Quick Cloud tutorial

AHHHHH! Its hard to blog lately. We've been really busting our butts over at the Studio, and there are no computers there (intentionally!) so boo! I have been trying to get this tutorial posted for a spell now, and I got a few minutes right now so I'm gunna do it by tunder!

Side note! I did a second Guest Blog post for CopicMarker.com! Its about using coloured Multiliners! Check it out!

Sorry for the shadowy images! I didn't have good light at the time.
I hope its okay anyway!

So I have been getting a lot of compliments on the sky's I've been doing in my Hello, Albertosaurus comic lately, and I thought I'd do a little walk through of how its done.

I start off with a blank sky. Here I've coloured everything else already.

Imagine the paper is white! LOL!

Next I take a light light hard to photograph blue, such as BG0000 and block in where i want some rough clouds to be. Try to compose them better than I did.

Its faint, but I hope you can see the lines!

Now I take that same colour (BG0000) and start doing feathering strokes out from the edges of the cloud shapes I made. Be loose, and be varied. try not to make them look too symmetrical.

Feathering strokes! Lift up your marker at the end of each stroke so it has a softened edge!

Roughly cover in the rest of the sky as well. I never worry about my first layer being too even, since i layer so much I blend it all together at the end. This is also the lightest colour I'm going to use here, so anything else will help cover up streaks. Here it is with the first layer done.

Delicious variety. I might go over the streaky parts to smooth it out a little before going to next step.

Okay, next up, a slightly darker colour. in this case I believe B01, or B00. I don't recall exactly. This is where i pin point some snuggly cloud areas where I want to accent some cloud shapes. I'll go in and add a bit of the darker colour, then blend it out with the lighter colour.

You don't have to be precise, leave some lighter colour around the edge of the clouds to give them shape

After you've blended those with your original colour (also feel free to use any number of colours - if its easier for you to use every single colour in a sequence, DO IT!) go over into the white a but more with your light colour to add some sort of depth to them. make em 3d fluffy.

Here it is while blending, jsut before going into the white parts more.

Needs a bit more smoothing, and going into the white will soften those edges!

 Here is a close up of the finished clouds.

Just keep blending until you're happy with it!
Again, the photos are bad, but I hope you get the gist of the technique!

Here he is! Yeti! Now, you can make it less painterly and smooth it out just by practising the technique a little. I tend to keep a bit of a painterly feel to my illustrations sometimes.

All done!

I used X-Press it blending card, or Aquabee Marker paper for this, I don't remember exactly, OOPS!
I also used probably a couple colours not in there. but in general a mix of the BG0000, B01, B00, B02, B000000. I mix and match and don't really keep real track of it, sorry.

Hope this is useful :)

Aurora Borealis - Copic Airbrush

This is not quite a tutorial but more of a ...Exploration!
 I wanted to see if I could achieve a northern lights look with some Copic techniques. I tried at first to do it with just the trusty nibs but gosh, going dark to light in a really short area is quite tough to get smooth, especially a really super light to an almost black. Too Laborious! So I cracked out Ye Ol' Copic ABS and this is what I did to get my mini Aurora Borealis Drawings.

Step 1
I drew a little square on my paper. I didn't make these too big. Then I tore a post it note on a jagged sort of angle. (I'm doing the ribbony lights). Keep Both halves of the post it note. you can even used an x-acto and cut out a ribbony line. Just get a good shape. Tape it down but don't worry about getting the whole thing stuck flush. the little bit of ink that sprays under the edge helps the glowing effect.

 Step 2
Start with a light pink, green, blue or red - whatever colour scheme you want. Those are most common in the light effect. stray across the post it note onto the white. I covered it mostly with the pink overall.

Step 3
Take another post it note and lay it vertically on the paper and puff little bits of pink across the edge. this is how you get that vertical striping that happens. Do several lines, don't make them too even or make the puffs at the same spot along the edge. get some randomness.

 Step 4
I puffed some darker pink and violets in the top an bottom corner of those sides to add some contrast and make it trail off the page a bit.

 Step 5
I took the other half of the post it note and covered what I had done. I tried to line it up with the other piece before pulling the first piece off. See how the pinks gone under a little and has that little glow around the edge? thats good. the last thing we want is a white line interrupting the effect.

 Step 6
I fill in this side with Violets and pinks and work my way into some darker blues. until I have the effect I want. I left some variation in darkness around the edges at the bottom.

Step 7
This is the final image created by this example. This is way bigger than actual size, the original is only about 6cm square. but you can see the effect!

Other Attempts

Here is the first attempt I made. I really liked the glow, but didn't have enough of the vertical lines. I added some stars with some colourless blender dots. I also really liked the addition of the black tree silhouette. It really completes it as an illustration.

What NOT to do

and here's a frightful example of what happens when you don't re-mask your first area, and don't line up the edges of the stencils.

Well, I hope this inspires someone to experiment, or play around with Copics, or shows some of the potential of the airbrush.

Sunset

Just a quick little walk through.

My good friends Donut said she'd wanna have a tutorial about sunset colouring, so this is what I've come up with. I know this isn't magnificent but I thought it would be a nice little mini tutorial in a series of sky tutorials!

 First off I always start off with a base colour of your lightest shade. I generally do a lighter yellow like a Y32, Y21, or in this case YR20. because both my other yellows were dry and they're one of the few colours I have no refills for.

 Next step, I start layering in some pinker tones. In this case I did some quick colouring starting from the top, going about 3/4's of the way down with R12. I blended it out right away with YR20 again.

last 2 steps together: Repeat the last step with R12, only half way down this time, then take a violet shade this time BV31, and only got 1/4 of the way down.

Always blending with the original YR20.

Anyway, I hope that was useful or interesting or something. See you later!