How I Fell in Love with Acrylic Markers

Sometimes all we need to get our creativity fired up is for something new to happen. What happened for me a couple of weeks ago was receiving a package from Lightwish, which contained a set of acrylic markers. Coincidentally I’d just watched a Danny Gregory video where he was talking about how wonderful acrylic markers are. He talked about how different they are from alcohol markers, or as we called them in England “felt tip pens” – which I always hated because they smelled bad and were always streaky and not even nice colours. 

How different from that the acrylic markers are!

I’m going to list the features that set them apart from other art tools I’m used to using and you’ll see why I love them!

1. They come in colours which are soft and pretty. My set all coordinate with each other, meaning that when using them you automatically make attractive art. No matter which ones you pick up.
2. They are opaque. This means that the lighter colours can go over the darker ones and they can be used to cover up mistakes, and to add highlights, and even to put whole elements in your design on top of darker colours. So different from watercolor, which can be unforgiving in this.
3. They are creamy and richly pigmented. You will be surprised at how intense the coverage and colour of these pens is.
4. You don’t need to activate them by pumping. They work right out of the box. Very helpful feature.
5. They come with their colour code on the end cap and a swatch chart to fill in with the colors. Very handy and professional.
6. They include black, white, gold and silver.
7. They work well with watercolors. Whether you start with the markers and add watercolor, or start with watercolor and use markers on top, you will be able to get interesting effects like this.
8. They accept pen work easily. You can use fineliners and tombow pens on top to good effect. 
9. They work really well on hot pressed paper. Not only that, they are a pleasure to use on a smooth ground. I felt as if I was painting with Neapolitan ice cream when I used them for the first time. I recommend this as a sensuous experience not to be missed.
10. They can be blended. You can moisten them on the paper and smoosh them together to get blended colours. Particularly successful on mixed media paper.
11. You can use them as watercolors. You can scribble with a couple of them on a ceramic plate,  and use a brush and a little water to pick them up and paint with them as if they were watercolor. Could mean that you needn’t take a set of paints with you to paint with if you had a set of acrylic markers to hand.
12. They work on all surfaces. I wrote “water” on my water container using one of them and it’s still there many washes later! Use them on pebbles, plastic, canvas, glass, ceramic, paper, card, fabric, even vegetables (think Halloween!) – any surface will do!
13. They come in a huge range of colours. My pastel set only runs to 48 colours, each pen has two colours, one each end. But there are bigger sets and sets which are more primary colour based. There are also metallic acrylic markers which are fun too!
14. They are not expensive. My set retails at about $16 which is only about 70c each pen (with two colours).

So are you convinced yet?

Just in case you aren’t, I’ll add the DISadvantages of these markers to give a balanced point of view.

1. If you use them forcefully the nibs might fray and make it hard to use them.
2. If you store them standing up one colour might not flow very well.
3. If you use them frequently you will use them up. They won’t last forever. 
4. The nibs on my set are quite thick so you can’t really use them for fine work. You would need a set with finer nibs to achieve fine lines.
5. You will want more. If you buy one set I guarantee you won’t be satisfied until you have more.

Here are some links for you to look at

I can’t guarantee anything else except that I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy using them and you’ll be inspired to do more art once you have a set of these fellows in your art drawer!

Lightwish Acrylic Marker Set https://amzn.to/3xDbmE9

Arrtx Fine tipped Metallic Acrylic Markers https://amzn.to/4cHy6BI

Lightwish Watercolor Sketchbook https://amzn.to/3zvaemu

And if you haven’t seen this video yet, do take a look. You’ll be able to see for yourself how much I enjoyed using them for the first time!