“Nash” is the main character of the Self-Negotiated Brief project which we were given to do last year at University. I have since chosen to continue on with this character, and storyline, and develop it into a proper comic book sequence. I also have the aspiration to get the potential comic book published – but it is very early days yet!
Here is a quick video I created during the summer break from uni, in which I demonstrate how I colour my more “comic book-esque” style of art. My medium of choice is Copic Markers, as I feel that they give off a rather nice watercolour effect, without the hassle of paints running or the mess which usually comes with it. It is a medium used by countless industry professionals in recent years, and have been a valuable asset to the creation of my art and characters.
The music accompanying the video is “Penetrate” by the band “Godhead” (taken from the Queen of the Damned Soundtrack Album). I chose to use this music because it is the type of music which I imagine the character of “Nash” would play in his band in the comic book. It is also a fairly mellow sounding song for the most part, which I think generally tends to go well with speed drawing / speed colouring videos (although, it also really tends on the subject of the art piece too). I will be able to elaborate more on the overall narrative of the story, once I have thought it through in a bit more depth – until then, we’ll just have to wait and see!
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PROCESS
- I always start with an E00 base, purely because it is a nice pale tone, which blends well with the proceeding skin tones.
- Recently, I’ve started using the BV00 “Mauve Shadow” colour to create the base for the more shadowed areas of the face. This was suggested to me by a tutor, and once I had gotten over the initial feeling of “bah, preposterous!” I found that it just adds that little bit more depth when you layer the next skin tone over it.
- The colour which I use for a medium skintone is E21. It has a nice, warm, slightly orange hue which gives a bit more of an impression of depth and contour in a characters skin. I only overlap it over the BV00 slightly, so that the highlight effect of the E00 is still quite prominent. For the lips, I start usually with E21 as well, depending on whether the character is male / female and with / without makeup.
- I also use YR02 to shade in the darker sections of the lips, as it offers up a slightly orange tone, with a very slight peach hue to it.
- I used BG01 for the base colour of the iris, because it was quite a pale blue, without it looking too “minty”.
- I used RV42 around the eyes to give them a sunken look, or a look which tends to come with a heavy lack of sleep.
- E04 was used to to shade in the sunken eyes, as it has a nice earthy purple tone to it, which I also use quite a lot to show bruising on a character.
- Because “Nash” starts to become “posessed” within the frame of the story, I felt that something unusual needed to be done to the appearance of his eyes. I decided to colour the sclera completely black, because I thought it looked quite unusual and a little bit sinister too.
- C-3 grey was used to create a base stubble effect for his facial hair – I also tend to use this on characters which have shaved heads.
- I chose to use E37 brown for the soul patch and beard, because coupled together with E47 brown, it gave off the impression of depth and varied hair colour, which tends to usually be the case with a lot of beards / facial hair.
- E47 brown was also used to colour in “Nash’s” hair. The one truly wonderful thing about Copic Markers, that I find, is the flick effect you get when applying pressure to the nib when colouring, and then releasing, so as to create a great impression of strands of hair.
- I used C-3 for the base of his shirt – using the pressure technique again to make the colour seem as though it is fading out at the bottom of the picture.
AbbieSTABBY 