Colouring Black!

Hello Everyone!!  Recently I made this snowman card and had quite a lot of emails about how I coloured his hat - so I thought it would make a great tutorial!!  As we know, the beauty of Copics is that you can blend colours so that you can get shading - but black is such a flat colour that you can't really shade with it, so instead of using black, you use a range of greys - in this case, I used the Cool Greys, C3, C5 and C7.

This snowman image is from JustRite Stampers' Groovy Snowman set and has been stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black onto X-press It Blending Card.  For Australian and New Zealand customers, you will be able to order this through your local Copic Stockist.  The BIG news announced last week at CHA is that the USA is now importing the X-press It Blending Card (along with the Mask It and High Tack Tape) and our friends in North America should be able to order this wherever you buy your Copic Markers!!

 

To begin with, I coloured the first part of the snowman's hat in C3 - at this point it doesn't need to be too smooth as we'll be going over it a bit.

Next I decide where my highlight is going to be on the hat - to make it easier I've put a couple of arrows so you can see.  I take my C5 marker and feather in from the edges to roughly where my arrows are.  (For more information on Feathering - please see THIS post.)

Next I take the C7 Marker and also feather this in from the side but not quite as far.  Keep feathering with both the C5 and C7 Markers until you get the look you want and if the line is a little heavy where the highlight is, feather a little C3 back in. 

Remember the more you go over your colour the darker it will get, so by the time you finish, the edges of your hat will be black!  Do the same to the bottom rim of your hat and finish colouring your image.

Don't forget that the first CopicOz Challenge is now on and can be found HERE!!!  Use your Copic Markers to colour FLOWERS!!!  It doesn't matter what size, shape or colour, we'd just love to see your beautiful botanicals!!!

Hope you've enjoyed today's tutorial and thanks for stopping by!!
Hugs
Kathy  :)