 Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnok. Welcome to my YouTube channel. I'm an artist and I work in all kinds of mediums including these alcohol markers in front of me and this is part two of a two-part series comparing Copic markers with Sketch marker and Olo markers. The link to the first video is in the doobly-doo down below. I'm going to be talking today about the unique colors that are in the other two brands that you might find some places where Copic didn't have a particular color that you wanted. It might be in some of these other brands and you can easily mix them in your artwork. Any kind of alcohol markers will pretty much work together. Secondly, I'm going to talk about browns specifically for skin tone, for hair, for animals and I'll be doing a demo where you'll get to see how when you use a conversion chart to go from one brand to another, if the color isn't perfect, things will come out a little different but usually a little different is just fine. Third, I'm going to give you a sneak peek into the new human rainbow class. I have put together a class I'm so proud of. I'm so excited and you'll hear more about why I'm excited when you get to that section of the video and finally I'm going to give you my assessment of the three brands, what I like and dislike about each one and kind of where I'm headed, what I'm going to choose for myself. All right, let's get started. All right, let's get on to the fire hose of information I'm throwing at you today. First, let's talk about the unique colors that are in Sketch Marker and Olo that are not in Copic and some of the color families. This is a page that I made with the leftovers that didn't make it onto my conversion chart. This doesn't mean some of these colors aren't close to Copic colors. It just means they had a color that was closer than this. But it was a good start for me to kind of figure out some recommendations so you can see those recommendations on my blog page. But here are some sketch pages I did with some of the color families. Copic has, you know, color families that I did a leaf for each one with or G8 has no family. There's no other G8s. There's just one, the G8 too. And I also included the YGs because they have Gs and YGs. The Sketch Marker goes from yellow, green all the way to blue, green in just the Gs. I find the G1, G2 and G3 families to be the most interesting to mix with Copics because they're more unique colors, a little more in my color way that I prefer. But they have some weird anomalies when you lay them all out this way. Like those markers are all kind of going along in a visual progression and then all of a sudden you get a desaturated or a darker one like out of the blue. I don't understand the numbering system. And I like to understand numbering, says Dubbs. That kind of kills me. Olo has hardly any greens. Please, Olo, get some greens for us. I do like those two YGs that I marked though. And then Sketch Marker has some blue grays. We'll talk about more grays in a minute, but I wanted to swatch out all the blue grays so you could see them in line. They kind of go from a progression to greens and then into blues and then kind of purple and then back to blue and then more of these kind of brownish purples. I don't get the progression. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't like the idea that goes from blue to purple to blue and then brown. Anyway, yeah, I like it when things make sense to me. Next up is pinks and purples. I know lots of you love those colors. Copics in the middle, Olo on top, Sketch Marker on the bottom. I tried to kind of line them up where they might fit in if you have some gaps. These are not all the colors in all of these ranges, but it's just, you know, smattering of them to get started with. And you can kind of see the little action lines I put around the colors I find most interesting in those. So they might be ones you want to pay attention to. This is also drawn on marker paper. It's not on Mina cardstocks. So the colors will look a little different on other papers. Sketch Marker also has a ton of really light, light, light, light, light, light, light, pinks. I didn't include them because there's like 30 of them or something. It's like a ridiculous number. But they also have some pairs like that, the two that I'm pointing to where there should be something in the middle. I wish there was something in the center between those so you could pick something from a different marker brand. And that are 20. I found kind of interesting. It's like a deep raspberry, a nice dark red. And then there's their purples that I've marked as interesting. The flowers down here, I just decided to do a carnation in each brand and tried to use a smattering of the different colors. You know, I ended up using in the middle of the Copic one some of the reds, which were weird. But you know, is what it is kind of made an accident there because the center looks weird. But it's hard to do apples to apples when you're just using all these smatterings of different colors together. But it gives you an idea of the flavor that they have for their pinks and purple kind of colors. Then we have the grays. Copic has had four grays for a long time, the cool, neutral, toner and warm. I've always said get yourself cool and warm and you're good. You don't need all the grays. Nobody needs all the grays. That's kind of crazy. And I used a three, five and seven for those. I used a three, five and seven for the two elephants on the right. And I use more grays for the red gray because I wanted to use them all. But the warm and the cool, you can see how they compare. One is more of a kind of a grayish blue. The other is more of a bluish blue. And the Copic warm gray is a little more on the yellow side. Red grays, unique to Olo. Nobody else has those. They also have a red black and a blue black. Again, warm and cool is probably all you need. But those are definitely interesting. Grays for sketch marker. They have the four basics that everybody else has, but they also have added a simple gray and a gray green as well as those blue grays on the first page. So they are heavy into the grays. They're very heavy in general into desaturated colors. So I don't know the reason for that decision, but