Copic Technique Journal #2 Skin Swatches

Hi everyone, I hope you are all working on colouring those swatches for your colour journals - I know that's what I spent my weekend doing!  Today I'm going to show you the second idea for your Copic Colour Journal - it's one we all use and lots of people have trouble getting something they are happy with - yes it's Skin Colours!

But first we have a prize to give away from our Copic Technique Journal #1 Colour Swatches competition, congratulations to Alashandra who did a fantastic job of showcasing Colour Swatches in her Technique Journal, we really loved how she used one image to nest a series of different leaf and petal colour options!  Well done Alashandra, please email Sascha with your postal address and she will get your prize out to you!!

And now onto this week's tutorial.... I find that keeping a record of skin colour combinations is vital to my colouring, both those I have discovered for myself and those used by other Copic artists that I've seen online or at certification classes.  Armed with this array of choices that I know work, it makes it much easier to choose skin colours to match hair or clothing.

Once again we are providing you with a fabulous and free Copic Blending Template, designed especially for Copic Oz and perfect for trying out those skin colour combos! 
You have two options depending on which way you like to work (landscape or portrait) both templates can be cut in half so they can be glued into your Copic Blending Journal, or you can use the full A4 size and pop the pages into an A4 ring binder.

Click here for the portrait template
Click here for the landscape template 

To get you started I've completed a page of beginner friendly Copic skin colour combinations - all of which are simple combos for guaranteed results!  The only tricky one in the bunch is the very last combo - which takes a little more work to blend than the others.  I've tried to stick to the same cheek colour R20 for most of these, so you can see how different it looks against each of the colours.  R20 is one of my 'go to' colours for cheeks as it gives beautiful results against most skin combos.

Pale Skin Colour Combos

Now I have to admit to also creating a few 'play' pages, this first page is perfect for people who do not have access to a Copic safe printer.  I've made this template page by cutting a circle from some scrap paper, tracing the circle onto a page in my Copic Colour Journal 3 times, then placing the template over the drawn circle and using this as a mask.  I stamped my La-La Land Crafts stamp (New Years Marci) into the circle using Memento Tuxedo Black ink.  I then cut out some pieces from the Copic Colour swatch template and used these to record my colour combos.  You might like to record hair and clothing combos on the same page.

Your other option is to go a bit fancy, now I wouldn't do this for every page (as it took a while) but it might be fun to have a few like this scattered through your Colour Journal to make it look that bit more special.  On this page I've used the same skin colour for each image, but have played with different shadow colours, hair and clothing.  I am always surprised by how different the same colours can look when paired with different combinations.  To create this page I die cut a circle in pink paper, then die cut the fancy frame behind, stamped Autumn Marci on some scraps of X-Press It Blending card and cut these to fit into the circle - instant gorgeousness!

I hope you've enjoyed this peek at some of my favourite skin colour combos and that you will enjoy using our new skin colour combo template!

So now it is time for the competition details.... similarly to last time, we are calling upon participants to  show us how they sample skin swatches in their Copic Technique Journal, feel free to use the FREE Skin Swatches Templates, links above!!!  Show us how you journal skin tone options and link up your blog post via the InLinkz below.  A FREE Journal will be awarded to the most impressive post... check back here in two weeks time to see who won and be inspired by the next feature in our Copic Technique Journal series.

And for some further inspiration here is a look back at some of the Copic Oz Tutorials of past that focused on skin tone:
Copic Hair and Skin Colour Wheel
Dark Skin Tutorial
Colouring Dark Skin


Back soon with more,
Kate

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Copic Journals

Copic journals - where do I begin??  When people talk about Copic Journals they are often discussing different things without even knowing it, from now on I will be calling mine by the following names:

• Copic Art Journal - a visual art journal or diary in which Copic Markers are used, and
• Copic Colour Journal - which records colour combinations, ideas on colouring, techniques and often a printed chart with purchased/wanted marker colours.

Now these could be combined into the one book but many people (myself included) have a separate book or journal for each of these purposes, mainly because my Copic Art Journal is a tiny bit messy - just a little bit.  Now on to a few examples...

