artistic license and can lighten up the crayon layers just where you want, instead of melting off everything. I think the clouds are my favorite part of this final image- they really look fun and vibrant. Image: Rainbow Row, by Carolina Stamper 843-522-9966 Paper: Copic sketchbook paper Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black Extras: Crayons from various manufacturers


Certification in Seattle Nov. 7 and
Vancouver, BC Nov. 10
The Vancouver, BC class is now full. I am taking applications for Seattle though. The Seattle class opens to the general public on Monday Oct. 20th, so contact Kris at the main office to get added to that class if you are interested. In US, toll free: 866-662-6742. Cost is $100. Also, I am still gathering my mailing list for Anaheim in January and Florida in feb. 2009 so e-mail me to get on those lists.