there you go. And you can kind of look at the colors and see which one appeals to you the most. Again, I always say something cooler, something warmer, and you've got plenty of grays in your life. Next up, let's talk browns. I really wanted to focus on browns because I was doing the class, setting up the human rainbow class. And I did this crazy chart. I put them all in terms of dark to light. I wanted to see who was heavily weighted in darks and who was heavily weighted in lights and who had more mediums, who had more reddish colors, more brownish, more greenish, more purplish. So I tried to kind of group them. And I group them by shapes too by each brand has a shape. And like Olo doesn't have very much in the lights, but sketch marker has tons in the lights, just tons and tons. And in the darks, when it comes to those, in the yellow brown kind of colors, there's not a whole lot of darks for anybody. But when you get into the greenish ones or the purplish ones, there are some darks. And in the reddish, there are some. So this was kind of just an interesting way to look at the overall types of browns there are. And that one I just pointed to over there, that's an E04, which is the bane of my existence, because it's the one marker in Copic that makes no sense. But nonetheless, it was kind of helpful to be able to look at all of these different kinds of browns and which company fits where this is a little test I did just looking at markers that had I had on my chart as the same color and equivalents, but you can see different colors are going to have different temperatures to them. You know, some are going to be more toward the yellow, some more to the red, that kind of thing. And that's something when you use a conversion chart that you're going to need to understand. Because just because somebody says this color is the equivalent of that one doesn't mean they're exact equivalents. Because this is my chart for the new human rainbow class. And you can see as I'm coloring this that there are some colors that are spot on and some colors that are not. And when you're looking at trying to use a conversion chart, do a couple swatches for yourself first and see whether or not a color pushes more toward a darker color or a lighter color. Is it more yellow or more pink? Is it something that you want to make an adjustment on? Or is it going to create the kind of color you're looking for? If it's a skin tone and the color is too dark, you're going to need to either lighten up on the color that you use, mix it with some colorless blender by either putting the blender down first and then putting a real light coat of the color on it or put the color down first and then use a colorless blender on it or maybe go over it with a really pale color like the bird I'm drawing right now. This one is in the Olo marker and that light color that base tone was supposed to be the same base tone as those two little birds and it's not. So if you wanted to make that look exact like those other ones, then you would take some kind of a pale yellow marker and play around with what does it take to turn that marker into something that's going to be more of the same skin tone. Otherwise, you could just decide my person is going to look darker or my bear is going to look darker than that person's because my marker is darker and that that's just something you'll have to get used to as a colorist following somebody's conversion charts, even my conversion charts. None of them are going to be perfect because most of these companies are trying to create colors that nobody else has. They want to be the only one with that color as much as they can. So even having conversion charts, these two birds at the bottom look great. They look very similar to each other, but the bird above them does not look quite so much the same. So if you attempt to follow one of my classes or one of my YouTube videos or something using one of my conversion charts, even my own conversion charts, you will have different results. And I just don't want you to be disappointed thinking there's something wrong with you. No, there's nothing wrong with you. It is the nature of conversion charts. So no matter where you get them from, you're just going to run into that problem here and there. These birds were looking too different. So I gave them all yellow tummies, these kind of cream yellow kind of color to make them all feel like they were one family having a big argument on a tree branch. So now I'm super, super, super excited to share with you the human rainbow two class. There is a human rainbow one. And if you've seen that class or taken that class, you'll know the difference in the images that we were coloring last time. And these are just vast. I have actually grown, like I can physically see on the paper that I have grown in my skills, both as a draftsman, as a pen and ink artist. And I've been part of a life drawing group here in my town and have been just learning by leaps and bounds. And it's just so exciting when you can look at your work from years ago and look at your work today and say, wow, I've actually improved. I've moved forward. And that that's part of my excitement for this class. But the other part is exciting to share with you the techniques. There's techniques for skin tones for hair. And I covered just as many different kinds of hair and skin as I could different colors to combine while also trying to keep that color list kind of contained. I didn't want to make you feel like you had to go out and buy a gajillion markers. So the chart that I showed you earlier in this video is also the one that you're going to use for this class. And hopefully if you're somebody who's colored people before, you'll have a bunch of those kinds of colors already. It's a level four class. But if you have been like a level two, level three colorist, and you've done lots of people coloring, if that's your main thing, then you'll probably be fine in this class. I just didn't want to mark it as a lower level class and then have people like terrified or, you know, feel like they were a failure because they couldn't do it, that kind of thing. So that's where the level stands. And the digital images come with the course itself. So you can get them just by signing up