Beginning a Copic Colour Journal
To start your own Copic Colour Journal the following items are essential:

• Copic Markers in assorted colours
• Copic suitable card (my all time favourite is X-Press It Blending Card A5 as it's already cut to perfect journal size and works so beautifully when blending)
• Copic Multi-liners in assorted thicknesses
• Digital or rubber stamps
  

For my Copic Colour Journal I purchased 3 packets of  X-Press It Blending Card (A5 size) and some matt board/book board and took these to the local print shop where I had them bound with spiral binding into a neat little book.  I split the book into sections - colour chart/list, colour combos, colouring ideas (hair, water etc) and lastly techniques.  You can see a few photos of my Copic Colour Journal below, of course you can put anything you like in yours!

 I have several pages with combos for flowers.

 A page listing the colours I have, and those I need.

A quick list of some techniques I've seen used - I should have made this section larger!

 Plus a section at the back for techniques I've created or am working on.

Beginning a Copic Art Journal
I created my Copic Art Journal in just the same way as my Colour Journal, but without any sections. To start your own Copic Art Journal the following items are useful:

• Copic Markers in assorted colours
• Copic suitable card - X-Press It Blending Card
• Copic Multi-liners in assorted thicknesses
• Molotow Paint Marker - these are amazing white paint markers
• AtYou Spica pens in assorted colours
• anything else you like to use - fancy papers, paints, pencils etc.

The rest of this post refers to creating in my Copic Art Journal.  This is one of my art journal pages and this particular page was created and coloured using all Copics.  YES this did take a while to finish and not all of my pages in here are like this, but I wanted to play with my Copics and this is the result.

Copic Colours used on 'K' page:

• N3, N5, N9, Black 100, 
• YR15, YR27, 
• V01, V12, V15, V17, V28
• BG 01, 05, 07, 09, 11, 53, 57
• B 01, 02, 04, 06 18, 21, 23, 24, 37
• YG 03, 05, 07, 17
• AtYou Spica: Lilac, Pink, Clear and Lavender

In my Copic Art Journal I'm not interested in perfect blending, I just want to lay colour down FAST - so I use the following technique to quickly get colour on the page, have it still look blended and get a nice amount of shadow - all achieved as quickly as possible.  This is basically blending colours using 'flicking'.

Draw image using Copic Multiliner pens and choose colour palette.  For my journals I use 2 or 3 colours from a blending family (eg: V15 & V17) and then a marker which is roughly 12 higher on the colour chart in this instance V28 for shadows and depth.

Lay down the mid tone first - V17, starting from darkest edge and 'flicking' towards lightest area.

Add your palest colour - V15, starting from about halfway up the V17 you already coloured and 'flicking' towards the lightest area.

Add your darkest colour - V28, colouring over the previous layer of V17.

Add the second layer of V17 and colour over most of the previous layer of V15 (keep the top edge light and wispy so that some of the V15 peeks through.

Add another layer of V15 - going over the edge of the V17 and flicking further into the centre of the lightest area - this will help to blend the V17 and V15.

Flicking from top down, fill the rest of the lightest area with V15 - keep flicks light and wispy so as not to end up with a flat colour.

I've used this same technique to create all the elements of the 'K' Art Journal page, as this flick colouring technique is relatively quick and gives great blended results, perfect for pages, but you can use this same technique to colour images.

If you look closely at the flower petals, circles or green flower stalk you can see the 'flicks'

I used a little more care on the 'K' as it was a larger area and I wanted to make sure I had a nice graded blend.

Challenges when using Copics in journals

• The markers bleed through the card, so you get colour on the reverse side of page. 
  They sure do, I cover my reverse pages with pretty paper, gesso, cut out images or I just stick another layer of clean paper over the back and keep colouring. 
• They don't perform well in journals with watercolour card or normal (non copic safe) card.
  I remedy this by colouring my image on copic safe card (X-Press It Blending Card) and then gluing my image into my journal.
• Colouring a whole page with Copic Markers uses a lot of ink.
  While this page did take a while to colour and I'm sure it used a bit of ink, not all my pages are 100% coloured with Copic markers, sometimes I only colour my main image, sometimes it's just doodling or colouring text, I often then add spray inks, ink from ink pads, paints, paper, pencil etc - while Copic Markers may not perform well on non copic safe card, all those other yummy mediums perform just fine on X-Press It Blending Card!

I hope this post has cleared up the difference between Copic Art Journals and Copic Colour Journals and maybe even inspired some of you to begin your own journal.  If you already have a Copic Journal (of either sort) we would love to see them.  If you feel like sharing please post a photo of your Copic Journal or favourite page/s onto the Copic Marker Australia Facebook page.

May your day sparkle,
KatePin It