Another Opinion

So I really don't like to knock something until I've tried it. The university art sale is this month, so I went and got a few Copic markers to compare against the "no-name" ones I had bought the other week. (25% off all art supplies, bringing these markers to $5.96, the average US equivalent price)First of all, like many others have said with these markers, if you don't know the basics of shading and colouring, these aren't a miracle worker. You need to have that basis before expecting superb results. My general observation with these- they are a bit excessive for card marking, but they are quite nice to draw and colour with. So here are the first few items I did. This first one is an elephant by Doodle Factory. I actually mixed my no-name markers with the copics here. Guess what. They blend together just fine! I also used Prismacolor pencil crayons (for the tusk) and the Prismacolor 10% grey marker for the oval shadow. The one big thing I noticed with the Copics right away is that they are a bit more forgiving than my no-name ones. If I don't like my colour placement, I can almost pull some away and swirl it and blend it with the next shade down. I did find, and this is to be expected, that they bleed and spread a bit more than I'd like. It's not a big deal, just means you require a lighter touch at the edges of the image. Or, you could emboss the image or use one of these Magenta peel-off stickers, like this funky fish. This one is mostly Copics (the eye is the black no-name). Another thing I noticed by this time, is that the lighter coloured markers make more of an impact. You can use them to build up dimension easier and I had an easier time mixing them with the darker colours. It's like they activated the darker colours better, which made blending a dream!

Like I said at the beginning of my entry, is that I LOVED these for drawing with. Talk about inspiration to get back into drawing! I really like drawing eyes, and although these are definitely not the best ones I've drawn, I figured I'd share them anyway. I wanted to see if the Copics could achieve that twinkling light that only eyes seem to have. I was pretty pleased with the results. Again, these are mixed media/brand images. The eyes themselves were drawn with the no name markers, the irises with the copics, the highlights with white prismacolor pencil crayon and prismacolor grey marker. The flower on the right was done only with the no name markers. I figured I'd just show a side by side comparison of doodles with each. And finally, I have one more doodle. I just really liked how it turned out. It's a little cherry. I was very pleased with how well the red and the olive blended together. Color theory says they should,(use complimentary colours to darken each other- use green to get a shadowed red, etc) but that doesn't mean the product works nicely that way. I drew the cherry in olive, then coloured in with the crimson, again, pulling the color a bit to blend the two on the edge. I left a bit uncoloured for a highlight, then emphasized it with white pencil crayon.

So, there you have it, another stamper/artist's experience with the Copics. My overall opinion and observations: They are definitely high quality. I could notice a difference between them and the no names. However, if you have more experience, I'm sure you could make any medium work for you! I had more fun drawing with them, than colouring in with them. For card purposes, they seem over the top, but if you haven't yet invested in a marker set, they are similar in price to the Stampin' Up markers, and you can get decent colour matches.

Here's the price break-down:

$187.95CDN plus shipping and taxes (in MB, as a demo that's $194,72) for 48 from Stampin' Up! versus $115US for 36 plus shipping, customs fee and local taxes (in MB, you're looking at an additional $27) so $142 for 36. You're looking at 4.05 per Stampin' Up marker, and 3.94 per Copic from My Favorite Things (the cheapest I've seen sets of Copics online).