So if you didnt catch my last post about materials then this one may be a little perplexing.
My work has transitioned over the last few years to include alcohol markers, inks and other assorted nonsense, as followers of my youtube channel will have no doubt have noticed.
While the core of my coloured pencil materials remain, polychromos, luminance, light fast, procolour, Pablo and prismacolor pencils, my markers have grown, shrunk and changed until the point where I am happy with them.
The marker brands I have grown into loving are –
Arteza Everblend
Winsor & Newton Brush and Pro Markers
Cassart Alcohol markers
Ohuhu Markers.
Why so many different brands?
I started with Winsor & Newton brush markers, they were the brand in my local Hobbycraft and they had a generic skintone set.
I used them OVER my coloured pencils to melt the wax and oils and get the pigment into the texture of the paper without the need to destroy the texture of the paper.
When I reached my limitation on those pens I bought some cheap sets from Wish and Hobbycraft and explored them as much as I could before buying more Winsor & Newton general sets and then picked up the Arteza set.
The arteza skin set (and then the grey set) were great additions to the arsenal, a variety of colours in skin tone ranges but they were all warm tones with nothing to offset them, so I use them with the W&N colours and the Arteza grey tone set to give some more balance to the skintones I use.
I have also added the ohuhu 36 colours and cassart skin markers to the collection as they are fabulous pens to work with, and in the cassart pens – highly underrated!
Each set of pens brings its own hues to the work, Winsor & Newton are more earthy, Ohuhu are vibrant with a fast ink flow, the Arteza pens are very well made and have a great range of tones to warm up a cold pallette, and their grey markers are to absolutely die for!
On their own I am capable of making artworks such as
or
but in conjunction with the coloured pencils I use the work starts having more depth and subtlety.
I use the pens as an underbase, a rough layer where I map everything out – the equivalent of an underpainting.
I then use the coloured pencils in light layers on top of them, deepening shadows or adding colour shifts, and then I use markers over the top of that to blend it all.
it sounds chaotic.
but the results really speak for themselves.