Tim Fisher puts Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolour Markers through their paces.
Watercolour is popular today due to its unique properties and versatility. The materials and equipment required are relatively simple, and it is easy to maintain and transport. Faber-Castell has taken this medium one step further by developing highly pigmented water-based inks in the form of a marker. With a broad and a fine tip, these markers contain all the benefits of watercolour painting in a much more compact and streamlined form.
The set I received contains ten Artist-quality inks in a range of colours that should suit anyone’s painting style. Every colour is rated maximum lightfastness, with one colour, phthalo green having a high lightfastness rating. This high degree of lightfastness is unusual for inks, but a great benefit for the artist.
How to use the markers
The approach to painting with these markers is slightly different to using tubes or pans. They can be scribbled onto an impermeable surface and picked up with a wet brush, or the broad and fine tips can be used to work directly onto the painting surface. The soft flexible broad tip or the slightly stiffer fine tip can produce a wide range of marks, such as hatch patterns and contours, which can then be wetted and blended onto the painting surface. They are self-cleaning when scribbled onto scrap paper.
There is also an additional clear, colourless blender that can also be used to gradate and blend marks. This opens up a wide range of possibilities for making different types of art.
Having played with a few of the colours, I noted that they were delightfully transparent and would be ideal for creating watercolour portraits. As Faber-Castell claims the ink won’t bleed through the back of most papers, I decided to work on thin cartridge paper to see how they performed. After completing the following demonstration, I studied the back of the paper and couldn’t see any evidence of bleed on the thin paper so concluded that these markers are suitable for lightweight sketchbooks.
Further experiments
This rocky view (below) was a good try out for these markers. Working on 300gsm hot-pressed paper, I drew the subject, adding all the detail and tones with a 3B clutch pencil. I drew this starting at the top of the page and rested my hand on a clean sheet of paper. Despite this, there were still grubby marks here and there and so where the water was catching the light, I lifted out some of the graphite with a shaped putty rubber.
Using the CD palette, the sky and mountains were completed first with phthalo blue, dark sepia and middle purple pink. The next step was to fix all the pencil in the lower half of the drawing. An overall wash of dark sepia mixed with dark chrome yellow was applied, with the white paper reserved for the water and the autumn leaves on the right-hand side of the image.
The foliage was added next. A wash of chrome yellow, orange glaze and sepia were fed into the wet wash as the paint started to dry. I worked directly with the fine tip of the orange glaze marker on the edges of the foliage. This tended to create cauliflowers which created interesting foliage effects.
Remixing orange glaze, sepia and black, I worked back over the rocks developing the shapes and contours. To create depth, the fissures in the foreground rocks were drawn directly with the marker fine tip. I also used hatching in this area, followed by the colourless blender.
Finally, dots were added into the water with the fine sepia tip followed by the water shadows using a mix of ultramarine and pink – and Waterfall was complete.
Marker techniques
I began with a pencil sketch using a 3B lead contained within a Faber-Castell 2mm clutch pencil. These clutch pencils are perfect when on the move as the lead can be retracted to prevent breakages. I have used the Faber-Castell 3B leads for a number of years now, as the quality is second to none. I kept the sketch quite loose, just indicating contour lines of the different light patterns on the face.
You will need:
- Tin of ten Albrecht Dürer Watercolour Markers
- Cartridge paper, 8gsm, 11x12in (28x30.5cm)
- Faber-Castell 2mm clutch pencil with 3B lead
Step 1
After finishing the drawing, I added the background. Using the broad tip, May green was scribbled onto an impermeable surface, picked up with a damp brush and painted as a wash into the background. As this began to dry, I splattered clean water to create back-runs and texture.
Step 2
The next stage was to start on the face, mixing a flesh tone from dark chrome yellow and dark sepia. This was washed over and whilst still wet, the light areas were lifted out with kitchen roll and allowed to dry.
Step 3
This shows significant progress in the face after a number of layers of the same colour mix were applied into which a little black was added for the darks. The edges of the later washes were softened with clean water and, where necessary, lifted out with tissue.
Stronger pigment was used to accentuate the eyes, nostrils and the top shadow of the lips. The band of the head dress was painted directly using the fine tip of ultramarine, pale geranium lake and dark chrome yellow marker. Fine dark lines were painted in for the fabric textures.
I lifted out some of the colour on the right-hand side of the headband using the colourless blender.
Top Tip!
If each layer is allowed to dry thoroughly, subsequent layers do not lift the underlying washes.
Step 4
I discovered while using these markers that a CD case with the CD still in makes a great palette! A small piece of card taped to where the cover was provided a nice white background to mix colour on. This was then quickly wiped clean with a damp tissue.
Step 5
At this stage the face was finished so I carried out a little more work on the head dress and clothing, keeping this area as understated as possible so that the main focus falls on the face.
