 Hello there, I'm Sandy Olnok, and today I'm going to take a value study and turn it into a Copic marker drawing. A while back I talked about trying to do more value studies, but I have not really done a great job of following through on that. But this is one attempt to do that. So I have started with a sketch in Conte crayons. They are Conte sticks, kind of a chalky charcoal type of thing. They come in, I don't know, they might come in more colors than this, but I have black, white, and sepia, I'm just using the black and white here. It's smushable with your finger or ball or various kinds of things, and I did a little play around with this on some toned paper so that at least the gray was already done. I didn't have to do much smushing. And really I was adding in the lights, in the light sections and the darks, because I wanted to know where those would be in this scene that I was creating. And then it was time to start on the sketch itself with the basic perspective lines. So I'm just going to put in the main pieces. I'm not drawing everything in here at this point. I'm using a light Copic marker so that I can go over that, change it as I need to for the drawing itself, but to just get some of the bigger shapes blocked in. And since I was adapting this anyway from the photograph that I was using, I decided I would just adapt the sketch and move things around a little further to fix the orientation of the paper because the paper for the Copic drawing is smaller, of course, than the sketchbook. And there were just certain aspects of this that I really liked. I've been looking at a lot of anime, manga art for quite some time, some of the scenes that are created in those. They speak to me of Copic. A lot of it is done digitally, but a lot of it makes me think of Copic airbrush when I see those. And I just been wanting to try something like this to create a kind of moody piece and also to do a silhouette because I'm talking about silhouettes this week. And I had this stamp from Mo Manning that has a couple that are just walking. So they're kind of the anchor for this whole piece and trying to give them a setting for the date that they're on. And I began with the lights. A lot of times I just look at planes. So I start working with the background and decide what that's going to be and then start working on the mid tones and then the foreground. This one went a little bit differently because I wanted to have sort of misty light coming from the center of the picture because it's nighttime and I wasn't really sure what colors I was going to end up with even at the beginning. I changed from some of the photos that I had that had more of a bluish tinge to them. That would be kind of fun to do something a little more pink, maybe a little more romantic pinks and purples since they're on a hot date. And got out my airbrush so I could get this center section with this foggy look to it just kind of down the center part and up into the sky. I'm not worried about the buildings on either side because all of that's going to come together as I start adding more layers and adding some of this reflection from the sky color into the reflection on the sidewalk. I'm assuming a kind of rainy ish day, not pouring down rain so there's not going to be any raindrops. But the city has some reflections on the sidewalks and that's what I'll be capturing there. So having the same colors in the upper portion as the lower portion is helpful in that with that glow still in the middle. In the building that I added in there, I just used a piece of paper to throw over top of it to do some loose masking to create a very ghostly kind of building in the background. I didn't want anything really super specific. But then started working on a few details. I didn't really have a plan for how I was going to approach this, which section was going to come first. And then I decided I wanted to build in some darks because since I've been thinking about silhouettes and I've been working on silhouettes all week long. And if you don't know this, when I do something on Monday, it's kind of a general easier deep dive into a subject of some kind. And then on social media, I just play with it all week long. And sometimes the Friday video is done before then. And sometimes it just takes longer to do. So I'm working on it at the same time as all that other stuff. So I've been working with silhouettes for a bit here and trying to figure out which way is best when it comes to this probably would have been better had I done those mid tones and then put the blacks in. But I just wanted to see what that contrast was going to be and how it was going to work out because I was at the point of the drawing that I I tell you guys not to do this. But I was at the point of saying, is this working or do I need to start over again? And for me, I just wanted to see some of the contrast of what the figures were going to look like, what that big dark building on the right was going to look like that one is closer to you. So it's going to more contrast, more shadow in it. And there was this one picture of a city escape picture that had a look through an archway. And on the other side of the archway, you saw this glowing window in the dark. And it was so cool because the building itself that the window was in was really dark. So I kept fighting with it to try to make it darker and darker. And then I put a haze of some shelves and a light, a chair, a plant or something in the window just to create some some little magic going on in there, because that adds a little interest to that