April is here and while the April showers bring May flowers, it’s okay to take a break and just exist. Enjoy the sound of the rain, watch as the world becomes greener as plants begin to bud. Thankfully, we’ve put together a delightful box of art supplies to help you relax this Spring.
We won’t spoil everything but some of what you can find in this month’s box are, several Copic Ciao Markers. Ciao markers contain fast drying, permanent and acid-free inks that are safe to use with photocopies. Copic ink blends extremely well so streaking and overlap lines are minimal. The round, durable barrel is comfortable to use, making these markers a favourite with manga artists. Conveniently refillable with Copic Ink Refills.
An 8x8 White Pad by Fabriano, which contain acid-free paper made of ECF cellulose pulp. Ideal for pastel, colour pencils, markers, paper craft, portfolio presentations and mat boards. Although not recommended for pure water techniques such as gouache and watercolour, the heavier weight takes light water media. The pads are glued on top, and include 20 sheets of 300gsm, a versatile weight to maximize uses.
A Sakura Gelly Roll White Pen. The opaque white ink stands out on dark and coloured papers! Works beautifully for highlights in illustration, comics and even watercolour. Use it for handlettering, party crafts, layered on top of colors for mixed media and add a broader range of value with bright highlights in tonal drawings. Perfect for intricate detail and unique bold marks.
Explore, have fun, and be amazed by the creativity within you!
Please SHARE YOUR CREATIONS with us! Check out our social media channels, give us a follow and post what you create this month (and every month) using Hashtag: #CurrysArtWellness in your comments. We'd love to see what you make!
Remember - our customer service team is here to help with any questions, or creative suggestion with this month's box or any other ideas you have that are waiting to be explored!
Video transcript:
Hi and welcome to Curry’s creative wellness box inspirational video. This video is going to focus on working with Copic Ciao alcohol-based markers.
So here’s everything we have in our solo set. We have some white paper from Fabriano and we have a selection of copic markers. We also included a copic liner and a white gel pen. So these markers are refillable, they have a chisel nib and a brush nib, You can also get new nibs to replace them once they get worn down.
So for my first piece, I'm going to grab a piece of paper and I’m going to use a pencil I already have to sketch out my design. I’m going to do a butterfly, but you can do anything you like.
I’m putting a piece of scrap paper underneath because the alcohol markers; when you work with them a lot, they do bleed the paper a little bit so I want to protect my working surface.
On a spare piece of paper, I’m just going to use that to do some tests. So the first one I’m going to do is called priming or flooding. So I like to open up all my markers so that I can use them, change out of different colours really quickly. So flooding is where you take the area and you use your colourless blender and cover the whole surface area so it’s nice and wet. While it’s still wet, I’m going to take one of my colours and colour the whole surface and then I'll take my yellow here, and flick up from the bottom to feather out the colour and create a nice gradient. You just keep working back and forth with your two colours until theyre blended seamlessly.
I’m going to do the same thing on the other side with another set of colours that I plan to use for my butterfly. Again, just working back and forth cetween those colours, until you get a nice blend.
When we look on the back, we can see that is an example of it bleeding through a little bit, so you know what to expect.
Now, I’m going to trace out my butterfly with the copic liner we’ve included. And once I'm done that out, I’m going to get my palette, so I’m going to do two different colours on each side of the wings. First, I’m going to use this flooding or priming method with the two greens. So I’m going to flood the area where I want the colour, then I'm colouring the whole area in my light colour and taking my darker colour and flicking up from the bottom, i'll go back in with my light colour and cover that whole area again. And you can keep repeating this until you get a nice blend. So I’m having it so that the dark colour is coming from the middle of the butterfly outwards. So now I’m just going to just do that same method to the whole side of this butterfly's wings. As you can see it is bleeding through the edges of the marker that I already traced, so that’s okay in this case because I’m going to fill that in afterwards with the liner so you won't actually see it. You can account for this if you leave a little edge between where you're drawing and the line and it will bleed out, but it is kind of hard to control so you want to think ahead a bit.
So there’s my palette for the next side. I’m going to do this same method, flooding that area and blending those two colours together. And there it is all coloured in! Now I’m going to take my liner and fill in all the other space with black. This is kind of a nice meditative peice because there’s so many little details and colouring it in with the black will take some time and patience, but it’s nice to mindlessly colour that in. I’m going around all of these little details that I want to stay white. And again, you can see I’m covering up that marker that has bled the line.
