Sunday 8 January 2012

Some Promarker tips

Before we get started I had a think about what advice I could give you that would be useful lol!  Here's some things I do recommend particularly if you're quite new to using the pens or want to become a bit more skilled along the way...

Tha main thing with promarkers of any colouring medium is to practice and experiment, I cant recommend this more, it really does help to play :)

Select an image that YOU personally like to practice on and print out (or stamp) several copies of it to play around with.  Look for nice lines, do they have lines to help guide you so you can clearly identify highlights and areas that will be darker shadows?

If using a new image use colours you're familiar with for the first time, so if you always do brown hair and always use vanilla, tan and cinnamon (1, 2, 3) then colour your image in so you get a feel for it in familiar territory then swap to a new colour combo so if you'd like to try pink hair you'd swap your vanilla, tan and cinnamon for a light, medium and darker pink such as baby pink, rose pink and fuschia (1, 2, 3)

Experiment on your copies and make a note of the colour combos you've used and keep them, punch a hole in them and secure with a ring or stick them in a book, they will be invaluable to you!  This is an example below trying various combos of red hair (do you know how many shades of red hair there are lol!)


Imagine you have to make a little girls birthday card and she has red hair like Annie, you can flick through quickly and find the right combo to match :)

One of the things I hear a lot is "I wish I could colour like you....."  ".....but I dont have the patience!"
What makes me chuckle is often the people saying this are the ones who think nothing of spending 6 hours on pergamano, cross stitching or other time consuming crafts but wont put an hour into colouring an image lol! 
PRACTICE yes really, is there a desparate need to make a completed card?  SOme challenge blogs like Make it colourful also accept entries that are just coloured images and not completed projects because its all about just having a go and practicing. 
Pick an image or two you are comfortable with and LIKE and just play.  Make a note of favourite combos or happy accidents such as a pink and yellow make an absolutely gorgeous orange (handy for things like fairy wings)

Paper quality - it should be smooth and give a small amount of bleed.  Hold the nib straight down on the surface gently for 10 seconds and see how much it spreads, if it soaks the ink like a piece of kitchen towel or leaves just the dot off the nib with zero bleed reject it.  Its very much down to personal preference, I like stampin up whisper white or a better value xerox card personally and others like Rymans smooth which I cant stand so experiment and ask friends for a sample of what they use till you find your one.

Will be back tommoz with Promarker - Red Hair

5 comments:

Andrea said...

Fabulous tips - thank you so much. I never think of keeping a record of what I've used. Hair is what I really struggle with, and I find it virtually impossible to leave white space for highlights.
Love, Andrea xx

Unknown said...

really useful tip because I always forget the colours I used, your tuts are fantastic most people use copics these days so it is nice to find someone who uses the promarkers.
Thanks Chris x

Scrapcat 1 said...

I will need to spend more time practising I think. Thanks for the tips.

Shazza said...

thanks for the info, will remember to keep note of colour combos. I use Whisper White too x

Anne-Marie said...

I'm so glad you're doing this....I do struggle a bit, so any tips are most welcome.
I'm never happy about colouring hair, so thank you so much!