#3 Focus on 🔎
Promarkers - Winsor & Newton or Letraset
Welcome all,
This is the third in a new series thats is not emailed to everyone. I want to write more and not have writers or artists block.
ProMarker by W&N or Letraset
Currently as of writing this they retail at £3.65 for open individual markers. 1W&N website. They also do many variations of sets with options for brushes or chisel ends as well as metallic, neon and a complete watercolour range too. I will be focussing on only the alcohol markers in this piece.
As always you can find them discounted at various art supply shops and there are quite a few that come up as used on marketplaces like Vinted and Facebook. You could ask why this may be the case and the answer may be written below.
I bought most of mine 2nd hand with the occasional new one mixed in so I could get certain colours. You’ll see I’ve collected a fair amount at greatly reduced prices (between 90-100) by paying attention to the colours I have and what I want before purchasing sets.
From the drawing examples below I have used them, but not regularly. I do want to improve my drawing and art with them though as they are quite fun. I’ll go through what I see as the pros and cons for me as a developing artist a bit later.
The Letraset promarkers brand was acquired by W&N in 2012 and are now all under the Colart group now. They have been revitalised into the W&N markers we see today.
One bug bear of mine is the end sticker is often not there or has fallen off. As I store mine horizontally on a shelf to preserve them I really need to see the end cap number and shade. You can see in one of the pictures I made my own and glued them on in some cases!!
The following pictures show my collection, the different branding, the end caps and also my swatch against a printed full swatch.
This leads on to my pros and cons:
Cons:
The end cap labels not being there or falling off
Fairly expensive to buy new
Not particularly environmental
Easy to feel dispirited with your art after using them. Difficult to master
Requires patience and practice to master the colours, values and saturation.
Will bleed through paper and requires particular paper to get better results. So you will use more sketchbook pages if you are using them in a sketchbook.
Greys are limited in numbers
Pros:
Can be found cheaply 2nd hand, perhaps from people who got dispirited (see above)
You can get some decent looking art with practice
Convenient single use with no faffing or filling
Fun to use
They seem to last a long time
They also have a blender that I sometime use but prefer to understand the colours and layering to get the shift in values I like. Also, using the various greys will do this. They often get compared with Copic refilable or Ohuhu who have a superb line up too.
If I had got into the Copic markers I think I would be disappointed with the expense and resale value by now, whereas with the W&N my outlay was low and I can sell them on should I just get bored with them. I think the Copic markers are priced more for professional illustrators and artists rather than the hobbyist.
Samples
The following examples are the what I’ve created using the markers. They are just for fun & practice or trying things out following a youtube tutorial.
The following pictures show the note book paper and the difficulty you have with bleed through. I use a standard slip of paper behind while I’m working to stop it ruining the piece underneath. The book I use was a cheap specific dual purpose book (£5.99) with half the paper for watercolour markers and half for alcohol. You want the marker paper to be a little more coated and smooth so as not to drain away all the ink getting the colour down.
As with all these Focus on series, if I feel there is a good update I will add to this information.
https://uk.winsornewton.com/collections/view-all-promarkers
Lovely architecture 🥰 wow!!