Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi, my name is Kolbie, and I'm a self-taught
watercolor artist. I'm sure we've all seen watercolor that comes
in a palette like this, or we've seen it that
comes in a liquid jar or in tubes or in dry little cakes that you
can buy at the store. But have you ever seen a
watercolor that looks like this? If you're saying to yourself, but Colby, those are markers. That's because this
class is all about using water-based markers as a
substitute for watercolor. We are going to go into the
different ways that you can use marker as a substitute for creating
a watercolor effect, the different kinds of water-based watercolor
markers that I have, and which ones are my favorite. Then we're going
to practice using watercolor techniques and
paint four different projects. That's right, four. If that sounds
interesting to you, and you want to learn to
paint this or this galaxy, this sunflower, this
classic gradient night sky, all using a water-based
marker then this is the class for you and I would love
for you to join me.
2. Materials: Before we get started, I just want to go over quickly the materials that you
will need for this class. First and foremost,
you're going to need any type of
water-based marker. In a later video, I'm going to go over all
of the water-based markers that I have and talk
about the pros and cons. But for you, you don't have to have all of
these that I have here. You just need your own set
of water-based markers. That could be Crayola, that could be Karin markers, that could be Ecoline brush
pen watercolor markers, Tombows that are water-based. The important thing is
that they have to be water-based because that is what will allow them to
activate and be a substitute for watercolor. Any water-based marker
is what we're going to use for our ink,
for our color. Then the rest of
the supplies are pretty much what you
would use in watercolor. I have a mixing palette. Palette for using markers as watercolor is
especially important so make sure that you
have a mixing palette. This one is a handmade
ceramic palette that I have, but you can also just use
any plastic palette or even a Ziploc bag sometimes
works or a plate, any dish, something that
is really smooth and will allow the ink to rest on the palate and
let you pick it up. Then a paintbrush. Any paintbrush will be fine. I usually use Princeton
paintbrushes, I may use a larger
size than this also, this is around size 6. I may also use around size
10 or a smaller size 0, depending on the projects. Then some masking
tape to tape down your paper and some
watercolor papers. I want to make a note
about the paper. Usually, when I do
watercolor classes, I use student-grade
paper to practice, and I use professional-grade
paper for my final project. But when I use water-based
markers for projects, I don't normally use professional-grade
paper ever and that's because professional-grade
papers are made of 100 percent cotton and that
makes it really textured, it makes it really rough and
especially if you're using brush pens that you might also
want to use for lettering. Using these brush pens or any
marker with a felt tip on professional watercolor paper is a fast-track to
ruining the tips. If you don't care at all about ruining the
tips of your markers, although I will say
that it will probably drive them out faster as well to use 100 percent cotton
paper, then it's fine. But because I like to
preserve these things, I use student-grade
watercolor paper when I'm using
markers as watercolor because it is a little
bit smoother but still starting enough
to withhold the water. That's my one note about that. I will also say though, that if you're planning to use markers as watercolor regularly, you probably shouldn't use the same ones that you
use for lettering or calligraphy just
because no matter if you're using watercolor or
any watercolor paper at all, it's going to fray your brush pens at some
point probably soon. The best paper to use for
brush pens is really smooth, like Bristol paper or a
laser printer paper or marker paper and any
watercolor paper at all, we'll likely ruin
the brush tip over time and make them less
ideal for lettering. I'm probably going
to go more into that as I go over the pros and cons of all of these different water-based
markers that I have. But I just wanted to make
a note of that while we're in this first materials video. Then also I have a white gel pen that
I am going to use for one or two of the
projects and two cups of water off to the side like
I usually always do one to keep dirty and one to keep clean and then some
paper towels off to the side as well to blot out your paintbrush just like any normal
watercoloring session. With that, let's go ahead and gather all
of your materials, even if you're using a
water-based marker that I don't have here,
that's totally fine. Just wanted to say that again. The only important thing is
that it's water-based as opposed to like
alcohol-based or archival. If it says archival on it,
that means it's permanent, and it will not be
activated by water. Let's now move right along.
3. Watercolor vs Water-Based Markers: Before we get started
learning how to use water-based markers as a
substitution for watercolor, I wanted to do a quick
demonstration of the difference between watercolor and
water-based markers. Obviously, the difference is, one one paint and one is ink. But just so that you can
see how the two stack up. I'm going to use one of my favorite colors and
adds a color that's potent both in watercolor
and in these markers. This is Queen Rose. It's like this deep
raspberry pink. When you activate watercolor, at least when I have these dried watercolor
in my palette over here, I bring some water with my paintbrush and tap it
into this little well and activate the pigment and make it movable and turn it into a liquid by adding
the water over here, and then just painting
right along with it. The magic of watercolor really is with the
wet-on-wet technique, using watercolor to blend and create some soft and
magical textures. Water-based markers work
to do that as well, because they're also
activated with water. But there are some things
about water-based markers that are a little different. For example [NOISE], if I try to use this
ecoline brush pen, first, I would activate it. I would draw on
this palette over here just to let the
ink sit on the palette, and because it's a smooth
surface it's not going to like absorb into the
palette or anything. Then I would take my
paintbrush and with water, just dip it right
into the ink and use it like my own little
watercolor well, but one thing about water-based marker ink
is that it dries a lot faster than watercolor does. Where with watercolor, I can wait a few seconds and go back like I did over here,
extend this gradient. With water-based markers, it dries a little faster and dried paint lines
happen more frequently. You do have to work a little
faster or make sure that your paper stays wet longer
with water-based marker ink. That's something that
is important to note. Also important to note, especially if you're using a
palette to activate the ink, because you have to add water to it and the ink is
all ready its most potent when it's on the palette, the color that you get
is going to be lighter. It's going to have
a lighter value than watercolor typically. That just has to do with you use more water to activate the ink because it already has
water in it when you put it on the palette,
it's already wet. That's what allows you to write with it when you have it in the marker is
that it's already wet, and activated with water. In order to make it possible
to paint with a paintbrush, you need to add more water and that dilutes the
pigment a little bit. That's another thing
that's important to note as a difference
between the two. Other than that, I
would say that probably watercolor markers also come
in much brighter colors. They don't always come
in the neutral colors that are really good
oftentimes for landscapes. Just know that you're
probably not going to get a very dense dark pigment
with watercolor markers, but that doesn't mean that you can't have
fun with them and you can't paint really
beautiful things with them. That's what this class is about. We're going to learn
how we can use watercolor markers as a
substitution for watercolors. Not an exact translation. Not like I could get rid
of my watercolors today, but as an addition to
your work as an artist, you can explore and expand and try other
fun things as well. That's just a brief overview
and side-by-side comparison of watercolor versus
water-based markers. Now, let's move on to some
more demos and techniques.
