Gray Base Tones, new header again

Running Horses, Part 2

Sky
For this image, I started with the sky. Usually I finish an image with the sky, but I knew what I wanted the sky to look like, and I hadn't decided on the horse breeds yet, so I began with the sky. If you want to see another tutorial on coloring sky, you can check out this older post on coloring clouds.

I used B32 and feathered out from the horse cluster. Then, I took a really juicy colorless blender and pushed the color back towards the horses. I specifically wanted the sky to feel more like an illustration than a realistic sky, so I pushed the colors around irregularly to give it a mottled look.

Once the colors were pushed, then I let the base dry. I took the colorless blender and added the spots in the sky. Then I went back and touched up with the B32 around the edges of the horses and added a few spots. I was not too worried about going over the edges of the other images, as I can always clean up the edges.

Gray Base Tones on Horses
While I was still deciding on the horse breeds, I added base grays. When you look at the final image, you can't tell that I used warm grays to plan my shadows.

All 3 horses were colored with W1, W3, and a hint of C1. This helps me get all my shadows correct before I start adding other colors. The middle horse I started toning brown with E31. The base tone of grays makes the E31 look like it has a lot more color variation than just one simple layer of light brown. At this point I knew it would be a brown horse, I just hadn't decided on breeds yet.

Notice that I have not done much blending with the base colors. Since I will be layering lots of other colors over the grays, it is more important to just have tones in place, rather than worrying that they all look perfectly smooth at this point.

Middle Horse
It finally came to a point where I had to decide on a breed for the middle brown horse. Once again, I ran a google search and looked up brown horses. I saw some beautiful Spanish Mustangs that I liked, so I decided to color him as a nice, rich brown that darkened into almost black accents. Since he was to be the focal horse, I put the most work into him so he would stand out more.

He is colored mainly with E31 and E35 to go with the base grays. I like the E30's sequence because it is a good, neutral brown family, without too much red or other tones in it. The more you layer browns over the base grays, the more the grays will be pushed out of the way, so be careful not to layer too much or you may lose the original shading. If this happens, just darken it more.

The areas that darken almost to black are colored with E47 and hints of W7. No black! W7 is as dark as you need to get. Even the darkest brown has a value of 7, so it is not black. In the final, you can see that it looks almost black, but still retains the feel of brown.

To soften the colors on his face, I went back over his head with the colorless blender. This added highlights back in, and allowed me to tone down the deepest areas a bit.

His foreleg that is in back, I added W3 to dull it down and make it less intense. This helps with the illusion of depth. I colored his teeth with W3 and his tongue with E04.

You can see that I went over the edges a little bit, on the knee of the front horse and under his chin, but that's what the colorless blender is for.

Tomorrow I will continue the tutorial, and finish up the other two horses and the markers around the edges. Have a great day!

Back to School Grays

Back to School
Recently, my children went back to school. While my husband and I are cheering, our son has been gray, since school is obviously not as much fun as hanging out with friends all Summer.

Grays might seem blah, but when you are working with a limited color palette, you can't underestimate the power of grays.

Working with grays
Copic makes 46 shades of gray. Each shade is used for a specific purpose...
Cool Grays are very blue-toned, and useful for shadows and metal.
Neutral Grays are neutral and good for generic gray things or for storyboarding.
Toner Grays are slightly warm, but not too warm.
Warm Grays are very warm and earth-toned, great for wooly or earthy things.

Working with limited colors
People frequently ask me, what are the best colors to start with when collecting Copics. I always answer that it depends what you are going to be coloring. If you color people, then go for skin tones and build from there. If you enjoy nature, then start with greens and browns. However, you may have only a few colors from each family and feel that your artwork has no depth until you get more colors.

This problem can be solved if you have a few grays. My first two markers I got after the 12 basic marker set I started with were two shades of gray. This instantly multiplied those 12 colors into twice as many options.

Here is a girl who is heading back to school. I started by laying down a C5 to mark my shadows. You may think this is too dark to start, but an interesting quality of Copic markers, is that any lighter color can push a darker color out of the way, so this C5 will lighten up as we layer colors over it.

