Time vs. Talent: Your Copic Marker Skills and Your Schedule

Today is my first day back to work

My family and I spent nine days on a lake in the woods. Remote and relaxing. 

The best thing about our vacation was that I put stuff away. I didn’t sneak into town for wi-fi; in fact, I barely checked my phone.

And for the last nine days I have not drawn or colored anything.

I know that sounds strange to anyone who colors for fun. Most of you dream of having enough free time to color late into the night.

But art is my job. It wouldn’t be a vacation if I dragged my work with me. So I haven’t touched a pencil or marker in nine days.

That’s a long time for my hands to sit dormant.

Which means that I’m not going to be drawing anything amazing today. Pretty much everything I draw or color for the next several days is going to be a stunted version of my usual work, way below average.

I’m mentally preparing myself. It’s going to sting my ego but nothing I create this week will be worth saving. It will all be lack-luster.

Because I spent nine days at the beach.

I’m out of practice

When I left on vacation, I was in the zone, making some really good stuff. But I can’t expect to spend nine days unplugged and then return to peak performance. Frankly, even if it were only a long weekend, I would still have trouble recreating the magic on my first day back.

Art skills wither when you’re not using them. It doesn’t take very long to lose your groove.

Now let me ask - how many days has it been since you last colored something?

How many days do you typically go between Copic projects?

And for those of you who dabble with Copics, colored pencil, ink pads, and lots of trendy stuff… how many days days does it take for you to cycle from markers through all your other play toys and get back to markers?

Be honest, how many days a month do your markers sit untouched?

Each one of those days is a day in the woods.

It’s not uncommon for me to hear students chatting before class… “I can’t wait to get started because I haven’t colored since our last class.” 

That's very normal. Most colorers only pull out their supplies when they have downtime and downtime is downright scarce. I have students take classes specifically because if they weren’t paying for dedicated coloring time in a classroom, they’d get detoured by laundry or email.

And yet when you do find time to color, even though you haven’t touched a marker in weeks, you expect to sit down and effortlessly create your greatest masterpiece ever?

Can we get real?

Nobody, not even the most skilled of artists, not Leonardo freakin’ Da Vinci could spend the better part of a month dealing with kids, yard maintenance, and mandatory overtime but then crank out the Mona Lisa on a random Wednesday night.

I spent nine days on a lake in the woods and I know it’s going to take at least a week to warm back up to the point where I can create something worth showing here on the blog.

And you’re trying to do top level work squeezed in-between the office, the grocery store, and junior’s soccer practices?

You are putting too much pressure on yourself!

Great coloring happens when you are in the perfect mental state, when you’re warmed up and the marker feels like an extension of your fingers. Top level work happens when your hand and brain are communicating at lightning speed. You can’t tap into creative flow when you only color every once in a while. 

I’m sure you know how to ride a bicycle but if I handed you one right now, you’d bobble and sway around for a few minutes until you found that old equilibrium, right?

And here you are expecting to win the Tour de France with Copics on one night each month?

Stop and think a minute- we all have a favorite marker blogger or design team members we really admire. You pin their work and when it comes time to color, you have their projects in mind. You want to color just like them.

But they’re in the zone. They’re warmed up and running smoothly on sustained creative activity. At the very least, they’re coloring as a part time job.

Do not berate and downgrade yourself.

You can not color like your hero if you’re not coloring as much as your hero.

Yes, I want Beans!

I’m not saying this to dishearten you

I’m not ordering you pitch your career and ditch the family in order to spend more time coloring.

My point is simply to lighten up. Stop comparing your work to someone who colors for three to four hours every day. Stop envying the project of a star student who takes fourteen coloring classes a month. You are not being realistic and you’re slowly killing off your joy.

You enjoy coloring, right? 

But you’ll enjoy it a little less each time you expect too much from yourself. 

“I like to color but I’m not very good at it”

That’s the kiss of death for your soul. You’re holding yourself to a higher standard than what your schedule allows for.

Good takes time. Great takes even more time.

You are spending three weeks at the beach and expecting to drop into marker class and create a miracle.

Let’s be realistic

Do you have to color every single day of your life to color well?

No.

You can make some pretty good stuff with the time you have available.

But I’m not going to sugar coat it. You’ll never, never, never color at your peak level if you are not doing it every day.

Just like you’ll never win an Olympic medal for Fencing, you won’t place top five in the Indy Car circuit, and you are not going to be on the cover of the next Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

If you’re not training for it, it ain’t gonna happen.

