Marker Rendering

Marker rendering is all about being comfortable with the markers - for several reasons. One is that you can not afford to work too slowly with markers because if you want to blend it has to happen when the ink is still wet. Also knowing the bleed ranges of your markers will affect the way you render. (Although at the same time, people often think that rendering should be a fast process. This is simply not the case. A true rendering can some times take hours to complete.)

If you are new to marker rendering start off with very basic shapes, cubes and cylinders. There are countless examples in countless books on the ways to render these simple objects and they are almost always the same. So start there.

Learning basic principles of lighting and shading with those shapes is usually enough to get you started with some more complex shapes. You may not be ready to tackle chrome just yet - but you should have enough of a sense of lighting so that you can create a convincing rendering.

Books, Tutorials, & DVDs
For really informative DVDs that integrate traditional rendering skills and Photoshop, I'd say that Scott Robertson's DVDs are really helpful. You should have basic drawing and intermediate Photoshop skills to get the most out of them.

I would recommend buying "Design Sketching" - By Erik Olofsson and Klara Sjolen. It is an incredible book of student work from Sweden (printed on environmentally friendly paper). Reading this book will potentially make you question your own skills as most of the works are incredible, but it is great to see how versatile pencils and markers can be. There are also tutorials in the back of the book that make it very easy to see how to approach a rendering.

Markers
First and foremost is the quality of your marker set. Everyone has their own preferences - some good brands are COPIC, Prisma, and Letraset. I have not had good luck with Chartpak markers. Both the Tria and copic markers are refillable, however the copics typically give you the best value when refilling. The markers are $5.25ea, but their refills (Same price) will refill the marker 4-5 times.


 * Prismacolor Premier Markers
 * Letraset Tria Markers
 * Copic Original Markers

Care and storage: Keep markers in an airtight container to prevent them from drying out over time

Paper
Rendering papers are typically translucent papers that are so called Bleed proof. Although there are many types of paper that claim to be "bleed proof" - but these are often LIES! but by all means give them a try if you are having trouble controlling bleeding.

Marker rendering paper is translucent so you can do overlays. That is, you draw your image elsewhere, place it under the marker paper, then refine/ render over the image.

List of marker papers:
 * Bienfang Graphics 360
 * Aquabee Manga Artist Pad
 * Letraset Bleedproof Marker Pad
 * Borden & Riley Paris Bleedproof Paper For Pens This is a thick paper for those who do not like the really thin translucent stuff.

Marker paper is often expensive, so you may want to find a viable solution that costs a lot less. Your first thought may be computer paper. Well, you are not that far off. Computer paper will work, but you need super bright white (98+ brightness) color laser printer paper. It takes the marker really nicely,is thicker than normal computer paper, and does not bleed everywhere like the cheep stuff does. You can typically find some good stuff by HP around $13 for 500 sheets. If you try the cheep stuff, it will soak up too much ink, and it usually bleeds, leaving you with crummy edges.