I tried to keep all my shadows consistent, so you can easily tell that the light is coming from the upper right. (For more ideas on shadow placement, run a search on "shadows" on this blog using the search bar at the top.)

Usually when layering grays it is a good idea to match gray type to color family. However, I have limited colors, and I only have this one gray. That is OK. Shadows tend to cool down, as the sun is not hitting them directly. Skin would usually be a warm brown, but, it is OK to add a cool color in the shadow of skin, so I frequently add blue or purple into my skin shadows. Cool gray is cool, so that will be fine to use to accent the colors in the shadows.

Now that I have planned out my shadows, I can layer my limited colors. Since I like drawing people, I have a good range of skin tones. I start by adding E000 over all skin areas, including the gray colored parts. then, over the gray shadows, I added E11 and E04. See how much lighter the gray is now?

I colored her bag and shoes with E15 and E19. I colored the paper sack with the E11 I used on her skin.

Last, I colored all the other areas of her with my limited colors.

I colored her hair with Y21, Skirt with R83, and her shirt with BV13. I lost some of the shadows when I colored the shirt with BV13, so I went back with my gray and darkened those areas again.

As you can see, using a gray helps cut back on the colors you need to own when starting out your collecting. In total, I used 1 gray, 5 browns, 1 yellow, 1 blue-violet, and 1 pink. The 1 gray meant that I did not need a darker shade of yellow, pink, or blue-violet. If I had colored her book bag purple, then I could have eliminated 2 browns as well.

She doesn't look too bad, in my opinion.

Enter our coloring contest!
For a blank image of this girl to download, and to see another way to color her, please visit our Copic blog. There you will also find information on how to enter this month's coloring contest via Facebook and copiccolor.com

Not a member of Copic Color yet? Now is the time to register and see what people are making with Copic markers. Registration is free and easy!

Coloring Metal things - part 1

I'm back! What a week I had, but it's now back to the coloring board. Today I wanted to talk about coloring things to look like metal. I'll do a different post on coloring things that ARE metal, but today we'll talk about simple metal things, and I'll ry to keep this a beginner post.

The color of metal
If you think of something metal the first color that comes to mind is a plain, silvery color, since this is the most common metal color - silverware, galvanized steel, chrome etc.

Don't forget that metal things come in all shades of color, from the deep black of cast iron, to the bright yellow of gold, the reddish tones of copper, and many other colors in between. I already talked a while ago about coloring gold, so today I'm going to work with galvanized steel / basic silvery metal.

Silvery metal is a cool color, though very reflective and neutral. For this reason, I will be working mostly in cool grays. If you have objects near your metal then the metal may pick up reflected hints of that color as well.
A few things to consider about metal
• Shiny metal has more contrast and sharper lines between light and dark
• Dull or textured metal (galvanized) will have softer blends
• Shiny metal reflects light in very odd ways, so always try to look at a photo before coloring something
• When metal has direction, streaks are OK to accent this (see below)

There's a whole lot more things to worry about out there, but this is fine to start with today.

Galvanized Steel Watering Can
Galvanized steel looks like the chip-board of metal (photo courtesy of www.images.asia.ru). It is made up of lots of chunks of metal and therefore is not quite as crisp in it's reflections, so this is an easy type of metal to start with.

Steel is generally a light, cool gray, so I will be working with cool grays. Notice in the photo though that the metal picks up tones of whatever is around it, so don't be tricked by the warm gray areas in the picture. For now, just concentrate on the cool gray.

Before I colored this watering can I ran a quick search online for "metal watering can" images as a reference. Then, as I like to do with complex areas I made a simplified diagram of the colored areas based on looking at 2 or 3 pictures.

In general, a watering can is made of two cylinders, so please refer to this older post to brush up on the rules of shading.

My light is coming from the front left, so my strongest highlights will be on that side. My deepest shadows will be on the opposite side. The softer light is a reflection, so it will be less bright than my main highlight. Since I am coloring galvanized steel I will soften my shading instead of having crisp edges, though this is a matter of personal taste.

I start with C3 and I am coloring in streaks following the bend of the can. This helps accent the ribs on the can, and increases the feel of reflection. I darken the far side with C5. Don't forget to shade under each wrinlke of the can ribs, and leave the top of each rib white, as it catches the light differently.