Be okay with that.

If you have more time, squeeze in a little more coloring. You’ll immediately see the results of more practice. More time with a marker in your hand pays definite dividends.

But if you can’t, you can’t. 

Your coloring will always reflect the amount of time you have to give 

Maturity is the ability to accept that fact without disparaging yourself.

It’s okay if you can only color in my classroom. It’s okay if you can only pick up a Copic once or twice a month. 

What’s not okay is asking yourself to color wow-level beautiful projects after an extended period of time away from the markers. 

You are not in the zone. Be honest about it.

It’s not that you don’t have talent, it’s that your talent hasn’t been given time.

And besides, there’s nothing wrong with nine days at the beach.

Seashell Trio

Join me for a fun Copic Marker + Colored Pencil lesson in the Vanilla Workshop

Seashell Trio was recorded live, now it’s a forever access class.

Art of Coloring is a live demonstration program from Vanilla Arts. Edited classes with perfect narration tend to make the coloring process look faster, easier, and smoother than it really is. Stop comparing yourself to the supermodel version of an artist!

Real time coloring with real mistakes and real fixes.

Class Printable Pack Includes: 

• Class syllabus with detailed recipe guide

• Full color project sample

• Guide to Copic base

• Detailed color map

• Project inspiration references

Improve your Copic Marker Coloring Today: Size Matters

There are no magic shortcuts to better coloring...

But there are small and simple things that you can do TODAY to immediately improve the quality of your finished coloring projects.

Is your coloring flat?

I know, I write about flat coloring a lot.

But that's because I hear about it. A lot.

Copic beginners are always pretty worried about getting the blends nice and smooth. But once they've nailed down the blending process, they start to wonder...

Where is the depth and dimension?

Don't worry, you are not alone. It's a common problem.

There are very few colorers who achieve the kind of depth and realism they want from their projects. Every colorer I know is on constant look-out for the magic bullet that will solve their flat coloring problems once and for all.

There are a lot of tutorials and videos out there which talk about how to add dimension to your Copic projects.

But there's one simple key that I never, ever, no-never hear or see mentioned.

Image size matters

When you walk into a museum, do they hand you a magnifying glass?

When you visit an art gallery, do they warn you to bring your reading glasses?

Heck, in the Pottery Barn catalog, do they show you big long couches with itty bitty wallet sized art over it?

That's because most artists work large.

Yes, you can purchase a pretty postcard with the Sistine Chapel ceiling on it but Michelangelo didn't paint the real ceiling that small.

Realism requires space

Let's face it, most stamps are tiny. The average stamp image was designed to fit on an A5 or quarter-fold card front and many stamp sets give you the ability to fit several objects plus a sentiment on that card front.

That leaves colorers struggling to fit several marker colors into itsy-bitsy spaces.

With big giant brush nibs, by the way.

To paint or color with realism, you are essentially creating a trompe l'oeil effect (that's French for "fool the eye"). Depth and dimension are a matter of getting the right shade of the right hue into just the right spot to fool the brain into thinking a two dimensional item is actually three dimensional. It's not only about the colors you use, it's also about placing those colors into just the right spots.

When a face is the size of a postage stamp, it's pretty darned hard to color it accurately. Depth and dimension, getting that shade into just the right areas to feel real... that's next to impossible when the head on the stamped character is pocket-change sized.

Miniature painters have unique skills

Once upon a time, back before the days of photography, you had to hire a painter to make a portrait or to capture a landscape. And if you wanted a portrait to carry around in your pocket or in a locket, you had to find an artist who specialized in miniatures.

Painting in miniature is a very specific skill and frankly, it's a rather rare talent. Working small requires lots of study and practice and a whole slew of specialized tools and supplies. The smaller you get, the more talent required.

And yet you expect to master this kind of thing instantly using big fat juicy markers and a $5.99 tiny stamp?

Be kind to yourself, use large stamps

I shock and startle my newbies all the time. When a new student takes my class for the first time, they're always amazed at the project size. That's because as an artist, I understand that your best chance to color with depth and dimension... all of that good realism stuff is highly unlikely to happen if I don't provide large stamp images.

Now granted, I draw the class images for 90% of my classes but I do use some commercial stamps. Rubber and silicone stamps are governed by the rules and regulations set by the issuing company. And some manufacturers are sticklers about enlarging their images, even if you're coloring them for personal use.

