![]() ![]() Look at the shape of the cranberry highlights. Here’s a closeup of the photo reference for the center cranberry in my Festive Cranberry class. This extra effort pays off because students get more realistic results. When I teach realistic highlighting in advanced classes, I show how to do things the painterly way. The problem comes when you’re still using the same simple highlight technique two years later. Students follow the instructions and end up with passable highlights. I’ve used these shortcuts myself in beginner classes, telling students “the key to easy highlighting is to always keep your highlights in the upper left or all in the upper right corner.” White comma shaped highlights don’t look realīecause real highlights don’t look like white commas.Īnd if you spend any amount of time observing highlights in real life, you’ll quickly notice that highlights are not always in the top right corner of an object, they’re not C shaped, and they’re not white. Later, many colorers with artistic instincts start to realize how fake and flat gel pen highlights look, so they sometimes graduate to making softer highlight oval shapes with white pencil.īut there’s the catch… soft white pencil highlights look better than gel pen highlights but they still don’t look realistic. ![]() It doesn’t look real but it’s cute for small cartoon stamps. When colorers first learn to blend with Copic Markers or colored pencils, the easiest way for an instructor to teach glossy highlights is to have everyone grab a white gel pen and make little comma shapes in the top right corner of everything. If you’re someone who aspires to artistic level coloring, you can’t expect beginner highlighting shortcuts to look real. If you like the look, keep doing it!Īnd white gel pen looks great in stylized cartooning- genres such as manga and heroic comic illustration.īut don’t kid yourself that it looks real. There’s nothing wrong with white gel pen highlights for casual coloring. Look, if you’re someone who colors for fun or relaxation, then this article is not for you. Plus, I’ll offer tips on how to better approach highlights in your next marker or pencil project. Today, let’s look at why the white gel pen highlighting techniques taught in stamp coloring classes hamper your artistic growth. If you’re coloring cranberries with the same technique you also used on a fuzzy brown bear or a prickly pine tree…Īnd if you’re using the white gel pen highlight technique on everything? ![]() Shortcuts lead you into the mindless coloring trap where everything you color starts to look the same. I don’t teach handy-dandy step-by-step coloring techniques because they’re shortcuts. When in reality, I don’t teach techniques. My class projects look different than regular stamp coloring… I think people assume Vanilla Arts projects look different because I’m teaching different techniques. If you’ve never taken one of my Copic Marker or colored pencil classes, you may not realize how different they are than the average coloring class. ![]()
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