Adding Color with Markers: The Dixon Ticonderoga Chibi!

hey there everybody it's Mark Cy I'm back with another video now those of you who've watched my videos for a number of years you know that I love to use this pencil the Dixon taond deroga well this is a very special day because a very kind woman at the Dixon K taond deroga company by the name of Christina got in touch and offered to mail me complimentary art supplies all these wonderful markers these ink and uh not only that but check this out this has got me kind of nerding out this is something like a lifetime supply of Dixon tyoga pencils that's not available in any store uh and they sent me a lovely uh sketch pad that I'm looking forward to using but I thought as a way of thanking them for this that I would do an illustration today that is a Dixon tyoga chibi character uh so I've got all the pencil lines in place and I'm going to be using some of these uh markers that they sent to me to begin adding color all right so let's get into this I'm going to begin by adding a little bit of color using the Lyra uh brand uh markers they got the brush tips and my idea because this is a Dixon taond deroga chibi character I'm going to make all of her clothing have the same colors as that classic Dixon tyoga pencil uh and I can't do this all real time because it would just make for too long a v a video but I can give you a few little tips here about adding color uh with markers to a pencil drawing one of the key things you have to remember is to get that pencil line quite light you don't want uh thick dark pencil lines because the marker will uh blend with that uh and maybe blend is too kind of a word it'll start to sort of smear it around in ways that you don't really want if you want a nice clean drawing so you can see that I'm starting with very lightly penciled lines and that allows me to marker right on top of it without it you know smearing too much or giving me any problems in that regard notice also that I chose to start with the yellow which is one of the lightest colors and that is a great way of uh doing these things when you're adding color to uh an illustration starting with the lightest colors and working your way up towards the darker colors you know there's a logic to that it's easy for a um light uh color to get covered over by a dark color uh if you start with a dark color it's very hard to uh go on top of that with lighter colors it just doesn't work so those are my two little tips relating to this first part of the drawing I'm going to go ahead and kick it into time lapse I'm going to finish adding uh all of the yellow maybe some of the skin tones other lighter colors and then uh I'll show you uh how I work my way towards the darkest color which in this case is going to be that classic uh Dixon tyon Roga dark green all right so we've nearly got uh the coloring done uh and I just wanted to stop and say uh how pleased I am with these markers and the way they work one thing that I really love is when you can go on top with the same marker and get darker areas uh with a second layer and you can see I'm definitely able to do that here with this um hair you know and in a way to me that almost feels like getting two colors out of a single brush you know a darker version of the brown and then a lighter version very helpful and uh yeah it's real nice and smooth the way the ink comes out uh of the pen but like I said I decided to wait until the end uh to add the darkest of these colors which is this classic dark green and I think you can see what my idea was my concept with this whole thing was to create a chibi character whose clothing uh emulates this um you know classic Dixon tyon deroga color scheme that you see on the actual pencils um but I would say that uh when you have a dark marker color like this you definitely want to be putting this on last if I had put that this down first and then I was going right up against it with the yellow you know inevitably that yellow is going to start to pick up some of that green and it's going to smear together and you just don't really want that so um an experienced artist knows to uh start with the lighter colors work your way towards the darker ones well again I'm going to kick this in a time

lapse just to finish this up I might add a little bit of shading uh to the clothing before I come back and start adding uh ink lines to get uh close to the finished product of this illustration all right so you can see I pretty much got uh all the different marker colors in there that I needed to and it is time to add some ink now what I did here you notice that this was kind of never moving the whole time that I was adding the color when it comes time to inking I need to be able to spin it around to get the sort of optimal uh pivot point of my wrist so I'm going to start adding uh a little bit of the ink lines with this um here I'll show you what it called they called it The Graduate manga pen by uh Lyra and um this is the 08 those of you who know my videos you know that I have used a micron pigma a lot over the years this is very comparable I got to say and uh it feels very natural to me I'm just using this in place of that and of course the advantage of both of them is that it's a nice waterresistant uh ink line that you don't have to worry about it um getting ruined if a little bit of water falls on it um you can see and I've talked about this in other videos that relate to inking that when I add ink uh I very often will do it at the end of the process instead of the beginning again it helps to avoid uh any uh smearing issues that might happen with the um marker and you know just your hand going on top of it and that sort of thing so I wait until the end and uh also it allows me to decide whether or not I want to add lines like this whole thing where the green and the yellow on her sort of eraser hat thing I don't think these need to be outlined at all so I'm just going to leave that as uh the color doing the line work for me but that's about all I need to say about that I'm going to go ahead and finish up all the inking in time lapse and at the very end I might add one last little touch that is not among the different art supplies that was mailed to me I wonder if any of you can guess what it is but let's go ahead and finish off the inking process in time lapse and I'll be back uh to add that one final touch all right so we're nearly done here but of course I can't be finished until I use my beloved white gouache uh as I mentioned a second ago the one material that I'm uh just pulling from my own private supplies I suppose they do make a uh White gach of some kind if I had uh requested it but U we're just relying on the type that I always use and I find that adding these little highlights at the end of the process can make a very big difference in terms of uh just giving it that last little bit of Polish and uh giving you that sense of light uh falling upon the object like uh you know that this if this was made out of metal uh this sort of hat that she's wearing it would be getting a little bit of a shine there and that's what this allows you to uh apply to it so I'm going to go ahead and finish off adding the uh beloved white gouache and then I'll be back with a few final words all right so there's my little Dixon tyon deroga chibi character of course she can't be finished without the blushies seems like it's been a while since I added the blushies to complete an illustration but I just wanted to say thank you one more time to Christina over there at the Dixon taanda Roga company uh very grateful for these complimentary art supplies that she sent my way and I want to thank you for watching this video I think it is time for me to lay down this pencil not just any pencil it's a Dixon tyoga I want to thank you all for watching this video I really hope you enjoyed it and I'll be back with another one real soon