Monday, March 24, 2008

MARK A LOT

I love markers. They are by far, my favorite thing to work with in the world of art. They are fun to look at, fun to collect, fun to draw with & look good when you have lots of them. Here are my coloring markers.

MARK A LOT

I tend to use the sharpies more than the copics as they sharpies are 1/6th the price & have some bolder colors & i've worked out a whole system with them. The copics are very nice markers, but are too expensive. They are refillable though, so that makes up for their price. I have been discouraged from using markers as my primary medium many times, but i always come back to them. Two of my favorite artists use markers primarily.

I was introduced to Vaughn Bode via a combination of graffiti, Ralph Bakshi's Wizards (Vaughn was supposed to work on this but they had some kind of falling out & then Vaughn died) & his son Mark doing my favorite issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Vaughn Bode named his son Mark after "Marker".

comic by Vaughn Bode

Pedro Bell is famous for his work for Funkadelic doing covers like Cosmic Slop. Bell's work is some crazy Cosmic Slop in its own way & is like the Funky Black Futurist parallel to the work of Cal Schenkel for Frank Zappa. He got his start doing cartoons & writing for his college newspaper & you can find alot of his early stuff reprinted in issues of Roctober.

Sun Ra by Pedro Bell

4 comments:

Aeron said...

I have a love hate relationship with markers myself. I used to use them all the time but I started to hate that you couldn't layer the colors in the way you can with paint. Something I'm always curious about but can never find any solid facts concerning is the lifespan of a sharpie. I've heard people complain that sharpies fade or the blacks turn yellow after time but I've never had that happen to any of my marker drawings, even ones from twenty years ago. Yeah, I'm a packrat with my art. I have huge boxes full of drawings from my teen and even further back years. I should scan some of that stuff and do a post, I'm sure some of you would be amused to see some of the stuff I used to draw.

Luke P. said...

Both those artists are great. What kind of paper do you usually draw on? I've got a set of those pantone markers and mess around with them sometimes, but it only really works with my style if it's a solid block of color.

pickledpunk said...

Yeah...those copics are pricey. I've wanted to try them out though. Is there anything special or different about them beyond other designer markers?

I'm not really a marker person but would like to use them more often but I lack tecnique, especially when it come to overlaping...like when yer trying to fill a large area with color, as Aeron mentioned. And I also wonder about the longevity and archival quality of the ink. I do occasionally like to use pale marker colors for detail on top of prepainted surfaces done with watercolor or thinned acrylic. I like these faber/castell PITT brush pens. Decent colors and supposedly lightfast, but the brush tips fray quickly. I primarily use the black brush pen for drawing. The standard PITT pens are good too. If you use Microns you'll probably like these.

Anyhows...Vaughn Bode's work very cool...and ahead of its time in many ways. I have a few issues of Cheech Wizard and JunkWaffel. He drew some of the best boobs too...

SEAN said...

Aeron, yeah, i think i have a similar relationship to markers on occassion too, what with the love hate, but it's really more of a love & then a frustration with some of their limitations. However, what they lack is made up for by the weird stuff they do to your mind involving color that just doesn't happen to me when i'm painting. As far as longevity, they hold up better than any of the "art pens" i've used over time. Like, way better than microns or penstix or whatever. They don't change color, i've got drawings that are about 14 years old that are just fine, but my micron drawings that are that old have turned brownish. Luke, i draw on cheap cardstock. Part of my evolving art philosophy is to not use any supplies that i can't just pick up from anywhere. Marc, I had a bunch of different markers before i started to build up my copic collection, but at the time, copics were the cheapest when you factored in their refillability & felt replacement & stuff. Their distributor is also here in Eugene, which for some reason is comforting to me. & again, the ink sticks for as long as i can tell. At least the black. Better so than the other art markers too, because i've used them all for making stickers & sharpies have held up best to constant exposure to the elements.