Karin Markers Review

If you follow any letterers of Instagram, you may have seen Karin Markers.  I was curious about them, but a bit hesitant.  I am not typically a fan of larger nibbed pens – my lettering is on the smaller size.  And, everyone talked about how rich and juicy they are.  However, as a lefty, I typically don’t love a juicy pen – it just makes a super smudgy mess.  Curiosity got the cat, and I put them on my Christmas list!  I was super thrilled to see a set under the Christmas tree just for me!

It took me a few days to bust them out and really get to practice – we had a lot of company over the holidays.  Like I said, I am a huge skeptic when it comes to rave reviews with no downfalls mentioned.  I just can’t help myself!  I am here, however, to eat my thoughts.  I am in love with these pens!  There are tons of reasons to fall in love, and a few things that I don’t love.  There is a full video below with all the details too!

First of all, the set of 60 has a diverse and well rounded color selection.  There are so many shades of each color – they really make hay with the 60 pens.  There isn’t a color that I feel like is missing.  Plus, when I created my color chart, I really liked the colors.  There weren’t any that I thought… eh, not my cup of tea.  I was pleasantly surprised by some of them; I can’t wait to use Almond!  The colors are bright and vibrant and consistent throughout your downstrokes.  Because these aren’t color additive, you will get consistent coloring, even if you have to go back and touch up later.  And, I love how usable these blender pens are!  Because they are way more functional than some other blending pens I have used, I was super excited to see THREE of them in the box.

The pen nibs are not quite as long as the Tombow Dual Brush pens, which is just fine by me, but I love how sturdy the nib is!  It has great bounce back after using firm pressure and doesn’t stay bent over.  Plus, I haven’t seen any fraying on my nibs.  They are very stable when I write and they don’t wiggle all over the page.  This is really helpful to have straight, neat lines!

The barrel of the pens are see-through, so you can see how much ink is available to use.  To me, this is also a way to track which colors you are using all the time and maybe a challenge to diversify your color usage.  Since mine are brand new, I have no idea how long these pens will last, but from what I can tell from others, they seem to last for a while.

When you are writing, these pens are juicy!  While I don’t usually love a juicy pen, these seem to dry pretty quickly.  They dried really fast when I wrote on my HP Smooth Laser Jet paper, but held color puddles a little long on my Rhodia pad.  Because they stay wet for longer, they make a great pen for some beautiful blending and color bleeding between lines, words, and letterers.  When they dry quicker, obviously, there is less smudging, but you also don’t get as many weird pen blurps and blobs of random ink.

A few things that I didn’t love about these pens was the inconsistent drying time.  It took me a few tries on a couple of different papers to figure out a good blending paper.  I will write more about different ways to blend and tips for blending in another post.  Also, this is going to sound nit picky, but the colors are listed on a sticker on the side of the pen lids.  I prefer the label to be on the pen barrel, because lids can easily get switched by accident and then I have no idea what I am working on.  While the lid colors are pretty close the ink colors, we all know that it is never a perfect match.

The video below goes through all of these things, plus a peek at my color chart.  Not to toot my own horn, but this may be the most beautiful color chart I have ever made.  But take a quick peek at the video and be sure to subscribe to my You Tube channel too!

 

If you are ready to get your paws on this awesome set of markers, you will have to order directly from the company.  They are located in Poland, so you won’t have them next day (and hit translate on the page!).  But, from the information passed on to me, it took just over a week, so not a terrible amount of time to wait for a package.  And, if you order the full set of 63, they ship for free!  Grab your set at this link right here!

I would love to hear your opinions if you have gotten a chance to try them out!  Drop a comment below!

Go get your letter on!

 

 

 

 

 

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