Marker Rendering

Hey guys, I love seeing all the great sketching stuff, I am new to rendering and want to start marker drawings and wanted some advise on which brands are best. The ones I saw differ by a few bucks a marker. OH, and what colours are good to start with?.
Thanks guys

Get a bunch of grey scale markers and start practising with monochromatic forms. Color comes later.

Before everything, make sure you get your line and perspective right. Nothing will look right unless your perspective is good.

As for brand… since you are just starting, go for prisma. They have nice tones, affordable(relatively) and doesn’t stink as much. When you know your style, then start consider other more expensive brands. On the long run, you want to use something refillable.

ive just started my product design course, so, among million sof other things, we are learning rendering. we were reccommended to buy a book called presentation techniques, by dick powell - its not expensive (the price of 3 markers), and is a very good introduction to not just marker rendering but everything that goes with it. well worth it.
the list of colours we were reccomended to buy was:
cool grey 3
cool grey 6
warm grey 6
light blue
dark blue
a grey/blue

  • a coupleof other colours, i got a red and a yellow

id add that it might be usefull to get another really light grey
i got copic markers, which were stupidly expensive (£5each, i think they are about $5 in the states), but i am told it is worth it…
other brands that people here have: pantone tria markers, and cheaper promarkers (not refillable)

as excercises we had the following:
render primitives
copy a rendering from a step by step in a book or from the net
render something from a photo
render a real product
render somethign from imagination

this lets you focus on different aspects, building up skills as you go
they say rendering should be fast, but it takes ages till you get the hang of it - set asside several hours :slight_smile:


good luck


Mayo

I have a bunch of light grays (no black; you can put a mark on the paper from an inch away) and a pale red and blue. I think I’ll buy a few more when I have the money (at $5.50 CDN each…well, it’s easy to blow through 35 bucks after tax).

Oh, I use Letraset TRIAs, by the way. The prisma’s nibs are too fat for my taste, and the TRIAs are refillable. Plus it’s nice to be able to key the exact color in when you’re rendering something (Photoshop has a Pantone color LUT, in case you didn’t know).

Thanks for all the tips guys, I ended up getting the pantone tria markers they reallya re better than the prismacolours I was using.

ARcslight, I am a fellow canadian student at OCAD in Toronto, What kinda stuff is going on at Carleton? ARe you liking the PRogram?
Thanks again

Personally, I think it’s great. I ought to be studying for my IDES (intro to ID) final exam, but I need a break. Anyway, the studio courses are awesome. Perhaps I’ll get an online portfolio set up at some point. Right now we’re building furniture from corrugated cardboard (flat-pack, no fasteners or glue, max one 8x5 sheet). It’s a hell of a lot of work, when you factor in all the calculus and physics and economics and psychology, as well as the ID stuff…but it’s awesome.

Have fun with the markers.

Yeah, i just started a course as well and was recommended the same book… it certainly is pretty good.

just wanted to add something as well. If you are starting out with marker rendering you will need to make sure you have a decent set of coloured pencils and pastels as well.

Man there is so much stuff you have to get when starting out… I am just glad I had some stuff from the art course I did. Kinda softened the financial blow (maybe ppl on design courses should get a bigger student loan?)

I’ve found that I hardly ever use colored pencils, and I never use pastels. Horrible dirty things…All markers for me. Although as a general rule, I also use some blue mechanical pencil lead for rough work.

In addition to the Trias, I find that the Staedtler Triplus thingys (triangular markers, I don’t find them any more comfortable than regular ones) are cheap, vibrant felt-tips that work really well for quick color sketching (also, they don’t put as much ink on the page as a prismacolor or a tria, so they’re more forgiving).

ID85,

I use Chartpak AD markers, they’re great, no small tip though. My favorite colors are ice blue, mint, chrome orange, I use a one marker per color technique.

Just wanted to share a great tool I use, grab a white gel pen, (I use the uni-ball signo) you can use this for crisp highlighting in place of gwash (is that how you spell that?) anyways, good luck

Gouache :slight_smile:

I agree, white gel pens are nice for highlighting things like sharp egdes.

ID85 - gott any hot ones to post up yet?

Way to follow up, Yo!!!

I couldn’t tell if that was sarcastic or not, but I’ll roll with- thanks man.