Next I go back with my colorless blender. I start in the middle of the whitest highlight and I am softly pushing the color back to each side (don't oversoak!). Then I come from the other highlight and do the same. I want to work smoothly so I don't get "puddles" of blender and leave crisp edges. I can also use the blender to add light back in on the top of each rib of the can.

You'll notice that your colors get much lighter as you add colorless blender, so after you're done blending, go back with your darker colors and deepen those shadows again (don't forget to darken under the spout and the handle). It's OK to darken in slight streaks as well. Now our watering can looks like shiny metal. At this point I could layer in other reflective colors or add some reddish brown rust, but I think I like it how it is.

For my final image today you can see that I colored it in exactly the same way as our practice above, the only difference is that this picture has more details and I left a tiny hint of a white relfection along the dark edge (this also makes the dark stand out more). Notice how the subtle streaks in the metal help you feel the reflective nature as well. If you look at the other colors I chose to use in the picture you will see some high-contrast colors. I used a lot of tip-to-tip blending on my tiny areas, since this drawing isn't very large (drawn on color laser copier paper with 0.2 mm multiliner SP).

Shadows part 8 - Shading things close and far

I am not sure why I want to talk about this today, but I figure now is a good time to talk a little bit about landscapes. Let's look at the nature of understanding depth and how to color things far away. If you remember back a few weeks ago, I said that cool things are far away and warm things are close up.

What do things far away look like?
The earth's atmosphere has particles that are generally blue. From a distance our planet looks blue because of these particles, not just because there are so many oceans. These particles get in the way of our view of things far away.

Here in Oregon our hills and mountains are covered in pine trees and evergreens. These are a deep, dusty green color. As you get farther away, the hills become more blue and there's less contrast. Why? because the particles in our atmosphere interfere with what we're seeing from a distance making them turn from green to blue.

Look at this photo of my son climbing on some rocks. The rocks close to us have more contrast and are rich in color. We know that the rocks over near the waterfall are exactly the same type and color of rock, but see how they have much less contrast and are lighter. The shadow of the overhang is also stronger on this side of the waterfall than when you get right up close to the waterfall. It's not as strong a contrast in this example as a photo of something farther away, but you start to see it even here.

Take a hill in an area where there are lots of oak and maple trees. In the fall these trees turn beautiful colors, yet the ones far away loose their vibrancy because of the blue particles. What would be a bright, warm yellow tree up close would be a muted cool yellow tree from a distance.

Cool and Warm
Now do you understand what I'm saying about cool and warm in relation to distance? Our minds are used to this concept so we naturally pull this into whatever we see. If you are coloring something and you want the background to be far away and less inviting since it's not your focal point then color it with hints of blue. If the background should compliment your work and make a warm inviting, close scene then make the background warm.

Here is a tree in snow. Notice the background tree on one side I colored all Warm Gray and the other tree I colored all Cool gray. Then, I'm adding my lighter green over the top, and very little of the dark green, since these are farther away. Which tree feels closer or more inviting to you? In my opinion the warm gray changes the tone of the tree, but the cool gray feels a bit more natural, just far away and shadowed.

This is all personal preference. Many of you swear by W1 shadows because you're that kind of person. When I want a gray I always reach for cool grays (maybe because I have a colder personality?). No, really it's because I tend to draw a lot of metal things and things in the distance so I tend to make my shadows cool.

When should I add grays while coloring?
Grays get added for things in shadow and things far away. From the example above you can see that I used gray first, then added color over the top, then added a bit more gray. The final example I used color first, added blue, then added gray. It is a matter of personal preference.

The nice things about Copic markers is that you can keep adding and layering colors and shading or muting it as much as you need. If it looks too bright and detracts from the background or doesn't have enough contrast then you can always add more gray. If it's too dark, then add more color.

For my final image today I drew this scene with a 0.3mm multiliner onto color Laser Copier paper. If you look at the first steps, you'll see how the trees all blend together and look flat. To make the front tree stand out I added the most contrast, and made the background trees muted with both the blue from the sky and the darker gray to make it fade into the distance. Notice on the background trees also the ones closer to us are brighter slightly. My snow is made with B41, which has a bit more gray in it than the brighter blue of the sky.

