Artist's Notebook: Check Your Color Values! (Copic Marker, Colored Pencil)

Artist's Notebook: Check Your Color Values! (Copic Marker, Colored Pencil)

Tell me if this sounds right…

You’ve colored for months or maybe years, and you’re pretty darned good at it. There’s no tutorial that you can’t knock out of the park.

And yet when you go off on your own, picking original color palettes and choosing your own markers or pencils… well… your coloring is still good but, uhm… there’s something missing.

Your personal projects don’t have the same oh-la-la you see in professional projects.

You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something is just… off?

Color Theory: Are you blinded by color? Value vs. Hue (Alcohol Marker, Colored Pencil)

Color Theory: Are you blinded by color? Value vs. Hue (Alcohol Marker, Colored Pencil)

Confused by hues?

As a Copic Marker beginner, you follow marker recipes given to you by instructors or bloggers. Many colored pencil beginners do the same, using tried & true color combinations.

When you grow and improve, you try to invent your own color palettes. Sadly, this is where a lot of colorers decide they don’t really like independence.

A lot of intermediate colorers pretend to be beginners again!

They go back to using someone else’s color palettes even though they’re very capable of making their own.

Why?