Copic Coloring Tutorial- Deamond Reaper

This is a tutorial on a pretty basic way I use
copics. I won’t get too detailed with the photos but I will explain a lot of
things and give what I hope to be helpful tips. I’ll start from the sketch all
the way to the finished product. I’ll be using one of my own characters for
this.
1.
This is the sketch. I try to keep clean as
possible. That makes it a lot easier when you go back to create what we call a
line art (see next step). Type of pencil doesn’t really matter though I use
mechanical . I find they create nicer lines than wood ones; they don’t need to
be sharpened and the lead is thinner which makes it easier to get finer details
in. The paper I used here is a brand called Fanboy. The other I have in this
photo is Simply. Fanboy is thicker like card stock while the Simply is super
thin. Both have their pros and cons. Fanboy doesn’t bleed nearly as much as
Simply but line art ink doesn’t fad with Simply when you erase the pencil.
2.
Now for the line art. Line arts are pretty
straight forward as far as what the name means. It is just pure lines. No color
yet and some artists just leave this as their finished product. So here I used
a copic multi liner, size 0.3 and a prismacolor size .005. I also use the
really thin tipped sharpies (those are one of the best; they work with
anything) and Micron. Be warned though if you use the Micron: these pens do not
mix well with Simply paper. It will smear when you go to color. If you are
using Fanboy, wait awhile for the ink to settle before erasing some fading. I
do recommend that you go back and reink once you’re done either way.
3.
Coloring is the next step but there are so many
steps to this one step! It’s important to know which part you are coloring
first or else you could ruin the whole piece. For example, always do you skin
tones first!!! Especially if your hair color is black. For some reason, my
black copic will smudge if I lay it down first. As a rule, always do your
blacks last.

For me, I find it best to work in sections
(skin, hair, clothing, ect.) so you don’t get over whelmed and you stay focus
and don’t miss spots.

There are so many ways to color with copics. I
recommend looking at the copic technique book or going on to Youtube or
deaviantART to find some great tutorials. I’ll be honest, the ones on
deviantART are pretty advance and slightly hard to follow but still, their
great for tips or just references. I’ve learned a lot from them. Though there
is one technique that I think you should always use to prevent your colors from
looking choppy. You lay down your lightest color first and work your way up in
shade, applying the colors in a circular motion. Once you have done your
shading, notice how your colors really stand off each other and don’t look
natural. You now want to blend the colors with your first, lightest color. Once
it dries you’ll notice a huge difference. You can also use that color to go
back over your shading to make it darker if needed.

So this is very simple because my art is pretty simple if you ask me. I know there are so many people out there that can do it better than I can but I feel like this one is better for those out there just getting started and to understand. Let me know what you thought of this and if you would like to see a bigger picture of the final draft, just head over to my dA account!

Owl Always Love You

Owls, as art icons, are very popular right now (What? Now. I wasn't aware of that :P ) and let's face it, they're really cute. In real life though, they can look kinda scary. But, these cute guys I used for my valentines cards for my Girl Scout bunko aren't!

Despite what this picture will tell you, this was a very small, and hard project to accomplish. I had to make tweleve of these things on a card that was size of a really mini envalope (I should have taken a picture of that). The owls themselves were maybe the size of a quarter (another thing I should have tanken a photo of) and they were really hard to resize and when I did, the quality of the design was lost so I had to go back over them in pen. What a waste of time.

The next step was to color each owl. I tired to stay with earthy tones so that, no matter what color the back ground was, they would still look nice. I did make a purple one though so... Anyway! The owls were colored in pairs so there are two owls the same color as you can see in the photo below:

Now comes the real fun. I had to cut out all of these owlies with their stupid, thin branches holding their fat asses up. My thumbs hurt so bad after this. The easier part was cutting out the paper and the little circles and glueing it all together.

These cards are really simple but that doesn't take away from it. The end result was too my liking but the time and effort it took to put these together was a lt longer than I had hoped to invest in. I hope that you all find these little guys to be worth your admeration and to those of you that recived them, I hope you liked them and that my message of love was protrayed nicely through them.

One thing before I go. I almost decided against this but, I'm a niceish person so I will leave you the owl design for you guys to use if you wish. Just remeber, if you use it, credit me or these little owlies are gonna take a stand against you, and all your shit (lol dA joke). Don't say I never gave you nothing! (For usage, please either credit graphicnovellife Studios or Kalee Paxton directly. Thank you.)

