Alcohol Marker Technique For Absolute Beginners: A Hands on Guide

1. Alcohol Marker Technique For Absolute Beginners: A Hands on Guide : And can be truly magical. But markers are something else. They have such a special place in my heart because they became a safe place for me to explore textures and colors and the simplicity. Hi, I'm Carla. I'm an editorial illustrator. I love stories, character design, color palettes, and would love to talk to you about my favorite media. Alcohol markers. I've used markers pretty much since I started my career, and in all honesty. At first, it was a bit lost when it came to picking the right medium for me. But then markers came along and changed everything. They let me dive into colors and textures in a way that felt so natural. Plus they're super handy and portable. That's not to love. Honestly, markers were before and after in my journey as an illustrator. Mainly because of how simple they are to use, and I will be super happy to share with you what I know about how to get started with markers. In this class, we'll explore the basics of color markers, including ink flow, different types of nips, blending and layering techniques, types of paper, and some useful tips as well. You'll only need a few alcohol markers. Three, we'll do just fine, and some preacher paper as well. As we progress in this class, we will do very simple and easy exercises. To will give you a feel for the medium, and we'll help you feel more confident to use alcohol markers in your daily practice and explore your own style and technique. These exercises will be our little war book. But it will come in and in the future. Not only that, but this will also be our class project. I'm super excited about this class because this was a request class, and I think it's perfect for anyone just trying out with analog media or those curious about trying out markers for the first time. I hope you enjoy this medium as much as I do. Thank you for being here. Hope you enjoy this class. 2. Material And Class Project: I would like us to quickly discuss the materials we'll use for this class. The idea for this class is to explore techniques and play freely with our markers. So we want to minimize anything that can hold us back in this exploration, and sometimes the cost of materials is something that might do exactly that. Nice markers and paper can be quite pricey, and I wouldn't want you to worry about wasting them in experiments and learning technique. So I would recommend either using markers you might have already laying around that you don't mind using to play around with or buying a few cheap markers. You don't need to buy a whole pack. Three different colors will do. Just make sure that these are alcohol markers and not water based markers. Personally, I'll be using this pack of markers I bought online. The brand is foro, and I also have this pack of touch cool markers. You can find them on Amazon and little stores, et cetera. They've become really popular. And you can find cheap markers anywhere nowadays. Later in this class, we will talk about nicer marker options such as copies or pro markers. So you know roughly what you expect from each rant in case you're interested in investing in better art supplies later on. But for now, let's use the most economical ones we can find. As for paper, the same applies. We want to use cheap paper for now, so let's get some regular printer paper or sketchbook that you have at home, whose paper is not super thick. Believe it or not, printer paper has been my absolute favorite for years. This is completely optional, but I would recommend using a clipboard since we're going to be working with loose sheets of paper. I find them pretty practical, and I like the sensation of mark making against something that's hard. But again, completely optional. Now, let's talk about our class project. As we talk about technique and cover other key concepts, we'll be doing some quick exercises together. The idea is to create a little workbook, so to speak, so that if you do all the little exercises by the end of this class, you'll have a visual record of what we have discussed. I would love to see your mark making and your own application of concepts in that workbook. So please upload your worksheets to the project gallery. Now, if you would like to put what we've learned into practice right away, I have a template for you to co. You can find it in the resources. Just print it and apply the concepts seen in this class. If you decide to use it, please upload it to the PjectGallery, as well. I would love to see it and offer feedback as I do for all projects. Okay. So let's start with our first lesson now. 3. Get To Know Know Them : I believe certain personalities match really nicely with certain art supplies. And I think it's important to take this into account. We don't end up downing ourselves or giving up too soon on a medium that might not be the best match for us, at least, not right away. When I stumbled upon markers, I just knew they were a perfect fit for me. They drip quickly. No patients needed among other things. It was just right. On the flip side, watercolors were a little bit more tricky to get the hang of, and I used to find them super frustrating. They didand a level of patients that honestly, I don't have. So I thought that I was just bad at them and gave them up for a while, which is unfortunate because I actually really love them now. Where I'm going with this is that if you ever find yourself struggling with markers or any other medium, please dump down your abilities right off the bat. And don't lick on the medium just yet. Perhaps all you need is to get to know the medium a bit better, so you know exactly which aspects you may want to spend a bit more time practicing in order to get the most out of them. So with this in mind, I would like us to talk