Liquitex Acrylic Paint Marker – Test

Acrylic markers are an exciting new art tool. Are the Liquitex acrylic paint markers that best alternative to the ubiquitous Posca pens? We take these paint pens through their paces and see how they hold up to the toughest competition.

Samir: Are we always going to be stuck in our insatiable lust for the POSCA paint markers or do we have a new contender for our affections? Read below to find out!

Vishal: Hello and welcome to Stationery Test Drive where we are always a good mark for a good marker and I think we have got the most marker-ific markers that you could ever get. I’m Vishal.

Minjal: This is Minjal.

Samir: I’m Samir.

Minjal: And today we’re looking at the Liquitex Professional Paint Markers.

Vishal: We have them in four colors, silver gold white and black. So we’re going to need to break out the ever trusty Black Sketch Paper Artist Notebook from Sundaram. Why don’t I demonstrate the gold pen, and Minjal, you can demonstrate the white and the silver. Talk about a wedge – shaped nib! You kind of have to punch in the nib to prime it. You can do a more steady line, you can do a really nice quick hard line, you can do a nice slow, meandering curve. (Watch the demonstration of Liquitex Acrylic Markers here – https://youtu.be/Xdc_R6of8gc?si=QzeX5-Fw6yIpdM1M&t=57 )

Vishal: And the paint fumes of the Liquitex marker are going to get to me because, wow, this is heavy duty stuff.

Samir: We are discovering the, well to no spoilers meant, but probably the only negative I found about these – you need good ventilation.

Vishal: You do need good ventilation, unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case you know that’s up to you. We are not saying that there’s any ill effects of this thing but it’s quite a smelly marker. But they’re wonderful markers. Did we all enjoy using them?

Samir: Yes, a lot.

Minjal: I’ve actually been using the Liquitex markers for over 6 seven years. Whenever I do canvas board pieces, I usually give it a coat of Winsor & Newton acrylics and then I go over the final strokes with the Liquitex markers.

Samir: And I think the important point to make is that you’ve been using THESE Liquitex markers for 5 or 6 years.

Minjal: Yes and they’ve not run out of ink and they work well, the nib has retained it’s wedge shape.

Vishal: Yeah, I mean that’s a nice sharp black edge, it’s got character to it. You are kind of buying these for their texture I think. If you want the pure, black, filled in thing just get a cheap marker, a cheap permanent marker. This is an artistic tool, a brush tool.

Minjal: And one of the reasons I actually also bought this is that I’ve seen a lot of YouTube videos where graffiti artists use much bigger markers straight onto walls or you know other surfaces. And when you’re using this you feel like a street artist or graffiti artist.

Vishal: Yeah because you know you have to kind of like shake it and it’s got that nice sound and you press it to prime it.

Samir: And just because of the size of it there is no elegant way to hold this. You almost want to hold it like a weapon. So that’s what gives it a very different feeling than most of the the tools we use.

Vishal: Speaking of things, one of the things we always had a problem with through various different test drive episodes is gold pens and the quality of the gold. The Liquitex Acrylic Paint Marker gold is very good! I’m very happy with that gold and weirdly I’m very happy with how gray that black is.

Samir: I mean these are meant to be, acrylic markers, they’re essentially paint markers. I think with paint you don’t want that flat black.

Vishal: Yeah, you want texture, you want interest, you want something where you can be sort of a street artist and get that very graphical style.

Vishal: Like Minjal said she’s used this for years and this is her piece of, well I guess it’s calligraphy but also abstract art and and just like letter forms. Does this say anything, Minjal?

Minjal: This is all the trending hashtags on Instagram that say #abstractart and #abstractcalligraphy. So what I used is the Liquitex Black and also our very trusty Luxor Highlighter Fluorescent Markers.

Vishal: Yes, we have a whole episode on that.

Minjal: Watch the episode and if you can just buy the Luxor highlighters because you don’t want to just use them in the office, you can create art with these. These are fantastic highlighters.

Like I mentioned earlier I’ve been using the Liquitex for some time and as far as water – based acrylic markers are concerned these are probably one of the best in the market. They’re a little expensive. So one pen would cost roughly INR Rs. 700 or under $10. They are available as sets of six but they are on the expensive range of things. But then again these are archival, they’re lightfast, they’re available in more than 50 shades.

Samir: And the fact that you’ve been using the same set for 5 years means that they’re long lasting and worth the money.

Vishal: Yeah, none of these seem dry. They’re almost transparent bodies so maybe you’ll even be able to tell when they’re kind of running low, at least in some form.

Minjal: The only problem is that, from what I read, the tips can be replaced but once you run out of the in, Liquitex does not make refillable ink. So a lot of artists actually use inks from other brands but they continue using the same pen body and the tip.

Vishal: And also, $10 over 10 years that’s pretty good value I would say. You could probably stretch this all the way or maybe just make something really brilliant with it and that would pay for itself. It’s just in the joy of it.

Speaking of the joy of it I kind of went in a strange direction for my piece which used the gold and the white and I didn’t end up using it the way I thought I would. I thought I’d do something like Minjal, which is you know like really graphic and really street arty and all.

And then I just put it down on this sort of test page and I really enjoyed the weird kind of almost, painterly works because it is an acrylic marker, it’s not a pigment – based marker. So I used it in this weird painterly way. Of course I used a fineliner for the lines but I love the way the gold went down.

I just used random edges of the nib just like sort of you know dancing it over the paper. All of that worked. Yes, you can see the texture of the paper through, it’s not like some perfect white, it’s not a perfect gold and those imperfections were the reason that I loved this so much. Will I use it the other way with the graphic look? Absolutely.

