HOME | DD

Description
This particular tutorial was originally posted in my LiveJournal, but I thought I would also post it here, just in case people don't read my LJ If you would like to see the original post of this Tutorial (with larger pictures), the link for it is here: [link]

Before you begin reading this, I apologise if the photos are blurry...it's hard taking close-up pictures with one hand, it being your opposite hand that you're not used to (since I'm right-handed when I draw and colour, I had to take pictures with my left hand). I hope that it'll still give you a general idea of how I do things

Lastly, this is just a tutorial on how I colour. It may not work for you, or maybe it might, I dunno. But this is how I colour. For the most part, I've used Prismacolour brands in this piece, but you can really use whatever you like...I do have other brands with me, so I'm not limited to using JUST Prismacolours

Photo #1

Supplies:

1. Strathmore Bristol Board Smooth, acid-free (I use 9x12")
2. Pencil crayons (I keep mine in groups, according to colours, plus, there's also a mix of Prismacolour, Prang, Crayola, Laurentien, and Shopper's Drug Mart brands in there)
3. Prismacolour Markers
4. ChartPak AD Markers (I'll give more info on these guys later)
5. "Specialty" markers (Galaxy marker that writes in white, and metallic silver marker)
6. Micron pens for inking
7. My pencil and eraser
8. Um...that's my flying squirrel plushie. She wanted to be in the picture
9. (Not Seen In This Picture...) Prismacolour Blending Pencils...there will be a picture of them later on though

Now, for this particular drawing that I did for this tutorial, I didn't use ALL of these things, but I used most of them. The only things I didn't use for this drawing was the Specialty markers and the ChartPak AD Markers.
Photo #2

The Drawing:

I chose to draw Clax for this tutorial cuz...Um...I didn't really know what to draw for it, really XD Looks like he just woke up from a nap XD Anyways, I had penciled in my drawing, and then I inked it with my Micron pen. I erased the pencil sketch, and then (as seen in this photo, I'm going over the inked lines again, making them a little more darker, as well as putting in some thicker lines here and there. You can see parts of it where I started going over it with the inking pen a little more, and other places is just small lines.

Photo #3

This is what it looks like when it's all inked Doesn't he look like a happy camper?

Photo #4

Before I start colouring, I get a scrap of bristol board. Since Clax is mostly purple, I got all of my purple markers out and tested them out on the scrap paper. I went with the colour "Imperial Violet" (the colour that's on the left, first colour of the first row). I don't have many shades to work with, unfortunately, so I go with what I usually have, and then improvise along the way. Using that scrap bristol board will be very useful later on too, so keep reading

Photo #5

Using the Imperial Violet marker, I colour Clax's body colour with it. I'm purposly leaving his mane, tail tuft, eyes and beak uncoloured for most of the tutorial (usually, I colour everything all at once with the markers), but I'm working on his main colour, just so you can see how it's done. And yay! I suck at colouring with markers XD But since I'm going to be covering it up with pencil crayons, it doesn't matter...you won't see the streaks by the time I'm done.

Photo #6

And here he is, his main colour coloured with markers. For some odd reason, the pictures make him look more on the blue-ish side rather than purple But anyways. After I had done colouring this, I decided that the colour was a little too dark for my liking...but that's Ok, cuz I'm going to lighten it up

Photo #7

I used Greyed Lavendar (a Prismacolour pencil), and I coloured on top of it. This is what the pencil's colour looks like compaired to the solid marker, I purposly coloured just the head and a bit of his forearms, just give you an idea.

Photo #8

And here's how it looks, completely coloured in the Greyed Lavendar He's ready to be shaded now

Photo #9

I found a darker shade of purple in my pencil crayons stack...For this shade, I used Imperial Violet (which is actually a little darker than the marker of the same name).

Photo #10

I used an even darker colour for more shading...The Prismacolour pencil called Violet. you can't really see it all that well in the photo though But after I've laid down all the shading that I wanted, now's the time for....

Photo #11

...The Prismacolour Blending pencils! I have a bunch, stacked together like the different colours of pencil crayons I have. It's time to start blending the shades of colours together.

Photo #12

(Sorry for the fuzzy picture) In places where I want show a little bit of texture and show exactly which way the fur/feathers are going, I usually start from the darkest point (like, under his eye), and drag the pencil across to the lighter areas. Then I pick up the pencil and just repeat that part. Where it gets lighter (where the pencil is atright now in the photo, I sometimes scribble that part with the blender pencil, to blend all that shading stuff in with the lighter colours there on the cheek. Whenever I colour a character, I usually do the head first.

