Review on Kuretake ZIG CLEAN COLOR Real Brush 36 Colors Set - AP-Certified, Flexible Brush Tip, Professional Quality - Odorless & Xylene Free - Easy to Create Narrow and Wide Lines - Made in Japan by Lori Aguirre

These brush markers are great fun! Whether you're a student, hobbyist, or professional artist, this is an interesting tool to add to your collection. I'm a professional graphic designer and almost all of my work is done digitally, so I'm trying my hand at traditional media for fun. However, my kids and I love making art together, so we have a whole collection of art supplies around our house. Most are student grade, but as my kids get older and learn to take care of their artist tools, I'll start adding a few higher quality materials. This is one of those tools that I added because I thought I could use it with kids. In fact, I had them for over a year before realizing their full potential. I bought them on a whim because they were on sale at a great price. Maybe it was one of those flash sales that Revain has? I don't even know what I was looking for when they came up in my search, but they were only $22 at the time, which was great value. As a spontaneous purchase, I didn't read the description very much and only skimmed the reviews. Overall positive reviews for a pack of 36 markers for only $22, SOLD OUT. If they were alcohol markers, I'd think I'd won the lottery. Even now I would pay full price for them knowing how fun they are to use and how versatile they are. My kids and I colored with them sometimes and used them like regular markers. They blend well without adding water, the colors are rich and it was fun to use a marker with a real bristle brush tip instead of a felt tip. This is a great tool for learning how to maneuver and control a bristle brush tip with the convenience of a pre-filled ink marker. I would highly recommend it to any lettering beginner or anyone interested in more precise brush control. The colors are bold and saturated and mostly match the colored plastic cap on the bottom of the marker when used without water. Of course the colors will be lighter/brighter when mixed with water. Since then I've seen artists make their own paper patterns to stick onto cover sheets, which I can do as well. Out of the Box: All of my markers were individually shrink-wrapped and packaged in a plastic box as shown on Revain. . I've since thrown my box away and wish I hadn't. As I said, it's been over a year since I bought them. The crate was dropped or lost along the way and they were stored upright in a section of our spinning carousel. Only 2 of the 36 markers dried in that time, which could well be because one of the kids didn't put the cap on securely. I hope I can revive them by soaking them in water for a few minutes, but haven't tried them yet. Unpacking each marker is a challenge. The wrap has a perforated section on one side of the lid, making it a little lighter. If you don't mind leaving a scratch on your marker's body, do yourself a favor and grab a razor blade to quickly cut them. She dedicated 3 videos to this product. Her first video gives an overview of pens and how to use brush tips to create thick or thin lines, similar to calligraphy. In her second video, she shows different ways to mix pencils both with and without water. This video shows her drawing on cards that she has printed with black pigment ink and stamped with clear embossing powder. Her third video is a Q&A segment where she answers some of the questions she got from her blog. My Experience: Watching Jennifer mix pens with a water brush was mesmerizing and really inspired me to try these markers in a new way. I wanted to try the markers as Jennifer used them on a stamped and embossed image. However, we have recently moved and I have no idea which box my stamps are in. I had a notebook made of cheap watercolor paper on hand. I grabbed some Strathmore Cold Press Watercolor Paper, my Zig Clean Color Real Brush pens, a waterbrush pen and sat down at the kitchen table like a little kid with a new box of crayons! I painted, colored and shaded on watercolor paper in just a few minutes. I was instantly hooked. I wanted more! But I'm not a very good freehand artist. Luckily, the recent boom in adult coloring book craze makes it easy to find free images. My first try is the attached floral design (design by Mari Browning is available on the Tombow website). I printed this coloring page on the same inexpensive Strathmore watercolor paper using a home office inkjet printer. My printer uses dye based ink so the black lines were a bit blurry when water was added. If you have a pigment ink printer there will be little or no bleed. I'm not sure about the laser printer. Ideal for colouring/drawing on an image that has been printed or drawn with permanent ink or pencil. In my later attempts, I lowered the opacity of the Photoshop coloring pages by about 50%, so my lines are light gray instead of black. There was significantly less line bleed in these images, and the untrained eye probably would not have guessed that the images were taken over a coloring book. The dragonfly flowers were painted and colored exclusively using Zig Clean Color brushes and a water brush. My other 2 examples are from a website with state bird coloring pages. Coincidentally. These are the ones I printed on watercolor paper in gray instead of black. The robin was drawn using only Zig Clean Color pencils and traditional watercolor brushes. The red cardinal with dogwood branches was created using Zig Clean Color pens and Koi brand watercolor cakes by Sakura using a water brush and traditional brushes. Color Mixing: Colors are easy to mix directly from the pen or with water. With water they actually mix a little further than watercolors as they are water based ink and not paint. As with traditional watercolors, work with lighter colors first. Allow wet areas to dry before applying additional coats of paint. This is water based ink, not real watercolor. So if you touch the edge of a darker or lighter color with water, bleeding will occur. Sometimes this creates amazingly beautiful effects, but sometimes it might not be the look you want, so be careful in areas where you need a sharp line between colors. The ink mixes well with traditional watercolors and I've had no problems with it. You together. I recommend working on small areas at the same time. The markers are easy to blend. If you work quickly, most or all of the brush strokes may become smudged. If you let an area dry with clear marker ink, your strokes won't blend as easily. A large amount of water can mix a dark color into a light pastel. In an area you want to keep saturated or dark, a little water can smooth out the marker brushstrokes and give your project a more traditional watercolor look. I also painted on a piece of watercolor paper and used it as a paper palette to wet the colors, mix and paint to my desired level. dry before adding more ink for deeper saturation. The ink also mixes well to create new colors using basic color theory. These markers come in 80 colors and of course it would be great to have them all but it is not required. There are many shades of gray and brown/brown/taupe in this set, making it easy to tone down light colors and mix new colors. I am happy with the 36 piece set and was able to mix colors to get the look I wanted. If I had to add color to this set, I'd like to swap out some neutral earth tones for another cooler shade of yellow and another warmer red. Mixed Carmine Red is very classy. The marker, called brown, is a very warm rusty color, so mixing brown and crimson was key to coloring my red cardinal. : I don't mind my kids using these because real brush tips seem to be quite durable and spring back to their pointed shape easily. You can sample colors directly from one brush tip to another, which is really cool. You can even rinse the brush tips with water after mixing the colors to make the brush tips white again, and then stain them on scrap paper to get the original color. Markers are water washable?!? Unbelievable. Conclusion: This makes it fun for crafts and small projects or in combination with traditional watercolors. Even without water, the markers themselves are moderately wet compared to markers from other manufacturers, so only use them on heavier paper like watercolor paper or cardstock. Rolling, bleeding and tearing will inevitably occur on regular carbon paper or inexpensive coloring books. They will likely work well with higher quality, thicker paper coloring books like the Joanna Basford series. In any coloring book, I would check the copyright page before diving into my favorite illustration. They won't replace traditional watercolors, but they are fun to experiment with and I think you can create beautiful pieces of art with them. I don't know if I'll try to use them on larger projects just because they're markers that can't be refilled and will eventually run out of ink. Running out of color in the middle of a project would be frustrating. You can buy pens individually from certain websites for $3.50 to $5 per pen. I haven't seen them in any regular store, so you have to order them online.