I work with Prismacolor markers and Prismacolor pencil for small detail and highlights. My process may be a bit time consuming and slow, with lots and lots of layers, but it's due to the fact that markers are very similar to watercolors. Any areas you want as a highlight, or lighter in general, need to be planned out ahead of time. You can always add darker colors, but can never make an area lighter.
^^ Alright, finished lineart! Inked with a .005 Micron and a .5 Copic Multiliner.
^^ First pass Prismacolor markers. I went over the initial shadow areas with a 10% Warm Grey, and filled in the spots with Jasmine Yellow. The grey is barely noticeable, and that's perfect. It's just to get an idea of where they should be, but won't interfere with the final result.
^^ 10% Warm Grey again, going over the shaded areas a second time to make them slightly darker. I work very light and gradually make my way darker.
^^ 20% Warm Grey. Slowly adding a darker gradient.
^^ Here's where my memory is going to start failing about what colors I used. This was a few months ago. I added in a very light shade of the brownish areas of the salamander. I'm leaving areas for my highlights slightly larger than I want them in the end to compensate for the slight bleed these markers have. I could wait for them to fully dry in between each layer, but then they won't blend as nicely. Tradeoff is I get some bleed with the color. I've left a bit of a rim around the entire salamander just inside the lineart to compensate for the bleed as well, as well as shiny highlights.
^^ I think I went over with a 20% Warm Grey again. Regardless of the shade, it was a very light 10-20% grey to re-emphasize the darker areas. This will happen often.
^^ See? More going over with a slightly darker grey. It's great that Prismacolor has a nice gradual progression of greys, from 10% to 90%. The different shades as well as the difference between Warm, Cool, and French greys leaves a lot of options for creating a fantastic gradient.
^^ More grey passes. You can see, very gradually, it's become more desaturated than the original addition of the brownish hue. I'll add more color in later.
^^ Deepening some shadows around the head and feet mainly.
^^ Hey, darker grey finally! 40% Warm Grey, filling in areas that are much darker.
^^ And a wash of 20% French Grey (probably) over that to help blend out a few areas I wanted slightly lighter and blur some edges. When the marker ink is really wet, it's possible to go over with a lighter color heavily to "move" some of the darker ink out of the way. Sometimes it leaves dark rims of built up color, as you can see along the back, but those can usually be blended in by going over it a few times. For this, it doesn't matter because those areas will be darker anyway.
^^ More lighter color blending and some darker shades on the underbelly and legs. I probably should have gone a bit darker on the back, but oh well. The highlights are much thinner and sharper than I originally blocked out, too thin in some places that I will fix later with colored pencil.
^^ Finally more work on the spots! Darker yellow added, leaving the original light yellow color for highlights.
^^ And a darker yellow. Leaving the rims of the spots slightly darker and avoiding my highlight areas.
^^ I went in with a yellow marker and added some yellow speckles. By using the tip and carefully going over the same area, the darker shades are pushed to the side, letting the yellow overlay that area with a darker outline from the "moved" color. Some speckles are applied less than others, making a few bright yellow speckles and a few darker speckles.
^^ Some colored pencil highlights. Using a white Prismacolor pencil, I went over my brightest highlights to give them more pop. At some point I took some grey shades of colored pencil and blended a few shadow areas together better, fixed some sharp edges, and added a little more detail to small places like the toes. Salamander is finished!
^^ Background time! Coloring in the frame with a base yellow.
^^ Colored in the flames. I used the same process as I did with the salamander, starting with a light yellow and working darker until the Terra Cotta red center. I did this fast so the ink would be very wet through the whole process so it would blend and bleed together more.
^^ Added some color to the circle. I ended up not liking those colors at all, but the great thing with markers is that I can overlay with some darker colors to cover them up.
^^ Fixed those colors so they'd fit better with the palette of the overall piece. The circle is done! Blending the darker colors over the original lighter color made a great faded look, enhanced by going over the end result with 10% Warm Grey to further wash it out. Also placed the base colors for the mountains. I knew the foremost mountain would be the darkest, so I went ahead and filled it in much darker than the others, which share 20%-10% Cool Grey.
^^ Adding some shading and gradient to the further mountains.
^^ Gradient enhanced with 30% Cool Grey and some light white pencil.
^^ Quick once-over with a white pencil to make sure all my highlights are where I want them. Very small changes, barely even noticeable.
^^ And the final product! I blended a little darker yellow into the frame, and there's a tiny bit of contrast adjustment in Photoshop because of how severely my scanner blows things out. This color corrected version is so much closer to the rich colors of the final piece, but not 100%. I need a better scan..
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