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.

Wax Resist, part 1

I'm back, What a trip! I met so many wonderful people and had a great time with everyone.
Thank You to everyone who attended my certification classes, visited me in Savannah, or that I got to talk to in Kansas City. Now I'm back to all my unanswered e-mails, questions, and tedious coloring that fills my days. If you think I've been ignoring you just know I've been busy and will answer your questions in due time.

Wax Resist & Copics
Years ago I was doing presentations in an art school and the teacher who I was presenting to said she gave each student a lump of clear paraffin wax the first day of class so they could do resist techniques. As simple as this is, I don't know how many people actually have tried it.

A good coating of wax will repel Copic inks, though you have to be careful. Here I've taken a sheet of "Pool Fun" by Reminisce and by putting clear resist (a clear tea candle) over one word I can get it to stand out more by coloring over the rest of the area with a wide B34 marker. To clean up the area so the white is more vibrant I scratched off the the wax after I did the resist and any residue of blue came right off.

Once this is coated in wax Copic markers will not stick to that area very well, so if I had wanted to color in the word "Swim" I needed to do it before I added wax to do my resist.

Here are some rules of thumb to get the best results when working with wax resist and Copics. Wax is something you don't want on your marker tips, but if you're careful this technique will work just fine.

1. Always work over a good scratch paper and clean up any bits of wax you may leave behind. Otherwise it will come back to haunt you, stick to your fingers, get into your keyboard, or get ground into your carpet and other awful things. Clear wax could get on your clean paper and when you try to color later it will prevent you from getting even coverage.

2. Try not to scrub and soak your marker over wax. This might clog your tips, so color quickly but evenly- no need to go over an area twice. If you pick up a stray bit of wax get it off your tip quickly or it will cause streaking, especially with colored waxes. If it gets embedded in your tip you're in trouble.

3. Clean up any stray wax bits before you color with marker. I'm going to say it again because it's so important. Look at my red crayon/yellow marker example and how the red specks get picked up and smeared when I add color over the top. These lines look really bad.

4. Evenly cover the area you want resisted with wax, then test. You need to make sure the wax is protecting your paper and filling in any gaps that marker might seep into (see my example at the bottom of the page where the first word is not evenly coated with wax).

5. If you are layering colors to resist, plan which color needs to go down first. In this example the white was paper that I put wax on, then I added yellow, added more resist to protect the yellow area, and then added blue. The blue turns greenish from laying over the yellow, but both the yellow and the white show through the final layer of color.


6. For different resist colors, use crayons. Crayola crayons are the least waxy and will give you the best colors, but you need to color firmly to get best coverage. Waxy crayons will resist better, but their colors aren't always the best and they leave more little flakes that could get picked up and smeared around. Test a few brands for best results. In this example you can also see how much more vibrant the color gets when I scratched off the top layer of wax on the last 3 strokes after I colored over it with marker.

7. Avoid going over the wax with a Multiliner. It clogs and ruins the tips, trust me.

After you color over your wax, clean any stray marker off the wax area by gently scratching the top layer of wax off. Do this only when you are completely done, NOT between colors if you are layering colors. The wax protects the under color from the marker and when you scratch it off it isn't as protective. I scratched off this wax with my fingernail- see how much more vibrant the white looks. Also, see how I didn't evenly cover the first word and so it wasn't completely protected. You should experiment a bit to make sure that you are coating your paper thoroughly.

Now that you have some ideas about how to get the best results I'd love to see examples of what you've done with this technique. I'm going to finish this up tomorrow and show you my final image at that time, since this post is getting kinda long. Have a great day!

Winner For World Cardmaking

It's been a week, and now it's midnite on Sunday so I can pick 3 winners for the fabulous World Cardmaking Day prizes.
I want to thank everyone for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Just like many of you, I can't pick my favorite Copic product- I like them all! I just want to sit and color all day if I could. Hopefully I will share some ideas that will help you get more out of your coloring in the future as well. Now, without further chatting, the winners are:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

212 11 394 

Timestamp: 2008-10-12 04:00:29 UTC

So congrats to:

Cindy

Lynette

Dawn

Cindy said...

i love how well they blend .

thanks so much for your tips and tutorials.
they are a GREAT resource

Lynette said...

I love your blog. It was your blog that gave me the confidence to buy some markers. Although I have been reading your blog since day one I am still a newby. I get the impression that you more often blend your colors without the blending pen. What would be the advantages/disadvantages of blending without the blending pen or is it just a matter of how experienced you are.

Dawn said...

How could I pick just one? I LOVE all of the markers and your tutorials are amazing! thanks for sharing your talent with us!

Congrats ladies, and send me your e-mail if you haven't already had a note from me.

I want to thank everyone again for leaving their comments. As I return from this long trip I'll gradually get through your e-mails, so please have patience with me for taking so long to answer you.

Coloring snowmen

I really wasn't going to talk about this today, but enough of you have pestered me that I just want to get this posted before I move onto other things. We made this image last night at the SCS get-together here in Kansas City.