So the solution is easy. If the stamp image is too small, don't buy it.

Don't waste your money on teeny tiny stamps that are completely inappropriate for coloring with markers.

Companies are gradually learning that serious colorers want larger images. I support only those companies who produce appropriately sized coloring images, not just for legal reasons but because we want the sales statistics to show that there's a healthy market for large coloring images.

Or you can stick with digital stamps. When you purchase a digi stamp, you are not locked into using the stamp at one particular size. Digital stamps are scalable and that means you can squinch them small for a quarter-fold card front but also enlarge them when you want to practice coloring with realism.

Check out our Digi Stamps in the Vanilla Stamp Shop:

The Goldilocks Rule

Bigger is not always better; there is such a thing as too large.

Smooth blending gets harder as the stamp size increases. That's because the smoothest blends happen with fresher, wetter ink. So if the space you're coloring is so large that the ink has fully dried before you even get the whole thing base coated, then that's a blend that will require more nursing to make it happen.

And larger spaces usually require more markers in the blending combination. I save my two-color combo coloring for areas under .75 inch square.

Every colorer has an ideal size to work at. Not so large that the blend is choppy but not so small that you can't add shaded detail.

As you learn and practice your coloring skills, you can work smaller and smaller with more confidence. But just like when you were learning to write out the alphabet on wide lined kindergarten paper, it's definitely easier to learn a skill when you have room to see what you're doing (or doing wrong).

Quarter and Half-size images

When I draw stamps for classes, my beginner images are quarter sheet sized (a sheet being US 8.5x11 inches).

I don't mean that my Digis fit comfortably onto a quarter-fold with lots of extra space. I mean that my images ARE the size of a quarter sheet.

So for my classes, a single object in the stamp is usually anywhere from 4 to 5 1/2 inches wide. For intermediate students, I move them up to images that may fill the entire page.

I know, you can not fit large class projects onto a standard card. But you need the extra size to learn how to shade properly. When you get better, you can gradually begin to work smaller until you're back at standard card size.

Or maybe you'll stop producing everything for cards and start making framable art, hint hint.

Like day-old cola...

If your coloring continues to be flat, no matter how much you practice, no matter how closely you're following the tutorials, stop to consider the size of your stamped images.

Coloring isn't a clown car experience. The goal isn't to impress us with how much you can fit in. If you're trying to squeeze shade, highlights, and local color all into a teensy tiny space, it's no wonder things don't look dimensional.

Real artists rarely work itty-bitty because we understand that realism requires some elbow room. Working in miniature is a specialty skill which requires customized tools to do it right. Artists know better than to force themselves into working abnormally small.

Purchase larger images. Color larger images. Learn and practice on larger images.

It's one tiny thing you can do today to begin improving your coloring.

Want More Tiny Thing Tips?

Read the Entire Series:

Spring Cleaning: Simple care extends the life of your Copic Markers

It's that time of year again

Forget about the crocus buds or the robins singing! The surest sign of spring is when all the house cleaning tips start blooming on the internet.

Yep. Everybody loves a good spring cleaning.

This year, don't forget about your Copics!

Spring cleaning for Copics?

I know what you're thinking...

I've seen lots of tutorials about how to clean Copic Markers, but that's for people who color all the time, right? A lot of tutorials talk about cleaning your marker after you refill it and I've NEVER had to refill!

I guess when I finally refill my markers, I'll worry about cleaning then.

You're absolutely right. People like me, who use Copics on a daily basis— instructors, bloggers, and super serious colorers- we do refill markers more frequently than average colorers.

But cleaning? That’s a different matter entirely.

Everyone, from high volume colorers to the once-in-a-whilers:

We ALL need to clean our markers on a regular basis.

Do you make Copic Jelly?

Jelly?

Copic jelly? Really?

Yep. I have jelly problems. You have jelly problems too.

Every time you uncap and recap a Copic, your marker nib rubs along the inside of the cap. It leaves a streak of marker ink.

That streak of ink quietly lurks inside your cap, slowly evaporating. After the solvent is gone, the streak becomes a smear of Copic Jelly- a super sticky residue.

I know, it’s a bit of a weird concept. When most of us think of "evaporation", we think of water, right? Water just disappears into the air and leaves no trace behind.