4. Watercolor Techniques: Now that we've talked about just the difference between watercolor and
water-based markers, let's talk about using watercolor techniques with
these water-based marker. The basic watercolor
techniques are the wet-on-dry technique and
the wet-on-wet technique. Wet-on-dry means
you are painting watercolor on dry paper, and wet-on-wet means
you're painting watercolor on wet paper. These two techniques
look a little different. I mean, they look very
similar but approaching it, you can approach them
in different ways when you're using
water-based markers. The first way that we're
going to talk about, we've already discussed in
the previous video when we activated this one
of these markers, the ICO line magenta
marker on this palette. The first way that you can activate water-based markers is by coloring directly on
some kind of palette. Now I'm going to use some
art lines sticks markers, and I'm just going
to show you again. You color directly
on the palette and then you take your paint brush
and dip it in some water and use that water to activate the ink and help it
stick to your paintbrush. Then you can paint just like you would with
normal watercolors. The wet-on-dry technique is defined by these
crisp clear lines, and when you use
your paintbrush, it's just like you would
paint with watercolor, except for the differences
that we talked about in the previous video, like ink from
water-based markers dries a little quicker
than watercolor and so you have to move a
little faster if you want to manipulate it
while it's still wet. But other than that, it's mostly the
same as watercolor. The other difference
is that if you try to paint on top of it, glazing doesn't really work
because it's water-based, not pigment based
and so the ink will, if you put water on top of it, even after it's already dried, the ink will disperse because the water is going
to reactivate it. That's using the
wet-on-dry technique with these water-based
markers drawing on a pallet. Then the wet-on-wet technique will also look pretty similar to when we normally use
watercolors with our paints. If we get the paper wet first and then dip a wet paint
brush into some paint here, we can paint right
in this wet area and it's just like
using watercolor. But with the
wet-on-wet technique especially it's
important to know that the ink is going to dry faster than watercolor
paint would. That means with the
wet-on-wet technique, if you want to
maintain those blends, you need to move faster as well. That was the quick rundown of how to use these
basic techniques using a mixing palette
and drawing on a pallet. Basically using the markers as a direct substitution for
paint just on a pallet. In the next video we're going to talk about the second way, how to us water-based markers as a substitution
for watercolor.
5. More Ways to Use the Markers: Welcome back. In
the previous video, we talked about using a
palette to encourage and leave the ink from
water-based markers so that we can use it as a
substitution for watercolor. In this video, we're going talk about other ways that you can use water-based markers
as watercolors. Basically, there are two ways. One is instead of transferring the ink from
your marker to a palette, you can transfer directly
to the page and then very quickly use your paintbrush to activate it even further. This method is great if you're
trying to paint galaxies, or you're trying [NOISE] to
paint skies or gradients. You want to have your color from the
marker be really potent, because as we discussed
before in a previous video, when you take the
ink from a palette, and you need to
activate it with water on the palette before
even painting, adding that water is going to lighten the value of the color. It's going to make the
colors not quite as bright as if you were able to paint directly on the paper. Using water-based
markers in this way, to draw directly on the paper
and moving very quickly, [NOISE] using your paintbrush to activate those colors
together helps to keep the vibrance
of the colors and still use these
water-based markers as a substitution
for watercolor. One thing I will
note about this, and it's something I've
talked about before is, ink is going to
dry very quickly, it's going to dry even more quickly when you draw
directly on the paper as opposed to using the
ink from the palette. If you wait even just
a little bit too long, you're going to see
dried paint lines. I'm purposefully waiting
a little bit longer, and then when I go to
try to activate this, notice how it's faint, but there's still a
dried paint lines on here where you can see just the paint
outline of where I initially drew with the
marker on this paper. I think that there are
other papers you can use that help to
diminish this effect, where you use the marker to draw directly on the
paper and then use your paintbrush to activate it. There are different papers
that alleviate that somewhat, but every paper you use, if you wait too long to
activate the marker, you're still going to get this dried outline of a paint line
[BACKGROUND].I've also found that sometimes is better at not leaving behind
those paint lines, they are also worse
for the markers. On the whole, I would
still rather stick with a Canson student grade paper or like Strathmore
student grade paper, but just note that you're going to have to move a
little faster if you want to avoid these
dried paint lines. You can also use
the markers to draw directly on wet paper. I have a little wet square here, and I can use this marker to draw directly
on this wet paper. It's not going to act exactly like watercolor
for the most part, but you are going to
get these blurry lines. The difference between
watercolor is that instead of blooming outward and a
nice watercolor texture, I still have this draw, this line of marker, it's still drying
with the marker, but the lines are
going be fuzzy. One thing to note about that is different
markers are going to react differently
with this effect, and we're going to talk
more about that in the video where I do a demo of all of these
markers that I have, and that demo video is
