How to Blend Colors & Ombre with Tombow Brush Pens

Hi, I'm Becca with The Happy Ever Crafter and today I'm going to show you five ways that you can do blending with your Tombow brush pens. The first blending technique I'm going to show you is just a really simple technique using the Tombow blending palette. So that's just like a plasticky piece of sort of laminated paper that allows you to put some color down onto it and mix it around. I'm going to be using the Rhodia paper which is a nice good quality paper for brush pens and So this first demo is probably the easiest it gets when it comes to blending and what I'm doing is I've picked two really contrasting colors. I'm actually going to use red and yellow for all of the demos in this video. So red is really dark, yellow is really light obviously and that way it's easiest to see how they blend. So what you do for this one is you just put down some of the red onto the blending palette. The darker color goes down and then you just use your lighter color and you dip it right in. So now I've mixed it all up and that color is right on my pen and when I write with it it'll start off really dark and as you go you'll get sort of that ombre look and the more you write with it it'll go all the way back to your original color. So if that was a longer word and I kept going my pen would go all the way back to yellow and sometimes the tip of your pen will stay stained and that's really not a big deal as long as your color is back to yellow which it always does. So that's technique number one using two different pens and the blending palette. The second technique is very very similar except it works really well if you don't have a blending palette. So really all you're going to do for this one is take your lighter marker and draw right onto it with your darker one. So some people get really freaked out by doing that because it does sometimes stain the tip of your pen but I'm telling you it'll go back to yellow. So again if I write another word there aren't enough letters in this word so I'm just going to write fun with four n's but you see it go all the way back to yellow. So that's very similar technique but a lot easier if you don't own the blending palette or have any plasticky surface around. The next technique is also very similar except this time I'm going to use the same two pens but now I'm adding in this blending pen. So this is a clear pen and it comes in most of the packages of Tombow dual brushes that you'll get and a lot of people wonder what it's for. So for this one what you would do is put down some of your red, put down some of your yellow, and then you're going to use your colorless blender to grab a little bit of each of them. And then when you go to your page it gives it a little bit of a different look than it does with the actual two pens. Sometimes the yellow doesn't show up too too strong with this one and the blending pen actually sometimes leaves a little bit of like a white or really really light version of the colors you've mixed which can end up having a really cool effect like you can see it here. It's just nice and light and not overwhelming which I find can be really really fun. So same thing with the blending pen oftentimes it'll stain but if you just keep drawing with it the color comes right off. So that's technique number three. The next technique is where I'm actually going to add in a third color. So what you want to do with this one is choose a color that is sort of in between the two. So for this mixture it would be orange. So I'll pick an orange color and now I'm going to actually just use all three to sort of blend them all together. So what I would do for this is I'm going to start with the lightest one and I'm going to write my word. So I've written my word in the lightest color. Now I'm going to take the darkest color and I'm either going to choose the top or bottom of the word where I want to make it darker. So in this instance I'm going to use the bottom. So I'm going to start down here and just carefully go over those spots that were drawn in yellow. But now I'm going to turn them to red and you want to sort of use the same level across your entire word. So this only hits a little bit of the U. So I'll just give it a little color at the bottom here and you're going to do this on the whole word. And when you're done with your darkest color you're going to take your middle color and now you're going to add that into the middle. And as you go you want to sort of blend it with your darkest one at the bottom. So again same thing you want to just go up to the same level on the whole word. And generally the more jagged these edges are at the top the more realistic that blend will look with the next color. So you don't want to just draw it straight across. So some people choose to leave it just like this and that blend does look quite nice. But if you want and you're not happy with the way that the yellow is blending into the orange you can always choose another color if you have a lot of different tombow colors. This one is sort of in between an orange and a yellow. So I'm going to take this one and add even more layers of color. And so now I'm even happier with the way that those blends look together. And I've used four colors instead of three. So if I bring this closer a little bit you can see how that turned out. So that's technique number four. For this last technique which is my favorite one you're actually going to probably want to use watercolor paper instead of rhodia paper. We're going to be adding some water to this one so sometimes it can kind of mess with your paper if it's not made to be used with water. If you're using watercolor paper it can be a bit harder on your brush pens. So what you want to do is find either a hot pressed watercolor paper or a cold press watercolor paper that's a little bit less gritty than most of them. So you'll maybe look like a crazy person in the store but you want to go in and really feel it and try and find a smooth one. So for this one you're going to need either a water brush like this one. This is a pentel aqua brush and unfortunately mine is covered in white paint from a previous project. So I'm not going to use this but you could. Otherwise I'm using a paintbrush and just some water so it's the exact same thing but I have to reload it. And then I'm going to use the same two Tombow pens that I was using earlier. So for this one what you're going to do is similar to that last example. You're going to write your word in the lighter color first and then you're going to take your darker color and add it where you want to on the letter. So again I'm going to add the red at the bottom and then I'm going to take my paintbrush and dip it in the water and I'm just going to start to blend where the colors meet. And so you can see that right away I've picked up a bunch of that red and it's blending into orange. So I find this technique to be like really it feels really satisfying when you see those colors blend perfectly together. And that's really all there is to it for that last technique. That's my favorite one. I just love the way that Tombow pens are water soluble and they can blend together beautifully like that. And I just find it it's a really relaxing thing to watch those colors with the water all spread into each other. So those are your five techniques. You had the first technique where we use the blending palette for both the colors. Then we had the technique where you put the color directly onto the other pen. And then we had the blending palette with the blending marker. And then we did blending multiple colors together. And then we did blending with water. So I would love to know which one was your favorite if you want to leave a comment below. And I hope that this tutorial was helpful for you and I'll see you next time.