about three key aspects of alcohol markers. One, what are they exactly and how they work. Two, what I consider the pros and cons of alcohol markers, and three, the different kinds of nips that you can find in markers. Okay, so what are they? Alcohol markers use ink and their pigments are suspended in alcohol. In other words, as the name implies, these markers use alcohol as a solvent. There are also water based markers that use water to carry their pigments. That's why both kinds of markers can offer different results. Now, what are the pros of alcohol markers. My favorite one, as I've said before, is how fast they dry. You don't have to wait long to add details or create layers. Beautiful. But color rates available and how vibrant some of them can be. You can also find very subtle colors as well, so they can cater to a lot of different styles and preferences. The textures you can achieve with them. You can create really opaque layers or build up to create solid rich colors. We'll talk more in depth about this a bit later. They're so proportle You can draw at a cafe on your couch, at the park, which is great if you like to do outside studies or just get some fresh air. This is one of my favorite things. Some brands offer ink refills, which is great, less waste, and a bit cheaper in the long run. Blending, blending is one of the key features of alcohol markers. You can create nice and smooth colored transitions which are super useful, especially if your style is more realistic, layering. This is personally a quality that I use a lot in my work. Laying can help you create depth by starting with a lighter shade and then building your way up. I use it a lot to create shadows and textures as well. Now, cons are disadvantages because there's no such thing as perfection. This smell can be a bit overpowering at time, especially when you work for a long time with them. You might even get a bit dizzy. I do sometimes. So make sure to take breaks. Surprisingly, how fast they dry. I know I mentioned this previously as an advantage, but sometimes this can also be a disadvantage if you're not used to working quickly, or if you want to blend many different colors together because they will dry super quickly. So keep that in mind. How pricey they can get. Yes, they're cheaper options, but quality ink does come at an expense. Cheaper ink tends to fade, and even the ink in the marker can dry out quickly compared to high quality markers. We'll talk about this later, but also how ink can bleed and how much ink you can use up if you are not using the right paper. Let's now talk about NIPS because they're crucial for creating specific textures, handling the marker, which does impact the final result, trust me, line variation, and controlling the application of ink onto the paper. Knowing this will be useful in the next lesson. Markers can feature different types of nips, which vary from rank to rank. Most markers have dual nips, one for covering larger areas and another for precision work. This is important because we often have a preferred working size. Personally, I prefer working smaller, but there are tons of people who enjoy working large. The most common nip is a chisel, and you'll likely find it in every marker. This nips are useful for covering larger areas. The finer side of this nip can also help in detailing ap precision, making it quite versatile. No wonder why almost every marker has it. I find blending colors with this nip a bit easier as well. However, this is purely a matter of personal preference. You might prefer other nips for blending. We'll delve into blending in detail in the next lesson. You can also find markers with big chisel tips, if you prefer covering even larger areas. Overall chistelnps are the easiest to use due to the way they apply in. They're also brush and bullet nips. Brush markers are amazing for detailing, and I love using this type of nip for shadowing. The flexibility of the brush nip allows for creating various textures like hair and grass and even doing lettering. I believe that this nip is excellent for working smaller areas since it's super precise, allowing you to create both thick and fine lines. Copic markers usually come with brush snips. Additionally, Winsor and Newton and Ohuhu offer this nip, but it's not as standard as it is with copies. So be sure to double check if you're especially looking for markers with brush nips. If you're used to painting with a brush, you might either love or hate this nip. Finally, bullet nips are known for their consistent ink flow and are also great for precisional work. They're super stay due to their firm feel, making this nip ideal for creating consistent lines. Personally, I believe it's the versatile option in terms of effects or textures you can create, but it's also the most beginner friendly. Usually, cheaper markers will offer this type of nip, but more expensive brands such as Winsor Newton or hu ho may also include it. So once again, make sure to check the markers nip before purchasing. Okay. Now that we talked about this three key aspects, we can move onto marker technique and our first exercise. 