Furry Reindeer...

Hello everyone,

It's Sue here today and I've been colouring one of my favourite images - a reindeer! 

For a long time I avoided colouring furry animals because I wasn't confident about colouring their fur!  If you are feeling bit unsure about it as well then hopefully this tutorial will help.

Now, today I am going to be using a really strong Copic red combination so it is really important that my markers are clean.  (To be honest It's always important to have clean markers but with reds even more so)!

I have chosen an image which I think shows off the technique to colour textured fur perfectly.  It is also quite beautiful - Rednosed Mousedeer by Di's Digi Stamps.

To colour textured fur I am basically going to make a lot of dots on the image with the brush nib of your marker.  It is important that the dots are randomly placed and of different sizes.

First I covered the whole of the image which would be textured fur with dots using E41...

...then I added dots of E42 where I wanted the darkest parts of my image to be...

and I went back over the whole area again with E41.

I then coloured the darkest areas again with E42

Next I used E43 to colour the darkest area...

...followed by E44.  (Don't panic - I know it is starting to look dark but adding the lighter colours shortly will even it all out)!

Next, I coloured with the same markers, in the same areas in reverse order...

E43

E42

E41 (all over)

To smooth out the area which goes from dark to light, I used a combination of E41 and colourless blender (but only use the colourless blender sparingly or you will end up with bald patches)!

Using the same markers, I carried on adding dots until the area was completely covered, the transition from dark to light looked 'smooth' and I had achieved a result I was happy with.

Using W00, W1, W3 and W4 I used the same technique to colour the fur on the mice.

Their ears are smoothly coloured with R11 and E81.

I finished colouring this lovely image with Copic markers as follows...

Bells - Y35, Y15, Y11

Bow, bauble and beautiful nose - R59, R56, R46, R24

Bauble - YG67, YG17, YG03

I really enjoyed colouring this cute reindeer!  I hope you found this tutorial useful.

It would be great if you could try this technique and show your cards to us at 

Copic Marker Europe on Facebook.

To find us just follow the link

HERE

Thank you for popping by.

Happy Copic colouring

from Sue...xxx