I was running out of watercolor paper, and “just” ordering the one thing I need always feels sad. So I hitched up my britches and treated myself to these new Copic Acrea Paint Markers. I specifically want to say paint markers because I keep hearing folks call them pigment markers and asking how they compare to the Staedtler Pigment Markers I used a little bit ago – and that comparison and a few more are ahead.

Tutorial: Copic Acrea Paint Markers – first look

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Swatching

I started with swatching the colors – at first I’d begun playing with them on white paper as I took the wrappers off (these come with those supertight plastic wraps on them like Zig Clean Color markers do…..paino in the draino!) But as I shook them and pressed on nibs to get color to come out – I saw these are most definitely paint pens, not pigment pens like some followers had assured me.

Which led me to swatch on both white (marker paper) and black (cardstock).

One test these mostly passed…

Against other paint pens in my stash, these are very bright – and very thin lines. Which leads me to think I’ll be doing more doodling with these pens than creating any imagery.

Test project: a Christmas postcard

I decided on recreating a project from a pencil class – it had a soft background to explore the use of these pens with water, and a foreground element that I thought would be nice in strong flat colors. Sadly, I never did get these pens to make clean flat areas of paint 🙁 They always had the pen lines showing in them so I ended up painting them to smooth it out better. The Winter Pencil Enchantment class will show you quicker ways to create any of these elements. (And that’s not just me talkin’. I’ve gotten more direct feedback from students than usual on that one, and it’s giving people lots of joy.)

A limited success

If I didn’t have the pencil version right next to me, and didn’t know how much easier it was in pencil – I would be very happy with this! But in the holiday season I end up with limited time to dawdle, and this one wasn’t as easy. 

But in my next video, let’s look at what it’ll take to get these to work with stamps – in several mediums!

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Winter Pencil Enchantment

At first I thought I’d be working my way through the scenes in this class using the Acrea…but homey got no time for that, so I’ll be back to me and my pencils on the sofa! I’m very excited so many of you are enjoying this course too. Way way way fun. And I’m almost done making my holiday cards!