4. Ink Flow: Now, let's delve into technique. When it comes to alcohol markers, technique refers to the methods used to achieve different effects and results when coloring. For example, we might want to achieve flat, even coloring or we might want to create rich textures. Technique can help us achieve a more realistic result or not quick note. None of these styles are better than the other. They're just different. There are three things I would like us to keep in mind whenever we're working with markers. Pressure, speed, and hand movement. Why are they important? Well, because these three elements affect inkflow and it's precisely inflow that will help us create different effects when it comes to markers. Now, get your markers and paper ready because we will do a few short exercises focusing on pressure, speed, and hand movement in this lesson. Let's talk about pressure first. This basically refers to the amount of force applied when using the marker tip on a paper surface. Now, grab your paper and do a quick squibble. You can use whichever nap you refer to. Don't overthink it. Just go for it. I want you to observe how the ink looks like on the paper. Are there any patches? Does the color look even? Perhaps you noticed that you started with pressure, and then when you lifted the marker, the pressure diminished it. Or maybe you applied an even amount of pressure. This exercise gives us insight into the natural amount of pressure we commonly tend to apply, which you may want to consider if you're aiming for a specific result. Personally, I tend to vary the amounts of pressure whenever I create any strokes. Pressure mainly affects color intensity. So if you're aiming for a bold finish, it's important to consider the amount of pressure you'll apply. If you want a shear finish, less pressure should be applied. Now, using the same marker, we're going to draw a circle, applying minimum pressure, and then another one applying more pressure. Don't worry if the color is not completely even, we just want to see a difference in color when applying different amounts. So fresre. Pressure also impacts how even our color will be. Changing pressure while color in an area can result in different color tonalities, which I personally love. I think it creates a really interesting texture. But if you're aiming for a flat, even finish, it's important to be mindful of the pressure you apply. Now, let's try creating another circle, but this time, change the amount of pressure, while you color. Let's be mindful of keeping the pressure constant, while you color. Which one do you prefer? Finally, using the same color, let's attempt to create a gradient. Begin by applying pressure and then gradually reduce it as you continue. Consider what we discussed about NIPS in the produced listen. Perhaps you might want to experiment with how varying pressure feels using a brush versus a bot. I encourage you to try different colors and see which one you prefer the most. Sometimes colors vary even within the same brand. Also, please remember that we are just experimenting. We're not expecting to see a perfect gradient or perfect textures. Now, let's talk about speed. Speed is crucial because alcohol markers dry quickly on paper. So if you're not quick enough to coloring, your angle dry, resulting in blotches or marks. So we'll do a couple of exercises to observe the differences between fast and slow speed. For these exercises, we'll also keep a pressure in mind. For our first exercise, we will lead a marker, and I is you using one with a chiste. We're going to do a stroke and count till five, then another stroke right next to it, and then count till three, and then one and then two continued strokes. As you can see here, the more time you let pass between strokes, we'll create this lines, and sometimes this could be a good way to create texture. But if this is something you don't particularly like, it's important to consider how quickly you need to work in order to avoid this. For our second exercise, we'll draw a circle. I would recommend not using a graphite pencil because we want to avoid smutches so I'll use this colored pencil. Now, try to fill in this circle quickly so that it looks even with no vis lines. Remember to keep pressure in mind as well. The key to even finishes when you're working with alcohol markers is speed. If you really want flat finishes, you have to work really quickly to achieve note texture at all. Remember that ink dries super quickly, so it is important to keep this in mind as well. Now, let's try drawing another circle, but this time, we're going to try color it in really slowly, allowing the ink to try a tiny little bit and see what texture we get. Also, don't forget to write down the differences between these little samples. Sometimes it's really useful to keep this information for reference, especially if we're after certain textures or finishes. I think these little notes are particularly useful when we're exploring a new medium, and we want to remember how we came about a certain result. Now, let's have a look at the second circle we made, and you can see here how there's this little blotch of gray here that it weighs kind of similar to the lines we had in this first exercise. Lastly, let's discuss hand movement. And movement can allow us to create textures. By moving or rest up and down, it's possible to create textures such as grass and hair. My favorite is circular motion because it can help us create patches of color, which can be interesting for creating watercolor effects, and movements combined with pressure and speed can help you with precision as well, which will help you feel more in control whenever you color. For example, if you're coloring a piece with several elements and you want to color inside the lines, so to speak, the precision of your hand movements can help you with this preventing bleeding, since you'll be controlling the ink flow with them. Now, for our hand movement exercises, think about speed and pressure as well. I'm going to color my first figure with up and down strokes, and I'm going to try to be really quick to avoid any texture or lines. For my second one, I'm going to do circular motions. And you can already see the difference in texture between these two just by having a different hand movement. Try use some different ps and see if they have any impact on the final results. I'm going to be using a bullet nip for this one. And as you can see, it's just a little bit tricky because there is basically a lot of time for the ink to dry. So I'm going to end up with quite a bit of texture, which is totally fine. It depends on what you're after. I remember that when I started with markers, I wanted to achieve the flattest textures that I could achieve. So this was really frustrating to me. Don't forget to write down your notes in your worksheets. If you would like to work on your coloring precision, I would suggest you to draw random figures and color them and staying inside the lines. Constraints can really help us to work on our hand movements and the quality over stroke. As a quick tip, apply less pressure around the edges where the ink will bleed. Now we have covered pressure, speed, and hand movement. We can go ahead and talk about blending. See you in the next lesson. 