building that could become just a big solid block. And on a drawing like this, I wanted something that's going to have a little bit more to it than that. And then came the other building on the other side. And this is the one area that I did worry about trying to leave some light color because there's that one light pole in the Copic rendition. I moved it over so that the light would be in that dark space. But that meant I had to leave that. I wasn't going to be able to get enough of it lifted using the Copic blender pen because that will lift some color. But I didn't trust it to lift enough color. So I just colored around it, which is always painful. It's one of the reasons that I prefer to do a drawing rather than stamping because stamping you have to get around the edges of everything. But using a silhouette is one way you don't have to do that when you're creating something. You'll see when I get to doing some of the area around those two figures, I can draw right through them because they're going to be solid black. If I erase something, then I could just go over that part again. And if you're coloring around those two figures and trying to leave them light and leave all that detail in there, then when you get to the cars and the people and the sidewalk and everything behind them, you have to make sure you stop before you get to them. And a silhouette means you don't have to do that, which is kind of nice. It's just yet one more reason I enjoy making silhouette types of drawings. They're also much more dramatic when you have any kind of contrast. The contrast is what draws people's eye to an area of your drawing. And any time you're trying to create a focal point, putting the focal point with some very dark darks next to some very light lights, that's going to end up being where the eye looks first. That's going to be the focal point. So now working into some of these mid tones. And I wasn't really sure how dark to go. So I started light and just worked in by layers, adding more and more darkness to it. I knew they were going to have to go much darker than this. I wasn't sure whether I would be leaving openings for some of this mid tone color and then add darker shadows on top. But what's great about Copics is you can just keep layering and keep layering and keep layering. The paper doesn't peel off or anything. It can get a little muddy over time. But when you're using a limited color palette like this with just grays, purples, blues, like these kind of night colors, lots of BV2s in there, BV2, 3, 2, 5, 2, 9 are in here. Then you don't have a whole lot of that to that mud to worry about necessarily. So then this building kept getting darker because I just needed it to kind of go away. I needed not to have a lot of detail in it. But enough to have a few windows showing maybe a lighter window so that there might be some light, some life scene in a few of the windows. But lots of it would just kind of disappear. And then the other side of the street, just making vertical shapes of various kinds, some blocks going across, some are just going up and down and then adding in a car in here. And this car, you know, this taxi was kind of a mess at first. I just kept putting people in front of it as I started adding that section because, you know, people can walk in front of a parked taxi and be just fine. And crowds can cover a myriad of car issues because I'm not really good at drawing cars. So next I'm going to pop some highlights. And that in a night scene is important to just have some spots that are going to be really, really bright. So that you get that twinkle effect. And it's not even that important that you end up with all these lights in places where there actually are light poles. Because if you look at any city scene, a lot of it just gets all sort of blurred together. And then there's pops of light here and there. The pops of light definitely helped my car to look like a car because now there are two bright highlights for the headlights. And then I added some lights to that building on the right and a little bit of another building because it almost seemed like that tall guy needed a friend. The white that I was using, by the way, is P. H. Martin's bleed proof white, which does stay white on top of Copic marker and all kinds of other mediums. It's quite nice. And I will have all the supplies listed for this in the doobly-doo down below. Not that I have any expectation that folks are going to try a drawing like this because this is just a crazy playtime thing. But it's been really inspiring to look at all of these anime type scenes that have been done digitally and see what it would take to create something like that in Copic marker. And all I can say is thank goodness for my Copic airbrush, because that made this possible. So the last finishing touch, of course, is going to be all these wires going across the city. And then the wonderful tape peel. I love the tape peel. I love watching that nice edge appear. Even if sometimes it's not a totally perfect edge, it just feels like it's finished when you get to pull that off and have your drawing all done, sign this puppy, put it in the shop in case you would like to have this drawing at home for yourself and maybe get inspired to try something like that on your own. So yes, I used a stamp to make a silhouette. Sure, there's a much easier one in my last video. So you can check the Monday video, which will be linked here on the screen as well as in the doobie do. And that's about it for me today. I will see you next week with more creativity. Bye, guys.