going to help you know and decide which markers you want to use for which projects,
things like that. We're going to
discuss that more, but this is a way that you can use water-based markers as a substitution
for watercolor. It's just forgoing the
paintbrush entirely and painting directly
on a wet surface. I think that the
best way to do this [NOISE] is probably to do a mix. Again, with the other one, if you want a more
vibrant or potent color, and you still want to have that blurry edge effect
than to do both, to paint, to draw directly
on a wet surface, and then use your
paintbrush to manipulate it even further if that's the
direction that you want to go. Finally, you can also
with very few markers, this doesn't really work
with a lot of them. In fact, I think it
really only works with these Karin brush markers
but sometimes markers are so wet and so inky that you can use the wet-on-wet technique directly in the marker stroke
that you've just laid down. I've really only seen
this happen with Karin markers where
if you can see, I drew this blue
streak right here, and then I tapped in some of this light blue
that you can see. It's blended right in there. It doesn't work
exactly the same or as long as actual watercolor, but it does work and is
useful for blending. Those are just a few
short ways that you can use water-based markers as a substitution for
some techniques for the different watercolor techniques that we already know. There's another way
that I want to talk about that's not so
much for watercolor. I don't know that
you're really going to use it for illustration that much except maybe
to make gradients. It's a method you likely
already know if you do lettering or work
with brush markers. It's a pretty fun and easy. Basically, if you just
draw right on a pallet, [NOISE] just leave
some ink directly on your palette and then take a different color brush pen and basically [NOISE]
lift the ink from a different color brush pen. Then you can mix those colors directly on the pen and
create this natural gradient. Because water-based
markers are water-based, they can lift and blend
directly on the nibs. I've not really found
this super useful for painting watercolor
landscapes necessarily, although you could paint mini landscapes to do a
little gradients like this. But I would classify
this more as an illustration
technique generally rather than a
watercolor technique. Still it was worth mentioning that you can use this method to create gradients without needing a paintbrush or water at all. That wraps up this video on using markers and
watercolor techniques, and now we're going
to move right along.
6. Marker Review: Welcome back. Now
let's take a look at the seven different
water-based markers that I have on hand, to just see what the pros and
cons are of each of them. Before we get started, I want to say that for the projects that
we're going to do, after, mostly I'm going to use Karin markers because
they are my favorite. If you don't feel like going over all of the
rest of them and want to just know my best recommendation it would definitely
be Karin markers, but let's dive into why that is and all of the
other markers as well. I think when doing
side-by-side comparisons, it's always most helpful if
you can use the same color. I don't always have
the exact same hue of all these colors
and I couldn't find my purple kuretake marker. Most of these are like a
typical violet purple. Some of them are more
on the blue-violet and some of them are more
on the red-violet end. But I thought that it
would be helpful to look at mostly the same hue. Because it's important to note that even different hues within the same brand react differently depending
on the situation. As you are doing your
own experimenting, I would look into that as well. How different colors
are either stronger, pigment-wise, or if
they dry faster. Those are important
things to look at. But for now, let's take a look at these seven different
brands of markers and how to test their ability
to replace watercolor. First, let's take a
look at Karin markers. I already said that
they are my favorite, but we're still going to do the four tests that
I recommend you do for any of the water-based markers
that you have if you're trying to determine
what you should use. First, let's test the
pigment strength when we draw on a pallet versus
when we draw right on paper. First I'm going to transfer some of this
ink to my palette and then I'm going to
take my paintbrush, activate it, and just make a little gradient right underneath where I
wrote the word Karin. We are making this
gradient by painting with the ink first
and then washing off my paintbrush and then
using clean water to meet where I left the ink so that I can have this subtle
shift from dark to light. This light gradient, this is the plum
color Karin marker. Looks like after I have
diluted it with water and activated it with a pallet so it's pretty light,
pretty delicate. That's the first test. Then the second
test is to create a gradient by drawing
directly on the paper first. I'm going to draw, just scribbled directly on
this paper about halfway, then take my paintbrush
and continue it. I'm going to activate the
water first and then take clean water and meet
it like I did before, just so that I can
spread the gradient out a little bit and see
how light it can go. That is the gradient. That is the Karin
marker when we draw directly on the paper and
activate it on the paper. As you can see, the places where it
was untouched by water and I'm even going to just add a little bit
more ink to it here. It's much more vibrant and potent when you draw
directly on the paper. Me at my adding ink directly
to this wet spot is a technique that Karin
markers do particularly well because they're so
inky and so pigmented. A lot of other brands don't
do this quite as well. Where I can take the marker
and tap it into a wet space. We're going to test that technique with
other markers as well. We first tested making a gradient by using the
ink that we transferred directly from our palette and
then making a gradient that we made by first drawing on the paper and
