Let's talk art supplies for a sec. I bought this masking pen a few months ago and then completely forgot about it.
Ever since I started doing these outfit drawings, I've struggled with patterns. I love to wear them, and drawing them is fun, but it takes a lot of effort and it's very time consuming.
Then, just this week, I remembered that I had that masking pen and proceeded to kick myself for not utilizing it as soon as I bought it. It's amazing. It raised my pattern drawing level from here to here. I used it on the super complicated pattern of the vintage dress above and it was a breeze. This masking pen is now one of my favorite art supplies, ranked right up there with the Pentel pocket brush pen. And that's saying a lot.
Note: After receiving comments on Facebook, I realized that non-artists have no idea what a masking pen is or does. A masking pen is like a paint marker that contains masking fluid. Masking fluid is a liquid version of masking tape. It's like a liquid rubber that, when dried on paper, resists water and is easily removable by rubbing or erasing. Watercolor artists use it most. They will apply the masking fluid in all of the places that they want to remain white and then paint over it. When the painting is dry, they will remove the masking fluid and have nice crisp white highlights that are otherwise, hard to achieve. I use it in patterns so that I can mask out all of the little detail stuff and then color the background color over the entire thing. When I remove the fluid, I can then go in and fill in the details. It's a lot easier then drawing all of the details and then trying to fill in the background around them. This is especially true when the background is a darker color than the print.
