Absolute beginner needs paint or marker advice
I’m an absolute beginner that decided to make a comic character poster for my kids. I found a nice tutorial and was able to sketch a nice 24,36” picture of the character Luffy from the cartoon they watch called one piece.
It’s all pencil outlines and it cleaned up pretty nicely. I unfortunately only had fluorescent pink poster board.
I’d like to paint the character in, but I’m afraid the paint won’t cover the pink and it would look pretty bad.
There are only a few colors in the character and it’s line art.
At any rate I would want a paint marker for the black lines. Would the oil based sharpie paint market be a good choice? Does anyone have an overall recommendation?
Here is the drawing tutorial. I followed. https://www.drawingtutorials101.com/how-to-draw-monkey-d--luffy-full-body-from-one-piece
Here is the color palette
https://www.anime-colors.com/one-piece-series/monkey-d-luffy
It will never be fine art, but I want to make something nice for my kids.(ideally before Easter)
Thanks for any beginner friendly advice
7 replies
Acrylic paint should cover it up nicely, and it dries quickly, and you can dilute it or wash your brushes out with water (rather than turpentine or mineral spirits). Once it dries it is waterproof, and can be overpainted with more acrylic paint.
You can fill the main areas in with normal acrylic paint and a brush. Cheaper or no-brand acrylic paint will be a bit thinner and might need a couple of coats to be opaque enough.
You can also get "acrylic paint pens" or "acrylic paint markers", which is the same paint etc, but in a pen format - which may be very useful if you want to outline the work, or fill in any small detailed areas.
As another user suggested, you could undercoat the pink area with white first, which may make it easier for your top coat of colour to not be slightly pink-tinted.
When you say cheap no-name. What is a name. I was just going to order from Amazon.
When it comes to paint. Are some easier to use than others? I know I’d have a challenge painting clean lines with the tempura paints I usually use with the kids.
Just ordered off Amazon is likely "no name", though you could definitely get high-end stuff on there.
Most brands also do a range from "basic" through "student" to "professional". The professional ones have more pigment in them, i.e. better coverage or stronger tinting power. The absolute cheapest may be like "trying to paint something white using milk".
For example, Daler Rowney do a Basics range, then a Graduate range, then their fancier stuff is Cryla or System 3. Other brands are stuff like Windsor & Newton, Turner, Holbein, Lascaux, Golden.
The price difference is quite extreme, as in the price for a full set of colours at cheapest, may only get a single tube of one colour at the high end. Model painting acrylics (i.e. Warhammer or Vallejo etc), in case you have any already, tend to have good coverage, and if you're wanting flat untextured layers of colour, will probably work as well as a fairly high-end art paint. They may not have much flexibility if you're working on canvas though - but should be fine on board or paper.
I wouldn't worry about it too much for what you're currently planning - putting some time in, you could visually get the same results from cheaper stuff, it just might take two or three coats until it covers well enough.
For the acrylic paint pens, as far as I could tell, even the no-name brand ones work pretty well. AK Interactive do high end ones for model makers, which should work well if you're just getting the black for the outline.
If you’re using a good opaque paint it might cover the pink OK. If not, you could cover the pink with a base layer of white paint (maybe acrylic paint?) to get good coverage. If you want to get really fiddly with it, you could try covering the pink board with plain white paper. You could go over your pencil with sharpie so it will show through and then carefully use a thin layer of paste or glue stick inside the lines before laying down a layer of white paper. The down side is that you would then need to trace the whole outline with a xacto knife to remove the excess paper.
ETA I don’t have a good general paint or marker recommendation. But if you’re going out to buy something you might be able to test paint pens/markers in the store to check the coverage
Oil-based markers are good for color blending, but are somewhat more expensive than regular. I personally wouldn't recommend using them for outlines due to the blending potential, but I believe I've seen people use them for outlines just fine. Personally, I'm pretty partial to acrylic paints. Water them down to get a nice watercolor-like texture, or use it as-is for a solid color. It's quite versatile, so you should be able to cover the background.
I'm a big fan of alcohol based markers in different sets of greyscales. They can cover pretty well if you layer it and they're awesome for building up shade. My posted drawings are all done with grayscale, to give you an idea.
I picked up winsor newton acrylic paints from the craft store.
I probably should have watched a YouTube video on painting or something.
The white paint has pretty good coverage. I just need to learn brush control.
The red paint has good coverage as well, but it does need more than one coat and it appears much darker than I expected. The more paint I add the darker it looks. There are two shades of red down and they look identical on the paper.
It looks like for me going over the lines with the paint marker than painting inside that works ok for me.
The yellow is not going to work. It’s transparent and I worry it will be dark ans muddy by the time enough layers are built up. I’ll try painting white under, then yellow over.