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WHAT’S NEW ‘ROUND HERE?

No gosling video this week, just a peek at some pond time.

Last week, we wrapped up what I think was a 14 week series about how to find quality colored pencils.

Forgive me, I’m too lazy to go back and count how long it actually took.

If you’re new to Vanilla Beans or want to re-read the entire thing, head down to the end of this issue where I link to previous issues.

I had planned to jump into my next big series this week but I’m nose-deep in June materials for Color Wonk and UP members. I haven’t had time to spread out all my thoughts and research to map out a logical series of articles.

If I’m gonna talk about organization, I need to get organized.

So let me buy myself a little time with an interlude on teaching.

COPY THE CAKE

If you haven’t figure it out yet, I’m not a colorist and I’m not a crafter.

Nothing wrong with either, it’s just not what I do.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the streets of Detroit, I went to art school.

Once upon a time, illustration was part of the Commercial Arts department. So even though I do fine-art-ish stuff, I’m trained in graphic arts, printing, lettering, and copywriting.

And this is why I was required to take marker classes in art school — but hang on, because it’s not the kind of marker classes you’re used to.

Blending had not been invented yet.

Heck, brush nibs had not been invented yet.

We used a technique called “indication” which is basically coloring like a blind man. To indicate, we sketched with technical pens (expensive refillable fineliners). If you wanted to fill a space with color, we used the broad side of a chisel nib to apply streaky stripes. Staying inside the lines is completely optional. Think of it as primitive Ink & Wash but with markers.

We could be sloppy with markers because marker indications were only for in-house idea presentation.

Marker wasn’t an art medium, it was a planning medium— a time saver before we pulled out the real paints and made the final art work.

So no, we didn’t blend.

Any blending that happened was 100% pure accident. I layered colors all the time but I can’t ever remember looking at my paper and thinking “hey, that kinda blended…”

Blending wasn’t on our radar because it would’ve been a total waste of time.

Now get this: I owned Copics for 15 years before I saw anyone “blend”.

And I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen.

You’re pretending to paint but it’d be easier if you understood how markers work…

That little observation sat like a seed in the back of my brain… and it slowly changed my life.

From the beginning, right from day one, I was the odd duck amongst marker instructors.

Because I’ve never cared about blending.

I’ve always taught marker classes as if they were painting classes.

Why mess around with color gradients if you’re just gonna complain when they look flat?

If you don’t want flat, don’t blend — seems rather obvious to me.

But here’s where I was truly off in my own little la-la world…

I never got the message that colorists just wanted to make something cute.

So I’d spend 20 minutes explaining how to push something backwards in space and I built props to demonstrate dimensional volume.

Seriously, what other Copic instructor holds up a Vermeer to teach how to shade yellow?

But they only wanted the cake.

It didn’t click until a student walked in and announced “I’m back!” and I asked how her vacation went.

“Oh, I wasn’t on vacation. You were teaching fall classes and I don’t like orange.”

And that’s the colorist problem in a nutshell— hobby coloring is 99.95% about WHAT you’re coloring, not HOW you’re coloring it.

Just show me the steps so I can copy the cake.

Which is why you’ll meet people who’ve colored for years but they’re still a beginner.

Maybe you’re one of them?

You’re good at following steps but you don’t understand how or why the steps work.

You can copy the cake but you can’t bake your own.

As you wander through my courses, memberships, workshops, and digital line art… looking for something cute to color.

It’s easy to slip into project mode:

This looks fun. This one’s beautiful. OMG, I can’t wait to color that one!

But wait, there’s something deeper to be found in the various classes.

If you’ll just look past the cake.

My beginner instruction is different because—

Before you can color anything well, you gott’a understand how markers and pencils work.

I can’t imagine a worse way to learn than tossing you a 2 inch stamp image full of teeny tiny spaces and telling you to blend it with a bunch of giant markers.

Or conversely, let’s hand you teeny tiny colored pencils and a great big coloring page. Good luck!

It’s not about coloring cute bugs or tasty desserts, I teach:

how to hold your markers and pencils
how inks interact with other inks, how pigments respond to other pigments
how to efficiently apply the products to paper
how to select and manage colors

Until you master the basics, you will always color like a beginner.

The Blend and The Point: More Info Here

Once you understand the tools, then we can talk about art…

It’d be easy to jump on the practice bandwagon because it sounds so simple.

Practice makes progress!

No, it doesn’t.

If practice was all it took, art school would happen once a month in aisle #8 at Hobby Lobby.

Practice is repetition. Repetition is not education.

This is where I can help intermediates and advanced colorists—

Every month, Color Wonk expands your intermediate technique base, introducing new fine art concepts and challenging your skills.

The Underpainters kicks it into high gear for advanced colorers who are ready to develop their own artistic coloring style.

COLOR WONK AND UNDERPAINTERS: MORE INFO

And where do my Workshops fit in?

Before I had the UP and Wonk memberships, I released one new workshop a month. These lessons are now released into the membership systems but I still keep a small collection of useful lessons in the Workshop.

I also move expired Wonk and UP lessons to the Workshop for those that missed them the first time around.

Again, when you’re looking at the Workshops, don’t focus on the project, look at what it teaches.

Workshops for specific lessons

So that’s how my class system works.

It’s different than other coloring schools because I’m not teaching images. We build useful skills which eventually lead to independence and artistry.

You have artistic potential. You were not born to copy someone else’s coloring.

Let’s bake some cake!