Photo #13

You might be able to see it a little better here...The colours look more blended, rather than "scribbly".

Photo #14

Again, trying to show the difference between not-blended, and blended. This is the "not blended" pic I was just focusing on the forearms for this.

Photo #15

Blended...although, unfortunately, it's fuzzy cuz of the photo When I get into larger areas, I tend to just use the Blending pencil like I'm colouring with it. I also press down on it too, that also helps to move the colour around a little bit more.

Photo #16

After I'm done blending the whole body, I'll take a regular Prismacolour white pencil and put a little bit of highlights in there. That's one thing I like about the blender pencil...you can still colour on top of it And, as you can see, I'm always moving my drawing around. Sometimes it's right-side up, sometimes it's sideways, sometimes it's upside down

Photo #17

Well, the main body colour is done! Basically, it's just repeating what you did before. Here's Clax with the basic marker for the mane and tail tuft. I used the Prismacolour marker called Violet.

Photo #18

Here's where that scrap piece of Bristol Board comes in handy again I use those scribbles that I had tested out the colours earlier, to test out which colours match the marker, as well as which ones look good as shading and for highlights.

Photo #19

For finishing Clax's mane, I used the Prismacolour pencil Violet to completely colour in his mane on top of the marker. Then, I used my black pencil crayon, as well as that Greyed Lavendar pencil. I scribbled the black on in areas that I thought would be the shadows, and then used the Greyed Lavendar for the highlights. Then I blended it together. I had to put the Greyed Lavendar on again after I had blended it, cuz the darker colours overwhelmed it a bit. So, that's how his mane and tail tuft look like now.

Photo #20

Now for his beak. Whenever I colour something black, I usually use blue marker as the base colour. In this case, I used Prismacolour Light Cerelean Blue (it's my most used marker). I colour his whole beak blue.

Photo #21

Ugh...Another fuzzy picture I coloured most of the beak with my black pencil, leaving some areas "blank" so that the blue can show through (the blue will become the highlight colour).

Photo #22

Grab that old scrap piece of Bristol Board again (see, it's really handy!). I clean off my Blending pencil by just dragging the tip against the old bristol board. I have other Blending pencils that I could use, but I'm too lazy Drag it across the bristol until there's no more colour left over.

Photo #23

Bleh, another fuzzy picture >.< Anyways, I use my Blending pencil and "colour" the black with it. The blending pencil usually makes my black pencil show up a lot darker than what I usually colour on the picture. When I get to the blue part of the beak (like the highlight in the centre of the beak), I only colour up to the blue part with the black, mostly cuz the Blending pencil WILL drag that black over, and I don't want to completely cover that area. I just keep the black where I want it. After I'm done with that, I clean off the Blending pencil again, and then go over the edges of the black, where it meets that blue highlight colour, just so soften the edges a bit more.

Adding the eye colour is just as easy (just not as much to do, since they're small). I coloured the eyes with Prismacolour Crimson Red marker, and then I used a really really dark red-ish purple colour (I think it was Prang Raspberry) for the little bit of shadow at the top part of the eyes, and then just plain white for the highlight of the eyes.

DONE!

And he's all done! Sheesh, you'd think he'd be happy that he was all coloured This is the scanned-in finsihed version of the pic, and I had to fix it up in Photoshop so that he'd look at least close to the purple that he really is.

A Note about CharPak AD Markers : I didn't use any for this drawing, but I DO like using them.

Pros for ChartPak AD markers:
* They don't streak! Woo! The colour goes on flat, and I've had it so that the marker dried on the bristol board, and then I went back and scribbled on top of with the same shade of marker. After it dried, you didn't even see the scribble I had made. I love using CharPaks for stuff like...the sky.

Cons for ChartPak AD Markers:
* They stink...literally! Whenever you read about me feeling light-headed or had gotten a headache from colouring, that's usually because I've used ChartPak markers. Prismacolours do have a smell to them, but ChartPak's is a MUCH STRONGER smell.
* They also bleed. I usually have to colour about 1/4" away from the lines and just let it bleed itself up to the line. Otherwise, if I colour right up to the line, it'll bleed over. Unless, of course, I'm going to colour over it with pencil crayons anyways, then it won't be noticeable.

But I do like using those markers They're great if you just wanna colour using markers and no pencil crayons.

