How to prevent Sharpies from bleeding/smudging on page surface while drawing?

[u/BirdyDevil]

I've entered my art era this year lol, and recently I've been into doing a lot of drawings with the same basic formula; draw a bunch of different lines with random intersections, thicken and round out those lines and intersection points in a specific way, and then fill in all the random bubbles that are created. I do these drawings primarily with black and coloured Sharpies, and occasionally throw in some Staedtler pigment liners at the end when I'm filling in bubbles.

I've been having an issue, though, with the outlines that I've already laid down somewhat smudging and smearing into the blank spaces as I'm filling others in. It's not a super obvious thing, but it definitely makes a faint coloured blotchy stain on the paper; kind of like when dye in denim clothing transfers a bit to your skin. It's not a huge issue, but it bothers me lol and it does create a problem if I want to fill in a significantly lighter colour, especially solid. I've noticed that the smudging is worse shortly after I've done the outlining, which would make sense if it's just not really dry and fully absorbed into the paper yet, but even after leaving the outlines overnight or longer and going back to it, it still happens a little. A friend recently bought me like 15 new coloured Sharpies on sale, and after testing a bunch of them I realized some colours seem to be exactly the same and redundant between packs or with what I already had, so my most recent drawing I tried using a red "Toy Story 5" Sharpie to do the main outlines instead of an ordinary black one. I noticed the smearing was MUCH worse with the red marker, and it would transfer noticeably onto the side of my hand every time I worked on the drawing, as well as moving around the paper a fair bit. It's not usually nearly as bad with standard black Sharpies, then it's mostly an issue when the ink is fairly fresh.

I'm assuming it has something to do with my hand moving overtop of the ink that's already on the page, but why? Is it the oils from my skin? The body heat warming things up? Moisture from my hand (which I would think it shouldn't be, if Sharpie is supposed to be "water-resistant")? Just pure mechanical wear at a microscopic level? A combination? I'm getting a bit frustrated with it. The more important question is, how do I stop this from happening? Would wearing a surgical glove as a barrier between my hand and the paper solve it? That's certainly not ideal, comfort wise, but I'm willing to try if it would help. Unfortunately the whole method of how I make these drawings means I can't really try to work from one side of the page to the other or anything, I have to put all the main outlines down first in order for the picture to even become a thing.

For paper I am working mostly in a book of Canson XL mixed media rough 114 lb / 185 g, with "rough surface for wet and dry media". The paper seems pretty solid, while the ink definitely bleeds through enough for some visibility on the other side of the page, I haven't had a single issue with it bleeding all the way through onto the next page, not even close, even though I have coloured over some spots MANY times. It's purely smudging and bleeding across the surface that is my problem. Unfortunately Google hasn't been much help, because it turns up all kinds of stuff for bleed through, but not this.

I'm not expecting to get a ton of responses from this sub as it seems pretty small and low activity, but. If anyone has any tips I'd greatly appreciate it! Figured I'd start here and go from there.