5. Blending: Okay. Now that we have a better understanding on how inflow will affect textures and how we can control that inflow, that is with pressure, speed and hand movement, it is important that we now talk about blending and layering. These two techniques are important because they will help us to create different effects and can be used for separate purposes. But in this lesson, let's focus on blending. We'll cover key aspects such as what's blending. We'll talk about gradients and colorless blenders as well. When it comes to alcohol markers, we want to use blending, whenever we want to merge two or more colors together to create smooth transitions or gradients. I consider that blending is used more frequently in realistic drawing or painting styles. Since there's more a bit of a color transition required to create realistic shadows and highlights. If your style is not realistic, just like mine, I personally don't tend to use blending frequently, but I also consider that it's important to learn the technique regardless because it is important to understand how markers behave overall. The key to blending is that the color transitions need to be smooth. Now, considering what we covered in the last lesson, you may already have an idea on how you can achieve this. Now, let's do a quick exercise. Remember that we are looking for smooth transitions. Now, let's try a gradient using two different colors. Remember that ink dries super fast, so it is important that we have our markers ready and that we work quickly. Whenever we're mixing two colors, I would suggest starting with a soft pressure. It's always easiest to work light to dark, not only because it makes making gradients easier, but also because it helps us achieve deep and richness in artwork. Quickly, change to the second color. I suggest starting a bit above where the color line ends. Remember, we're not looking for a perfect gradient. We're just experimenting here. Montana, I suggest going over with the lightest color. It is quite common to use three colors whenever we create gradients with alcohol markers. But for this time, I think the same light color that we used will create a nice and smooth transition. Personally, I'd like to do gray ins creating circular motions. I believe that it is easier to blend the colors this way since you don't have a very visible line where colors need. Now, grab your latest marker and create circular motions. It doesn't have to be any specific shape. The important the here is that we have pressure, hand movement and speed in mind as we create in our block. Now, grab the darkest color and do the same here on top. And we're going to do the same as we did in our gradient. We're going to grab the lightest color and just create a little transition right here where the colors meet. So it looks a bit more smooth. All of these in a circular motion. Which one do you prefer? Also, keep in mind that the paper needs to be wet to blend properly. That is, the ink dumpy to dry completely to blend nicer. Now, perhaps you've seen colorless blenders. Almost every brand offers them, and you can also by blending solutions. Personally, I believe that there should be a better name for this because the name can be quite destive or maybe it was just me, but when I started with markers, I thought that this could help you create some bmoth transitions, like you would have one color and then the second one at the bottom, and this would help you combine them in a smooth gradient. And although they can help you with that, they don't work like that. What they do is that they strat the pigment from the paper. If you have a blending marker, try this exercise. If you don't, don't worry, you can simply try using regular rubbing alcohol. At the end of the day, alcohol is what these markers use a solvent, so it will work pretty similarly. You will also need a Q tip for this exercise. Grab a marker and draw a few strokes. Once again, try to keep pressure and speed in mind to create a smooth finish. Now, grab your colorless blender or your Q tip. Start at the bottom and drill some strokes with very light pressure. Notice how the ink is being dragged. It is particularly noticeable how the ink is disappearing as you let the ink dry. You will see really interesting patches and results. Colorless lenders can also help you correcting some bleeding that happened accidentally or if you want to create some textures to. In a way, colorless blenders behave as erasers of some sort. Just keep in mind that for this to happen, the bleeding has to be minimal, mainly because colorless blenders don't have the capacity of extracting loads of pigment, but for little quotation mark mistakes, they're okay. When it comes to textures, colorless blenders are amazing to mimic or recreate watercolor effects. Like this one right here, it was done with a core color and colorless blender moved in circular motions, and I think it achieved a really nice water effect. And for this little sketch, I really like how fluffy the clouds turned out, and it was also done with a colorless blender. If you want to apply a light color over a darker one, then it can help you with that as