Samir: I think the the great thing about the the width of the felt tip here is that yes you can do these beautiful clean strokes but you can also use them in a very, very rough and kind of unplanned way, the way Vishal has done. And it does kind of behave like a brush almost at that size.

Vishal: A very tough brush that you can just kind of bash against the paper. You’re getting interesting lines and interesting wedges without too much thought. You don’t think about these kind of things as a thoughtless, kind of relaxing exercise. Samir why don’t you show us what you have?

Samir: Like Vishal I went in the more painterly direction because I think we’ve done a lot of markers and we’ve tried to keep to that sort of very clean marker look. But this one just like Vishal once you put it down on a test paper and you see those very textured strokes that you can get out of it when it’s not fully saturated, you just want to kind of lean into it and that’s what I did. I just went for the texture of it all. Vishal and I didn’t have the black when we were working on it so I just used a UniPin, one of our favorites.

Vishal: Yeah, I used the UniPin as well. So, hats off to UniPin for always coming in for us when we just need a simple black line. I haven’t explored the Liquitex Acrylic Markers enough to find something I dislike about it other than let’s say the smell.

Minjal: I think one of the things worth mentioning is that the founder of Liquitex, also launched the world’s first water – based acrylic colors. Most of the paints earlier including markers were solvent – based. And it was Henry Levison, the founder of Liquitex who introduced the first water – based markers and this was in the 1950s.

Samir: The thing that we kind of take for granted these days is that oil paints have almost become a secondary medium when it comes to painters who are hobbyists especially. Oils are difficult to deal with, they require solvents to clean your brushes, they require solvents to use instead of water when you’re mixing your colors.

Today we take acrylic colors for granted but yes, Liquitex and they used to be known as the Permanent Pigment Company before they rebranded to Liquitex. Liquitex was the first paint that they invented that was acrylic and water based. In essence they invented what we call acrylic colors today.

Vishal: We’ve talked about several times, are these better than the Poscas, that is the question that we posed at the beginning?

Samir: I think they are as good as the Poscas at what they do.

Vishal: Yes, I would agree. They are different.

Minjal: The Poscas I believe are more opaque.

Vishal: Yes. The Posca white definitely goes down more opaque. You can fill in a shape better and that shape then becomes sort of matte.

Samir: But I think it wouldn’t be it wouldn’t be too far off for Liquitex to make something like a Posca, it’s just that they are going for a very different kind of applicator. The very wide felt tip that the Liquitex uses has a lot of texture to it. So when you lay down a layer you’re also kind of scraping through that layer, so you’re not leaving this kind of clean right layer of paint like the Posca does. That’s what gives it the texture that we have so enjoyed but that also makes it less opaque. I think if they made a very smooth tip it would it would be as opaque as the Posca.

Vishal: Yes, because Posca kind of makes a big fat tip and we should try those out and see like as close to you know this.

Minjal: And just like the Posca, the Liquitex markers can also be used on various surfaces. So it would also be interesting to try it out on maybe a canvas board or a wood panel, glass even. Maybe we do a comparison between Posca and Liquitex on some of these different surfaces.

Samir: Yes we should do that because as people who draw we just tend towards paper as our natural medium of choice. But these things are very, very versatile and can be used on all sorts of even non -absorbent surfaces and we should try that at some point.

Minjal: It would be nice to just keep one of these pens at home, make random strokes and see what creative art you can make with it! Also, I think we may have found a really nice gold marker in Liquitex!

Samir: Yeah, yes we might have. It has the right amount of shine and reflection to it.

Vishal: Like Minjal said you should definitely just get at least one Liquitex Acrylic Paint Marker. It’s worth the $10 or so that it is, it’s totally worth it, even just the black one. If you you want to do something like that or street arty, there’s really nothing quite like an acrylic marker.

Samir: And as we’ve mentioned before the one proviso to this is that yes it does have quite a strong solvent smell to it but I assume that’s what keeps it running for 5 years without drying out with such a very dry and and broad nib. So, it’s a price to pay but it’s just something that you’ll have to live with.

Vishal: If you can open a window and use it, that’s always recommended especially with solvent based things, you just don’t want to take a chance with that. And yeah we hope that you will take a chance with us at least because we’ll be back like we said. We’re covering one of the best sets of fineliners – cheap and cheerful that we have ever covered. You’ve already seen the gold in action on Minjal’s piece, you will see the rest of the colors that are very vibrant. So if you’re into that kind of thing do come back for that, until then I’m Vishal.

Minjal: This is Minjal.

Samir: I am Samir. And, if you like markers definitely check out our video on the Poscas, one of our favorites. And as far as the bright colors are concerned our Luxor Highlighter video is one that you must see.

1. Liquitex Professional Paint Marker Set, 3 Piece, Iridescents – https://amzn.to/3VlGX5H
2. 2 Posca Paint Markers, 1M Markers with Extra Fine Tips, Posca Marker Set of Acrylic Paint Pens – https://amzn.to/49kwk8U
3. Canvas Boards, 8×10 inch Set of 10,Gesso Primed White Blank Canvases for Painting  – https://amzn.to/3VlKQYp
4. Winsor & Newton Galeria Acrylic Paint, 10 x 12ml (0.4–oz) Tube Paint Set – https://amzn.to/4i9FaKZ
5. Uni Pin Fineliner Drawing Pen – Sketching Set – Black Ink – 0.03 to 0.8mm – Set of 6 – https://amzn.to/4ij3lqc
6. Liquitex BASICS Acrylic Paint Set – https://amzn.to/3Vntpqn
7. Winsor & Newton Winton Oil Color Paint, Studio Set, 10 x 37ml Tubes, 12 Piece Set – https://amzn.to/3BaWu1y
8. Winsor & Newton Sansodor Low Odor Solvent, 250ml (8.4-oz) Bottle – https://amzn.to/3OBZXJy