for the class. Or if you want to color the images and not really have to go take a class or anything, you just want to color them on your own, you're welcome to do that. They don't come with the color lists, but they do come just the square image itself. And you can buy them separately, you can buy them as a group for a discounted price. And if you choose later on after you've already tried coloring them, then you decide you want to take the class, just email me and let me know that I'll look up your order and we'll set up a class purchase for you, subtracting the amount you've already paid because I don't want you to pay twice for the digital images because that price is already factored into the cost of the course itself. So that is the new class. And you can take it in any of the mediums, but be sure to go through the pre-class lesson to be able to see kind of some color alternates that you might want to consider if you're using a different brand of markers than Copic because this is taught in Copic markers. The link to the class is in the doobly-doo as always. That's down below the video. And now it's time for my assessment of these markers. I want to first start off by saying congratulations to Olo and Sketch Marker for even making it this far in the competition that they did not know they were in. I have been looking for a long time for a marker to rival Copics, either just a little bit less expensive, maybe a little less quality, but really close or something that's better. I would love it if somebody would start making a better marker rather than just trying to make cheaper ones. Everybody's trying to get some market share by cutting the quality of the nibs, the quality of the inks, the colors they're using, the body of the marker, anything they can to just make you buy more markers. And I don't like that. I have tried out so many brands and found them lacking in so many ways and they end up in the box that goes to the elementary school. Yes, I said the elementary school because that's where they belong because they're not very good markers. When I got my hands on my first Sketch Marker and Olo's though, I thought, ah, this one has possibilities, whether right now or at least they're showing me enough that I can see maybe they're going somewhere with this and I wanted to learn more and began by making a hex chart. That's a really great color exercise for me to go through to really get to know the colors. And then everything you've seen in these videos, I've just been going crazy doing sketches, sketchbooks that you will never even see because there's just full of doodles and tests and all sorts of things. I am not going to do that much work for all these other brands so you can stop asking me in the comments if I'm going to do hex charts and everything for whatever those other brands are, unless I find one that I think has some real possibilities that's not going to happen because all this time I've been spending doing all of this, I'm not making any money during that point and I need to put a roof over my head. I can't continue to do that for every brand so it's just not going to happen. If you would like to express your gratitude for me doing this much research on these two brands that you can then pattern your own testing for on your own markers, then you could do something like take a class, you could become a patron, you could go buy a digital image or something like that. You could even use the tip jar in the doobly-doo. There's a little heart down there that you could click on and just drop a little something in the tip jar for all this labor because the dogs need cookies. That's yeah. Don't they tug at your heart strings? That's Gialo and Vienna. All right let's get on to the assessment. I'm going to start with let's say Olo markers. These markers I was surprised at. I did not expect the cheaper one of these two to be the one I liked better. I just not think that was going to happen. I am the person who always is drawn to the most expensive thing that I can't afford. That's me and for these to be something I loved was a surprise. There were some things I didn't expect to like about it and they turned out to be not a big deal. For one the fact that they are a DIY marker you can pick your own colors. You can have half of one color half of another with brush nibs on both sides of your pen or you can get different nibs and make a pen of one color if that's what you like to do. I found that over time when I was using these I would get to the point where I knew that my Y02.3 is on the back of my YG2.1. I just knew that instinctively. I didn't sit down and memorize them but I just knew how many times I looked for it and it was always on the back of that one. Your muscle memory will kick in over time if you decide to do two-sided markers. That's one thing off the table which is a good thing because I didn't want to not like them just for that little logistics. The other thing I love about them is the feel of the pen in my hand. I like an art supply that feels like an art supply instead of feels like it should go to the third graders. I want something that feels substantial and these are a little heavier because they've got twice the ink because they're two markers in one and the nibs are wonderful. I even tried working these markers hard enough that I could get them to be all floppy the way that other alcohol markers always get. That's just the nature of alcohol marker nibs and I really wanted to push them to see if I could make them get all floppy and weird and I have not been able to really do that. It doesn't mean they're stiff nibs. They're a little more substantial I guess than other nibs I've used. Maybe substantial is a better word than stiff because they're not stiff but I've been surprised at how long they have withstood the pressure and not given into it. So that's a good sign. The one drawback with these guys is and it doesn't really compare to their upsides is the fact that they have a limited color range. So if there are specific colors you want especially in the light tones in certain certain hues you're going to have to buy those in a different brand for now but the good thing is those brands all work together. You can use alcohol markers together and mix them up in