Are you purchasing Copic Markers for the first time?
While buying lots of pretty markers sounds like fun, this is real money we’re talking about.
Your money.
Sadly, we usually can’t buy all the colors at once. When I started, money was tight so I debated the worth of every color I purchased. Even with an art degree, I still made rookie mistakes. Many of the markers from my starter set are still gathering dust today!
If I could go back and change the past, I’d focus on useful individual blending combinations rather than grabbing any Copic in the clearance bin. It’s only a bargain if you actually use the marker!
In the spirit of helping you avoid my mistakes, I started to wonder:
What’s the best orange blending combination for Copic Marker beginners?
I asked three of my favorite marker instructors about which orange markers they recommend for first time colorers.
Which YR markers offer you the best value?
Which Copic Yellow-Reds are versatile enough to color many different orange items?
Which YRs do we teach with?
Which orange markers do we use in our own work?
Which Orange Copics are Best for Beginners?
We highly recommend Copic’s YR-Zero series orange markers for beginners and anyone building a small, versatile alcohol marker collection. YR09, YR07, YR04 are easy blending oranges which can be used for food, flowers, and holiday images.
YR18, YR16, YR14 would be our second choice for a more organic orange blending combination.
Let’s talk to four Copic instructors to find out why.
“Carrot” by the author, Amy Shulke. Copic Markers and Prismacolor Colored Pencils on X-Press It Blending Card paper. This project is Amy’s sample project for “Coloring Basics: Fences”, technique tips and talk from two Copic instructors. More info here.
Michelle Houghton’s Favorite Orange Copics
Find Michelle on her Copic in the Craftroom channel at YouTube and at Scrapweaver.com
Michelle recommends YR21-YR14-YR18 for beginners. She colors this combination light to dark.
Michelle says:
“There aren’t as many options with the YR family as we’d like but I use YR21 quite a bit. I basecoat with the YR21 and for this combination, I sometimes add Y25 under the YR14 if I want a brighter, more yellowy orange.
I also love the YR21, YR24, YR27 series but it’s very different. I use this golden combination on hair more than anything else.”
Michelle warns students who have purchased or inherited older markers about YR14. “It’s a great color but the plastic on the older caps does NOT match the color of the ink. The cap is darker and browner which can confuse many people. They changed the [plastic end] color on newer markers and it’s much more accurate now.”
Watch Michelle demonstrate this pretty blending combination in her “Finding Copic Color” video here:
Michelle is also hard at work on a video series which demonstrates every Copic Marker! You can see her blend the entire Yellow-Red family here:
Last, Michelle has a handy infographic comparing the various YR groups:
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Michelle is an elementary school teacher (BS Fine Arts, MA Education) with over 20 years of paper-crafting experience. She’s is a former Copic Certification Regional Instructor for Imagination International. Michelle runs the Copic in the Craftroom website and YouTube channel. Her Copic College events are favorites with Copic fans at all levels.. Visit her at Scrapweaver.com.
WE ASKED YOU!
In our survey of frequent Copic colorers, YR09-YR07-YR04 was voted favorite orange blending combination.
This isn’t a surprise. Many Copic fans favor bright, clean, vividly colored markers. You can’t get a brighter orange combination than the YR-Zero family!
Cordine van der Touw’s Favorite YR Blending Combination
Find Cordine’s latest projects on her Facebook page here. You can also find her at Copic Marker Europe and Cordine’s latest classes for Copics at Colourstock.
Cordine recommends YR09-YR16-Y17 as a beginner orange Copic blend.
Notice that’s two YR markers plus one Y?
Cordine says:
My to go to YR combination is YR09-YR16-Y17.
Sometimes I switch the YR09 to YR07 if I want a slightly softer orange.
I love this combination because it’s flexible! If I want a yellower project i would ad a Y15 after the Y17. If I want a darker looking orange, I can start with the red or the brown family plus these YRs.
I love Cordine’s approach to blending combinations.
Her goal is to color something orange but she’s actually not buying many orange markers.
Instead, she borrows yellows and either reds or browns to expand two YR markers into a larger blending combination.
This is a smart budget strategy!
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Cordine is an office manager in The Netherlands. She’s an avid paper crafter who loves card making, scrapbooking, and coloring stamps with Copic and colored pencils. She has taught Copic since 2013 for Colourstock as the Benelux region representative (Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg). Contact Cordine here.
Elena Cazares’ Favorite Orange Copic Markers
Elena recommends YR07-YR04-YR02 for beginners. For advanced colorers, she recommends YR18-YR16-YR14.
Elena says:
YR can be a bit stubborn so I like the YR-Zero family for beginners because they’re easy to blend. YR07, YR04, and YR02 won’t give you any trouble.
But in my own work, I like orange to have a bit more sophistication. YR18, YR16 and YR14 are a bit desaturated and natural looking. They're organic colors, better for flowers and food.
I like that Elena acknowledges that there are beginner blends but also more challenging combinations which are best saved until you have some experience.
Beginners tend to focus on collecting colors— but there’s more to markers than just the appearance.
Some of the prettiest colors can be frustrating to blend!
By recommending an easy-blend orange combination to beginners, Elena helps her marker novices grow their skills before they tackle harder blends.
By the way, Elena always colors dark to light and she often underpaints orange with blue to create an interesting shady orange.