I hope this helps you as you plan your colors for landscapes, and gives you some ideas for coloring snow scenes. Have a great week.

Coloring Black Things with Grays

Have you ever tried to color something you wanted to look black, so you color it with black and it just looks bland and bad? You're not alone. Lots of people have this problem and hopefully I can help your black things look better after this post.

Why does it look so bad?
Your black lines disappear and your area looks totally flat if you color with black. Black is a monster that sucks in all color, especially color around it. If you have large areas of black it can be very overpowering.

So how can we make something look black without coloring it black?
This is why Copic makes so many grays. There are 44 shades of gray, which seems like a lot when you only use a few of the lightest grays every now and then for light shadows. The darker grays are what you would use to get black.

Note: In this post I am about 1 or 2 shades lighter than you will want to work, mostly because I needed to make sure my scanner would pick up the subtle differences between blacks. You may like these blacks as they are, or you may want to go a couple shades darker. That's a matter of personal preference.

Look at this shirt. The black shirt is just a black shape. It has no life. Next, we have a t-shirt colored with two shades of toner gray, T6 and T8. The shirt still looks black but now we can see the black lines around the shape.

Now look at the last shirt. This shirt has been through the wash too many times and looks faded. This was an easy effect by going over the shirt with the lightest gray of the same family T0. I could have used the blender but it would have been too much and too harsh.

Usually you can get a good "black" by using the 6 or 7 in each gray family as the base color and shadowing with the 8 or 9 from the same family. Sometimes you may need to use the 10 in that color family, but rarely do I reach for a black.

So why are there so many grays?
Each gray has a slightly different feel. If you look at this sequence you can see that the W's are warm, almost brown, the T's are a little less brown, the N's are truly neutral, and the C's are sort of blue.

I'd use the Warm grays for warm feeling natural things, trees, dirt, etc. I'd use the Toner grays if I didn't want the grays to be quite so brown but not cool or neutral. The Neutral grays are really that- neutral. If you look the Neutral circle looks more black than the others when you see them in this sequence. The Cool grays are more for metal and cold things.

The shirt above is a fabric that I wanted to be sort of neutral, so I used the Toner Grays, since the warm grays were too brown. I could have used Neutral gray, but I didn't feel like it at the time. I drew the circles with lines through the light area so you can get an idea of how the black lines compare to the blacks of the shape. (Note: the T4 you see in this picture is one of the first two markers I was given over 8 years ago- it still has the original brush tip).

What about the black markers?
First, never use the black 100 or 110 for drawing a shape you're going to color in with other colors of Copic markers. These markers are meant to blend, so the lines will just get blurry and look bad. Use these if you need deepest shadows in your artwork. If you want black lines draw them with a multiliner. The lines will be crisper and they won't bleed with other marker colors.

What's the difference between 100 and 110?
Have you ever worn a black shirt with black pants and it's not the same shade of black, yet each piece of clothing by itself looks black? That's the difference. You can't really see it unless you're on certain papers and the two are next to each other.

100 is equal to a C11, or a cool, deep blue black. This is what most people consider true black.
110 is equal to a T11, or a slightly warm black.

Coloring black shiny things
Black metal you can color in exactly the same way as other black things, but where a t-shirt is fabric and has a matte finish metal is shiny and will reflect light back. This is another case where you need to use opaque white. No way can I leave the white areas white when I'm working on such a small shape and with such dark colors.

However, a little dab of thick opaque white covers up the black nicely and makes our little ball look like dark, shiny metal (it's cool gray so it's supposed to look like metal or hematite, my favorite stone).

The final picture is from Flourishes. The young man in the tux was so dark compared to the simple white wedding dress that I added a black Spica glitter pen to break up the black areas. My scanner picked those up as rainbow flecks, so that's the speckles you see on his outfit. Image: Wedding Party by Flourishes Paper: Neenah Classic Crest Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black Other: Atyou Spica Black pen

Limited Colors? Bring in Grays

I hope all of you had a great weekend and got your coloring fingers tuned up. I was going to post a color spotlight today, but I wanted to cover a few more points about color theory before I spotlight a color in depth, so look for that on Friday.

