From the bottle or a marker?: While people sometimes use only markers in alcohol ink work, most people tend to use markers in conjunction with the ink from bottles. Uses for markers include outlining, blending and using it for “dams” to keep gently applied ink from spreading outside of an area.

• Popular art marker brands are Spectrum Noir®, Copic® and Sharpie®, Prismacolor®,  Several of our leading contributors are very fond of using colorless blenders (alcohol with no pigment/ink) to manipulate ink further, and the Chameleon Colorless Blender wins the highest praise for that specific purpose. 

• Additional info: Prismacolors® are noted to match Holtz® inks. Copics® are very often mentioned as the “gold standard” of markers, with Spectrum Noir® getting frequent praise as well. Copics® are on the expensive side. Copic® markers now make a “air trigger” system that can attach your marker to an airbrush device, which can be powered by either an airbrush compressor or canned air. Copic® makes refill bottles for their markers, which inkers use in the same way they would use ink from the Holtz® or Pinata® brands.  If you can afford them, both the Spectrum Noir markers and the Copic Markers are refillable markers and bottles of the same color are available for purchase, so no need to worry about matching your “bottle-applied” colors to your markers with these two brands.  

See Working with Alcohol Ink Markers post here…

Alcohol Ink Marker Brands

• Spectrum Noir®
• Copic®
• Sharpie®
• Markers Supply
• Chameleon®
• Bic®
• Artist Loft (Michael’s)
• Premiere (A.C. Moore)
• Ohuhu
• Chromatix
• Prismacolor