Marker Demo Drawings

Here are some marker sketches I did for the demo at Blick Art Materials in Fullerton.The purpose of this demo was to show how to layer bright colors over a value marker sketch.
I used the Blick Studio Markers set of twelve which are mostly bright colors over the warm grays set of twelve (9 values + 3 black markers in the set) for a 10 value scale as well as the Blick Studio Brush Markers set of 24 which has the same colors as the bright set plus some non-bright colors.
I had several papers to demo. These here were done on the Canson Pro-Marker Layout Paper.

Markers are similar to watercolor in their transparency so are easily layered. The benefit with starting with the value sketch first is you focus on the design then add color.
The sketches with color are all value underneath. I started with a page of the value sketches then added color for the demo leaving some to show the difference.
It is fairly easy to knock down the saturation of most colors by coming back in and adding more of the value marker on top. If you compare the yellow in the bottom page middle sketch to the untouched bright yellow of the top page bottom sketch you can see what I mean.

I like working with markers for preliminary sketches and thumbnails for their immediacy to get right into it with any mixing of paint colors and sometimes you need to strike while the iron is hot.
Another aspect I like is as you really wet the paper with the marker over and over it will take on the look of watercolor somewhat with that characteristic blotty puddle we associate with watercolor.
See bottom page middle sketch.

Markers are not just for tight advertising and design renderings. They can also be used in a more painterly organic manner.429,430