Masking Frisket and Markers: An Easy Tutorial to Up Your Art Game

Posted by Becca Hillburn September 14, 2017

Masking Frisket and Markers: An Easy Tutorial to Up Your Art Game

Earlier this month, I shared an overview of masking techniques for alcohol markers. I covered several techniques briefly, but wanted to share my most used technique, which involves adhesive masking frisket, in more detail.

This technique has been used multiple times on the Nattosoup Studio Youtube Channel and allows me to mask larger, or more intricate areas quickly and easily. It can be used at the beginning of the marker process or at any point during, and only really requires one specialty product- the frisket itself.

Materials Needed:

Masking Frisket (I'm using Grafix Masking Frisket)

The Piece You Wish to Mask

Materials Recommended:

Permanent Marker (fine tip, ideally)

Rubbing Alcohol

Paper towels

XActo Blade

Cutting mat or scrap chipboard (like the back of a sketchbook)

Light table or light pad (if you don't have one, and would use it rarely, Crayola makes a decent little light box. I haven't tested this one yet, but it also looks promising)

Masking Frisket is also used by airbrush artists, and is a great technique if you enjoy using aerosolized inks like the Copic Airbrush System (link), or other alcohol marker airbrush options like the Ranger (link) or the (link), or if you enjoy using alcohol inks in misters or straight from the bottle, as well as if you enjoy using Copic Wides to lay down areas of color. I do not recommend using this type of frisket for watercolors, as water reacts with the adhesive and leaves a residue that is difficult to remove.

How to Use Masking Frisket with Markers

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Tutorial: Using Brusho Watercolors with Alcohol Markers

Masking frisket can be used at multiple stages of your marker process. Here you see an early application of masking frisket to mask Kara off from the background. In this photo, I've already applied a layer of alcohol ink (via spray) and am preparing to apply a layer of flicked acrylic ink.

You can see how well the masking frisket protects the masked area in the photo below, where the masking frisket has been removed.

From this point on, I used a reverse mask- I masked everything but a small area of the image, and applied Brusho and water. The bubbling you see in the frisket is just the result of lazy application- once I secured the areas adjacent to the area I wanted to apply Brusho to, ensuring a seal, the rest is just for cover. You could get a similar result, and waste less frisket, if you simply traced the area you want to mask, created

Unfortunately, masking frisket plus water is a bad combination. The water seeps under the plastic and reacts with the adhesive leaving a sticky residue on the paper.

Since there was seepage along her neck, I used Copic Opaque white to cover the blue, then went over it with Copic Marker to better blend it in.

Although the blue is still somewhat visible, the correction job is an improvement over the seepage.

In the below example, I use masking frisket to protect a finished figure from the background. Given Brusho's staining properties, I saved the background for the end rather than risk ruining my markers.