I have spent a lot of time drawing my characters in pen, scanning them and coloring them in Adobe Illustrator. I started using markers this past winter to color my illustrations, and I fell in love. It took some time to get used to the technique. Learning how to blend and build up color, depth and texture; this took a lot of practice. Currently, I use Prismacolor markers, and I really like the quality of the Blick store brand markers. These markers have a fine tip and a broad tip which make it easy to fill in any odd shapes and curve that I may draw.

I use markers for my illustrations. But also, I use them for my earrings and pins.

What I love the most about using markers: creating variations in skin tone and color. I'm pretty good at blending markers now. I can't wait to have a 300+ color collection of professional grade markers.

Collection of some of my favorite marker illustrations of 2016

How do you feel about drawing with markers? Have you tried it? Share in the comments!!

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I switched to drawing with pens in my sketchbook instead of pencils a long time ago, probably high school. The pencil sketches would smudge and I hated that I couldn’t get the lines to stay crisp. Back then, I was trying to draw more realistically, and I’m not good at that, I knew that early on. I was more interested in the story and the characters in my artwork than perfecting the form. Plus, I really have the WORST handwriting/penmanship, so in school I needed a nice fine tip pen to even attempt to write anything legibly, well that’s if I wanted to actually take notes to study with. And since most of my notetaking in school primarily consisted of doodles and daydreams, drawing with pens became my favorite way to draw.

Neatness was definitely not a priority when I drew, and it still isn’t when I’m freehand sketching. I loved the texture of the pen scrawling & scribbles, and building up the dimensions with varying my pen pressure on the paper.

Nowadays I work primarily in pen, but I try to be a little more clean with my strokes and more decisive with my pen marks. I use pencil lightly to sketch my ideas, placement, expressions etc. then I add in the permanent lines.

From here, I color in with my markers or I scan the image & add color in Adobe Illustrator.

Rosy  marker illustration. — Rosy marker illustration.

When I draw in a freehand manner with my pen, its generally in these curvy and semi connected shapes. I can do this for hours, throw on some music, or a podcast (We Hate Movies, The Read, MmHmm Girl, 2 Dope Queens, This American Life—my go-to broadcasts) or I pull up Seinfeld reruns on Hulu and zone out. I draw them as just outlines, sometimes as part of a zentangle or I spend time coloring them in with fine point sharpies.