There are a gazillion ways to use wide tipped makers for backgrounds on your artwork.
Typically you see me put backgrounds on some of my portraits AFTER I’ve drawn the portrait. I like cutting around the figure with the wide tip. It’s just fun. You can’t really see the edge of the portrait all the time because the marker gets in the way as you try to make an edge. The uneven, random nature of it is something I enjoy. I think it takes me back to my childhood when so many print jobs (books, newspapers, magazines) didn’t quite hold registration.
Whatever. I love playing with it.
Here’s an example of me sketching, painting, and then throwing on the background color with a Montana Marker.
Today you see me going in first with the markers.
In the second photo of this post you can see the backgrounds before I started sketching.
I had not yet picked out my references. The colors were added because of how I thought faces might fall on the full page. On the right I figured that the bottom half of the face would be darker. (I didn’t want to use a cool color like certain blues which would have made “temperature” sense, because they could be darker in value. I didn’t want the brush marks to be lost on a dark valued color. The magenta is already pretty dark but as you can see in the finished sketch, the brush lines show.)
On the left I wanted the green to go where I put the eyes, and the rest of the strokes didn’t matter to me.
Because the background colors were lighter on the recto page. I elected to use an orange ink brush pen. It’s also a Pentel, but this line of Sign brush pens is water-soluable. By selecting it I knew I wasn’t going to paint watercolor on top of the lines—they would dissolve. My options would be to leave it just lines, to paint opaquely with gouache and hide any blurry lines, or paint it with watercolor and work up the whole face dissolving the lines as I worked. (That’s just way to much trouble for me most of the time.) And of course I could have used dry media to work with these water-soluble lines.
If you want to see me work with these color brush pens with watersoluble ink you can check this post. There is a video at the end of that post.
Just for grins here is a close up of the verso page with the black brush pen ink lines. I just love brush pens as a tool so much. And the Pentel Brush Pen with pigmented ink works great on top of Montana Marker. It dries quickly there and doesn’t bleed if I do wash over it with wet media.
I use the Montana Acrylic Marker with waterbased acrylic ink/paint. (I don’t recall what they are calling the liquid.) Sadly the store I used to get these markers at doesn’t sell them any more. I have a bunch of them. I have refill bottles. As you can see, though, these strokes are pretty dry. Filling these markers with more ink was a low priority during the long protracted move! I may have “lost” some markers permanently to the tips being too dry for too long. I’ve never reached this state before. We’ll see.
These are in a Handbook Watercolor Journal (large size, 10.5 x 8.5 inches or so). It has the lighter weight paper, and is one of the non-100-percent-cotton books they made first. I found it while unpacking the studio gear and supplies during the move. I was trying to use up supplies.
Experiments
Goals
Let’s talk goals—the main goal here is to play, have fun, learn about your materials. One goal is to learn new ways you might use materials you already have. Another goal is to understand the abilities of different media—whether they work on top of other materials or not. And still another goal is to allow yourself to be a little messy when doing the backgrounds so that you can discover new textures and line qualities you might otherwise not encounter.
Since the main goal is play—don’t over think it. When I made the decision of how and where to lay in my colors I didn’t wait until I had a subject and methodically measure and work out exact placement of background colors. You’ll be overwhelmed if you try that.
Look instead at what your subject is going to be. If it’s landscapes then having a foreground, mid-ground, and background color might be a good place to start.
If you’re doing a person or pet, thinking about body proportions and where the face will go will help you ensure you have lighter colors that will allow you to read the eyes of your subject when you put the ink down.
It’s really that simple. No more thought than that.
If one doesn’t work out, well you’ve got more pages in your journal. Turn the page, try another one. Each sketch you make with these new materials (or materials you’re combining in a new way) will yield something better than a perfect portrait/sketch. It will yield understanding of your tools and materials so you can use these items in your current work in expanded ways.
More practical understanding means more options out of limited tools and supplies. More options means more choice. And more choice means infinite creativity.