well. But I must say that it can be quite tricky to achieve. If you have two workers that are completely different colors, but would like to create a gradient, I honestly would suggest blending with a Q tip and alcohol. Very important note. Remember that for these exercises, we're using a very thin paper that is not designed to handle big amounts of liquid. So the paper may peel. We'll talk about paper options later on. But for now, just keep that in mind in case that your paper stars peeling, but don't let that to be something that stops you from experimenting. Remember what I said about color less blenders and how I felt that worked at first, having one color at the bottom and one at the top and expecting the blender to create the transition. Well, in my experience with the blender marker that doesn't work too well. However, if you try with rubbing alcohol and do circular movements while mixing, you can get interesting results. I will do this exercise and screen to see the differences between the two, because I'm aware that not everyone will have a colorless blender. But if you do and want to give it a go, try this exercise and see which method works best for you. Okay, so I'm going to use these two colors. Now, keep in mind that because they're very different from each other and we don't have a third color, the transition is not going to be super smooth, but we're going to try to make it as smooth as possible. We are going to repeat the same steps that we followed, while we create our previous gradients. And now here comes the fun part. My advice here would be to not get the QTped to wet just because of the paper that we're working with. Just wet enough for it to create a smooth transition or as smooth as possible. Remember that we're not trying to create perfect gradients. We're just experimenting. Now, I'm going to do the same thing with a colorless blender. My experience is that you can get pretty similar results. The thing with the colorless blenders is that you can have a little bit more control, but definitely pure alcohol takes away a lot of the ink. I would definitely encourage you to try different color combinations and different amount of alcohol. Don't forget to write those notes down. I personally really love this one. Although it didn't create a really smooth transition, I really like these little textures in the middle. I think they're pretty interesting. These were all done with a Q tip. And lastly, just a quick note, I personally have found that cheap markers are a bit more difficult to blend. So maybe consider this whenever you're blending. And once again, I would like to remind you that your worksheets don't have to look perfect. Please don't let this stop you from uploading your worksheets to the project gallery. Honestly, these worksheets are for you, and they are just a way to record your progress and what you learned in this class. They really don't have to be cutically pleasing. They just have to be useful. Now, let's go ahead and talk later. 6. Layering: Now, let's go ahead and talk layering. Layering happens to be my favorite technique, so I'm quite excited about this lesson. But we'll talk about what layering is, shadow, depth, and color. While blending focuses on seamlessly emerging colors together to create smooth transitions and gradients, layering focuses on building colors to create depth and richness. Sounds complicated, but basically all we do to achieve this is to apply multiple layers of ink on top of each other. I think that layering is the easiest technique to learn when it comes to markers and at the same time, can get very interesting results. I personally use layering a lot when creating shadows, which can also help to create depth. For example, in my character faces. Whenever we are layering colors just as with blending, it is important to work from light to dark. In terms of pressure, you don't have to be too mindful about it. Our regular consistent pressure will work. Now, with blending, we needed our ink to be wet on the paper to create a more smooth and softer finish. But with layering, we want our ink to be dry to achieve more richness in color. Let's try a little exercise. Let's pick a light colored marker, and let's draw a circle. We're going to create a shadow by adding a layer of the same color right here. For this exercise is completely up to you if you want the circle to have textures or if you prefer it to be completely flat. This will be just our base color, and we're going to focus on the next step. Once dry use the same marker to create the shadow here at the bottom. Nothing too complex. Just try drawing a little crescent moon right here. Now, we have two layers of the same color in drawing. If you want to create more depth, you can try adding a third layer. Once again, one in gets dry. Just remember that because of the nature of this technique, you're going to have a few lines and it's not going to be a smooth transition. If that's what you're after, perhaps blending will be best to create shadows. I personally sometimes like to use purplish colors for shadows. I feel that gives my illustrations a bit more ambiance when it's required. However, I more frequently tend to do a very simple layering, which involves using the same color. Now, let's try playing with the same depth. Grab the lightest color you have and draw square and color it. Let it dry. If you don't, you might end up with feathering and bleeding. And once again, it's completely up to you if you want to create textures or if you want this little square to be completely flat. This can also be a good opportunity to practice ink flow, but it is completely up to you. Personally, I really like textures in whatever I draw, so I'm going to leave my square with texture. Now, with a darker marper draw a circle right in the middle. Now, what we want is to create depth. So