I have signed up to Copics for Cardmakers, but was unable to start lessons until yesterday. Firstly, I was away for work this week. Secondly, I only owned about three colours and needed just a few more to practise with! Luckily for me, my order arrived in the mail yesterday morning. :-)
I am sharing my progress here, but please note, I am an absolute beginner. These are my very first Copic lessons. It is highly unlikely that anyone will learn anything from me, but hopefully in a few months, we can look back and see some progress, lol!
Second disclaimer - unusually for me, neatness has not been a priority. I'll tidy up how I work once I've learned some of the techniques. You'll see lots of outside-the-line colouring here.
Day 1 - Blending Basics
We started with two colour and three colour blending on balloons. I forgot to practice three colour blending because I was most interested in learning how to blend two colours (to stretch my limited stash). We were taught how to create light using the Blender, but I didnt' practice it this time. On the second balloons, those highlights were just created by leaving the first colour alone in that spot (not going over them again).
I forgot to add the red and green colours onto this next one. They were R29, R24, R22, and YG23, YG95.
On Day 2 we learn about tip-to-tip blending, acetate blending, and feathering. All very cool techniques that I didn't even know existed, except perhaps the feathering, but the lesson taught me more than I knew, for sure!
The little red-breast was made using tip-to-tip AND acetate blending. The little grey bird was just an experiment on my own to see how he would look in grey.
I found the blending with grey lessons fascinating! Some of my results were a bit dodgy, but even those "not so great" results taught me things! The use of grey may be one of the best things I take away from this online class. That I need to buy more grey markers may be the accompanying lesson (I have three greys, T1, T4, and T6, that's it).
Day 4 was all about shading. My favourite lesson was where I learned how to imagine sections of images as either round, oval, square, etc and to imagine where the shadows would fall, depending on the light source direction. My favourite revelation was that it's okay to shade any way you choose to. :-)
The first flower has directional light. The second used the feathering technique on the flowers with more realistic leaves. The third flower I didn't like much (too dark), so I decided to experiment with the leaf colour, which was an interesting process.
I will admit that I never thought I would learn how to colour skin and hair. It looks so tricky. I now think that with a little practice that I WILL learn this skill. Yay! I don't have many skin/hair colours, but I don't imagine I'll do much colouring of people, so for the moment my few colours will suffice.
So that wraps up the first five days of lessons. I hope that next week I will be able to play along within a day or two of the lesson. I'm really enjoying this class and I'm so glad that I signed up. If you have been thinking of joining in, it's worth it! I managed to catch up on the first five days over the course of a day, so you certainly have time to join in and catch up with the rest of us. :-)
See you later!
Michelle
xxx
