QuailSoup

I have been making traditional badges for a very long time, and traditional art in general even longer. Ive played with oil pastels, charcoal, paints, clay, lino, whatever I can get my hands on I encourage you to do the same for yourself. For fun. Not for content, not to be a better artist. Just for fun. The very first thing I started making badges with was coloured pencils

Even though I love how they looked it ended up being a lot of work with how I use them (100+ layers of coloured pencil shown here) Pencils are great for texture and blending!

After that I moved to alcohol markers

The blending is unbeatable with copics i cannot deny. I have tried a LOT of different brands of alcohol marker and rn nothing has beaten copic in terms of quality and reliability but! Any brand works. I have even gotten some from home goods I still use. Theyre fine. They make great badges Then I started playing with acrylic markers

Acrylic is the closest to digital in the form of traditional You can easily colour over dark colours to "undo" fuck ups. The pigments are bright, bold, and clean My fav to play with but I almost always do mixed media today Meaning I include some coloured pencils, acrylics, microliners, alcohol, all depending on the look I want and the style Im going for

No matter what I use to colour the first steps are always the same I take whatever pencil, shitty school pencil usually, a piece of printer paper and I sketch out the design

Once Im happy with the sketch Ill use my light table (this is a device that is a flat surface projecting light) You can buy one super cheap online. I got mine for 15 USD years ago and its USB plug in I place the paper I want the final badge to be on over the sketch The light projects through both sheets of paper and allows me to trace the sketch onto high quality paper

For markers I use marker paper, for mixed media and acrylics I use thick/mixed media paper

I will trace it with pencil and then line that with microliners If you are using alcohol markers the liner will bleed if its not dry and sometimes will bleed/smudge with cheaper markers. Be careful. Markers will also just bleed in general so prepare for that

Once its all lined Ill decide what medium I want to use For this one it was mixed but mostly acrylic

The arms were alcohol and the rest was acrylic. Once Im finished colouring I'll take an exacto knife and cut out the badge. I used to use very sharp scissors but that destroyed my hands and often bend the paper when I tried getting into tight spaces on the badge

After that I take it to office depot and scan it (I manually set the scanner to 600DPI and email it to myself so I have a copy for myself) At office depot I laminate the badge in 10mm laminate anything lower tends to bend and become destroyed over time. 10m doesnt promise it wont get damaged but it helps a LOT. I also glue a pattern backing on the other side of the badge One that matches the vibes of the character (Do this before exacto knife or you'll regret it)

Lately I’ve been feeing nostalgic and inspired by some old works from a couple of my favorite artists. I remember looking at their art on my dad’s computer when I was like 8 years old and thinking, “I wish I could draw dragons like that.”

I still have a ton of room for improvement, but I recently dug up a bunch of those artworks and was happy to find that I’ve managed to bring my skill to a similar level! I think 8-year-old me would’ve been ecstatic to know that their efforts would someday pay off.

Anyway, here’s a piece I finished yesterday, featuring my OC Kalda! I tried a different lighting style than I’m used to, and I also went for a slightly more dynamic pose. I really like how it ended up! I’m currently working on another one that I hope to finish soon.