Garden Dirt: Copic Marker Swatches for Christmas Corgi

 

Dashing through the snow...

Well, it's a Corgi, so it's more like wiggle-butting through the snow. They're so darned cute but those wee legs just don't do much dashing through deep snowbanks.

I'm a dog person, so I just love the Corgi Christmas sets from Power Poppy.

Today, I've got an easy Copic Marker underpaint recipe for giving these fellows the kind of thick, dense fur that is so typical of spitz doggies.

Hello, my name is Amy Shulke and I'm the illustrator and art instructor over at VanillaArts.com. Welcome to another article in my blending combination series here at Power Poppy-- The Garden Dirt.

Why dirt? I know, it's weird to name anything after dirty old dirt. But that's exactly the point of this series. I layer odd colors underneath bright and happy colors to make the dirty, murky, or downright muddy colors necessary for realistic depth and dimension.

I've got a whole series of artistic coloring articles here at the Power Poppy Blog. Here's a quick link to read more.

Let's color a corgi!

Today, I'm showing you the Christmas Corgis digital stamp, one of several dog themed stamps from Marcella.

You can find the whole series of holiday Corgis here and this underpainting plus colored pencil technique will work for them all.

The secret to fur is to start by ignoring the fur.


I know this sounds strange but hear me out.

Underneath all that fur is a dog body. In the case of a Corgi, you've got a barrel body with short stocky legs. They've also got a bit of that junk-in-da-trunk thing going on.

It's not the fur that makes a Corgi look like a Corgi and not an Afghan Hound, it's the body!

For my blonde doggie here, I started with a gray Copic Marker. I used the gray to carve out the armpits, belly, under the chest, under the tail, under the chin, behind the ears... all the places that are shady.

Then I added the actual blonde marker colors over the gray. It's not the E33 that makes the shade look shady, it's the C1 underneath the brown. Real shade is desaturated and murky, E33 is much too clean.

So my Corgi started to look very Corgi-ish long before I added a single hair with colored pencil.

The gray underpaint sets the depth before we add the details.

Gray under brown is what pops the head forward from the neck. The hidden gray is what brings those short little legs out and towards us. Gray is the secret dirt, down under the fur making the dog look three-dimensional.

Don't be afraid to add a little dirt to your next doggie. It gives them life!

Want to color Power Poppy’s dogs with me?


Santa's Backup Plan is part of the my Marker Painting Workshops series of online classes for intermediate Copic colorers.


This class is available now with no wait. Work at your own pace, color it as many times as you want, no expiration.

Santa's Backup Plan uses Power Poppy’s beautiful Christmas Corgis digital stamp set. We use a combination of Copic Markers, and Prismacolor Soft Core colored pencils, with a splatter background of Distress Ink.

You can find out more about the Santa's Backup Plan online class here.