I like using the Galaxy Marker from time to time, usually in my conbadges. Like the badge I did for ~janusd (should be located here on DA, he's in a pink tux, doing the whole Stayin' Alive dance)...the white outline around him was made with the Galaxy Marker. Galaxy Markers also come in different colours...they're markers specifically made for colouring on black paper. I've used it as a highlighting marker as well, but personally,I like using the white pencil crayon for highlights, because it's more softer and natural looking, whereas this, it looks like you blotted Liquid Paper on it

I like using my metallic silver marker from time to time as well...doing touch-ups with things, or doing fancy borders or stuff. I used it for Eclipse's glasses frames on his Conbadge (Found here: [link] ). Originally, it was just a black marker line, but I "traced" over it with the silver marker, and after that dried, I very carefully traced around the silver, giving them a black outline.

Some artists have used gel pens (*huskie666 is AWESOME with them!). I've tried it once, but they had already dried up on me So I've yet to try something with them.

There are also Prismacolour Blending Markers. *XianJaguar was the one to introduce me to the whole blending thing, and she was even nice enough to send me Blending markers. I'll use them from time to time, and I do like them, but I've found that I liked using the pencils more, maybe because I'm just used to them more, rather than the blending markers. ChartPak also has blending markers that are WAY more stronger than Prismacolour. Both brands of markers kinda "melt" the wax of the pencil crayons to do their blending thing, but the way ChartPak does theirs...if you've had alot of pencil crayons layered on your drawing, by the time you're finished, it almost makes it look like an acrylic painting of some sort...Or at least, that's what I've been told it looked like. This picture ([link] ) is an example of using ChartPak markers and blending markers. The sky was done with ChartPak marker, and the blending marker was used on the clouds. It looks more impressive in person though...

If you're colouring with markers (with or without pencil crayons), I've found that Bristol Board and Cardstock are great with markers Maybe Bristol board a bit more than Cardstock, as I've also noticed that if I use alot of markers, it tends to get slightly warped. I've tried using Prismacolour and Chartpak markers on regular photocopy paper, and it was definately bleh! The paper went all warped and even the Prismacolour markers bled over the lines. So, whenever I use markers, I usually use Bristol Board. Cardstock is also nice, but I don't use that one very often.

That's it! I hope this tutorial helps

Description
This particular tutorial was originally posted in my LiveJournal, but I thought I would also post it here, just in case people don't read my LJ If you would like to see the original post of this Tutorial (with larger pictures), the link for it is here: [link]

Before you begin reading this, I apologise if the photos are blurry...it's hard taking close-up pictures with one hand, it being your opposite hand that you're not used to (since I'm right-handed when I draw and colour, I had to take pictures with my left hand). I hope that it'll still give you a general idea of how I do things

Lastly, this is just a tutorial on how I colour. It may not work for you, or maybe it might, I dunno. But this is how I colour. For the most part, I've used Prismacolour brands in this piece, but you can really use whatever you like...I do have other brands with me, so I'm not limited to using JUST Prismacolours

Photo #1

Supplies:

1. Strathmore Bristol Board Smooth, acid-free (I use 9x12")
2. Pencil crayons (I keep mine in groups, according to colours, plus, there's also a mix of Prismacolour, Prang, Crayola, Laurentien, and Shopper's Drug Mart brands in there)
3. Prismacolour Markers
4. ChartPak AD Markers (I'll give more info on these guys later)
5. "Specialty" markers (Galaxy marker that writes in white, and metallic silver marker)
6. Micron pens for inking
7. My pencil and eraser
8. Um...that's my flying squirrel plushie. She wanted to be in the picture
9. (Not Seen In This Picture...) Prismacolour Blending Pencils...there will be a picture of them later on though

Now, for this particular drawing that I did for this tutorial, I didn't use ALL of these things, but I used most of them. The only things I didn't use for this drawing was the Specialty markers and the ChartPak AD Markers.
Photo #2

The Drawing:

I chose to draw Clax for this tutorial cuz...Um...I didn't really know what to draw for it, really XD Looks like he just woke up from a nap XD Anyways, I had penciled in my drawing, and then I inked it with my Micron pen. I erased the pencil sketch, and then (as seen in this photo, I'm going over the inked lines again, making them a little more darker, as well as putting in some thicker lines here and there. You can see parts of it where I started going over it with the inking pen a little more, and other places is just small lines.

Photo #3

This is what it looks like when it's all inked Doesn't he look like a happy camper?

