Figuring out my markers

I finally achieved the biggest thing I strove for with alcohol markers: actually using them right.

I love using alcohol markers and I have for a long time, but I never used them consistently because I never liked the finished results. One of the biggest reasons for this was I didn't know what I was doing wrong when I colored with the markers. I had trouble with streaky uneven coverage, and excessive ink bleeding (mostly because copic brand markers bleed through paper like hell). Basically, I kept having skill issues and it made me sad.

After scrolling on TikTok for hours watching tutorial videos, I found out what my biggest problem was. When filling in the space I was coloring, I was moving to quickly, and when I recolored over any part I had already colored, it made visible dark patches of color. I would get more specific with what I was doing wrong and the changes I made, but I don't want to bore the void I'm posting into.

I'm still trying to get into good habits for not letting the ink bleed through lines and the back of the paper, but that will come to me with practice. Comparing the two pieces I did right before and right after learning the right marker methods, you can see a significant difference in quality.

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  Dante portrait (before learning marker techniques)

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  Reign portrait (after learning marker techniques)

From this experiment, I've found a new hurdle to get over, and it's figuring out how color layering works. While picking and testing colors for Reign, I picked a color I thought would look nice for a blush, and immediately realized I needed to pick a new color when I was getting clown levels of pigment. The only other colored mediums I have experience with is color pencils, oil pastels and paint, and this wasn't anywhere close to how they worked. I've sort of figured out how to layer similar colors after the blush incident (thank god I used a test paper first), but now I want to figure out how to layer colors that are on different parts of the color wheel. When I did digital art I fell victim to the curse of always shading with purple, and I'd like to do that again.

So, now I have a mission for my next portrait. I'm already going with a more purple color palette for it, so it shouldn't be to difficult of a first attempt. Wish me luck :D