then activating it. As you draw on the
paper and activate it, I'm going to do
this one more time. It's also important to
look for whether or not your marker leaves
behind a dried paint line. Typically, the best way to test that or to see
you just offhand, is to see how wet
your markers are, how wet the ink is and Karin
markers are really wet. The more wet they are, the longer they're going to
be able to stay on the paper without drying and leaving staining the paper with
that dried ink line. Then finally, we're just going to test how well the marker will activate via the wet-on-wet technique if we draw directly on a wet
piece of paper. This is the fourth and
final test I'm going to do for all of
these markers and Karin markers passes this
test with flying colors. They still don't expand quite as much as if I was
using real watercolor, but they bloom and blend so nicely and well right on
this wet spot of the paper. That's one of the
reasons why I prefer Karin markers if I'm using markers as a replacement for watercolor over just about
any of the other ones. We're going to do
these four tests. Making a gradient by
using the ink transfer, making a gradient
by using the marker and testing the
dried paint line and testing the marker via the wet-on-wet
technique painting directly in a wet surface. We're going to do
all of these tests for all of the markers. That was Karin and now
let's move on to Tombow. I hope you enjoyed
that little time-lapse of how I tested all of
these different markers, and now I'm going to
go over the results. First, let's take a
look at how light all of the markers are when we
activate them with water, and what happens to them. It looks to me the lightest
when activated with markers are Winsor and
Newton, Ecoline and Kuretake. I think that Crayola probably
in there too and Tombow. All of them are pretty light. Maybe I should do the reverse. The most vibrant I think
even after using a palette, are Artline sticks
and Karin markers, and then all of the other
ones are definitely dampened, much lighter when
you add the water. Another way to test
the vibrancy is to see how dark the second
gradients are, where I drew directly
on the paper. I feel like this
test also confirms our theory that Artline
sticks and Karin are the most vibrant of the seven markers
that I was using. That's important to note if you are trying to paint things that have a high vibrance or
maybe a high contrast. If you're trying to
paint the night sky where the top of the
night sky is really dark and vibrant and
pigmenty and the bottom is more much lighter, then the contrast is what
makes that possible. You want a marker
that will go really, really dark and vibrant
as well as really, really light and airy. From the tests that we did, the limited tests keep in mind, because like I
mentioned earlier, different colors
react differently. But the tests that
we've done so far, it looks like Karin
and Artline are both more vibrant
than the other ones. Other things to look for is the wet-in-wet tests that we did. I'm looking for whether the ink reacted in
a really bloomy, cloudy way similar to
how watercolor reacts and not very many of
the markers really did. You get these more
bloated textures. Tombow did a little
bit but then had this weird background
drying effect. Most of them just look like blurry dots that still
hold the form of one. I dotted the marker, but I was expecting that and
I was preparing you for it. Most of these
markers don't really work very well, wet-in-wet, but they can still be activated
and used as watercolor. Then the other thing
that I wanted to look for was dried paint lines. Some of these gradients, I waited longer to reactivate
them with water to see how and where the dried
paint lines would form and most of them do. Kuretake has some pretty defined dried
paint lines underneath the wash. Artline has a pretty defined dried
paint line right there. Winsor and Newton does as well. Although I will say
that Karin also does. I think that dried
paint lines is something that is difficult to avoid when you're using water-based markers unless
you're moving very fast, or you're willing
to cover it up. One way to come back to the dried paint lines is to
just make sure that you are covering up with darker
or another layer of watercolor where
the paint lines exist. We're going to talk
about that as we move on to the projects as well, but I wanted to show you
these four tests that I do, testing the water, testing the ink from a palette, testing the ink when you
draw directly on the paper, and testing it wet on wet. If you have any
other tests that you discover or experimenting with then feel free to
share them with me or do your own experiments. But this is really helpful when I'm determining which
marker I want to use. As these tests indicate when I'm using water-based
markers as watercolor, I almost always either go with Karin or Artline because they're more vibrant and that's
what I'm looking for. The thing that surprised
me most about this was knowing that Ecoline
and Winsor and Newton, which are both marketed as watercolor markers,
are less vibrant. That doesn't mean
that they're bad. It just means that if you want really vibrant potent pieces, then maybe these brands aren't
what you want to go with. But these are really great
for more subtle soft pieces. In conversely, I really
love Winsor and Newton and Ecoline pens for lettering way more than I like
Artline for lettering. I like these two. These are some of my very
favorites for lettering. Karin is probably just
my favorite overall. One last thing, Crayola is by far the cheapest
of all of these. I want to say that it
held up really well, even up against these more
really expensive markers. If Crayola is the only
one that you have on hand, it's pretty vibrant. It did pretty well with
the wet-in-wet technique. I think that there are
some dried paint lines, but not more than any
of the other ones. Crayola is definitely
a viable choice here, especially if you're not wanting to invest in anything
more expensive. That wraps up this
markers roundup video. Now, finally, let's move on
to the watercolor projects.
