Copic coloring: matte metal finishes

I am still a novice when it comes to Copic markers, but I am happily learning more with each class. I've recently been taking monthly classes at Mary Maxim's retail store in Port Huron, Michigan. I come home from there feeling like I've learned all that was expected and then some.

Last week we spent the morning class working on skin colors and the afternoon was focused on matte metal finishes.  I'll show you the morning's result first:

The color in this photo is off a bit, probably because of the lack of natural light in the room when I photographed this. The stamped image is from Art Impressions and is called "Staying' Afloat". I love the girlfriends line of Art Impressions stamps. Besides learning what colors to use for various skin tones, this was the first time I used a Gelly Roll pen to make the white stars, stripes on the yellow bathing suit and designs on the purple one. Not showing well in this photo are white pencil lines (Prismacolor pencil) to make the water look like the ladies are floating in a swimming pool. Fun stuff!

The afternoon class used Penny Black & Mom Manning's stamps "Little Elf Finn" and "Little Elf Mim" We didn't use traditional Christmas colors because some in the class had done elves last fall in those colors. Our focus wasn't their clothing anyway, it was making a sphere look like a sphere and creating matte metal colors.

While these elf images are very cute, I don't know when I will get around to using them so they may hang around my craft room as examples. I took it upon myself to color the background black on the boy elf. I don't see myself fussy cutting the image, but I may do a rough cut now that the background is black. If I were to leave it the size that it is, I would need to blend the block more so that you don't see strokes. Since I'm not sure what I may do with it, I'm conserving ink.

And being lazy.

I wouldn't have known what colors to use to achieve the gold finish (Y21, YR24 and YR27) or which grays to use for the silver (N0, N2 and N4). We used the Gelly Roll pen again to decorate the ornaments and add fuzziness to the fur trim on their clothing. Tiny hash marks, made with a Copic Multiliner, on their hats indicate a knit texture.

What a cowinkydink...I'm listening to Oldies Radio and "Color My World" just came on! I love Chicago and am really loving Copics!