Tips & Techniques Rubber Art Stamps and More

Colored Pencils Tricks #1 If you have a set of Prisma colored pencils you probably know how fantastic they are for coloring and what a wide variety of colors they come in. And you might even know that you can use a product called Gamsol ( mineral spirits ) to dissolve them and create some interesting effects but did you know that there is a much safer and much more economical alternative to Gamsol? Today I am going to show you how to use your colored pencils with a product you probably already have in your home. And it probably only cost you a dollar or two for 16oz. What is this mystery product? Drum roll please .... Plan old 90% Rubbing Alcohol. Yes, Alcohol. It dissolves the wax in your pencils without damaging them or leaving any residue. It also drys quickly and allows you to work back over your drawing or stamped image quickly. You might be thinking “ Okay, Eric, that’s great and all but what can I do with it and how am I supposed to do it?” Let me show you. Because you can use alcohol to dissolve the vehicle ( the wax ) that carries the pigment ( the colored bits ) in your pencils this opens up a wide variety of tools you can now use with your colored pencils and a huge range of possibilities. For his demonstration I will stick to a few basic tools. They are a round #5 paint brush for acrylics, Two different brands of colorless alcohol marker blenders (a Copic, a Prima color and a Adirondack’s alcohol ink fillable pen filled with 90% rubbing alcohol), a Refill bottle for a Copic colorless blender, and last but not least a well used toothbrush.

First chose the image you want to work with. Stamp, draw or print off two. Pick the one to make a mask from. Stamp it on a piece of card stock and cut it out. Remember the better the job you do cutting out your mask the better your results will be. Using either your refill bottle of colorless blender ink, ie alcohol. Or a small container filled with Rubbing Alcohol. Dip the end of your old toothbrush into the alcohol. Here is the important part. You don’t need a lot. Just enough to wet the bristles. Now on a scrap piece of paper start rubbing the sharpened end of you pencil across the end of the toothbrush. Pull the pencil towards you so you don’t to wear whatever color your are using. Try changing the angle and distance away from the paper that you hold the toothbrush to see different effects. Once you’re comfortable with how it works place the mask over your image and applying the color to it using toothbrush. The results should look something like this. You can see how the spattering of the pencil color creates a soft and interesting pattern for the background. The image area has been protected by the card stock mask. Because the mask is fairly duarable you can put it back in place and try using multiple colors.

Next you can use your paintbrush dipped in alcohol to paint with. There are two ways to do this. One is to color in an area with your pencils and then wash over it with the wet brush. The other is to rub the wet brush over the sharpened end of your pencil loading the brush with color. Both techniques work great and I used both in the next pictures. If you look closely you can see the brush strokes created by the washes and daubs of color created by loading the brush with color from the pencil.

Remember at any point once the alcohol has dried you can go back and color over it with your pencils. This is what I did with the tan color in the picture above. Here I have added a lighter tan color over the first darke brown area in the ground.

In the next series of pictures I will use my pencils to color in different areas on the car, boy and dog. Using one or the other of the blending markers to blend the colors together and to fade them out to white. I will also work back over these areas with the pencils building up different layers of color to create more depth. In this picture I started with a ochre base color for the whole box.Then I applied red to the edges and corners. Using a blending marker I mixed the two colors together. To blend two colors together smoothly practice this technique. Start with some thing simple like red and yellow. Take the tip of your yellow maker and rub it across the red. Now look at the end of the yellow makers tip. There is some red on there right.? Start coloring with that part of the maker. The little bit of color you “lifted” form the other maker will gradually run out creating a soft even blend. Pretty cool! You can repeat this process

over and over to build up color or apply it over another area you have already colored. You can do the same thing with a colored maker or a colored pencil with one of your blender markers. The “lifted” color will gradually fade out to nothing as you color with it.

I added some more red with the pencils and blended it together using the brush tip of the Copic blender. The Copic’s brush tip gives you a looser blend. Using grey and one of the blenders with a firmer tip I have colored in the wheels and goggles while adding some shadow to the boxes. The blenders with the firmer tips seem to work best for fading colors to white. Adding some grey to the shadow areas is a easy way to add a lot of depth to your images. And finally using the various techniques above is the finished image.

Rubber Art Stamps and More

Copyright 2013 EMagine, Eric J. Dull All Rights Reserved

www.emagineart.com