7. Project 1: Sunset Landscape: Welcome to project number 1. In project number 1, we are going to use water-based
markers, Karin markers, and a pallet to use these markers as a
more traditional substitution form of watercolor. Meaning every time
I use these colors, I'm going to draw directly on this palette and use my
paintbrush on the palette, activating the ink with my paintbrush as opposed to drawing directly on the paper. For this piece, we are going to paint a quick little
sunset mountain piece. First things first, I'm
going to [NOISE] just scribble a few of
the colors that I'm going to use right
on my palette here. I'm using sky blue, canary yellow, rose pink, and pale orange for
the sky to create a colorful cotton
candy sky effect. [NOISE] There are
my colors and now, I'm going to get my paper wet. This is traditionally
how I start almost all of my landscape paintings regardless of what
watercolor I use. I'm going to get my paper wet. Notice that I'm using
student-grade paper and I taped it down with masking
tape just to keep the paper as taut as possible. I'm using some clean water
to get this paper wet. Now I'm going to take
my brush and start with the sky blue and
just paint along the top. As you can see, I'm going to paint in these
jagged strokes leaving behind some white spaces so I can
add more colors in later. As you can see, as we practiced
with Karin markers, the ink from Karin markers is pretty vibrant so you can get some really cool and
beautiful colors by using the ink
from these markers. Now I'm going to take the
canary yellow and start from the bottom and paint
upward from the bottom. This is just to create that
time of day in the sunset when the sky is still blue. If it's a sunset, it
hasn't quite started yet. But it's just starting
to shift colors. The bottom is going to stay this yellow color
and then it's going to just bleed a little bit into the blue sky and then
while this is still wet, I'm going to use the pale
orange and the rose pink to create some little clouds in the white spaces that
we left behind here. I'm going to start
with the orange, and with orange and blue, you want to be careful
not to mix them too much, that's partly why I left
behind these white spaces because orange and blue
are complementary colors. This is pale orange though, so it's not going to clash as much as bright orange would, still it's important to note. Then just right on
top of the orange, I'm going to tap on some pink and because of
the wet-on-wet technique, the colors are just
going to blend together. If they don't blend together, if it looks like they've dried, that's because your paper
has dried too quickly, and so it's important to move fast when you're trying to paint to the wet-on-wet
technique like this. Then really quickly, I'm just going to take
more pale orange and blend the two colors together
in all of my clouds so that I have this nice
cloudy blend instead of some stark or harsh
bleeds in the clouds. I'm just tapping along
and I'm moving very quickly and you'll notice
that as I'm moving quickly, I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm not trying to make
perfectly-formed clouds. If I did try to do that, if I tried to make my clouds
shaped a little "better", the ink would dry before I got a chance to even do
anything, and so here, I'm just really
embracing the doesn't have to be perfect
philosophy in an effort to avoid dried paint
lines and to just really love this loose
watercolor style that I already know
is pretty cool. There are some of my clouds. Now, I'm going to let this layer dry and paint some mountains. [NOISE] To form the little
mountain ridge that I'm going to paint, I want it to be pretty dark, and so I'm going to
use this Karin marker. This color is usually
sapphire blue, which is the darkest
blue that I could find, and then I'm going to directly
on my mixing palette, add some black to it. Normally, if you know
anything about color theory, adding black to a
color turns it into a shade of that color and
that's exactly what we want because I want this to be tinted blue but
darker than that. I'm going to get it really, really watery and then making sure my brush is flat so I'm getting a lot
of paint on there. I'm just going to paint a jagged mountain ridge
all the way across here. Then I'm going to act
quickly and fill in the bottom so I don't have any
dried paint lines on here. I'm trying to fill
in the mountain by either painting with
a wet paint brush, just with water or
grabbing more ink so that I don't leave behind
any dried paint lines. Then I'm going to wait for
this mountain layer to dry. [NOISE] This mountain layer is dry and
something interesting that happened is this mountain layer looks dark green rather than the dark blue that
we painted and that's because the water-based ink has the same transparent
qualities that watercolor does. By painting with the blue on top of this really
vibrant yellow sky, it turned to green, and that has to do with
glazing and using layers. In an earlier lesson, I talked about how some forms
of glazing doesn't really work with water-based markers because it won't really
always hold it shapes, some part of the ink will always reactivate, and that's true. If I were to paint this whole thing over
again with water, some parts of the sky
and the mountain, the pigment would
lift up and blend and bleed into the sky making all this big muddy
mess as opposed to if this was
pigment-based watercolor, if it were completely dry, I could wash over again with some water and mostly
it would stay, it would hold its form. Trying to glaze on top of already formed layers or objects in a layer underneath
wouldn't always work. But if you're just trying to use the colors and the transparency underneath and in your glazing, not necessarily trying to hold some shape in
a previous layer, then glazing and layering
works really well. That is just a little note
that I have about that, using watercolor markers as a substitution and how
the differences there. We have this mountain layer. Now, I'm just going
to finish off this [NOISE] painting by painting one more mountain
layer only using black. I'm going to do the same
thing that I did before, activating it with my paintbrush
and then I'm going to do a really thin small
little mountain layer right at the bottom here. Maybe have a little peak
that comes up on this side. Then I'm going to
take some more of the black and just to paint a few birds that are coming
out of the mountain. Just to add a little
bit of complexity and contrast in the
sunset. There we go. That is a landscape, a sunset painting with some cotton candy sky
with the pink clouds and the blue sky that
we painted only using Karin markers and
a watercolor palette. Let's take off the tape and see what our
painting looks like. [NOISE] Here we go. We took off the tape. It caught a little
bit on the top here, so it ripped off a
little bit of the paper, but that has more to do with the paper than it
does with the tape. If you're ever using
masking tape or painter's tape or washing
tape and it tears your paper, it's probably because you're using non good-quality paper, and I know that
we're not this time, it's student-grade, which I did on purpose to use
with these markers, so I'm fine with that. I also want to note that when you're doing these
little projects, I'm doing all of them on
small pieces of paper. I took a 9 by 12 inch sheet of Canson student-grade
watercolor paper, and I just cut it
into quarters because I knew that working with
water-based markers, you have to move fast or else you're going to get
some dried paint lines. Working on a small
piece of paper is going to be the best
way to practice that. This painting is on a
small piece of paper. I think it looks pretty cool, even if it was painted using
only the ink from markers, it still looks like an
awesome watercolor painting. This is project number 1, and now let's move on
to project number 2.
