Born Water-based Markers swatches + colour mixing
Sometimes you buy something, open it up, start using it and immediately regret it. That's how I felt with these Born water-based dual-tip markers.
I bought the 60 set from Officeworks for around AUD$25. Admittedly, the markers were pretty inexpensive, so my expectations weren't all that high to begin with. They didn't come with any colour information, names or numbers either.
Here is some swatching and mixing I did with these markers. They're swatched in a handbound book made from Kmart watercolour paper.
On the left hand page, the top row of each block of squares is the full strength colour. The colours are really intense straight out of the marker. Overwhelming, right? Too saturated, too dark. But then I realised I was using them the wrong way*.
If you colour with the marker onto a palette, add water and use it like a watercolour paint, you get much better results.
Underneath each row of full strength colour you can see the watered down version. Suddenly the colours are softer, more luminescent. They no longer look like a kid's set of textas. And I regret the purchase a little less, now that I can see how I will use them.
On the right hand page, I've done a colour mixing chart using the palette painting method. I chose 10 colours out of the set of 60 that looked closest to a basic mixing palette: a cool and a warm yellow, red and blue, plus green, violet, burnt sienna and raw sienna.
The top block shows the full and thinned down colours. The 10x10 square shows the colour mixes.
I particularly like the muted colours in the last two rows, and there are some interesting greens, browns and greys in the mixes too.
While I no longer regret this purchase, if I were to buy these again I would definitely choose a smaller set. Some of the colours are very similar, with two of the purples being almost identical. Looking at the mixing chart, you can achieve a pretty solid range using only 10 colours.
* The wrong way for me, as there is no 'wrong way' to make art if something works for you :)
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