Today I wanted to show you 3 ways of coloring with Tombow Brush Pens. They are so versatile and fun to use. I also include a mini-tutorial on how to draw a hedgehog that you can check out in my YouTube video. (My videos do have captions so it they’er easier to understand, and this video and blog post are not sponsored.)
I have done a brush pen comparison before looking at these specific methods. Your can check out one here, but I had a lot of fun making this video and writing this post so I hope you like it! So on to supplies and then the coloring.
Supplies
- Tombow Dual Brush Markers in 990, 947, and 899
- Archer & Olive 160GSM dot grid notepad
- Tombow Mono Drawing Pens in 03
- Pentel Hybrid Gel Grip in White
- Pentel Water Brush size 4
Coloring with Tombow Brush Pens
1. Water Brush Pen
This method uses your Dual Brush Pens as watercolor. You are going to use a blending surface (like a laminated sheet or a piece of plastic), and put some of the marker down on it. You will then wet your water brush and proceed to grab some color off of the blending surface. The trick here is to work FAST!
The first time you put your water brush down on your image, the colour will be super saturated, so make sure to start in an area you want to have a shadow. This way you don’t have to blend out quite as much a you preserve your journal page.
When grabbing more ink off of the palette, add the saturated brush where you have already blended in color. This makes for a more seamless blend throughout.
Last tip to share. Choose colors darker than you think. The Tombow ink is very watery when using this method so the color isn’t as vibrant or saturated. When I used a shade darker, I found the color I wanted.
2. Regular Coloring
This is the more standard way people would color with markers. The biggest difference would be that you are adding layers of color. What I mean by this is that you are going to slowly lay color down on your image, trying not to overlap. This gives you a nice “base” layer to be able to add shadowing.
As I just mentioned, the trick to this method is to GO SLOW! Try not to let the different strokes overlap. It’s obviously okay if it does; it just means more texture later, but try to minimize the overlapping.
Once the first layer is done, you can now go in with the same color, and add shadows where you want just by adding a second layer. Super easy and you don’t need too many colors.
3. The Pick-up Method
So this method is most similar to the water brush method, but instead of a water brush, you use a second brush pen. Using your blending palette again, you’re going to pick up the color you want using the lighter of the two colors. Basically, you use the lighter color to pick up the darker color or else the lighter color won’t show up.
This method results in your page becoming oversaturated with all of the ink you’re using to blend. Your page might buckle so either glue two pages together or color the image on sticker paper (or any other paper) first, cut it out, and then place it in your bullet journal.
This method is definitely the trickiest to use and again, you have to work fast since the ink dries very quickly.
I hope you found this helpful and more willing to try and color in with your Tombow Dual Brush pens. They are so fun to use and super versatile. Overall, my favourite coloring method ended up being the pick-up method. There was a bit of an issue when I confused my markers and made a bit of a mess. But I just went with it and it ended up being my favourite image! I hope you give one of these method’s a try.
If you enjoyed this video and post, you can check out my last tutorial on pumpkins and the different techniques I used to color them.
Thank you for your time today. if you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Talk soon!
