5 Awesome Nuvo Alcohol Marker Techniques with Zinia Redo

Each marker has two nibs. A chisel the nib to cover large areas (I love using this one when I want to colour backgrounds or sentiment strips) and a bullet nib for details and colouring small images.

I personally prefer the chisel nib as it releases a generous amount of ink and makes it easier to blend but sometimes, I need a smaller nib to colour small details in stamped images.

The markers come in packs of three and each set has a light, a medium and a dark shade of a specific color family. This makes them super easy to blend and take the guess work out of selecting colours.

As I mentioned before blend-ability depends on the paper quality, as well as the colours themselves. Some colours, like reds, have the reputation of being difficult to blend. However, you can see in the chart the smooth gradient you can get with the “Rich Reds” set.

In this swatch card you can see how you can get additional colors by simply layering your markers.

If you want to have more values of your colours for shading, you can add in a pack of Stormy Greys. You can use that to colour your image in black and white and then apply a layer of colour on top of it. This will keep the shading of your first layer and add a tint of colour.

This colouring example is created by layering marker colours to create new shades. Specifically the colours I used were the three sets I recommended earlier: Sunshine Yellows, Marina Blues and Rosy Pinks.

You can see the various shades of greens, oranges, and purple I got just by using a couple of markers.

This is a great technique for beginners as you do not need to worry about being precise. Just cover large areas with colour in simple shapes without worrying about the artwork lines.

This is a very quick technique and it creates a very modern look.

This is probably the most popular colouring technique with alcohol markers. Because these markers are blend-able you can create smooth gradients of colour to add shading to your images.

Another fun way to create the impression of shading in your stamped images is stippling. This is basically adding dots on your image using a darker colour. The density of the dots will signify the level of shading. More dots, darker shading. Less dots, lighter shading.

In small areas, I prefer using colours that are close together. High contrast can make things overwhelming so consider only using high contrast dots in one or two big areas of the image.

You most likely heard the terms “colouring inside/outside the lines” before, but I want to introduce you to a different idea. Colouring inside the lines can feel too uptight and overused but going outside the lines can get messy.

So how about colouring inside but away from the lines. This way you can take advantage of the white colour paper and use it for highlights.

This style of colouring is a fun and interesting twist to the more common techniques and it adds character to your images.