8. Project 2: Night Sky: Welcome to project number 2 in our exploring
water-based markers as a substitution for
a watercolor class. In this project, we're going to use our Karin markers
to paint directly on the paper most of
the time forgoing the pallet so that we can
get a more vibrant effect. The reason I want to
do it is because we are painting a night sky. This is one of my very
favorite projects. One of my very favorite designs. I've done it lots of times
over the years as I've taught, and it's a fan favorite. I thought that I would
use this project as a way to demonstrate how to use Karin markers in
their full potency by drawing directly on the paper in order to capture that kind of
stunning gradient effect. First of all, I'm using
my marker at an angle. These are brush
markers, ultimately, so I still want to maintain
the tip as much as possible. Then I'm going to go about maybe a little
more than 1/3 down the paper and just put one or
two layers of ink on here. Then I'm going to move quickly, and grab my paintbrush with
some water and paint just directly in the pigment
that I've already created. I can go right from the
top and keep moving down. I'm continually adding water to my brush and washing it off. Then as I'm going down the page, in order to maintain a gradient, I'm washing off
my paintbrush and using clean water to paint upward to meet this watercolor gradient
that I've created. If you want to know more about
my night sky techniques, I have a night sky class where I go over all of my favorite
gradient techniques for creating this
kind of night sky. I'd recommend checking that
out if you're interested. This just uses those
same techniques but with these Karin markers. It started with painting down, and then because of the
wet-on-wet technique, the water helped to make
the pigment lighter. It gets lighter as it
goes towards the bottom. Then in order to keep
the bottom as light as possible and maintain
the contrast between light and dark, then I take a clean brush and paint from the bottom upward because you need to paint from light to dark so that you don't accidentally get the
bottom to be too dark. Now that we have this
nice-looking gradient, I'm just going to draw
directly again on my page with the Karin marker to make
the top slightly darker. That looks pretty good to me. I'm just going to blend
that right in to the page. Now I'm going to let
this gradient dry. Here's our dried gradient. It is a pretty rock
and gradient for only using this sapphire blue
Karin markers where I just drew directly on
the paper and then used water to
activate the markers ink and push it down a little
bit so that I can create this nice gradient
from light to dark. Now we are going to use
a black Karin marker to paint directly on the
paper to draw some trees. Similar to the way
that I paint trees, I'm going to use very little pressure to draw out a thin
line for the trunk, and I'm starting from a
little below that line, I'm just going to
paint some blobs on either side of this
trunk to form my tree. Brush markers make
it helpful to mimic my painting tree
process this way because they have
the flexibility to utilize the
different pressures. I'm actually going to change the angle so that you can see these trees a little
better. I'm back. I'm just going to
paint a few trees along the horizon here. The trees are supposed to
act as a contrast against the night sky and help make the night sky
look even brighter. They're just silhouetted
against the sky. These really inky
Karin markers make for excellent watercolor
brush substitutions when painting trees
like this, I've found. I'm just painting little blobs on either side of the tree. I'm going to have one tree
that goes all the way up here because that's my signature move to have one really tall tree and maybe have it a
little thicker as well down towards the bottom, just adding more
blobs on either side. I'm going to have that
tree and then I think one more going into the
side like this. That wraps it up for my trees. The last step to this night sky painting using Karin markers is
to draw in some stars. I am using this Sakura
Gelly Roll Gel Pen in white to just manually
draw in my stars. If you've taken any
of my other classes, usually I recommend getting some white gouache and
splattering stars. You can still do that this time. You would splatter them
before you paint the trees. But because we're going for non-traditional
non-paint methods here, I decided to use my gel
pen to draw in the stars. The trick with drawing in stars manually is that you need to draw the stars in
clusters or clumps instead of just one at a time because when you
draw them one at a time, you're more likely to create
a pattern, I have found. If you draw them in clusters, it look slightly more realistic. I left this pen open
accidentally overnight, and so some of the dots aren't coming out quite as
well as I want to because some of the ink from the pen has
dried along the rims. But that's okay. I'm just
dotting a bunch of stars here. You can even give them
some movement or rhythm. I know that some people
like to draw a wave of stars just to maybe mimic
the Milky Way a little bit. Either way, it's going
to look the best if your stars have some semblance of chaos and randomness to them just because
that's how stars look. That's why normally I like to splatter in the first place. But it is fun to test
your drawing ability and just to stretch
yourself in different ways even if it's something
as little as drawing stars a different
way than you normally do. You could also make some
of the stars bigger. Or you could even draw in
a little constellation. But then I'm going
to finish this off. I'm just going to flick my wrist and draw a shooting
star off to the corner, which is something that
I usually do also, and have done for years. That completes this night sky. Let's take off the tape to
see what we're dealing with. That's pretty darn good. I think that considering we didn't use any
watercolor at all, this watercolor night sky
looks pretty awesome. This was project number 2. Now on to project number 3.
