I am Manic …me and Karin Markers!

I had a lot of difficulty titling this post -only because I had so many messages I wanted to convey and I how could I possibly get your attention!?

So here’s the very short version of what I want to convey:

I am Manic (in the best possible way), I love Karin Markers, and like-friends are absolutely the best inspiration. Read on if you want to understand more.

I recently had a zoom call with a friend who shares the same creative energy as me. We meet up every couple of months or so, drink wine, and journal, journal, journal. She shows me what she recently purchased for journaling and I show her what I purchased -and then we journal together for pretty much 48 hours straight - we get “in the zone” together and we go at it. What a joy.!

Perhaps spurred by that one weekend in October, I am now in a creative frenzy. I AM manic - there is no other way to say it. I draw and sketch till late into the night and I do have to get up early in the morning. I, of course, love every minute of it even with the tired eyes the next morning.

In the last couple of months, I have filled more than 5 entire sketchbooks- literally back to back and then was still looking for more pages! How often does that happen?

I had given myself a goal - I wanted to improve my drawing skills in flowers - I wanted to “love” the sketches that I did. I used all kinds of resources, looking for images of florals that I love. I used pinterest a lot and some of my sketches (full disclosure ) are literally directly copied from there.

But as I progressed, I started to find my own style - and that was the goal - I wanted to learn how to form a turned leaf, a turned petal - but in my own style if that makes sense.

And here is my progress - from “literal” flowers to what I imagine my flowers to be.

And then I knew there had to be color. And that was the magic to making these sketches come alive.

When I purchased Karin markers about 4 months ago I immediately knew that this was going to be my new preferred medium.

BUT - it took a lot of practice, and a lot of different combinations to use these markers to what I knew would be their (and my) full potential.

The real “trick” to using these markers to their full potential, I found, was the paper .

And here was my conclusion: karin marker + stone paper + karin blenders + and/or watercolor brushes = the richest, blended, color combinations.

The more you play with these wonderful markers and This Paper which I buy locally in Canada but you may find similar in the US - the more you will find brilliant, blended, combinations.

I have so much more to say on this subject and I will probably create a video to show all of this - but just to say, if you have karin markers and are not getting the most of out them please reach out and I will be happy to answer your questions.

I am going to make some of my favorite sketches available as prints at a very affordable price point if you would like to have a copy for yourself. Look for these in my shop soon and I will make framing ideas available too. See the possibilities below - oh what joy!