This fun technique has become popular lately due to the effective illustration style it results in, and the personal colouring challenge it presents.

Probably not a good one for beginners, but certainly one worth trying when you are confident in your abilities.

I have to admit I have really only experimented myself, but along the way I have come up with a few tricks and tips to make it easier, so today I am going to share the way I tackle the ‘no lines’ technique.

You can do this with any stamp but I think it’s wise to pick something that is not too complicated. I have chosen the cute Sweet Blossom. Perhaps a little detailed for a first try, but I couldn’t resist.

What defines this style of colouring is the fact that once completed, you cannot see the stamped image outline, giving the image the appearance of an artist’s illustration. In order to achieve this, you must use a very light coloured ink to stamp your image. Memento Desert Sand is perfect, as the colour is light enough to disappear and it is Copic friendly.

First – and very important – Make sure your stamp is perfectly clean. Preferably never before used – if you acquire a stamp you think would look good in this technique, stamp it up in Desert Sand Memento ink a few times and keep them aside for later – then you can go to town with your Tuxedo Black and not worry about it.

If the stamp has been used with black ink before you will need to clean it very well and practice-stamp it a few times on scrap paper as traces of black can remain even if it looks clean.

Before attempting to colour, I think it’s a good idea to stamp in black ink as well, alongside your Desert Sand, to give you a guide to work from, as once you start adding darker colours your lines all but disappear on you and you can lose track of the original image.

It’s a LOT of fun, but certainly not for the faint-hearted. It does require a lot of patience and trust in yourself. But if you come through the other side, you will have learnt a lot about colouring that you may have thought you already knew!

The secret to achieving a good result is contrast. For the most part you can achieve this with colour choice – colours with a similar tonal value (those on the same or a close ring of the Copic Colour Wheel) will appear to blend into each other, making it difficult to determine where an arm ends and a leg begins (for example)

For this reason I suggest a darker coloured hair than you may normally use – and pay careful attention to what colours you choose to put where – plan out your image in your mind beforehand to be sure you provide as much contrast as possible.

I have chosen to use this gorgeous Basic Grey paper as my guide – pale pink, hot pink, red, yellow, green and blue mean that I have many options.

Now – time to colour!

Sometimes of course, you have no choice about using contrasting colours adjacent to each other. For example, where her neck comes out of her chin. Ordinarily there would be a black line separating the two, but in this case, you must ensure you are very aware of your shading and shadow to define the difference between the two sections, even though they are both coloured using the same markers.

This is best achieved by adding greys to form deep shadows. I have used a mixture of Ws, Cs and Ns depending on what colours I was colouring over the top of.

The hair is the trickiest part I think. It takes a lot of thought to ensure you are shading and shadowing in the correct areas. It’s difficult to tell you exactly what to do here – just proceed with caution! Concentrate on small sections at a time and focus on where you believe that section of hair would have the light hitting it, what parts are in deep shadow and where it curls and falls closer to you or further from you and colour accordingly. Be extra careful to follow hair growth direction and retain individual strands as much as possible. Otherwise you run the risk of her hair being one big nondescript blob of brown.

Pay attention to defining sections – using your black image as a guide – try to replicate the delineation between sections by adding extra shading or darker shadows.

Don’t be afraid to do your own thing sometimes too – once the lines are gone, you are on your own – so if you mess up, don’t stress – extend that strand of hair a bit longer, make the arm a little bit fatter… Use the original image as a guide, but adapt it if you need to. Alongside each other, you can see that I made a few executive decisions regarding the hair as I went. Particularly under the yellow flower – once I added in my darker browns I couldn’t see the lines at all so I had to rely on my own judgment to make it work.

You might find it easier to define sections using your darker colours first instead of the usual way of starting with the light colours.

As I said – probably not for beginners!

There will be times when you will need to draw details back in, such as the facial features.

Go slowly and LIGHTLY! I first made the eyes much smaller than I wanted, to be sure I didn’t mess it all up by going too large. I used E00 to shade a part of the face where the nose may cast a shadow, as opposed to drawing a line for the nose. I also used a skin colour for the lips rather than a more obvious pink and I decided not to add lashes at all – you can still barely see the stamped lashes. Eyebrows were added in my lightest hair colour – E31.

Subtlety is key here – After all that realistic colouring, you don’t want the face to look painted on.

The same basic rules apply to colouring the rest of the image. Stick to small sections at a time and focus on defining each section. See how the shading/shadow and definition were so important on her legs? In a normal stamped image, we could rely on the black lines to separate the legs, but in this style we must take extra care to provide that distinction ourselves through more detailed colouring.

It might seem a scary task at first but do give it a go! And please let us know if you do – we’d love to see your projects!