 Hello. Happy Labor Day and welcome to my YouTube channel where today I'm going to compare alcohol markers, water-based markers, and watercolor in a specific context and using some color with line work that I've been doing a lot of lately. I thought it'd be good to do a comparison and that is partially because there's Labor Day sale that ends tonight and because of the sale, I have put up a pre-registration page for a new class. And I want to be sure that you get this class on sale because it's a pricey one. All right, so let's get started. All of this work I've been doing lately with throwing some color on the page and then going over it with doodling and pen and ink had gotten me thinking I needed to do something for all the mediums and this sketchbook got great reviews for using it with alcohol markers as well as water-based markers and I don't usually see that. I usually see somebody trashing it on one end or the other and I thought I'd try it. So I did. I dug in. The test page here that I'm starting with is this 6x6 area. The sketchbook is 8x8 so I made a 6x6 sheet that I just traced because all these drawings I was going to do for this class were going to be 6x6 and that made it easy rather than having to get out anything to measure things except for making a grid so I could have these 2x2 squares and students if you want to do some testing on your own then I recommend doing it this way. Don't just do swatches, do a real-world test and draw something. So I decided the first thing was going to be turtles so I pulled some greens and purples so that I could do turtles with a purple background. I erased a little bit of areas where I was going to let the turtles legs kind of peek out and I didn't want to trap the pencil underneath. It's one of the reasons why with this particular method I like to just draw with the markers. I don't put down pencil lines, I don't measure anything out, I just start drawing. And in the class there's enough easy things in there that I hope you don't feel like you need to pre-draw things. You could always pre-draw in a very light color if you want to sketch it out first. Instead you know just use a light Copic marker, that sort of thing. And I don't encourage you to get too crazy with the blending either. Notice how cheesy the blending looks on these because that's the kind of thing I'm doing in the whole class. So the class is a little more about the pen and ink than it is going to be about the coloring itself. With both the water-based markers and the alcohol markers, you'll feel a little more drag on this paper than you might with other papers that you like to use with these pens. So if you're like me and you just want to do both mediums in one sketchbook, this is a good one to get because I do like how it performed. But if you're going to be using the water-based markers only, then I recommend using something like Canson XL. That's a great paper and the water-based markers move really well on that. If you're going to just do the Copic markers or whatever alcohol brand, just use whatever paper you like. Here I was messing around with what happens when you try to blend water-based markers and you can't do that with just the markers. They don't work that way. But you can lighten the colors and the markers I use for the turtle are Faber Castells, very strongly pigmented. They don't have very pale colors. The way you get a pale color is to lift color back off or you can scribble some on something like plastic and then you can paint with it. Use that as paint. But this paper doesn't take tons of water. It's not like a watercolor paper at all. So it's more very much a mixed media paper and it is going to get warpy if you put too much water on it. So using the alcohol-based markers works great, but the water-based you may get a slight amount of warping. When we get to watercolor, you're going to see a lot more warping going on. But you can use all different kinds of brands on this. Tried some Tombows, tried some Ziggs. All worked fine on this paper. So then we get to traditional watercolor. The only reason I continued to do some traditional watercolor in this test and included a little tidbit here and there in the class itself is because I know I have lots of students who like to do wash and ink with watercolor. And if you get this sketchbook and if you are going to do this class, then you're going to need a little help with some of the lessons. There's a few of them that I don't really recommend doing with watercolor. And as you go through the class, I'll tell you which one. So if you're going to plan on doing this class in watercolor, I would recommend also having your water-based markers handy so that you can do a lesson in those if you need to or try it in both and see. Some of them you might be able to figure out a better way than I figured out to try to paint the items because we're not sketching. We're not putting any pencil down, which means you have to draw while painting. The turtle is pretty easy to do. It's a big blob with four legs sticking out and ahead. And I let it dry. I used my heat gun. I lifted the paper. If you lift the paper, then it won't warp the next page underneath of it because you're not getting it hot. And once it was dry, then I was able to add more detail into the area where the legs join the body. So then it looks like there's a little difference between those areas. And then I mixed up a purple. Now, my water was really dirty, so this purple is going to dry really muddy. So forgive me for that. You can excuse me. You can usually mix a much better purple than this. But I was just doing a quick test on this so that I could show you kind of how the watercolor works out with all three of these. The biggest difference that you'll be able to see in this phase of it, for sure, is the fact that the colors are different because every medium is going to be different. If you use zig markers in this, you're totally going to get like electric colors. There are some brands of water-based markers that will completely change color on you. Just totally go wacko. So