12 Basic Copic Markers Swatches and Review

I have heard AMAZING things about Copic markers and decided I wanted to give them a try. I wanted to get all 300 of them, but it would have been over 1000 dollars. I do not have that much money to buy the markers. (If anyone wants to donate some markers I would happily accept them). I decided to buy 12 of them. It was still 75 dollars! I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. There are Copic Sketch markers and Copic Ciao markers. The Sketch markers are more professional and cost more. I decided to go for those to start with and might pick up some Ciao markers later this year.

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What's In the Box

The basic set comes with:

B14-Light Blue
B29-Ultramarine
B39-Prussian Blue
V09-Violet
100-Black
E09-Burnt Sienna
G17-Forest Green
YG03-Yellow Green
Y13-Lemon Yellow
YR04-Chrome Orange
R08-Vermillion
RV11-Pink

Click here to buy Copic markers from Blick Art Supplies

What did I think?
They were super saturated and super bright. All except the pink that is. A little ink went a LONG way. It was hard to get find lines with them. There are two sides of a Copic marker. The brush side and a chisel side. I would probably use the chisel side to get fine lines because the ink did not come out as quick with that side. These markers will bleed through anything. I would definitely recommend having something under the paper being used. On on paper being used, use cardstock. I used printing paper at first. The ink spread everywhere and bled through a ton. The colors were also slightly different on cardstock. The violet was lighter. It came out super dark on the paper.

The markers are named with names and also a Alpha-Numeric combo. The Alpha letter refers to the base color, B for Blue, G for Green, Y for Yellow, R for Red and V for violet. Interestingly enough Orange did not have its own letter. Black was 100 because it was pure black, and brown was E for Earth.

The first number of a Copic marker refers to the saturation level with the more saturated colors at 0 and less saturated colors with a higher number. The second number of a Copic marker refers to the brightness level with 0 being the brightest.

Copic markers with colors 0-3 blend well together and 4-9 blend well together. It also works the same for the last number. If B29 and B39 are combined that would be a good blend. The 2 and 3 are close and the 9's are the same. Vermillion and Burnt Sienna blended well together. E09 and R08. The 0's are the same and the 8 and 9 are close.

The case the markers came in was subpar, watch the video to see why.