Thursday, July 9, 2009

How do you do the colorific hoodoo voodoo that you do?

May I ask how you all are doing your colors?

I've tried water color / art markers - they bled too much; tried color pencils - too muted versus the yellow card stock. Tried water colors with varied success, though seems I have to really layer up goopy thick paint to get enough opacity to overcome the yellow.

Most of you all seem to easily surmount the yellow and get some sharp details in your colors. What do you use? Is it guasch paint? acryllic?

And yes, sorry, this is a huge gaping hole in my fine arts background, I don't know nearly enough about illustrative color work or techniques. Any suggestions would be deeply appreciated!

Thanks!

e

PS - apologies if you saw this post on the other Moly groups I'm in, trying to get ample coverage from all the amazingly talented folks I've been fortunate enough to crew up with!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I use watercolor pencils as a base for most things, color then brush water over them. I let that dry then add details with markers. Sometimes I use an opaque white ink if I really want true while over the yellow paper.

Rene Fijten said...

I use technical inkpens (edding profipen) for the drawing outlines, and fill it with normal watercolour.
The problem is the smooth yellow paper of this type of Moleskine (I think it's called Bristol paper; I personally prefer the watercolour moleskine, but these are not available as folding books).
Water does not penetrate well. I moist the paper a minute before I paint, to loosen the fibers. And I apply my watercolour thick with colour. I was told recently that the application of drop of liquid soap in the water works well, but I haven't tried that out yet. I finish lines and add details with coloured fineliners, sometimes a tip of white gouache.
If you want to see what materials use when I travel: see a picture on my flickr pages: http://www.flickr.com/photos/renefijten/3352357304/

Any other tips&tricks?

emon xie said...

Thank you both, great tips! And your travel kit is my new role model example, Rene, very pragmatic and snappy, thanks for the peek!
e