Sunday Mailbag- Copics?

Q: How do you find working with the Copic markers for coloring? They seem to be the popular and recent/newest of the traditional art materials. I remember alcohol markers being around for a long time now but mostly for advertising comps and architecture/landscape renderings.

A: I like the Copics a lot, but I only use them for quick style work like I do at comic cons. They are versatile and convenient, but while you can do a lot of blending of colors to get a wider palette, you are essential stuck with the colors and values of the markers themselves. Not all colors blend together well. With natural media like watercolor, you can mix virtually any color. You can also go from a light wash to thick opaque with watercolor. With the marker the lightest value you can get is what comes out of the tip, although you can darken the color value some by going over it several times with the same marker. One thing that I don’t like about Copics is too many of the colors are really dark and saturated. They don’t have a lot of more subtle shades, and since lightening them up is hard or impossible, you are limited by the marker in hand.

That said, Copics are a great coloring media. You can get some wonderful blending effects, especially if you get the hang of using a light touch and the sides of the sketch tips to create gradations. I’m still learning with them, but I use them a lot at cons.

The one problem with Copics is they are not permanent. They are dye-based markers so the color is susceptible to fading under direct sunlight or florescent lights that have ultraviolet rays, and with the march of time. This is no different than the fading you see with Dr. Martin dyes or other dye/chemical based color. Spraying the art with a UV block or framing it under UV block glass will help with the fading, but nothing will completely stop the slow fading of the color, some colors more quickly than others. You’d think at $6.00 per marker the color would last, but these markers are not meant to be archival media. They are really meant for comps and studies for artists and designers. To be fair, watercolors also fade over time, as do many other types of media. Nothing lasts forever.

The only way to completely preserve a piece done in Copic markers is to scan it when it’s newly done. That way you have a record of the fresh piece with all color at full strength. If you are super paranoid about fading, use a photo printer to print out the scan and display that on the wall, and tuck your original away in a dark vault somewhere.

Thanks to Kyle Hildreth for the question. If you have a question you want answered about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!