Amy Shulke’s Favorite Orange Markers
Hey, that’s me! You can find me here at MarkerNovice.com or at my artistic coloring site, VanillaArts.com.
My favorite orange blending combination is actually one orange and two yellows: YR07-Y38-Y35.
Fall is about the only time I teach with orange markers. Aside from the occasional accent, orange is just not a color I use much. Instead of asking my beginners to invest in a bunch of oranges, I borrowed two of yellows from our standard yellow combination.
Y38 and Y35 are chameleon colors. Paired with orange, they look orangish, paired with yellow, they look dark yellow.
I love it when I can save student’s money by using the same markers in completely different blending combinations!
Orange can be a slightly stubborn color but Y markers have lots of solvent in their formula. Adding a yellow marker to any orange combination increases the ease of blending.
I color dark to light and I always underpaint orange rather than using a darker YR or E marker to shade. My favorite underpaint for orange markers is usually V20 or V22 but the carrot shown here was underpainted with one of the YG markers borrowed from the stems. Using colors from other areas of the same image is how I keep my class supply lists short and budget-friendly.
And in case you’re wondering, I did not invent underpainting. Underpainting goes back several centuries to classical era oil painting. I’m simply one of first fine artists to promote underpainting as a technique specifically for Copic Markers. To be honest, when I started underpainting Copics, I didn’t realize that nobody else was doing it!
Do beginners need to underpaint orange?
No.
If you’ve never drawn, painted, or used Copics before, you don’t need to worry about underpainting.
Skip it.
Underpaint creates the look of realistic shade by creating a dirty, dingy orange. In art, we call this “desaturation”.
Real shade is not darker, it’s desaturated.
But for beginners, it’s much more important to learn how to color orange with confidence.
Once you’re blending without thinking too hard about the actual blending process, then try adding an easy underpaint as a challenge element.
You’ve got years to work on building skills. Master blending a variety of YR combinations before you branch into underpaint.
Should I purchase YR00 for skin tones?
Many beginners use YR00, YR000, or YR0000 to color caucasian skin.
Now I don’t know about you but I happen to be a pale caucasian.
If I hold a YR00 up to my arm, it’s not even close to my skin color. In fact, my skin doesn’t match any of the YR markers!
If you like to color cartoons, then you’ll probably enjoy using YR00 for skin but it’s a pretend skin color.
No human has YR colored skin. Copic Yellow-Red markers are all too pink, too orange, or too yellow for realistic skin tones.
For realistic caucasian skin, you’ll want to look closer at the Earth family (E). My skin is pretty close to E21 but I use E50 in a lot of classes too.
We also recommend this YR blending combination…
As I mentioned, I don’t use orange in very many beginner classes.
fall leaves
Halloween pumpkins
snowman noses
carrots for the Easter Bunny
I’m sure you can think of a few more orange objects but honestly, I simply don’t find orange to be an investment you need to make unless it’s October.
But there is a YR blending combination I use all the time. In fact, my classes call for this combination more than purple!
Copic YR27-YR24-YR21 is the perfect combination for gold, brass, and even golden blonde hair.
And this recommendation is unanimous. Michelle, Cordine, and Elena all mentioned the importance of the YR-Twenty family without me asking. We all teach with this combination.
When I first started teaching beginners, I developed a master Copic list. You can subscribe to my newsletter to get a copy of this same list from my FREE download library, subscribe here. Anyway, my intention was to teach all my beginner classes using only the markers on this list.
To make the list, I ran through the rainbow, creating a versatile blending combination for every Roy G. Biv color plus pink and also several browns for the various skin tones, hair colors, and natural stuff like wood and dirt.
But then month after month, we kept finding things in the rubber stamps which needed gold.
Sometimes it was little things like a belt buckle or a key. There were many animals, flowers, and food like bread or muffins which simply didn’t look real when colored bright yellow.
Then when the winter holiday season hit, almost every commercial stamp featured large items which were actually golden— Christmas ornaments, stars, jingle bells, sleigh runners, candlesticks, angel halos, trumpets, decorative filagree, and fizzy champagne in gold rimmed flutes.
Golden items look cheap when colored with Y markers!
Gold wasn’t even on my radar until I taught classes for card makers. I rarely used gold in my professional illustrations but paper-crafters color gold all the time!
Who’da thunk?
If you color stamps or coloring books, seriously consider adding the YR-Twenty family to your Copic shopping list!
So there you go,
The Best Orange Copic Marker Blending Combinations
If you’re new to Copic Markers, you can’t go wrong with the YR-Zero series. They’re a bright and cheerful classic orange without the stubborn blending tendencies you’ll find in some of the other YR groups.
For a more organic and natural looking orange, try YR18, YR16, YR14. It’s a bit harder to blend but better for realistic coloring.
Because orange isn’t a frequently used color, try Cordine’s advice about supplementing YRs with yellow, red, or earth markers.
And if you color stamps or coloring books, put the YR-Twenties towards the top of your shopping list. They really come in handy!
Amy Shulke is a professional illustrator who has used Copic Markers since 1990. She teaches artistic coloring classes online at VanillaArts.com and locally in mid-Michigan.
Marker Novice is Amy’s completely free resource devoted to beginner marker education. For intermediate/advanced artistic coloring articles, see her Studio Journal here.