Photo #4

Before I start colouring, I get a scrap of bristol board. Since Clax is mostly purple, I got all of my purple markers out and tested them out on the scrap paper. I went with the colour "Imperial Violet" (the colour that's on the left, first colour of the first row). I don't have many shades to work with, unfortunately, so I go with what I usually have, and then improvise along the way. Using that scrap bristol board will be very useful later on too, so keep reading

Photo #5

Using the Imperial Violet marker, I colour Clax's body colour with it. I'm purposly leaving his mane, tail tuft, eyes and beak uncoloured for most of the tutorial (usually, I colour everything all at once with the markers), but I'm working on his main colour, just so you can see how it's done. And yay! I suck at colouring with markers XD But since I'm going to be covering it up with pencil crayons, it doesn't matter...you won't see the streaks by the time I'm done.

Photo #6

And here he is, his main colour coloured with markers. For some odd reason, the pictures make him look more on the blue-ish side rather than purple But anyways. After I had done colouring this, I decided that the colour was a little too dark for my liking...but that's Ok, cuz I'm going to lighten it up

Photo #7

I used Greyed Lavendar (a Prismacolour pencil), and I coloured on top of it. This is what the pencil's colour looks like compaired to the solid marker, I purposly coloured just the head and a bit of his forearms, just give you an idea.

Photo #8

And here's how it looks, completely coloured in the Greyed Lavendar He's ready to be shaded now

Photo #9

I found a darker shade of purple in my pencil crayons stack...For this shade, I used Imperial Violet (which is actually a little darker than the marker of the same name).

Photo #10

I used an even darker colour for more shading...The Prismacolour pencil called Violet. you can't really see it all that well in the photo though But after I've laid down all the shading that I wanted, now's the time for....

Photo #11

...The Prismacolour Blending pencils! I have a bunch, stacked together like the different colours of pencil crayons I have. It's time to start blending the shades of colours together.

Photo #12

(Sorry for the fuzzy picture) In places where I want show a little bit of texture and show exactly which way the fur/feathers are going, I usually start from the darkest point (like, under his eye), and drag the pencil across to the lighter areas. Then I pick up the pencil and just repeat that part. Where it gets lighter (where the pencil is atright now in the photo, I sometimes scribble that part with the blender pencil, to blend all that shading stuff in with the lighter colours there on the cheek. Whenever I colour a character, I usually do the head first.

Photo #13

You might be able to see it a little better here...The colours look more blended, rather than "scribbly".

Photo #14

Again, trying to show the difference between not-blended, and blended. This is the "not blended" pic I was just focusing on the forearms for this.

Photo #15

Blended...although, unfortunately, it's fuzzy cuz of the photo When I get into larger areas, I tend to just use the Blending pencil like I'm colouring with it. I also press down on it too, that also helps to move the colour around a little bit more.

Photo #16

After I'm done blending the whole body, I'll take a regular Prismacolour white pencil and put a little bit of highlights in there. That's one thing I like about the blender pencil...you can still colour on top of it And, as you can see, I'm always moving my drawing around. Sometimes it's right-side up, sometimes it's sideways, sometimes it's upside down

Photo #17

Well, the main body colour is done! Basically, it's just repeating what you did before. Here's Clax with the basic marker for the mane and tail tuft. I used the Prismacolour marker called Violet.

Photo #18

Here's where that scrap piece of Bristol Board comes in handy again I use those scribbles that I had tested out the colours earlier, to test out which colours match the marker, as well as which ones look good as shading and for highlights.

Photo #19

For finishing Clax's mane, I used the Prismacolour pencil Violet to completely colour in his mane on top of the marker. Then, I used my black pencil crayon, as well as that Greyed Lavendar pencil. I scribbled the black on in areas that I thought would be the shadows, and then used the Greyed Lavendar for the highlights. Then I blended it together. I had to put the Greyed Lavendar on again after I had blended it, cuz the darker colours overwhelmed it a bit. So, that's how his mane and tail tuft look like now.

Photo #20

Now for his beak. Whenever I colour something black, I usually use blue marker as the base colour. In this case, I used Prismacolour Light Cerelean Blue (it's my most used marker). I colour his whole beak blue.

Photo #21

Ugh...Another fuzzy picture I coloured most of the beak with my black pencil, leaving some areas "blank" so that the blue can show through (the blue will become the highlight colour).

Photo #22

Grab that old scrap piece of Bristol Board again (see, it's really handy!). I clean off my Blending pencil by just dragging the tip against the old bristol board. I have other Blending pencils that I could use, but I'm too lazy Drag it across the bristol until there's no more colour left over.