instead of shadowing the circle, we will shadow this area right here, so it looks more three D. Grab your lightest color and just do a little crescent moon right here at the bottom. It is amazing that just with this tiny little detail, you can create a lot of depth. If you want to add more dimension to your sketch, you can use a colored pencil to create highlights right here. Just use elighter color. I'm going to use white, and of course, that you can use your colorless blender as well. To erase some of the ink. I personally prefer the texture of colored pencils. If you would like to practice shadows and depth a bit more, go to resources. I have a little practice sheet for you. You can just print it out and draw shadows and depth. You can also blow the sheet as your past projects. Layering is such a simple technique, and yet it can help your artwork to look more rich and more dimensional. One of my favorite things about layering is that you can create interesting color combinations and textures. In this case, see how the difference in color between these two. I'm going to use this bright pink and this baby blue, and I really love how this patchiness came about. It's really lovely when you can see the colors underneath. Well, I think. Some colors will naturally do this while others will create a flatter finish. Definitely encourage you to explore different color combinations on your own, and see if there's a particular mix you like. And once again, I encourage you to write down some notes. Sometimes we forget what colors we used for a specific combination, and this can be really, really useful in the future. Having said all of these, I think it's important to talk about paper and how it can affect our drawings. See you in the next lesson. 7. Paper: Now that we understand how markers behave and what can we do with that behavior, it is important to talk about paper and how it can also affect our artwork. I would like to share with you my experiences with different types of paper, the pros, the cons. So you decide what may work best for you and your art practice. Let's start with a bit of a controversial one for what I've heard, printer paper. Personally, I started using printer paper by accident because when I was a student and started to experiment with markers, I didn't have the money to invest in good paper. So I thought, well, if printer paper absorbs, printer ink it should also absorb marker in grade. And Sunda Corea was right. I still use it on an occasional basis because it's cheap and highly available. But it is important that we consider *** thinks first. The thing with printer paper is that it will most certainly make your ink bleed because how thin it is. Now, paper comes with different weight specifications. You'll know your paper weight when you see a number followed by the acronym GSM. Or grams per square meter. The lower the number, the lightest or thinner the paper will be. You can find different types of printer paper, but 90 to 100 GSM is a mouse con. Now, printer paper can be great if you're experimenting and don't want to use your nice sketchbooks. If you don't mind the occasional bleed, then this could be a good paper to try. I also find the sizes this paper comes in very convenient. Also, this type of paper has no textures, so it's great if you want your colors to be flat or if you would like to create your own textures. There's loads of sketchbooks that have a similar GSM, so I recommend checking so you know with more certainty how the paper will behave. Now, since the paper is lightweight, your ink will can also bleed not only onto the actual artwork you're creating, but onto whatever you have underneath. So I recommend always working on a piece of paper to catch the ink and avoid accidents. Of course, this could also be a cool opportunity to experiment with the shapes as well. Now, let's talk about paper with a higher GSM like bristol paper. It usually comes in a GSM of 180 200. Honestly, I quite like this paper, since it bleeds less than printer paper, has no texture, and you can find very different sizes depending on how you're used you're working with. Since it's a bit thicker than printer paper, it will absorb a bit more ink. However, I don't find the difference to be that huge. You can find pads as well, if that's what you prefer. I guess the only disadvantage is that it can be a bit more pricey compared to printer paper. Now, cardboard paper can also be used with markers. It usually has a GSM of 200 upwards, and it's similar to bristol paper. But this one in my experience, does absorb quite a bit of ink. Now, let's talk about mixed media blocks. What I love about this is how much you can get away with textures. If you like to mix and match mediums, I think you'll enjoy this type of paper. This comes 250-300 GSM, usually, and some of it comes with texture. So it's important to consider that depending if you like texture or not. Also, since it's a heavier paper, the ink will absorb very quickly, and blending can be a bit more tricky. Okay, now let's talk about watercolor paper. It does very nicely with alcohol markers on an aesthetic level, especially because how lovely the paper texture enhances the ink. But please keep in mind this paper will absorb a lot of your ink. Watercolor paper comes with a higher GSM. It's designed to absorb the water to prep the paper and the actual water to actually paint with. So you can imagine how much ink this paper can absorb. Now, since this paper is designed to be used with wet media, it is unlikely that your ink will bleed. But unless you're after the texture, I wouldn't recommend it, especially because it can get pretty expensive. You can check the GSM number and pick the lower number, if this is what you're after. The perhaps more sensible choice, marker paper. This type of paper has a coating that allows you to blend and