I only use profesional quality markers on acid free paper. Surprisingly marker rendering shares many of the same prinicples of more traditional "wet" media without any drying time.
I enjoy using this media which is more often associated with commercial design in a broader more expressive form together with pastels and designers gouache to create drawings.
Below is a breakdown of the typical stages I will go through when working in markers.
I will normally start by sketching the general outline of the subject and drop in a small amount of shading. I often quickly sketchout 3 or 4 options or angles to make sure I am happy that the best angle / composition is used.
Once the composition is set I will work in a very light shade of grey to judge the general areas of light and shade across the drawing. I will then build this up with 2 or 3 darker shades of grey adding balance to areas of light and shade.
As I bulid up the constrast I will add the colour putting down the darker areas first and working layers over. I can now go back to lighter greys and add these to build up detail where there wil be reflections.
By now I will have a good feel for where the final piece will be. The light dark balance will not change too much from this point so I can begin add in areas of detail, if you add detail too early the contrast is unlikely to be correct and the detail can be lost when trying to correct it later on.
Once finished with the markers I will blend in pastels this helps to smooth out the transitions between different colours and add subtle colours to reflections and shadows. I will use a putty rubber to pull back the pastel to give crisp lines and reflections.
Finally I will add the finishing touches with gouache to pull out the highlights and deepest shadows and colours.
