Copic Design Team member Sharon Harnist is back this week to share some tips for coloring with red Copic markers. Enjoy!

It’s the beginning of the winter holiday season, which usually brings about a lot of iconic red images to color, so today I’ll be giving you a few pointers on how to color reds with your Copic markers. Since they are so highly pigmented, you may experience a little difficulty in coloring and/or blending reds.

Before I get started on my tutorial, I wanted to share with you a few tips from some of the other Copic instruction and design team members:

Debbie Olson (U.S. North Central & Upper Midwest Papercrafting & Fine Arts Instructor):Use less ink, try a more absorbent surface/paper, stay back from the edges of stamped lines/drawing/other colors. Use feathering strokes instead of saturating in circles.

Michele Boyer (U.S. Design Team Member):
Color surrounding areas first, even the background, leaving the reds for last.

Bianca Mandity (U.S. Midwest Fine Arts Instructor):
I often do the darkest shading in a brown instead of red since they bleed less and I have more control over them. As long as you pick a shade that works with the red it will look fine. I’ve done that with purples too.

Colleen Schaan (Copic Education Director & U.S. East Coast Papercrafting & Fine Arts Instructor):
1. Have absorbent paper underneath (paper toweling).
2. Try working from darkest colors to light (this is not normally suggested, but it doesn’t saturate the paper as much; although this may make the colors a little more difficult to blend).
3. Use less ink . . . work with a flicking motion instead of coloring in circles.
4. Leave highlight areas white until the very end (gives the ink somewhere to go).
5. Stay away from the edges of your stamped or drawn image.
6. DON’T use the colorless blender!
7. Color all reds first – if the other areas are wet from being colored, the reds may tend to “bleed” into those areas.
8. Have some fun when shading reds . . . try using complimentary colors of green or blue, or use RV or E color families.

Thanks so much for sharing, ladies!

As you see by all of the individual preferences above, just try experimenting to find out what works best with your personal combination of paper, ink and environmental conditions. What works well for one person may not work the same for another, simply due to environmental conditions (more humidity vs. dryer weather, etc.).

All that being said, here are my personal preferences:

1. I usually color the reds in my images first, so that if some bleeding/wicking of the color occurs, it can be corrected a little easier.

2. I always color with a pad of paper underneath, to help absorb any extra color soak/bleed through to the back of the paper.

3. I use feather strokes, instead of blending in circles, to help avoid over-saturating the paper. If the paper becomes over-saturated, the color won’t have anywhere to go and it will just build up on top of your paper, leaving a glop of unblended color.

4. Don’t color all the way to the edge of the image at first, to see how the paper I’m using reacts.

5. I usually stick to the basic Copic blending suggestions of coloring from lightest color to darkest and prefer usingX-Press It Blending Card – I think this cardstock really helps to make blending reds easier.

I started by base coating the entire poinsettia in this Memory Box Believe Poinsettia Collage stamp with R20:

Next, I shaded with R22, leaving some areas of the lighter R20 as a highlight and using light feathering strokes:

Then I went back with my lighter R20 to blend:

Next, I added in some darker R24 shading to some of the lower petals (those petals more towards the back of the flower), leaving the smaller petals in the center (which would be closer to you) the lightest:

 You can also use your lighter R20 marker to pick up some color from your darker R22 marker and use that to help blend the edges of the lighter colors into the R24:

Next, I used R22 to pull some of the R29 color from the darkest areas, to blend out onto the previous R24.

Notice at this point, the back of my paper is still not very saturated (not much is bleeding through to the back of the paper) because I’m using those softer, lighter feather strokes:

To finish the poinsettia, I used R39 (because it has a complimentary purple undertone) for my darkest shading:

To finish the flower, I base coated the leaves with YG91 and did my mid-tone shading with YG93:

YG95 finishes the darkest shading for the leaves:

Here’s my project with the flower coloring finished:

But the entire project isn’t finished yet… I’ll be back next month to show you how I finished it with some other fantastic Copic products! ~ Sharon

Products Used:
Copic Markers: R20, R22, R24, R29, R39, YG91, YG93, YG95, YR21
Cardstock: X-Press It Blending Card; Memory Box Dill Notecard
Stamp: Memory Box Believe Poinsettia Collage
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black