Winsor & Newton Watercolor Markers, Part One

As soon as I saw that Winsor & Newton had begun making these markers I knew that sooner or later I'd have to try them. A bit pricey, I finally decided it'd be good to try just a few to see if I like them.  Amazon offered the tin of 12 for a pretty good price, so I ordered the pack for a test-drive.  Of course, while waiting for them to come I got antsy and ordered 4 extra colors from DickBlick.com.  I have issues...

Winsor & Newton watercolor markers, pretty all in a row

So far, I've had time to do only a bit of testing to see what they are capable of, but I'll share what I've learned so far with you in case they've been tempting you, too.  There's not a whole lot of information out there on them, but this link is to a great video, in fact it is what finally convinced me to try them for myself.  Below are photos of tests on different types of paper, particularly watercolor sketchbook paper as that seems where they would be most useful.  

On 140 lb. Arches paper.  I laid lines down on the paper, then ran a very light, wet brush over them to see how they would dissolve.

Wetting my brush again, I scrubbed to see how much more pigment I could coax out of the lines.

Done on light-weight, cheap watercolor paper, the marker lines barely offered any pigment to my wet brush.  Got to use good paper with these things.

In a Moleskine watercolor book- this paper accepted and released color the best out of the watercolor sketch books I tried.

Strathmore's 400 series watercolor sketchbook didn't let much of the line give up its color..

Pentalic's watercolor book did okay, but still kept a dark line of color in the paper.

How the colors looked before I added water.  I wanted first to see how saturated the hues are and second if the marks will completely disappear with water.  Arches 140 lb. cold pressed paper.  

As you can see, cadmium red, and sap green are the most saturated.  However, I made larger areas of color (above the test piece) to see the colors better and they are all able to be intense, just some more than others.  The largest blob is where the black test was done, then lemon yellow hue was mixed with it.  They blended well.

The tin of 12 markers- Now honestly this tin was as much a temptation as the markers...

 So far, they feel good in my hand, the colors are okay, although not as brilliant as I'd hoped and look like they'll be interesting and maybe even fun to play some more with.  I'll report back as I go.

Thanks for stopping by! Alice