9. Project 3: Galaxy: Welcome back. This is project number 3 of this using water-based markers as a substitute for
watercolor class and we're going to
paint a galaxy. We're going to paint
this galaxy by drawing directly on the paper. We're also going to use a pallet to enhance the color blends
that we're going to do. Let's get right into it. First, make sure you pick colors that will
blend well together. Yellows and blues always
blend really well together. I'm just going to take
my colors and I'm going to draw directly on this piece of paper and sometimes leaving
behind white space, so leaving white space in-between the colors,
sometimes not. I'm just going to take
these Karen markers, drawing at an angle and draw all over this
paper right here. I'm trying to move
quickly so that I can activate the colors in just
a minute with the water. [NOISE] Now I'm going to take my paintbrush and
with a bunch of water, I'm just going to in circles activate all
of these colors. Note that because if you
do this method where you do all the
colors down at once, you are going to have
some dried paint lines from the brushstrokes
and that's okay because we're going to use
the watercolors after on a pallet to try to hide and cover up some of
those brushstrokes and make the contrast between
the colors even greater. For this first step is to
just get the pigment down, get the colors down, and activate them as soon
as possible with water, continually washing
off your paintbrush, and coming back with
plenty of water. Now that we have activated all of these colors
and we have our paper wet, and we have this cool
blend of colors together, now I'm going to use the
edges of my masking tape as a palette and draw directly on the masking tape with the colors so that I
can pick them up again. While the painting is still wet. [NOISE] Use the
wet-on-wet technique to add even more drop
in even more color into this piece and especially
if you see a place where there are dried paint lines
from the brushstrokes. They're definite lines from where you originally
colored on the paper, then that's where I would focus your efforts to just
tap your paintbrush, tap the pigment that
you're picking up along those dried paint lines so
that you can cover them up. You might not be perfect at it. You might not cover
up all of them. But that's okay. This is not to be perfect. This is mostly an experiment and having fun with watercolor. [NOISE] If it doesn't look exactly like normal watercolor,
that's totally fine. You may have to apply some ink to the outside of
your makeshift palettes here because as soon as you
add water to activate them, it turns them lighter. If you want more potent colors as you're painting in here, then you're going to need to get more of the colors
directly from the marker. That's just how it goes. Notice how we're all mostly putting the light colors here. I do have that dark blue. We're going to add
black and dark blue in just a little bit to really turn it into
that space kind of galaxy. But first, just
keep adding color, re-wetting things as necessary, covering up dried paint
lines where you see them. Keep going until you feel
like you have a decent amount of color blending going on
and then let that layer dry. Now that this layer is dry, we're going to do something
that I told you not to do but it's okay because we want these
colors to blend together. We're going to re-wet it completely and then
once it's wet again, we're going to add even
more color on top of it, and this time add more black and
darker colors along the outside to complete
our galaxy look. I'm just re-wetting my page with some clean water and
trying to move fast. We're going to do basically
the same thing we did before. But this time I'm going to start with some black
and I'm going to use this palette instead of the masking tape because
I ran out of room and take this black and just
along the outsides here, while my painting is still wet, paint a cloudy, wet on wet border
around this galaxy. I may need to see even
student grade paper does this in so does watercolor
marker ink. It's already dried
really quickly. I want to go back in with
some clean water and re-wet. Make sure to blend in this marker with the paper so I don't get tons of
dried paint lines and some of that sometimes that
might mean even picking up colors from before and blending it right into the black edges that
you've created here so that you don't have as many dried paint lines
so that you can avoid them as much as possible. I'm just going to use this
palette even more to pick up some more colors [NOISE] and [NOISE] continue painting
as quickly as possible. Let's pick up some yellow
here and just tap it, blend it into the dark color. Over here I noticed
some of the black dried into not a naturally shaped
paint lines so that's where I want to add more black to cover up that paint line and keep going until
I feel satisfied. The thing about watercolor
galaxies is that it doesn't have to look perfect. I mean, unless you're working
from a reference photo that you've taken from NASA's
website or something, it doesn't have to look exactly like what you might
imagine something in space to look like and
that's generally my rule when it comes to
painting with loose watercolor, especially when
you're experimenting, like when we're
experimenting with water-based markers as a
substitution for watercolor. Just feel free to be loose and paint and blend as you like, and then stop at some point
and have that be okay. One thing before you stop that
I would recommend trying, especially if you're
using Karen markers, this might not work if
you're using other markers. But especially if you're
using Karen markers, you can also go ahead and
just use the black right on the wet paper and blend it
in to the peace that way. I wouldn't do it the
whole way around. I would go in pieces. I would paint right on the paper and then blend
it in and then paint on the paper and blend it in
because otherwise it could dry before you get a
chance to blend it and you could end up with some, again dried paint lines
that you don't really want. But if you just use the
marker to draw right on the edge and allow the wet-on-wet
technique to work its magic, you can get some really
vibrant and dark results that way and it doesn't have
to be on the whole thing. Even if you do it in pieces, you don't have to do all
the way around necessarily. But that is a
method that you can use to get some even
more vibrant pigment. You don't even have to
only do it with the black. [NOISE] You can also, while it's still wet
paint directly on here with other colors, you just want to make sure
to blend them in with your paintbrush
so that you don't end up with marks that look like you have actually
paint drawn in with a marker, but you wanted to
blend it so it has that nice naturally cloudy look. [NOISE] I'm just going to paint with some yellow in here just to
add even more contrast. That looks pretty good to me. I'm going to let that
dry and then we're going to draw in the stars. [MUSIC] There we have it. I drew in some stars and I
took off the tape and here is a watercolor galaxy that we
painted using Karen markers. It looks pretty cool. It looks a lot like a normal watercolor
galaxy would look like. I hope you enjoyed this project
and let's head on over to the fourth and final
project in this class.
