Friday Art Links & basic blending

To finish up the fabulous week of prizes I want to announce the winners for the Salt Lake Certification giveaway.
Congratulations to Lesa Rapp and Mollie Farnsworth !


In the world of Twitter there is a phenomenon called "Follow Friday" where people suggest great links to visit/follow. I want to start posting more fine-art and illustration related links on Fridays.

World Drawing Day 2009
Tomorrow, June 6th is World Drawing Day. The organizers are trying to get 1,000,000 people to commit to not only making art, but displaying what they drew and linking back to their homepage. I know that EVERYONE who reads this blog can doodle something. Papercrafting is a form of creativity and any form of creativity is a form of Art. Even if you don't consider yourself an "artist" if you can add color to a picture you are giving your own artistic representation of something. So I urge you to share your creation with World Drawing Day. If you need ideas, just click on the draw-it-yourself at the end of this post.

For more details visit the World Drawing Day website. Tomorrow I'm going to post a brief history about myself and art (adapted from a gallery project I did a few years ago) to celebrate World Drawing Day.

Today however, for the papercrafter I want to share a quick blending technique. I read through most of the nearly 800 comments I got this week and the consensus is that you want to see:

• More blending
• More shadows
• More color theory
• More basic techniques

So I'll happily share all this and more over the course of the next year, along with more Draw-it-yourself techniques and Fine Art, Comic, and Design information.

Simple Blending, dark to light
This is a quick card I made for my son to give to his teacher to celebrate the end of the school year, and the end of my old elementary school (they're building a new one for next fall).

I made this card using Gina K. Pure Luxury 80# cardstock, which works very well with Copics. The patterned paper is by Reminisce.

I wanted the stars to be lopsided, so I cut them myself crookedly to give them a fun feel. I colored the stars using Y17 first and then I added Y11. This is another way of blending, which workd very well on open areas like these little stars.

This technique is easiest with the brush nib, but you can do it with any of our markers. Always work on clean scratch paper so if you go over the edge of your cutout it won't stain your surface and you won't have stray color bleed through from your scratch paper. It also helps if your hands are clean so you don't get inky fingerprints on your yellow (ask me how I know!).

First, with your darker yellow color each point, lifiting up at the end of your stroke as you work your way in. Leave the middle open.

Next, take your lighter color (in this case Y11) and really soak the middle of the star. This will start to push the edges of the darker yellow out. Don't let a ridge build up! (if you look at the diagram close-up you'll see a slight ridge of darker color- this needs to be smoothed out). You want to lightly feather the ligter color as you get deeper into the dark yellow. Then all your edges stay soft and blend smoothly. Push with the lighter color until you get a smooth blend. If the dark color gets too light, then add more of the dark, again feathering the darker color so you don't get harsh edges.

I know I have said this before, but ANY lighter color will push a darker color out of the way if you soak it enough. You can always keep layering colors as much as you need to get the blend that looks right. With Copic markers you'll never have a problem with the paper pilling.

Have a great weekend and keep drawing!