Art Tips from my time with Ladowska (Patreon)

Hey patreon fam! If you followed on Instagram at all I just got to spend a lovely week with the marker queen Ladowska! I learned a lot about art from her, it was really nice to have someone I could ask questions about art to because I really have no artist friends and I feel really lost a lot. I thought I would share some of the tips I got from her with you guys! It’s mostly about tools, so here goes.

First of all I asked her about how she gets such a smooth blending, especially with glowing effects. Turns out I’ve been using the wrong paper that doesn’t hold ink well and so it’s harder to blend. She relies on a cold pressed watercolor paper with NO texture. The no texture is very important. She didn’t give me a specific brand name but said any paper with those specifications should work. She let me borrow a piece of here and I made the above picture. It was a quick piece to try it out so i haven’t fully explored it yet but it was really nice.

For markers she of course uses copics, and also uses copic pens for the line work. She uses a brown for the skin and sometimes the hair around the skin to give a warm effect, and then colors like dark blue, purple or black elsewhere.

For digital art I learned she makes her line art with the hard airbrush, silly me I’d been using pens in the inking section for this and they always frustrated me.

She also showed me that if you have a digital tablet like an IPad then you can use it like a light table by locking the screen and tracing the art from there, I may try that out to turn some of my digital pieces into traditional pieces.

Also she uses the worlds tiniest mechanical pencils I didn’t even know they made lead smaller than .3

That’s what I remember for now! Hope that is helpful!