Mepxy Max 7th Edition

MEPXY MAX 7TH EDITION

Snake vs Mepxy
SHOWDOWN!

BY Ash Chain

Created with A3 Canson Drawing 220 paper and Mepxy Markers

Good afternoon everyone! Here we are again for anther tute on Mepxy and Canson, two of the best friends in the art universe in my opinion. Doing something a little different this time, not cute and cuddly, more on the slimy scaly side of things. Hope you enjoy.

So start off with your line work. I use just your average art liners for this in size 0.2 and 0.8. SO MANY LINES!

Like most of my drawings when I colour I go out of the lines. What can I say, no ones perfect. However, there is a way to amend these little outbursts of colour. The ever so glorious 00 colourless marker.

Simply go over the area where you have unwanted colour. This will essentially "bleed" the colour out and fade it away. MAGIC!

Now heres the best bit. Colour and lots of it. I start by laying down my darkest colour first and whilst the ink is still "fresh" i continue to lay down my medium and light colours. This will help to blend your colours easily without over saturating the area. I always do my favourite parts first I call this the "Beauty Spot".

Now for the body. As I previously stated, I use my darkest colour first and quickly go back with my medium and light colours. With the body though I used a slightly different way of shading the areas. I used my darkest colour first and with a whipping motion and not being particularly careful played it on the image. I did use a slight curve to the strokes to sort of give the impression of the snake's round shape. 

I then did the same motion with the medium colour while also going over the darker colour to blend it in a bit. So dragging the colour from the top of the darkest colour down to where you desire your medium colour to finish.

Then comes the lightest colour. Instead of going from top to bottom like I did with the medium colour I start from the bottom and whip the light colour upwards into the medium. This will blend the medium colour and light colour nicely without over saturating the darkest colour.

Again, if you have gone outside of your lines, never fear 00 colourless is here! You can see where I have used the marker in the scales as it looks darker than the paper. Don't panic though, once this dries it will fade back to its paper colour. Keep in mind however that this marker can only blend so much colour out. As in it will bleed the colour out further if it is quite dark or saturated but will make it lighter. Once this has happened try not to go back and attack that area as it will deteriorate the papers quality. Your paper can only take so much ink before it will start to warp. So be mindful and take it easy on our favourite magic marker.

Now I have fully coloured the scales of my snake but am not satisfied with it;s overall colour and feel it needs more contrast. I go back over the darker colour with a Cool Gray #6. I am carful to go easy and light handed with this tone as I don't want to over saturate this area and warp the paper.

Next to colour the belly scales. Not as awful lot of detail in these so I just used two colours that look nice and contrasting together. I don't want the belly to look flat so I used the dark colour to break up the light colour.

You're probably wondering what the blank stripe was for down the middle of the snake. Well here it is. I used a gold paint marker to fill in this area and cover up those unsightly bleeds. I have also created a really quick background for the snake using Cools Gray #4 and #1.

I continue with smaller gold paint marker to fill in some scales over the whole snake. I felt it needed a little bit of something extra so gold scales it is.

There you have it guys. My splendid golden scaled snake. I hope you've picked up some handy hints you can use in the future. Happy creating!

Colours used: 00, CG01, CG04, CG06,R32, R37, R59, W23, W02, W25, N01, N27.