Coloring Stylized Snow
After looking at beautiful pictures of frozen wastelands as I was researching this topic I came to know that those cold landscapes are a lot different than the simple depiction we're going to start with today.

Snow is cold. In our mind we see cold as blue, so we know that there should be blue in our picture somewhere. Show is white, and the shadow of white is gray, so we know that there needs to be gray in our picture as well. Neither of these colors should take us away from the overall white of the snow.

In my opinion, the two best colors are a light gray and a pale blue. I start with wider strokes of the light cool gray C1, then I darken each shadow area with a pale B00. Note how on the snowman I picked a light source and made the shadow heavier on the far side from the light. This snowmen has crisp shadow edges though, and the edges don't look like soft, fluffy snow.

How do we get rid of those crisp edges? By adding colorless blender. I start in the middle and push the color out to the edge of the stamped area. The blender lightens the colors, blends them together, and fades the edges to white. Now my edges are much softer, lighter, fluffier, and you can still feel the blue and light gray. Trouble is, the snow is so pale on my white page that you start to feel like it's getting lost, white on white.



Getting colors to pop more
A neat trick in art and coloring is that if you put a color next to it's opposite color it increases the contrast. What do I mean by opposite color? If you look at my simple color wheel on the little color tag you see that Purple and yellow are opposites, Blue and orange, and red and green are all opposite combinations. If our white is bluish then the natural opposite would be orange.

Trouble is, I'm keeping to a primary color palette (red, yellow, blue), so instead of orange, I'll use a pale yellow background to make my blue pop out more. The yellow I used is actually a custom YR31 that belongs to Lori Craig. It's an empty marker that's filled half with colorless blender and half YR31. Lori got this idea from Debbie Olson, who has her own custom extra-pale blue and yellow. See how the white pops out more because of the background color? If I had added a sky of blue it wouldn't jump out so much.

I went back in with my blender and lightened up the yellow so it fades out to white smoother. Last, I finished up by coloring with my primary colors B34 and R29. To keep my colors simple I used blender to make lighter shades of each color rather than grabbing another marker. The shadows on the red shoes I made by adding a bit of blue over the top and blending it in with red. Paper: Neenah Classic Crest Solar White Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black Stamp Image: I'm not sure, as soon as I find out, I'll tell you. Have a great weekendand don't forget to enter the drawing from Saturday.

Vellum and Coloring Sunsets

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, but I am on a much-needed vacation after a long and busy weekend down in Savannah GA, and teaching the class in Charleston, SC last week. I did so many presentations in Savannah that I lost my voice half-way through Friday and only now am I really getting to feeling like my old self, just in time for flying to Kansas City tonite.

I have been visiting here in South Carolina, the Palmetto State. On their state flag is a Palmetto, and my brother explained to me that a long time ago they were under cannon attack but their fort was made out of Palmetto logs, which were so flexible the cannon balls bounced right off the logs and kept the fort safe.

Since we can't grow palm trees in Oregon, I always like drawing them when I visit warm places- such a change from our evergreens and other trees in the Pacific Northwest. The other night we saw a gorgeous sunset, and I figured you would like to see a fun technique for making your own sunsets with Copic markers on tracing paper or vellum.

What is special about vellum?
Vellum is a coated paper that Copic markers don't get absorbed into. There are different quality vellums, and you'll want to test each one to see what works best. The best vellum will allow you to completely erase your marker work, without leaving any speckling (you'll see what I mean in a bit). Vellum or tracing papers are transparent, giving you two surfaces where your coloring will show up- either the front or the back. You can't layer and blend on vellum in the same way you can on more absorbent papers or cardstocks, but you can still get some really neat effects.

Vellum/tracing paper is used by Architects for their artwork a lot for the reasons I mention. They can photocopy or trace their line work, add color from both sides, and get very painterly effects on it. Papercrafters like to stamp on one side of the vellum and color from the backside, since it won't mess up your stamped lines.

Blending on Vellum
First, I start with a piece of Tracing paper or Vellum (I'm actually using heavyweight tracing vellum for this picture). I add my first color RV19 on the front of the paper, squiggling from the bottom up. See how I leave a little tail of color? This is important for blending.

Next, I come in with my blender marker. Look at the blue arrow- I go as wide as my base color, starting just beyond the tail coloring in horizontal swipes just like the pink. I evenly but quickly work my way down into the colored area and then just as evenly and quickly work my way back out, until all the pink disappears. This will take some practice, but with effort it will look cool. Try not to re-work the same spot too many times or you will add streaks back in.

Now my pink looks nice, let's add the dark blue sky. If I add it straight over the pink, it will mess up my pretty blend from pink to light, so I'm going to add the blues on the reverse. B34 is too light and B39 is too dark, so I put both of them down, again leaving a tail.

Just like before, I come in with my blender, evenly coloring in horizontal swipes from beyond the tail and bouncing back out. Look how my pink and my blue fade into each other from different sides of the paper and they didn't add streaks or mess each other up.

Now it's time to add my palm tree. I drew a palm on another piece of paper and with my black marker I trace the outline onto my vellum. It doesn't really matter which side of the vellum you trace onto, just try to color evenly or you'll see streaks.

