Shading

Details in Focus: Add Beautiful Color to Gray Copic Marker Projects (Grayscale Coloring Paper Recommendations)

Details in Focus: Add Beautiful Color to Gray Copic Marker Projects (Grayscale Coloring Paper Recommendations)

A whole project with only gray Copic Markers?

How boring!

Actually no.

In the coloring world, grayscale is presented as a fun novelty technique. Something to try just for the heck of it.

But in the art world, gray is serious. Gray is how artists train.

Grayscale projects improve your coloring by teaching you to focus on value rather than color.

But oh, gray markers are so… uh… well… they’re gray.

Gray is drab and ho-hum.

Meh times 10.

Pssstt… gray is only boring if you color it boring.

My spooky Nevermore Manor online class project is anything but drab. You can get the same beautiful effects from your gray markers on a wide variety of projects!

Details in Focus: Color White Flowers with a Rainbow (Copic Markers, Colored Pencils)

Details in Focus: Color White Flowers with a Rainbow (Copic Markers, Colored Pencils)

How To Color White Flowers?

White flowers are white. Your paper is white and they don’t make white Copic Markers…

Do you color white flowers by not coloring them at all?

Or do you pull out gray markers, hoping to add a bit of shade and dimension.

Pssstttt… that’s why your white flowers are flat and lifeless.

Let’s look up-close at beautiful white flowers that are everything but white.

Colorful whites are easier than you think. You can do this!

Copic Marker Highlights: When Dimensional Coloring Technique Fails (Dark Pulling)

Copic Marker Highlights: When Dimensional Coloring Technique Fails (Dark Pulling)

Do you use standard Highlighting techniques?

C’mon, most people do.

Every Copic Marker class teaches it. Most beginner colored pencil classes do too.

Let’s use our lightest marker at the end of this petal. Now look at how dimensional our flowers look! Wow!!!

Highlighting for dimension is all over the internet. It’s rare to find a free tutorial that doesn’t use this coloring method.

And it’s wrong. It does’t always work.

What happens when the magic trick stops working?