Love is For the Birds

(Sorry the Photo is so small! Lots of pictures so it came out that size :/ )

These randomly turn into my Valentines cards even though I didn't really set out with that purpose. But, I found all these really cute bird stamps and, you know how I like them cute birdies! The first three cards come from a diffrent set than the last.

I am in love with that Scrub Jay stamp! I think it was suppose to be a Cardinal but I love Blue Jays (even though I hate the noises they make) so I thought I would break out of that box and make her. She's got a little, silver heart on a string and the box says: 'Valentine, you stole my heart'. Get it? Cause those birds like shiny stuff!

I hope you guys like this and sorry for the long break and then crazy posting from out of nowhere!

Mucho Gusto

I don't speak Spanish so hope the title makes some kind of sense?

This is my thank you card I did for my birthday (sorry if you haven't recived your's yet). My birthday was suppose to be like a mustache/feista (which is ironic since I'm not a fan of Spainish cultur). I tried to keep the feista theme with warm, bright colors that are just as fun loving as those Spainards. Each card had a diffrent style of mustache on it that is back with pop up tape. I also put the card through an emboser or something that gave the card a good texture and each card also had their own pattern. The stamp says "Thanks a million".

Sorry that the photo was blurry but I took this photo by myself so yeah. Also, if you didn't get it, I held the card up to my face so it was like a mustache. Get it? I'm really funny guys.

I don't own the stamp but the design is mine~

Van Gogh Study

For my art class, we had to do an art study of a famous artist. I got really lucky and was able to snag Vincent Van Gogh-Landscapes. Besides just researching and reporting, we were to take one of their peices and depulicate it. This peice is probably not very well known (his most famous picece was Stary Night) but, the guy painted over 300 pieces I believe so it's not like you're gonna be familur with every painting he did. This painting is called 'Peach Tree in Bloom in Arles' done in 1888. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_Orchards_(Van_Gogh_series). Origonaly it was done with either acrilic or oil paints, mine was done on a piece of cardboard I found on my bedroom floor and painted with whatever hell paint I could scroung up. Oh the life of an artist~

So what have I learned from painting this? Painting thickly is really hard. It takes a lot of paceints and paint. But, I believe that my copy looks very close to the origonal but I'll leave that up to you. Leave your comments bellow or on my face book page. I enjoyed doing this piece greatly and wished that I had done it on a canvas but cardboard is the poor man's canavas and works just as well. (Fun Fact: Edvard Munchin painted 'The Scream' on cardboard). If you ever feel like painting but don't have a canvas, just cut up a box and use that instead of paper that will wrinkle and take away from your piece.

Van Gogh is my artist hero because he was so passionate about life and so misunderstood because of it. Many people believe he was crazy (he cut his ear off and mailed to a guy so, yeah, that's crazy) but I don't like the fact that people let that ruin the whole Van Gogh exserience for them! Please, give the guy some love for he would have loved you back!

Welp. That's all I have to say about this but that doesn't mean you have to be! Give me some feedback and tell me what you feel about my version, the origonal, or what you think of Van Gogh! Love you all!

Card Batch #1 :Friendship

So I finally got the chance to up load something (even though I said I would like a month ago)! These are just some cards that I made sometime back in 2011. Exsactly when, I can't remeber. The theme of these cards are friendship!

The first card on the left was suppose to be more earthy with very mellow tones with just a spalsh of color. Not much to say about this one but besides I think it's very classy. The words on the oval really doesn't mean anything since I didn't use it to actually say anything but just to accent the card.

The second one is slightly more active than the first card with slightly brighter colors that are still toned down. The little girl on the card was drawn by me. It was origonally a digital stamp for my aunt. She came with a pair but that's besides the point. She is colored with copic markers.

The last one, obviously, has an owl on it. He was a little difficult to make since I had to stamp two of him; one pink and one blue. You cut the wigngs and the eyes out and then jusst glue them on. The eyes are also glazzed with liquid glaze.

I hope you guys enjoy seeing these and another batch is on its way! I also have some stand alone cards to post after the batches. All these stamps are from Close to My Heart. The little girl and the designs are all mine so please give credit where it is due!