one drawing and you're just fine. So there's Ola markers. Love them. Now let's talk about sketch markers. These pens have 448 colors in their color selection. That's a lot of colors. If you like a lot of colors this is for you. I want you to be sure to go get the hex chart because the hex chart is going to show you when a color is really really close to one that's next to it especially in those light skin tones. Oh my gosh they went a little overboard in my opinion on light skin tones. There's one that's like a little yellow or one that's a little more peach or a little more purple a little more brown but they're really close and unless you have a super discerning eye it's going to be hard to tell the difference between them. There's just a lot of them. There's other colors in there too that are similar to each other but it's really visible in those light skin tone kind of colors. Also their general color range not all of them because they do have some brights but their general color range tends to have a little more desaturated colors in it those colors that feel a little dirtier and I tend to like those colors because I do art that's more natural rather than trying to make things like bright and cartoony all the time so it really depends on you and your color selection. Another tip for sketch markers keep an eye on your brush nibs. I discovered something in the last month that surprised me because I've been using these so much but I suddenly had a bunch of my sketch marker nibs my brush nibs that started to look like a banana it started doing that thing like why would it do that thing and I realized they had gotten extra long and they were being pressed against the inside of the cap and they were bending so I'm gonna have to go replace those but I think what happened because I've noticed it in some of my other pens is that the marker nib became unseated a little bit so if your marker nib seems to be growing longer and you're kind of surprised push it back in gently so that it stays in there I don't know if they're all gonna eventually start to do that but I noticed a bunch of them did I've never noticed that before in the year that I've been using them so keep an eyeball out for that and you can save your nibs from going bananas on you. The last thing I want to mention is something that I talked one last thing to mention about sketch markers when you store them put them into a container of some kind whether you're using a stiff container or a soft bag or something make sure there's something soft and non abrasive in the bottom of it and make sure the top of the container does not sit onto the markers themselves. I had this problem a year ago and shot a video about it the company said they were going to be working on it but I still have these same markers and they're all doing this thing to me you see that there's like no letters left on that one I have probably three quarters of my markers have some text rubbing off and about a quarter are about that bad now the other side of the marker has all the writing and it's fine it's just that side decided to rub off I have been keeping them in a container that has fabric like soft fluffy fabric in the bottom so it's non abrasive and that's what you want to do to make sure that your letters don't rub off be gentle with the markers they are going to be fixing that they may have already fixed it so I'm excited that a company takes my feedback and says they're going to go do something about it it just might take them some time to make that happen these markers are manufactured in China which could explain some of the production difficulties the nibs the brush nibs and stuff are made in japan the inks are good inks it's just the body of the marker that's the place where they chose to make a sacrifice to try to bring the price down so finally let's talk about copics copic markers have been in my life since 2006 that has a very long time and I have only replaced two markers in all of that time one because it just disappeared I don't know it sprouted eat and walked away maybe it's under a sofa somewhere and the other because my dog Sierra had eaten the lid she just chewed on it god bless her she didn't know how much mama loves her markers but for the rest of them I've replaced nibs I've replaced ink I've just done maintenance on them and they've stayed wonderful I expect that I'll use these when I'm 90 years old because they're still going to be here I also trust that copic is going to be here as a company when I'm 90 years old they've been around a long time they're not going anywhere and for me as a professional artist it means a lot to know that the company has been there and is going to continue I don't want to have to buy the markers when I turn 85 I just don't want these to suddenly fail at that point and I don't want the company to not be able to be there to make refills for me they can't hold that against these new companies they haven't had time to prove that they have longevity but there's proof here because they've already done that I also love the color range that's in copics even though they're not the desaturated colors that I can get from sketch marker I know how to make my own desaturated colors by using my compliments and I like the way that compliments make desaturated colors better than what comes out of a pen because I can control that and I can't control the ink in the pen as much and after all that copics win the competition again I know you're probably disappointed it probably was expected you were hoping I would say I found like the magic bullet but that's just not the case there are sacrifices every company makes to make a product less expensive than an expensive one that's just what happens there's all different kinds of things you can choose to sacrifice and that is entirely up to you and you can also combine them you can use a little bit of each one to get what you want in your art all right thank you so much for joining me if you learned something from this video tap the like button hit that tip button if you want to and go take the human rainbow class because that's going to be a whole lot of fun subscribe if you haven't already and I will see you next week in a new video on Tuesday take care and go create something every day