Using Big Kid Markers Now!

I have really been enjoying using markers to color my work recently. No Not Crayola. Prismacolor of course...I’m using big kid markers now :) I had a hard time at first because once you color a spot you can’t UNcolor it like you can when using PhotoShop. I had to get used to planning out where I wanted it to stay white or where I was going to Highlight. In a way it is very similar to Scratch Art…only that is planning out where I want it to stay black.
Mostly I’ve stuck to the Artist Trading Cards but I’m considering branching out and coloring larger pieces with the Markers. I have become pretty confident with them, much more then I am with paint and with Markers I can get the colors to be more vibrant I think. I’m working on about 10 more trading cards and then I will get started coloring a 11x15 piece that I’ve been working on. It is one of my few Si-Fi pieces and I actually took it from a ATC that I did for Dragon Con last year. I’m excited to see how it turns out when coloring it all in Markers. It will be quite a task so wish me Luck! I’ll try and post progress photos as I go.

P.S. I’ve finished a few Brand New Myxies and should be posting them on my store soon, keep checking my blog for updates!

Thanks for reading.
~Caralyn

Gather Around Kiddies and I’ll tell you a tale

So some of you may know that I have started working with Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). Little blank playing cards that you draw on, Paint or whatever you want really. I like to draw little pictures on mine and then color them with Markers. I’m really enjoying them and people seem to be responding well to them. I made about 10 for Dragon Con and went home with 0. Well I just recently got back to drawing a few more. I finished about 7 cards, then inked them before coloring them with Markers. Love that Coloring as you all probably know :P Anyhoo, I usually ink my work with felt-tip pens, I just like them cause they don’t bleed but usually bleeding isn’t a problem because after I ink my work I scan it to color it. So if I don’t have a felt-tip I just reach for whatever is there. So I just used some random ball-point to ink the ATCs I was working on. However I do all original ATCs so I color them before scanning. Much to my chagrin, this would be a bad decision. Now it was time to color and My Prismacolor markers, which NEVER bleed, started running wildly with the black ink, making a lovely mess out of the cards UGH! At first I thought it was the type of paper I was using but luckily before I had ruined to many I figured out what was the cause and stopped coloring. I wasn’t able to save the two I’d screwed up and the others will now have to be scanned and colored in PhotoShop. So the lesson for today kids is Ball-point pins don’t play nice with Markers…Remember that, it may save your lif….errr art :)

Go and learn from my mistakes. Later!
~Caralyn