Now I’m going to add some little white highlights to add further detail and to help crisp up the areas that I left white. And here’s my finished butterfly!
My next piece is a really detailed colouring page, you can find these online for free to print out, the only thing is that the alcohol markers don’t work great on printer paper so I’m actually going to transfer this image onto my good paper. So I've cut it to size, and I’m going to use a really soft pencil, I’m going to cover the whole back of the image. Now I’m going to place that onto my final paper and I’m going to use some tape to keep it in place. This will take some time, but just take your pencil and trace the whole design and this is going to press the graphite onto the paper and ill mirror that image perfectly and then you can work from that image!
It’s a nice way if you're stuck on what to draw, you can look something up for free online that sparks your interest. So now let’s reveal it, and it there it is! Again, I’m going to use my liner to outline the drawing, that way I can treat it more like a colouring page.
Now that it’s traced, I can go on and colour it in. Again, I’m just getting my colours ready and I'm going to use the flooding or priming methods often here because I love the way the blend looks. I’m placing the gradient where natural shadows would fall or just however direction you’d like it to go in. Here I'm doing the same thing by flooding it and using that darker colour to imitate a shadow in the way that the leaves are going. Another tip is that you can take your blender and once your piece is dry, you can go in and add kind of highlights. So, it’s lightening the colour not erasing it, but it's just going to push some of that pigment in that area. I’m going to do the same thing down here with the green flower and the designs within the flower petal, just to add a little more dimension/ little bit of a highlight. And as it dries, it reveals a lighter colour.
I’m also going to utilize my gel pen and add a few little details around that.
Here’s our flooding technique again, these markers are great because one single colour can get you a lot of value. So again using my blender the same way I was adding the highlights, I’m going to add some lines into this colour. So, it’s going to sort of bleach out that colour and lighten it and it should show you some linework. So it’s a cool way to add a bit more flare into the drawing aside from just colouring, Here’s a closer look at that. Here I’m going to continue with more gradient blending, going in with my pink and do a second pass over to make it a little darker and use my purple to add shadows and now I’m using my gel pen to add a few more little details.
So you can go ahead and finish that now that you know a few techniques, and I’m going to colour the whole background black. So there we are with our finished colouring page, it looks amazing and I can’t wait to see yours!
Alright, so the next one; i want to do a car because these markers could be great for that too! So I’m folding my paper in half. This one, I’m going to use tape if you have it, if you don’t, don’t worry about it. I just like to use it as a guide. I want to do a plaid or tartan look with this- I’m going to open up all my makers to my chisel tip this time. I’m going to go in the same order of markers each time, do a line down and a line over and take the next colour and do a line down and a line over and sort of overlapping them just a little bit. I’m going to keep going until I reach the top, doing the same order of marker. Once I reach the top, I’m going to go over and finish out that pattern. Now you can take your tape off, it still will bleed a bit as the marker is absorbing into the paper, but it just keeps its straight. Now I'm taking a pencil I already have and drawing out a design and using my liner to trace that. I'm making a simple card, this can be for someone to let them know you're thinking of them and it is Spring so it's going to be a Spring themed card!
I'm going to colour that text all in black so it stands out, and then I'm going to put some shadow on this text- I'm going to use this dark blue and go over top with the purple to make a deep purple and that should help it stand out on the paper.
And there’s our card!
My last one, I want to show how you can do a quick sketch and use your Copic’s afterwards. I like to do a lot of on-site drawing when I'm out with my sketchbook. So this way I can draw, and come back home to use my markers to add the colour later!
So now I’m using my green here and place it where there would be shadows, and do a few passovers so that it’s a bit darker and then really really lightly colour in the rest of that area. I’m taking my other green/blue and doing the same thing. I’m using this yellow for the roof, taking the same approach in adding the shadows first and lightly adding the rest of the colour. And again you can get a lot of value out of one single colour just by doing a few passovers with it, so even with a limited palette you can still do a lot with copic markers.
So here’s our finished sketch!
Thank you so much for watching our video, if you have any questions please give us a call or send us an email- we're here to help you! And don’t forget to show us what you've made, use the hashtag #CurrysArtWellness, we'd love to see it! Thanks again, take care and bye!