Photo #23

Bleh, another fuzzy picture >.< Anyways, I use my Blending pencil and "colour" the black with it. The blending pencil usually makes my black pencil show up a lot darker than what I usually colour on the picture. When I get to the blue part of the beak (like the highlight in the centre of the beak), I only colour up to the blue part with the black, mostly cuz the Blending pencil WILL drag that black over, and I don't want to completely cover that area. I just keep the black where I want it. After I'm done with that, I clean off the Blending pencil again, and then go over the edges of the black, where it meets that blue highlight colour, just so soften the edges a bit more.

Adding the eye colour is just as easy (just not as much to do, since they're small). I coloured the eyes with Prismacolour Crimson Red marker, and then I used a really really dark red-ish purple colour (I think it was Prang Raspberry) for the little bit of shadow at the top part of the eyes, and then just plain white for the highlight of the eyes.

DONE!

And he's all done! Sheesh, you'd think he'd be happy that he was all coloured This is the scanned-in finsihed version of the pic, and I had to fix it up in Photoshop so that he'd look at least close to the purple that he really is.

A Note about CharPak AD Markers : I didn't use any for this drawing, but I DO like using them.

Pros for ChartPak AD markers:
* They don't streak! Woo! The colour goes on flat, and I've had it so that the marker dried on the bristol board, and then I went back and scribbled on top of with the same shade of marker. After it dried, you didn't even see the scribble I had made. I love using CharPaks for stuff like...the sky.

Cons for ChartPak AD Markers:
* They stink...literally! Whenever you read about me feeling light-headed or had gotten a headache from colouring, that's usually because I've used ChartPak markers. Prismacolours do have a smell to them, but ChartPak's is a MUCH STRONGER smell.
* They also bleed. I usually have to colour about 1/4" away from the lines and just let it bleed itself up to the line. Otherwise, if I colour right up to the line, it'll bleed over. Unless, of course, I'm going to colour over it with pencil crayons anyways, then it won't be noticeable.

But I do like using those markers They're great if you just wanna colour using markers and no pencil crayons.

I like using the Galaxy Marker from time to time, usually in my conbadges. Like the badge I did for ~janusd (should be located here on DA, he's in a pink tux, doing the whole Stayin' Alive dance)...the white outline around him was made with the Galaxy Marker. Galaxy Markers also come in different colours...they're markers specifically made for colouring on black paper. I've used it as a highlighting marker as well, but personally,I like using the white pencil crayon for highlights, because it's more softer and natural looking, whereas this, it looks like you blotted Liquid Paper on it

I like using my metallic silver marker from time to time as well...doing touch-ups with things, or doing fancy borders or stuff. I used it for Eclipse's glasses frames on his Conbadge (Found here: [link] ). Originally, it was just a black marker line, but I "traced" over it with the silver marker, and after that dried, I very carefully traced around the silver, giving them a black outline.

Some artists have used gel pens (*huskie666 is AWESOME with them!). I've tried it once, but they had already dried up on me So I've yet to try something with them.

There are also Prismacolour Blending Markers. *XianJaguar was the one to introduce me to the whole blending thing, and she was even nice enough to send me Blending markers. I'll use them from time to time, and I do like them, but I've found that I liked using the pencils more, maybe because I'm just used to them more, rather than the blending markers. ChartPak also has blending markers that are WAY more stronger than Prismacolour. Both brands of markers kinda "melt" the wax of the pencil crayons to do their blending thing, but the way ChartPak does theirs...if you've had alot of pencil crayons layered on your drawing, by the time you're finished, it almost makes it look like an acrylic painting of some sort...Or at least, that's what I've been told it looked like. This picture ([link] ) is an example of using ChartPak markers and blending markers. The sky was done with ChartPak marker, and the blending marker was used on the clouds. It looks more impressive in person though...

If you're colouring with markers (with or without pencil crayons), I've found that Bristol Board and Cardstock are great with markers Maybe Bristol board a bit more than Cardstock, as I've also noticed that if I use alot of markers, it tends to get slightly warped. I've tried using Prismacolour and Chartpak markers on regular photocopy paper, and it was definately bleh! The paper went all warped and even the Prismacolour markers bled over the lines. So, whenever I use markers, I usually use Bristol Board. Cardstock is also nice, but I don't use that one very often.

That's it! I hope this tutorial helps