be sure you test things before you use them on your finished project. So a flattened wetted paper. What I have tried in this, I've done it in my Bible journaling plenty before, is just to take a nice hot iron and do a couple seconds on the paper with something on top and on bottom. So you're not ironing directly on your artwork. It protects it a little bit from burning in case you do anything crazy. So for the Sharpie markers, I ended up in the class using the one on the right. I forgot that I had an entire box of Sharpies in the drawer that were brand new. So I'd have a nice sharp point. So you're going to see me struggle with some of my lines being a little chunky and weird and imperfect. I wish I had this pen out when I was doing all the filming, but such as life. So I'm just doing the main shapes, the biggest shapes with the heavier marker. And in the class, you can use whatever markers you've got. If you've got a marker that's got this kind of width to it, that's another brand or you want to use a micron. That's a big, heavy one by all means, do that. One of the things I did discover, which was a surprise on this paper is, and I think it's on any paper, when you do the finer line work, you'll notice it more that the pens are going to act differently on top of each of the mediums. So on top of alcohol marker, they're going to behave and be one level of thick or thin and they might change on another one. That's one of the reasons why I'm not going to tell you in the class to go by any particular pens. Like, you're going to have to test them on whatever paper you decide to use and whatever medium you decide to use. I don't know if different brands of alcohol markers are going to act differently. I only have two to test and they seem to do the same, same deal. But you're going to need to test them so that you know for the projects you're working on what your markers and your pens are going to do together. So I'm using a Twizby Eco pen. This is the fine tip, I believe, or no, this is the extra fine. And I'm using this particularly because I'm doing small images in the class lessons, we're going to be doing full six by six and the shapes are going to be much bigger. And that's for a whole lot of reasons that you'll see when we get to the samples from the class at the end. So once I did all the detail work in the turtles and they all look fine. So don't let yourself be fooled into thinking you have to have one medium or another. Then I decided to put a background in. I wanted to get more testing on what these pens do on top of color. And here I'm using my my heavier nib. It's a medium nib and again with the Twizby Eco. Supplies are all going to be listed down below. So the verdict for me is that this sketchbook rocks if you're going to switch back and forth between mediums or if you want to use Copics and water based markers on the same drawing because there might be times when you have a color available in one and not in the other and you could totally do that. So I did some other testing in this. This was one of the first things I did. I threw some watercolor on here just to see how it would handle it. I didn't have to iron it because I went a little too crazy. Had lots of water on that. This one is Copic with with line work over it. And that's going to be a tiny tutorial later this week on social. So keep an eye out for that. These are all the samples for the class. So they're the kinds of things that we're going to create. And in some of the lessons, I'm going to show you the alcohol markers, the water based markers and watercolor. And then some of them you'll just get to because the technique is the same for both. This one lesson, I decided to use a super fine, super, super, super fine, should I say, pen, just to see what it was like. And you can test out any pen you like during this class. I've come up with what I hope are going to be really fun images that you can do takeoffs on as you explore this further past the class. So I'm going to teach you techniques for individual sections of of an image and targeting them not toward, you know, here's how you draw a rocket, but more of how would you draw, you know, something made of metal and how would you draw something that's more organic and how do you play back and forth with the colors and the lines together and that sort of thing? How do you recover from mistakes? Because I made plenty of them and there's there's just any number of things I learned throughout this process that I'll be sharing in the class. And it's just a ton of video footage right now. These lessons are not all processed. That's why the class is open for pre-registration, because I'm going to be busy this week getting all the lessons completed and ready so that by Friday could be sooner. But by Friday, my goal is to have it all fully available. A quick word on the bleeding, the alcohol marker does come through, but it doesn't somehow go through the next page. That little bit of red came through from these cherries that I did. Heavy, heavy blending on. So as long as you keep a little sheet between there, you're going to be fully protected and it might not even hit that protection sheet at all. So this sketchbook gets a giant thumbs up from me, even though it's got some like off-white paper. It's not completely bright white and it does have a little bit of drag. It works super well for what I was doing here. And it was an enjoyable process. The sketchbook is just about full. If you have an idea on what I should draw next, then let me know in the doobly-doo. I'll take your suggestions. Pre-registration is open for this class right now. The sale is on today. This is Labor Day, September 5th. Get it by the time I go to bed tonight, because that is when the sale ends and I want you to get the discount. This is a pricey class and it's worth a lot to have a percentage off on it. So go check it out in the doobly-doo. And I will see you Friday with one more drawing in this sketchbook. And tell me if you want me to use aqua markers or the alcohol markers. I'll see you guys on Friday. Bye bye.