layer, doesn't bleed and creates nice wet finishes. The issue I find with marker paper is how expensive it can get, and if you're starting with markers, I wouldn't want paper to be an obstacle to limit you or even stop you from experimenting and having fun. One thing I don't like about marker paper is that it usually comes in a litter or A four size. And of course, that if you prefer smaller sizes, you could cut the paper and even create a little sketchbook. But the other options of paper we talked about are a bit more flexible in terms of sizing. Personally, I've used marker paper for commissional work only. Now, if you had a mole skin or I am so sorry, I don't know how to pronounce this print, so I'm going to leave it here. The paper seems to have a subtle coding that works beautifully with markers, and they come in different sizes. So if you're after an actual sketchbook to carry around and work with markers, then this could be good options. Their paper GSM is around 70, 80, and 100 plus. Finding the right paper is such a personal journey, and we'll have different needs when it comes to creating artwork, so there's no rights or wrongs here. However, I hope that you found this little guy helpful. We're nearly at the end. So before we go, I would like to share with you some tips and tricks that I've picked up along the way, hoping that you'll find them useful too. See you in the next lesson. Okay. 8. Tips: Before we wrap this class up, I would like to share with you eight tips that I've learned throughout the years using alcohol markers. Let's get straight into them. One, create a color swatch page. I personally recommend doing this because the colors on the cap can actually look very different on paper. Also, if you work on off white paper, this can be quite helpful to see how the color would look on a different base color. It's also quite convenient when you want to create color combinations. It's more exciting to see them on paper, Ivan personally. You can also create a blending or layering page, so you remember which colors work nicely together. Two. When you're coloring or created color blocks, I recommend outlining the shapes first with your marker. This can help with bleeding, but remember to work quickly. Three. Talking about outlining, I recommend not using pencils or graphite as they tend to smuch quite a bit. Instead, I recommend using a light colored pencil, ideally, one that matches the underton of most of the colors you'll use. Personally, I like using this vermilion color because it's pretty subtle and has a warm underton which matches most of my markers. If you're not sure about undertones and would like to explore more about color, I have a class color theory as well. Four color block. One of the things I recommend quite a bit is to plan your composition well ahead of time so you know where your colors will go. And once you know this, start coloring all the areas that will be a certain color. If you're not patient like myself, this can help you work faster since you're allowing the color to dry before working on another color. Five, experiment with mixed media. Markers are great to work allside colored pencil, squash, another types of ink. Just make sure that you're using a paper with a higher GSM if you're planning on pairing markers with another wet media. Quick font it to try. If you have a colorless blender, experiment matching colored pencils with it and see what happens. Six. You can create your own colors with refillable ink. You can get the ink and just mix, so you have a custom color that won't be available in stores. You can even get empty markers or if you're feeling brave and would like to experiment. You can also use a water brush seven. Don't buy marker packs, at least, not right off the bat. I know they look pretty, but sometimes you end up getting quite a few similar colors in one pack, and you might not end up using them in the long run. I personally prefer building up a collection of colors that I already know, I will use. Eight. There's difference in pigments depending on the brand. For example, I personally find copies more sheer than ur colors. So if you have a softer use of color, then you'll love copies as I do. But if you prefer bold, strum colors in cura color or wins and Netin could be for you. Just as with paper, finding the right brand is a journey and a bit of a try an error. Also, you don't have to commit to um brand, but it is important to know that there's slight differences. Now, I could talk about markers for ages, but let's leave it here for now. Join me in the next lesson for a few final quick notes. 9. Final Notes: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope that you feel more confident and excited to experiment with your markers. They're such a great medium, and I really hope that you have a great time experimenting with them. This class was requested by a few of you, so I would like to give you a big thank you, and also let you know that if you'd like me to cover a certain topic or if you'd like more advanced classes on markers, know that I'm all ears. You can find me on Instagram and send me a DM there, and tech me if you upload your projects. Talking about projects, don't forget to load your worksheets to the project gallery. I always find it super inspiring to see the different approaches and uses of color of the same project. Don't forget that there's a principal resource for you to color in the resources if you'd like to practice technique in a more finished and tangible piece. And one important thing, it would be super helpful if you could leave a class review. I always enjoy reading what you enjoyed more about the class, and I always keep reviews in mind when planning and creating your classes. So your reviews are super important to me. That's all for me now. Thanks again. I hope to see you in future classes. Bye.