10. Project 4: Sunflower: Welcome to the final
project in this class. We're going to [NOISE] use our Karin Markers as
paintbrushes once again, and we're going to paint a watercolor sunflower
using no paintbrushes, using no palettes,
just the markers. First, let's get started
with pulling out the colors. I'm going to be using
sepia and copper brown, gold, and lush green
with Karin Markers. I'm going to get started with painting the center
of my sunflower, which is brown, and so I'm just going to
paint concentric circles, leaving behind some white
space of this center. Because I want the center of the sunflower to have a
little bit of texture to it so that you
can see at least, see like let your mind
trick you into thinking you're seeing all of the small little details that make up the center
of a big sunflower. One thing to remember
with sunflowers, at least, when I'm
painting them, is that the brown center is almost always bigger than
you think it needs to be. I'm just tapping on dots in circles around to paint
this big centerpiece. Then, once I have it down, I'm going to take my
gold Karin Marker, and draw using a thick, thin brushstroke,
draw in a petal. I do this in three motions. One side of the petal like that, one side of the petal like this, and then just coloring it in, and making sure to have
the petals stick outward. They're all coming out from
the middle of this sunflower. I like to do my layers
of petals in two rounds, so I'm going to do one layer where there's some space
between the petals, and then another
layer after that. Then I'm probably going to even add another layer of brown, but we will get there
when we get there. You can also turn your paper. Notice, I didn't tape
it down this time, and I did that on purpose so
that I can turn my paper, I'm also not using a heavy wash, so it's not super necessary. We have this one
layer of petals down. Before we move on
to the next layer, take your copper brown, and I'm just going to, using the wet-on-wet technique, add just a little bit of texture from the middle into the petals, just so these petals can have just a little bit of movement
in details on there. Not a lot, and it's okay if
it doesn't look perfect. It's also okay if you don't
really like this style. But I'm just adding a few
lines onto the petals just to add a little bit of
depth to those petals. Then I'm going to go again, and this time because these
petals are water-based, some of them might
bleed into each other and that's okay,
it's not a big deal. If you can't see every
individual petal, if they blend together, that is an effect that I
am definitely okay with. But as I'm finishing
painting these petals, I'm just going in between the
ones that I've already made and forming the petals
in the same way. Then I'm going to go back
[NOISE] and add a few details. You don't have to add
these copper-red details to all of the petals,
definitely not. You can do it to just a few
of them and that is okay too. Then finally, this looks
more like a daisy to me. I do still want it to
look like a sunflower, so I'm going to go and
add in even more brown around the edges because that is the biggest
difference I can see, that the center of
this sunflower isn't quite as big as it should be, and so that's why
I'm going around and adding even more
of these brown edges. Then I can go back and add
more yellow too [NOISE] if I want some spaces in between the petals
and the brown. Just to add more color almost always means
more texture and that is hardly ever a bad thing
when it comes to watercolor. I'm just adding in more
yellow, more brown, so that this sunflower actually looks more
like a sunflower, with that giant brown center. That looks pretty good to me. Definitely not perfect, but perfect is not what
I was shooting for. To finish this off, I'm just going to
draw in a stem. Sunflower stems
are pretty thick, and I'm going to use some watercolor
techniques that I know, so I'm going to leave
behind on purpose, some of these white streaks, just to showcase the texture
of this sunflower stem, and embrace that loose
watercolor style. Then I'm going to
have one big leaf that is coming off of here, like this, and I'm going
to leave the middle white. I'm going to leave a little
white space in the middle of this leaf and just
paint around it. Similar to how I would
do if I were painting a leaf with a paintbrush. Then I'm going to do one more
small one in the same way, leaving behind just
this small white strip and coloring in around it. [NOISE] The reason
why you can use Karin Markers to
basically color, I essentially just drew
this with markers and still have it look like a
watercolor flower, it's because Karin
Markers are so inky, they're so watery, and that makes them really
excellent for mimicking the watercolor effect
while using markers. This doesn't
necessarily looked like I drew it with markers. I think it looks like I
painted it with watercolor and so Karin Markers are
really fun for that reason. [NOISE] That wraps up
this final project, where we painted the center of this flower with
petals coming out of it and drew in the
stem and the leaves. This definitely looks
illustrated, not super realistic, but I still think it
looks really cool, and it's amazing
that we were able to paint this just
using these markers. Thank you so much for
joining me for this class, I hope you liked it, and let's head over to finish up with
some final thoughts.
11. Recap: Thank you so much for
taking my class on how to use water-based markers as a
substitute for watercolor. I had tons of fun
creating this content for you and painting the four different
projects that we created. To recap, these are what
we made in this class. We made this colorful sunset, and we did this mostly using a palette and a paintbrush and lifting watercolor marker
ink from the palette. We also painted this
galaxy where we drew right on the paper and activated the
markers with water. We ''Painted'' this
sunflower where we drew right on the
paper as well and we used such inky markers that
it looks like watercolor. Then we painted this
watercolor night sky where we did a mix of both drawing right on the paper and using a
paintbrush to activate it. I hope you enjoyed this class. I hope that it helps
to get you out of a creative rut maybe
or think outside the box. Even better would be is if finding a way to use
markers like this as a substitute for watercolor
helps spur you to experiment even more with art supplies and the different ways
that you can use them. If you really loved this class, one of the best
things that you can do to support teachers like me, is to leave a review. I would love to see
any of your feedback. I would love to see what
you thought of this class. If you have suggestions for our future classes or ways I
can improve on this class, I would love to hear that too. Also, if you're interested in posting your work that you've done from this
class to Instagram, please tag me, my handle is @thiswritingdesk and I would love to see any of the
work that you've done. Thank you once again for joining me and I will see you next time.
Kolbie Blume, Artist
