Contemplations in markup

As an early Christmas treat I got myself a series of Brushmarkers and Promarkers in cold and warm greys, and in colors. The pens come with a blender.

In theory the blender helps blend colors together by wetting the surface of paper. In practice, colors will blend in any case (except with black) but will do so more smoothly on a reasonably wet layer of color. I have probably not mastered it as I find it’s more of a smudger than it is a blender, giving edges fuzziness, even on non-bleed paper.

To test the grey series I went for a dragon that adorned an Alfons Mucha poster of 1896 for the Lorenzaccio play:

I sketched the outline:

I marked the outline using Uni-ball pin pens (0.05, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.5 mm):

Then I applied layers of grey. I had to use a white ink Posca pen to cover some overlapping black lines in the moustache. Here is the finished version:

I learned that the alcohol ink smears pencil lines and even the Uni-ball pin pens ink, so it’s better to go easy on the outline and add those or add finishing lines afterwards.

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I got a silver and black Decopatch sheet that I applied with glue/varnish to the square wooden frame and tada! The frame is now on a shelf in the room of my little boy who loves dragons.