Coloring Curls- Tutorial

Hi, I'm Elizabeth. So happy to be here at CME! I want to show you a way to color frizzy curly hair with Copic Markers. I love curly hair, but it can be hard sometimes. I found this is a way to do it. The trick is to use very light moves with the tip of your marker. 

I chose this beautiful image, Mothersday- daughter by Saturated Canary. I colored the skin first to make sure the chosen hair colors matched. 

Copic Markers I will use for the hair is: E49-59-39-35-33

 Start with your darkest marker E49. Use the tip of your maker to make the curls. You can practice on a scrap piece of paper to get the movements right. Make very light swirls, barely touching the paper. I'm careful to follow the artists drawings when coloring, starting near her face and coloring towards the tip of the hair. On the right picture you can se the strokes I made.

 Next, repeat the movements using your second darkest marker E59. As you can see I leave some white space between the strokes, filling it marker by marker, so the strokes have to be very thin.

I repeat the swirling moments over her whole hair. 

 Then I go over again with E39. Filling the white spaces, but make sure you don't cover it all. 

Go over again using E35 and E33. Be sure to leave some white space here and there.

Finally I go over one last time with the darkest marker, E49 to make shadows under her cheeks to make the curls pop. And finally the lightest marker, E33, to fill inn just a little more of the white spaces. Keep using the swirl movements.

Time to finish up the rest of the image and make a card.

Copic Markers used: 

Skin: E13-15- 21-53-50, R20, Eyes: B97-93-91

Daughers hair: E49-59-39-35-33

Mothers hair: Y21-26, YR24, E 23-25-29

Dress: B97-95-93-91

Mothers clothes: W7-3-1-00, V99-95-93-91

Flowers: G82-94, V99-95-91, V06, W7-3-01-00, Y38

Paper: B91-B60, W3
I used Copic Opaque White to make the dots on her skirt. 

 Here' s the finished card. The beautiful papers are by Maja Design, I used a Spellbinder floral oval, swirl by Memorybox and a Martha stewart punch for the butterfly edges. Flowers are WOC, Sentiment by Norsk Stempelblad and postmark stamp is Kort og Godt.

Hope you like my tutorial. Good luck coloring curls!
Crafty hugs,