Tombow Hack
In the studyblr community Tombows and just in general brush pens are widely used when it comes to note headers lettering. Since they are much appreciated I guess that a little hack which consists of buying only the blender pen and being able to use as much colors as you like with it, would be helpful. I haven’t seen this one elsewhere and I myself figured it out incidentally while trying to get the most out of my ten pack Tombows, which I got as a gift from a friend. So let’s get started without further ado.
Last year while watching how to draw videos for manga while keeping in mind I couldn’t buy any of the good markers I came across this video by Learn2DrawManga, in which she explains how she uses cheap markers to give her drawings a watercolor effect. I tried it out with mine but to no success so once more I went back to colored pencils. Then some 3 months later a friend gifted me a pack of the Manga set of Tombows. Too afraid to use them till I had the proper knowledge of how to use them to their ful potential I searched up the wed for hacks and tips and found that you could use them like watercolor markers by diping the tip into water to thin it out and thus make the color lighter. Tombow also offers a blending palette for them which most people replace with a cd and that’s what I did too. Basically you just decide what colors you are going to blend together and take each marker and make some strokes close to each other on the cd’s shiny surface. Then you take the blender pen and dip it into water and mix the colors then you apply it to your drawing. I had great results and was very pleased but creating whatever shade of color I wanted was very hard and even if I did the amount which I could produce was very scarce. And as I was staring at a ruined finished work done with this technique, I remembered the aforementioned video. Took my cheap Bic markers out and started using them on the palette instead of the Tombows and proceeded with the blender pen the same way. The results were like the real thing. Now my palette is increased in significant numbers but I still have difficulties using them for large areas that’s why I think it’s more suitable for lettering, or maybe it’s just my lack of skill :P
Above I illustrate this in a badly drawn thingy of some time ago. Please ignore the color of my blender tip. It’s become like that bc of frequent usage of this trick but it doesn’t alter the ink in itself bc tombows have self-cleaning tips.
