Promarker Tutorial - Skin & Eyes

After much thought and being asked lots of time about the colours I use to colour faces I thought I'd do another tutorial for those with more than a couple of pens.

This tutorial is designed for people with a reasonable selection of promarkers as I use several.
The image I am using is a Sweet Pea stamp - Seeing Through which I selected as its a huge face area and eyes so you can see what I'm doing!

So are we sitting comfortably?

The colours I use for faces are....

IVORY (BASE COLOUR AND BLENDING)
BLUSH
VANILLA
SANDSTONE

Now then this is my colour choice for Sweet Pea stamps and more "realistic" images. If I'm colouring a more "cartoony" image such as magnolia I tend to swap the sandstone for oatmeal to make the skin more pinky.

You need to look at your image and decide where the light source is i.e the imaginary sun and if you've got the memory of a goldfish like I have then put a little mark somewhere away from the image to remind you!

I start off by colouring most of the skin tone in ivory. I leave a part white which is nearest to the light source.

I then colour over nearly all of the ivory with the blush again leaving the white bit (on the forehead in this image)

Next I use the VANILLA and create some darker areas so I've coloured over the parts I want to be the darkest leaving quite a lot of the blush showing and the white.

The next thing I do is go back to the IVORY and starting from your DARKEST colour (i.e VANILLA) blend this in towards the lightest colour. To blend simply move the pen in small circles or lines and push the darker colours inwards. Go over the bit you left white now and colour all over the skin.

See how the harsh lines blend in and disappear?

Next I use SANDSTONE to add shadows. If it was a Tilda or similar I'd use oatmeal instead which makes the image pinkier but sweet pea images I tend to do a more natural looking skin colour so I go for sandstone.
Add small lines of this in areas of shadow such as below strands of hair and along the face line as shown below.

Blend this in as before with your IVORY starting on the lines you just drew and working the colour in to remove the harsh lines then I've used PALE PINK for the cheeks (Most pinks are ok such as baby pink or sunkissed pink)

I colour in a triangle shape starting below the eyes as shown below.

Again using the IVORY I've blended the cheeks in and gone over the whole flesh area with IVORY to finish it off.

EYES

As eyes are usually quite small and the promarker nib is quite big then you need to be careful with small areas like this and literally feather the pen on the image. The harder you press down the more ink comes out so using a light hand colour in the iris part of the eye with the lighter colour (ARCTIC BLUE) leaving a small white spot as below. Use a light and a dark colour such as ARCTIC BLUE and AZURE.

Take a darker colour out (AZURE) and starting from the pupil colour in a small amount leaving the white spot and part of the ARCTIC BLUE showing as below.

Next use a BLENDER PEN and run over the eyes just a couple of times. This will blend the two blues together and tone down the white spot you left leaving a very pale shade of blue.

Hope this has been some use, I'll show the hair next week!

Thanks to Teresa at Crafts and Me for sending me the stamp to play with!