Underwater background tutorial with Copic markers!

Hi everyone!

Here's an extra blogpost for you, it's an underwater background tutorial.

The original was for the Colourstock blog, written in Dutch, but I translated it for the Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps fans!

First I stamped this gorgeous mermaid from the brand new set "Mermaid Friends" by Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps. Mostly you see the water is a little bit darker at the bottom of the sea, so I started to flick a little around her tail with BG45. I always start to flick by the tail towards the edge of the paper.   

It's useful if your image is not already colored, otherwise you'll pull out the color of her tail out the image .

Go over the previous surfaces with your BG34 and flick a little wider. I added some BG34 at the height of her belly too. It's important to use the flicking technique because we don't want a smooth effect.

Blend the area's with BG23 and add a new part at the height of her head.

Repeat the previous steps with BG45 and BG23 to darken up the area's.

Blend everything together with BG11. If you don't get a nice blend, check if you still have enough ink in your marker. That will make things much easier!

After we did the background we can add a lightsource. Just take a pencil and draw an arrow to give you an idea where the light is comming from.
Use your blender to draw some stipes from the corner to the edges of the paper in fan shape.

The left part of the image has to become a bit lighter than the right part because the light is coming that way, so I added some BG10 between the blender stripes. At the right side I've added some BG11 instead.

It would be fun if you could see the sun shining through the water, so you can add some YR20 in fan shape to the upper left corner of the coloring. Now it looks like a sunny day underwater.

After the background was finished I've colored the gorgeous mermaid and I used the colors that were in the Doodlebug paperpad "Under the sea".

Here are all the Copic colours I've used:

skin: E13, E11, E00, E000

lips: R29, R24

hair: E37, E35, YR23, Y21

star: YR07, YR04, Y38, Y35

top: RV19, RV55, RV52

tail: RV19, RV55, RV52, B00, B02

dolphin: B99, B97, B95, B93, B91

background: BG45, BG34, BG23, BG11, BG10, blender, YR20

As finishing touch I've added some white dots with a white Molotow marker and clear Wink of Stella on her tail so it looks like the tail sparkles.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial! It would be great if you can let us see your work with the tutorial featuring Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps in the Kraftin' Kimmie Krafty Friends Facebookgroup!

Deborah