Black Hair

Hi Everyone, it's Faye here today :)

I thought I'd chat to you about colouring black hair and the different effects you can achieve with your Copics. I am using a stamp called Ellie Says Hi, from Tiddly Inks.

When I colour hair with flicks, I prefer to start with the lightest colour and work up to the darkest. This means I do not bleach out anything I have done before, I don't lose the texture and don't have to repeat the steps again.

Although I am looking to achieve black hair, I actually use very little of this colour (100 or 110), preferring to make the greys work for me. Let me show you with a quick step by step. In this example, I am going to use the Cool Grey Family...

I use C3 to get a base layer of colour down. It really doesn't matter that it's messy at this point, because further layers will hide this ;)

I apply a second layer with C5, again not being too precise, although I try and leave some of the C3 showing

Next up, it's C7 and now I try to be a little careful about where I lay the colour and how much of it

This time, I use C9 and you can see I don't use very much at all

Finally, I use 100 in the areas under the chin only. This pops these little bits back and adds depth

As I mentioned, in the samples above I have used the Cool Grey Family. But I thought it would be interesting to show how different each Grey Family looks. It's easy to get caught in a colour rut... if you have them all, it's fun to play with them all!

Top Left - Cool Greys; C3, C5, C7, C9, 100
Top Right - Warm Greys; W3, W5, W7, W9 110
Bottom Left - Neutral Greys; N3, N5, N7, N9, 100
Bottom Right - Toner Greys; T3, T5, T7, T9, 110

Of course, sometimes super shiny black hair will pick up ambient colour from the light around it. You can show this by starting with a colour as the base layer. In the samples below, I have again used the Cool Greys (did someone say something earlier about getting comfortable with certain colours?!), but I started with B21 on the top sample and BV04 on the second one...

Compare how different they look to the samples coloured only with Grey.

Finally, you don't even have to use the Greys for black hair. Look how gorgeous these two samples look. On the first, I have used BG72, BG75, BG78 and N5. On the second, I have used BV20, BV23, BV25, BV29 and C7...

So Copic Lovers, get out your Markers, mix them up and have fun!

Copics Used...
Skin; E000, E00, E21, E70
Hair; C3, C5, C7, C9, W3, W5, W7, W9, N3, N5, N7, N9, T3, T5, T7, T9, 100, B21, BV04, BG72, BG75, BG78, BV20, BV23, BV25, BV29

Thanks so much for stopping by... Have a great day.