So today I wanted to "sign out" from my phone and computer by using my coloring book that I bought years ago. Having internet is a big distraction to everything, so I figured I should pause with electronics and do something with my hands.
I've been wanting to use my art materials and paper again after using digital so I remembered my coloring book and @acidyo's Copic pens. :D
I bought this at a sale (maybe $4) and forgot about it since I have "out of sight, out of mind" "problem". :p
It's called Mythographic: Aviary and apparently it has a lot of different themes too.
The art is so good on this book and it's so detailed and exciting to color on.
What's so good about it as well is that they kept the medium in mind. The papers are thick and smooth, so if you use markers, it won't bleed as much and go through the next page. I think the paper is around 200 gsm thick.
It also has this cut pattern so they also thought if you want to frame it then you can do so easily.
I chose this design for today's activity. :D
We haven't really tried the Copics "seriously" cos I also got discouraged/scared to use it since the caps are so fragile that we have about 20 pens that are dried out and can't be used anymore. :< It's apparently a common problem for Copic sketch which is such a shame.
I was kinda worried it would bleed through so I still put a paper in between the pages but luckily it didn't. Pretty amazing book!
I'm not a big fan or markers basically because they don't blend well. Surprisingly, these Copics blend and also buildable. You can see how they blend so effortlessly.
It did kinda "run" on the paper so you can easily make the mistake of drawing outside the lines but nothing too serious.
It also relies heavily on how good the paper is and this paper held it well. I know other papers are designed for water-based markers specifically so they don't dry too easily and blending is a lot better but this one is really good enough tbh.
I also was just using the brush tips even on the background and I initially thought it would be annoying but it was not.
I love autumn so I didn't choose an ugly green for the leaves haha. I was not having any worries on which colors to choose but still being mindful about color theory. I chose this color for the main subject to make her stand out and I think it did. :P
It was so easy to do gradients using this pen. I was thinking more of darker crimson color for the bird but thought it would be too dark.
After using the markers, I used colored pencils for minor highlights. I think I used 97% markers cos it was getting dark outside and I was already coloring for maybe 2 hours.
Here is my final color for this design. :D
It was a pretty fun activity and I'm glad to have found this book before. I was listening to music while coloring but I only tapped on my phone just to skip the music which felt very good. I could easily doom scroll on my phone for hours without even noticing it and accomplish NOTHING so this was very refreshing.
The fact that you don't have to worry about the design or whatever is also refreshing.
Also, the paper only curled a bit which is still pretty good for a coloring book haha.