But Copic ink is not water; Copic ink is dye mixed with an alcohol solvent. Sure, the alcohol part evaporates cleanly without a trace, but the dye sticks around as residue.

Old dye residue lingers inside your marker caps, waiting to make trouble.

What kind of trouble?

Once you get an ooey gooey build-up of dye residue inside the cap, that jelly makes it hard for Copic caps to seal properly.

The cap clicks as normal, so you assume they're sealed... but no, the jelly breaks the seal.

Yep. Jelly is nasty stuff.

Without a tight seal, your marker nib will slowly dry out as the solvent in the nib begins to evaporate.

Basically jelly in the cap encourages the growth of more jelly on the nib. 

Eventually, jelly can works its way into the spongy core inside your marker!

Once the jelly makes it to the core, your marker is shot. Jelly doesn't just kill marker nibs, it kills whole markers!

It's like The Blob in that 1950's horror movie, jelly keeps creeping along, destroying everything in its wake.

It's not just unsightly, jelly costs you money!

Every once in a while...

I'll pull out a marker that hasn't been used in some time. When I begin to color with it, the nib leaves a weird dark streak. Not all the time and not everywhere, just little smudges of darkened ink that don’t want to smooth out.

Have you had that happen too? Its a bit of jelly that has transferred from the nib to your project.

Dark streaks are not pretty.

Let’s look on the bright side though, that streak is a warning call.

Your marker is crying for help.

When you see dark streaks, you can clean the marker and the nib before the jelly spreads further.

So yes, because I use my markers every day; all that uncapping and recapping means I create jelly quicker than you do.

But I'm also more likely to spot the jelly problem early. I can quickly resolve the problem before it ruins the whole nib.

If some of your markers sit for months without use...  then you're completely missing the early warning system!

Keeping caps clean is MORE important for the weekend hobbyist than for everyday colorers!

Dirty caps + long periods sitting unused gives your jelly lots of time to kill the nib!

Cleaning is easy!

And it's easier to do them all at once (in spring cleaning style) than cleaning them one at a time.

Pop in a good movie and sit down with your markers and a few basic supplies.

I have a small 4 ounce jelly jar (warning: Amazon affiliate link there) that I fill with 90% rubbing alcohol from the pharmacy aisle of my grocery store. The 70% alcohol works too but the 90% works faster.

Into that jar, I cut small 1 inch squares of clean paper towel.

This jar of teeny tiny wipes and a pair of tweezers are all you need to clean your entire marker collection!

Now keep in mind, rubbing alcohol is a different kind of alcohol than the alcohol in your Copics. These alcohols are not interchangeable or compatible! 

Rubbing alcohol also has some water in the mix. That’s what the % on the label indicates. 90% Rubbing Alcohol is also 10% water. 70% Rubbing Alcohol is 30% water.

Because of that water content, I'm super careful when wiping off the plastic right below the marker nib.

Rubbing alcohol is not good for your nibs!

But aside from that one caveat, rubbing alcohol makes an excellent cleaner. It dissolves Copic jelly on contact, and it's soooo much cheaper than cleaning with Copic Colorless Blender!

First, wipe the marker off with a little tiny square of alcohol-soaked paper towel.

Then plunge the same square into the marker cap and ream it around with the tweezers to clean the inner cap area.

Tap the excess alcohol out of the cap, recap the marker, and move on to cleaning the next marker with a clean square.

It's an easy-peasy process and you can clean even the biggest marker collection before the movie is over!

Spring clean your Copics!

Clean caps aren't just for neat freaks or heavy duty marker users.

Clean caps extend the life of your marker nibs and prevent accidental ink evaporation.

Try a little spring cleaning today and give your Copic babies a bath. Your markers will thank you!

Improve your Copic coloring: Use fresh eyes

Wouldn't it be cool to trade bodies with someone?

Like in the movie Freaky Friday. The Jodi Foster version, not the Lindsay Lohan version.

Oh Lord no, not the Lindsay Lohan anything...

If you could switch bodies with a really good artist, maybe you could pick up a few secrets about how to draw or color better.

Sadly, no. There are no easy fixes. Ask Lindsay Lohan.

Learning takes time and practice; and even if we wish really hard for a freaky exchange, there are no shortcuts to better coloring.

But there are a few tiny things that you can do today which will instantly improve the quality of your Copic Marker projects.

Really.

Before you call a project finished, look at it with fresh eyes.

Nobody knows your project as well as you do. After all, you were there when you made it, right?

