Copic Art Journaling Preclass

How class works

While lessons are available all at once, I STRONGLY recommend tackling each one on its own; spend time doing some thinking and journaling (just in writing) about YOUR thoughts on the topic. If you’re puzzled by the questions posed, feel free to ask your friends or social media followers for help in assessing your strengths, how you’ve grown, etc – sometimes others are better at assessing us than we are ourselves!

Then spend some time sketching out your own perspective on the topic. Use the techniques shown in class or anything else that works for you – but make your page your own. Replicating the pages shown in this class will be copying your instructor’s journey, and yours is unique to YOU! Prompts for thinking through each page will be provided – as well as a handout to help get you thinking.

Workbook

This little workbook will help you begin to think about where your art journey is right now – we’ll be focusing on all you CAN do, let’s keep the “can’ts” off the decks during this class! You can begin on it before class, or do it lesson by lesson as you go.

• One sided workbook: Download PDF
• Two-sided workbook: Download PDF

Supplies

And now, a discussion of the supplies needed for the class – most of which many Copic artists already have!

• Art Journal – I’ll be working in this one, but you can use anything you can color Copics on – even just folding cardstock in half and assembling your own book! I do recommend doing that rather than just making cards with the techniques (which you can!), because you’ll want the reference reminder of the technique ideas.
• Copic Markers – you can use the colors you have, any body style, whatever you’ve got! I’ll be using #allthecolors so giving a list won’t be much help. I get mine HERE.
• Copic Ink / reinkers – again, whatever you’ve got. You may want to look at which ones you own that you haven’t used – this class might give you a good way to use them! I get mine HERE.
• Black Copic-friendly pens – Multiliner sets like THIS ONE, or pick up singles that are refillable like THESE. Note that I’ve used sharpies before (and did in the first couple lessons filmed), but found they bleed through this paper; in the class you’ll get ideas for using the back sides of each page, and having pens that do NOT bleed through is going to be super helpful. Get a few sizes, like a .5 and 1.0 at least.
• White pens – a Posca Pen set is a good one, and I always like a good Uniball Signo white pen!
• Fluid: You can use Colorless Blender – but I recommend also having some inexpensive Isopropyl Alcohol (70% or so is fine) around too, for cleanup and techniques that require a bunch of fluid – way cheaper. It’s hard to find right now – but if you pay more than a couple bucks for a bottle you’re getting gouged. Look in Target, drugstores, etc.
• MiniMister – I have a mister that I mark with tape so I know it’s colorless blender and not water! (Though you can tell the difference by the smell!) In class you might want to make a colored mister, so having more than one handy will help as you will want to use up the rest of the color mister over time.
• Gloves and pads – whatever kind of gloves that will protect your hands, and makeup removal pads like these. I got both these items at Costco really cheap.
• Scratch paper to put under your page. We’re going to bleed right through the book pages!
• Optional:
  • Corner rounder (I use a corner chomper)
  • Adhesive, whatever you like for paper-to-paper for gluing in extra panels or elements
  • Stamps (anything that you’ll want! flowers, butterflies, people, animals, anything you want)
  • Stencils (again, anything! textures, shapes, etc.)
  • Mat to protect your desk space for messy things – any kind of mat, or just some freezer paper
  • Plastic sheet to make one small stencil – can be plastic packaging, a page protector, overhead transparency – whatever you have.