My sunset looks really neat, but all my edges are uneven and look bad. If I don't want to trim off the edges or hide them then how can I fix those ugly edges?

This is where the really cool part of vellums and tracing papers come in. Remember how I said that on good vellums you can erase? Now I can come back in with my blender marker and erase the edges until they are clean. I pick up the color with my blender and scribble it off onto clean scratch paper. This step works best with a nice juicy blender marker. I have to clean from both sides to get the blue, pink, and black all nice and square. If I had done my sky on one side and the tree on the other then I could have used the blender to erase any mistakes I made on the tree. As it is, if I try to fix the tree I would mess up the blue layer.

Here is my finished piece. This winter it will help me remember a warm, sunny place as I sit in the rain wishing for sunshine. If you haven't already signed up on Saturday's post for the neat marker prize you should do so now. If you've sent me an e-mail and I haven't got back to you don't worry, I'll be getting caught up on those soon. For those of you meeting me in Kansas City you don't need any additional supplies (I have confirmation that my boxes of markers and goodies arrived safe and sound). You can bring your favorite stamps and a few embellishments to alter if you wish, but otherwise everything is provided. Have a great week!

World Cardmaking Day

Today is World Cardmaking Day , and so to kick of this day for papercrafters we are sponsoring a prize drawing. All you have to do is post a comment on today's post about either your favorite Copic product or what tutorials you would like to see me show more of.

You have just over a week to post. At midnight on Sunday the 12th I will randomly choose 3 winners for our prize packs. Each pack is worth over $75 and is a great way to kick off your holiday cardmaking. I have chosen colors that are great for the holiday season and I think you'll have fun with the Spica glitter pens, Colored and Black Multiliner SP's, and the nice assortment of Sketch markers.

Check out Debbie Olson's blog for more companies who are celebrating World Cardmaking day. Have fun making cards today!

In honor of World Cardmaking Day I made a card. For those of you who know me this may seem like a shock- Marianne is actually making a card (by hand, not arranged on a computer and mass printed). I know, I know, Marianne is crazy for trying to make a card, but we all should step out of our comfort zone sometimes.

This is the card I made for my daughter's first birthday last week. I used a lot of Copic stuff on it, though at first you probably can't tell.

The easy part to see is the butterfly. This is a stamp from Lockhart Stamp Co. stamped onto Neenah Classic Crest cardstock with Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black ink. I can't remember what colors I used, except I know the purple is BV04.

Next, the antennae and sentiment I wrote with a 0.05 Multiliner SP. These pens are so smooth and so useful. I also used it to touch up lines on the butterfly that were mis-stamped. See the little yellow pearl in the corner? That was white before I colored it with my Y15 marker. I got those from Ellen Hutson.

You can't see it, but I took a clear Spica Glitter pen and scribbled a little on the edges of the white paper and pink paper, so that it looks like the paper is glittery even though it's plain.

Then, the silk flowers were white when I got them from Imaginesence, but now they've been colored. The pink one was airbrushed with RV14 then I touched it with a marker to make the spots, the yellow one was just colored directly with Y15 and YR65, no airbrush. The buttons in the middle of each flower were also white, but I dabbed with the tip of my marker onto each one to give it the mottled look

Be sure that when you leave a comment you either sign in so I can find your e-mail address to notify you, or add your e-mail to your comment. This makes it much easier for me to find you without hunting you down (Sorry, this prize is open only to residents of the US and Canada. You can still leave me a comment if you are from another country, I just can't send you a prize).

Have fun making cards and come visit me today if you're in Savannah!

News from Copic

Today is an exciting day since we are pleased to announce the addition of three fine papercrafters to the Copic Design team. Don't worry, we're not replacing our current team, just adding to it. And so, without further ado, let me introduce our new team:

Sally Lynn MacDonald- She lives on the East Coast and will be teaching Copic classes, doing store visits, and generally having a fun time using Copic Markers. Sally Lynn specializes in teaching, scrapbooking, altered art, and is not above making the occasional card. Come meet her at both the certification class on Jan. 24 before CHA, as well as helping me next spring in my Connecticut class.

Sherrie Siemens - We love the look and feel of Sherrie's work, and so we are excited to add her to our team. Be sure to check out her fun video tutorials if you haven't already had the chance (all I can say is Coffee and grapes??!). Come meet and play with Sherrie at the Vancouver, BC class in November.

And last, but certainly not least-
Sharon Harnist- Sharon does fabulous step-by-step tutorials and makes the cutest calendars. Many of you already follow her wonderful blog, and now you'll know that we like Sharon as much as she likes Copic markers. She also will be joining me at the Kansas City certification classes in a week, as well as the SCS gathering we'll be having the evening of the 9th.

Stop by each of their blogs and give them a nice big welcome to the Copic Team, then while you're out blog hopping be sure to visit

Debbie
Mish
& Trudee

They always have fun, inspiring papercraftings to post with Copic markers. Just to give you a head's up, National Cardmaking day is coming up in a few days, so be looking here for a fun chance to win something exciting. Have a great day!