Copic Mondays Colorless Blender & Blending Solution - By Laura Burleson

The colorless blender is probably the most mis-named item in the Copic Marker Toolbox. By saying blender, most people thing you can blend two colors together with it. In reality the Colorless Blender is actually just the plain alcohol that is used to dilute the marker colors. The blender "moves" the colors around. It doesn't actually blend them.

You can use this to your advantage in several ways. If you are coloring and image, and your color bleeds slightly outside the lines. Wait for the first color to dry, then push the color back using the colorless blender. Use small strokes, and be patient. You want to slowly move it by adding a little alcohol at a time. You don't want to saturate the area, because that will make the run worse.

The coolest thing you can do with the colorless blender is to make effects on your designs. Did you know you can use it to create a brick wall effect?

Color your "wall" using your favorite brick red. Then place the chisel end of your blender pen down flat on the colored surface to create bricks. Cool, huh? See how it pushes the color out to create the brick effect?

You can do a similar technique using the brush end of your marker to create flowers and hearts.

It does take some practice. Some of my flowers are better than others, but you get the idea. You can really see how the colorless blender pushes out the ink to create the image. You can see how the pushed ink pools to create an outline around your image.

So what else can you do? How about creating denim jeans on one of your stamped images? You will need a piece of denim a little larger than the jeans on the stamped image and a colorless blender refill or bottle of colorless blender fluid. Color the jeans first when using this technique. Color them normally with your favorite blues. I like to use B91, B93, B95 and B97. Dampen the denim. You want it damp, but you don't want it saturated. I like to stretch the denim on a stamp block to get perfect denim jeans, but you can just press the area with the damp denim. It will leave the denim imprint on your image. Another great detail for your artwork!

How about animals? Do you color them, but wish they looked more "furry"? Take a small scrap of terry cloth and get it damp with blending solution. Dab it on the stamped image to give it texture. See how my bear looks more like fun then just a colored image.

You can also use the terry cloth to create texture for grass or for mountains. I hope it is easy for you to see the light and dark areas that the blending solution creates to give a texture appearance.

Think of all the fun things you can try using blender ink! I would love to see your projects trying out any of these fun techniques!

Next time -- we will be checking out the Copic Airbrush System!