And you know exactly where all the oopsies are.

You know where you went outside the lines; you know where the blend is a little choppy. You were there when you accidentally dripped a little blue ink in the bottom right hand corner. 

Yep. Been there, done that. More than once.

You've also spent a lot of time obsessing over the details. Getting everything just right.

But here's the thing- all that attention to detail? It has left you in a state of hyper-awareness.

Yes, I want Beans!

Most people won't notice the mistakes

It's not that we're stupid, it's just that we haven't spent the last two hours hovering six inches above the project. We simply don't see the flaws the way you do.

Meanwhile, you're sitting there wondering how in the heck no one has noticed the little blue drip in the bottom right hand corner.

On long coloring projects, I encourage my students to take a break every twenty minutes.

In my live classes, I secretly plot to distract people every ten to fifteen minutes by telling a story or asking a student how her weekend went. They don't realize what I'm doing, but it serves a purpose.

Taking short breaks from coloring isn't for the benefit of your rear end, although it is nice to get up and stretch. Short breaks are actually far more beneficial to your brain than to your buns.

After a break, you look at your project in a new way

We call this "using fresh eyes".

Taking a walk, doing a load of laundry, chatting with a friend about the new restaurant in town... all of these things pull you out of the self-critical zone. That's the state we get worked-up into, where every other thought that runs through your head begins with the words "well, I totally screwed that up..."

We're our own worst critics and that only gets worse the longer we sit chained to our desk, staring at all the mistakes.

Taking a break divorces you from the project. The longer the break, the more remote those mistakes seem. When you come back to it, you no longer look at your coloring with a super-duper hyper-critical eye; you are kinder to yourself.

Plus, with fresh eyes, you realize that the little blue drip in the bottom right hand corner isn't as big as you thought it was.

Fresh eyes are a volume control button for your inner voice. The flaws may still scream out at you but you'll be better able to tune them out. And the good stuff will start talking to you too.

Things don't look as bad as you thought when you use fresh eyes

By getting away from the project, you begin to see your work the same way we do.

It's a less emotional experience.

That little blue drip won't feel like a dagger in your left ventricle anymore.

And here's the really cool thing- you can increase the efficacy of the fresh-eye effect by increasing the length of your break!

10 minutes = good

10 hours = absofreekinwonderful

Setting your project aside for a few days is an essential part of the process for most professional artists. We build that resting period into our delivery time frame because we know the power of fresh-eyed observations.

With portraits, I set them aside for a full week, completely out of sight and out of mind. When I pull it out again, I pay attention to my thoughts:

• What's the first thing that drew my eye- chances are it's either something really good or it's a flaw I need to fix immediately.

• Where does my eye linger- that's almost always something good

• What are the first three flaws I notice- those instantly jump to the top of my "fix it" list

• After my eye roves around the project, does my gaze settle back upon the eyes? If not, then the the eyes need more attention

Taking an extended break from your work is like a mini vacation. When you come back rested and relaxed, you will notice things you didn't see before- things your inner critique wouldn't let you see before.

You can't always run your projects by a trusted friend who will give you an honest critique. It's hard to trust family to tell you the truth because they love you, and frankly, they also want you to make dinner tonight and that might not happen if they mention the little blue drip in the bottom right hand corner...

Sometimes, your fresh eyes are the only tool available to you to evaluate the success of your projects.

And fresh eyes are free. You don't have to go anywhere or do anything. All it takes is a little will power to go a few days without peeking.

Take advantage of fresh eyes on your next project

If you're coloring a card on a deadline, leave yourself enough time to set it aside, at least overnight. Because when it's sitting on Aunt Minnie's mantle? That's not the time to discover that you forgot to glitter the unicorn's horn.

For larger projects, like coloring a class assignment or making a gift for someone, use fresh eyes several times during the process. Catching mistakes before the teacher does or before the recipient notices is embarrassment avoided.

Time spent in time-out is worth the wait. Fresh eyes will catch more than you think but fresh eyes will also pleasantly surprise you.

Because that little blue drip in the bottom right hand corner might look totally artistic and planned, once you see it with fresh eyes.

Want more Tiny Thing tips? Read the entire series:

Tiny Thing- Stamp Evaluation

Tiny Thing- Refresh Your Markers

Tiny Thing- Turn it All Off

Tiny Thing- Nibs Wear Out

Tiny Thing- Fresh Eyes