A quick note about Certification- The Chicago class on July 17th is full. However- the drop-in free event for papercrafting store owners, designers and teachers is still open on that day, just e-mail me and get on my list so I know how many to expect. I do have about 6 spots each day in my Seattle classes on June 18th or 19th (next week! aaack- it's so soon!). If these spots don't fill by Wed. then I'm opening the class up to ANYONE in the Seattle area- not just teachers and designers. I have plenty of space in my Milwaukee class on July 15th and the Chicago class on July 16th, so if you haven't signed up for those get in now by e-mailing me for details: office1@copicmarker.com

Layering Grays- Do you have only a few Copic colors and feel like you have to rush out and get more? I won't stop you, but I will show you ways to get more out of the colors you do have. You can make a lot of colors simply by adding together the colors you already have.

Most people, when they first see a big wall of Copic markers choose a few colors, get home, and realize they have the wrong colors. Usually, the colors are too bright, because bright colors catch our eye and we must have them. Or, you didn't know that you should have two or three markers in each color family to start with.

Here's a great way to adapt. With Copic, you can layer colors to get a more muted tone, or to get a totally different color. Don't worry about getting one color on the tip of another, remember it will come out.

I'm starting with this bright blue tulip. I colored it very smooth with B02 and YG05. This is nice, except it feels flat. And bright, very bright, since both these colors have a 0 in the middle. What to do? Should I rush out and get a YG07 and a B05 to make them more realistic. Not necessarily. Those color would just add shadows of bright colors to already bright colors. The picture wouldn't be flat at least, but it would still be too bright.

So what can we layer that will dull the brightness, but still keep the parts blue and green? Here's where a little color theory helps. Blue and green are COOL colors. Copic makes a color family for cool colors, Cool Grays. Grays dull down bright colors, so we can layer a Cool Gray over a bright color to make it less vibrant.

Here is the same tulip with C3 added for shadows to both the YG05 and the B02. Here's another example of Vo4 also shaded with the C3. Now compare it to the one below colored with V04 + V06, YG05 + YG07. The one with gray has much more muted shadows, the other just has darker tones of the same color. It's up to you which one you like more, but in a pinch that C3 sure is handy.

What if you have a bunch of muted colors and you need a blue but you only have a bright blue? This is a perfect way to mute one color so it matches your other colors.

What about WARM colors in your artwork? Use Warm Grays. Without getting too far into color theory, the YG marker I used is a color that could work warm or cool. The YR02 and Y02 however, are definitely WARM. Both of these are very light, so use a W2 or in this case, a W1.

How do I know which grays to try? For bright colors I can usually pick a gray that is one or two numbers lighter than the other color (look at the last digit- a Warm Gray one shade lighter than YR02 would end in 1, so I try W1 first). For darker colors I usually go with a gray that has the same last digit or is one or two darker (otherwise the gray doesn't do much). Yellows are so pale that I would tend to go light over those anyways.

How do I know if my color is warm, or cool? What if it could be both? Copic makes 44 different shades of gray, in 4 color families. Each color of gray brings it's own slight feel to a picture. Cool Grays add a hint of Blue, Warm Grays add a hint of Brown. Neutral gray is just that, Neutral. Toner gray is half way between Neutral and Warm.

So, if you want something to feel cold (shadow on ice, metal, etc) use Cool Gray. If you want something that feels warm or natural (wood, earthy things) use Warm Gray. For everything else the other grays can fill in for you. If you ever take a color theory class you'll learn that within basic color families (like Red) there are warms and cools, so it can really get confusing. For now, don't worry about it and just experiment.

When you find combos you like, add them to your swatch book so you don't forget. Tomorrow I'll be posting about cardstock and some blog candy, so stay tuned.

Image: I didn't have a stamp I liked at home when I made this post, so I just drew a flower a few times with a Copic Multiliner. The YG05 marker is one that I got 8 years ago in a special set. I don't use it very often because it is so bright, so I have never refilled it, yet it is still very juicy after sitting for 8 years!