Fixing old streaks

It's been busy for me this week. Last night I had the chance to teach a wonderful group of mostly Architecture students basic marker techniques. Today, if you are in town you can stop by the U of O Bookstore and see the Copic demos from 10am until 6pm.

Meanwhile, here is a quick tip to build on the last post. If have old artwork that you colored with Copics and you want to clean up an area the first step I mentioned is to figure out what color you used originally. Once you've figured it out, or are really close, the next step is to go back over your artwork to smooth it up.

Smoothing Old Artwork without changing the color
If you take the exact color you used before and go over your work to smooth it up it will get too dark. Likewise, if you color over old, streaky areas with the colorless blender it will get much lighter. The trick is to:

1. Find a marker that is about 2 shades lighter than your original streaky area to color with.
2. Start from one side, color smoothly and evenly in little juicy circles, keep all your edges wet and it will re-wet the old color, mix in with the new color, and with enough juice it will cover up and blend away the old streaks.
3. Don't let any edge get dry or else you'll add more streaks in. Also, it might take a bit of effort to get rid of really bad old streaks, so try this technique a few times over the same area if it doesn't work the first time.

I am not showing artwork today because in my next post I'm going to build on this idea and how to apply it into more techniques for coloring backgrounds. Have a great day and come visit me if you're in the area.