Tools
Gather some tools. Of course I recommend a brush pen. If you don’t use them this would be a great time to start. I recommend the Pentel Brush Pen with the gray squeezy body. You can see it and some of the other brush pens I use from Pentel here. I like the fine tip. It can make any line from hairlines to bold, thick splotches and strokes. Give it a try. (I’m not connected to the company in any way, they just make the best brush pen on the planet.) You can use your PPBP if you have one (Pentel Pocket Brush Pen). I just like the squeezy body pen from Pentel because I can play with ink delivery while disregarding gravity. I work very quickly.
The Pentel Brush Sign pen is not pictured as they didn’t have the color ink version when I wrote that post. It’s a very fine brush—that’s the fun, besides the color, of that brush pen. Don’t confuse it with their line of fiber-tipped pens using the same key words in their name. This pen has a brush tip with individual “hairs.”
You can see me sketching with these ultra thing color-ink brush pens in this video in this post.
Get your markers out. If you don’t have Montana Markers (water-soluble, not the solvent based!) you can try Liquitex and Golden who both sell markers with their acrylic high-flow paint in them. I know Golden also sells empty markers so if you have the high flow paint already you can just get a marker.
If you have acrylic inks like FW you can use them for backgrounds just brushing it on. If you have regular acrylics I think you might run into trouble with your pen ink drying on the acrylic paint surface. Acrylic paint brands are all different and some dry with a very “plastic” feel to their binder—and that will repel ink. A test will be in order before you continue.
Remember, the Montana Marker (water-soluble) and the Golden with their high-flow paint, both are receptive to the Pentel Brush Pen’s ink. If you’re using a different brush pen then that will mean another surface test in the back of your journal. Let the marker dry for 10 minutes and see how it takes the ink. I don’t usually wait that long, but that’s a good place to start.
Use your regular wet-media journal (whatever that is for you). Then you don’t have to worry about markers bleeding. (If you use alcohol- or solvent-based markers you’ll have bleeding issues on a lot of papers and I don’t use them because of that and their odors—so back to the back of the journal for swatch tests!)
I recommend you use wide-tipped markers because let’s face it it would take all day to make a background with a fine-tipped marker—but if you don’t have them and you’re using something that can be brushed on give it a go.
Come to think of it—if you don’t have wide-tipped markers but you have a ROLLER (foam or rubber) ROLL on some of the high flow paint.
Or put your paint on a gel plate and then transfer it to your book.
Don’t forget if you have rubber-stamp reinkers you could roller them onto your page too. Or you can dab and stroke the rubber-stamp ink onto your page with a paper towel or dabber tool—you’ve seen me do that on thousands of pages. (Just do a test first to see how your brand of stamp ink responds to brush pen ink on top of it.)
I almost forgot—if you don’t have a brush pen, first put it on your birthday wish and make sure everyone knows you want one—if I were you I would probably blog about your wish for one, or send notes to everyone you know. Or if there is still money in your art budget, just go buy one.
But if you are a contrarian and don’t want to buy a brush pen, BUT you have FW Acrylic inks (or some other brand), pour a little bit of the ink out into a small bottle (you don’t want to put your brush into the full bottle of ink—the brush could introduce contaminants into the ink and you don’t want the bottle open as the air can cause a skin to form in the original bottle). Then use the decanted ink to paint your lines with an older watercolor brush (NOT your expensive sable brush!). Be sure to wash the brush as soon as you finish to get the ink out. (I have a set of synthetic brushes I only use with inks, think about it.)
It won’t be the same as using a brush pen because you have to redip for more ink all the time, but it cuts down what you have to purchase for an experiment!
So much to play with here.
When that’s all sorted start drawing portraits of all the different hairstyles you see in the world. Because humans are amazing and it’s fun to sketch hair.
OK of course pet portraits are fun on backgrounds like this too. (I’m so jealous you have a live-in model!)
