hey everyone! i am back with a new video and this is goingbe a marker comparison video. i get asked a lot about copic marker alternatives andwhile i would love to do an in depth video on that, i simply can’t because i have nottried all the different brands of alcohol based markers out there. but i did have someexperience with two brands of markers what i used before investing on the copic markersthat i use now. and i will be talking about those two brands in this video. so we’vegot the touch twin markers here, the copic ciaos and the bic mark it markers.i actually started with the bic markers for my first alcohol-based markers, then i upgradedto the touch twin markers before deciding
that i really wanted the copics. and beforeeven purchasing the brand, i feel like i already trusted it. i knew that i was going to likeit since i read a lot of different reviews and most of them mentioned things i was lookingfor in a marker. so the way that this video is going to gois i have chosen similar colours from the three different brands. i based it aroundthe colours i already had for my touch twin markers and those were mostly the bright colours.luckily i also had some bright markers for my bic, and in the end all i had to do wasmatch those colours with the copic colours i already had. so we can see here alreadythat the touch and copic markers are double ended with the chisel nib as an option whereasthe bic marker only has one nib and that is
the fine bullet nib.this video is also going to be a bit of a challenge because i only have these coloursto work with and it might not be the best basis to test out how these colours blendwell together because there are no colours that are in the same family. i mean i do havetwo shades of blue: a turquoise and an ultramarine blue, but even those are pretty far from eachother and there’s no middle colour to help the two colours transition, therefore creatingthat smooth blend. but i will try and work with these markers, to show you their qualityand whether they do have a blending capability. also just to mention before diving into thedemonstration is that it should be taken note of that the orange and the violet of the bicmarkers are not in the same shade as the markers
for the copic and the touch. it’s not necessarilythat the bic markers are more vibrant; it’s actually that they have a limited number ofcolours and i will explain that more later. so it’s not a reflection on the qualityof the markers. just take that into consideration. ok so here is just a look at the markers.first off, the touch twin marker which like i mentioned before is dual ended. i do havethe older version of this brand because i purchased these back in 2010. so i’ve prettymuch had these pens for 5 years now. the brand has released a redesign of their product nowand they also released brush nibs for their markers.then this is the copic ciao marker, which is also dual ended. you guys see me usingthis a lot in my other videos, and this is
pretty much going to be the benchmark forthe comparison of the two other brands. and i bought these back in 2012.lastly is the bic mark it marker, which is not dual ended. it does have a fine nib andi also purchased these back in 2009 or 2010. so i’ve also had these markers for quitesome time now. okay, now it’s time to compare the specificationsof these three brands, and i just have a table here to show i guess the important factorswe take into account when deciding which brand to purchase. first off is price, and i didcalculate the price per marker for the bic because they are sold in a set. i personallydo not know if they can be bought individually. i haven’t found a store that sells themindividually, but if you know a store or an
online shop that does, let me know in thecomments because that would definitely affect my review about this brand. in australiandollars, it would be around $1.20. please note that these are only estimates and theprices vary from store to store. these are also not the retail price because i couldn’tfind the retail price for the touch twin markers so i based them off an online store that soldboth markers. and that’ll just give a general idea of how much they differ in price.so the touch twin markers come in two types, the fine nib priced at $5.50 and the brushnib at $6.00. from looking at the pens, i’m assuming that they carry the same amount ofink as the copic original markers, but once again i couldn’t find a website that listedhow much ink the markers actually carry. i
do know that the copic marker products differin the amount of ink it carries. there’s the copic original, which carries the mostink, the sketch and the ciaos, which carries the least amount of ink. the sketch and theciao markers have a brush nib and the original has the bullet nib. so here the prices: $8.25for the copic original, $8.30 for the sketch and $4.75 for the ciao, which is actuallymuch cheaper than any of the touch twin products. then we have the range of colours with biccarrying only 36 colours, touch carrying over 200 colours and copic with more than 350 colours,and both touch and copic are actually adding more and more colours to their collectionwhich is great. for refills, only touch and copic are refillablewith $8.15 for a 20ml refill bottle for touch
and $10.95 for a 25ml bottle for copic. thatactually calculates to be priced the same for both brands.all three of them are alcohol-based which is why they’re getting compared in thisvideo. and lastly, only the touch and copic brand come with brush nibs as an option fortheir markers. so now onto the demonstration of the differentbrands. i will be colouring in this drawing three times. i’ve already photocopied thisthree times and this will serve as the basis for comparing the results of using these products. okay, i started with bic, kind of just going in the order of when i bought them. and therewere a few things that went wrong with the
colouring. first off, the violet was way toodark, which made blending the violet and the pink much harder than i had anticipated. ido own a pastel violet bic marker and if i had used that, it would’ve been better buti felt that the dark violet was closer to the violets i chose for the other markersthat's why i went for it. anyway, it’s not too bad, i just feel like it doesn’t giveenough justice to the marker. because obviously if you use a really dark colour and try andblend it with a pale pink, even if you use copics it will still be hard to blend thecolours together. so that was pretty much my fault. i should’ve chosen the pastelviolet instead. but then again that’s the downside of this brand. it has a limited colourselection so achieving a nice transition of
colours is harder.what i also noticed is that when i layer too many colours, the top most layer ends up justsitting on the paper which is fine because when you add another colour, it helps withthe blending, but then it ends up giving a blotchy texture to the surface after the coloursdry. i’ve never experienced this with the bic markers before, probably because i knewtheir limit when i used them and i never layered too many colours together. but aside fromthat i really don’t feel like the quality of these markers are horrible. i think youcan create a solid and flat colouring with these markers, which you can achieve withalcohol based markers. and that’s why i definitely recommend this as a super cheapalternative.
next up are the touch twin markers. the onlything that went wrong with this demonstration was that i did not anticipate that the turquoiseblue would run out of ink. when i swatched it, it looked fine, but i guess i was colouringa large surface, so i should’ve taken that into account. once again, i feel like it didn’tdo too much justice to the marker’s quality because if i had enough ink on that one marker,i could’ve really shown how the light and dark blue blend together even without a middlecolour. anyway, i was able to get better blending on the colous, especially on the violet flowersbecause the violet wasn’t too dark. other than that the ink of these markers actuallygive this nice effect that helps blend colours smoothly even if they are not in the samecolour family. for example, if i layer a yellow
on top of an orange, the orange actually fades,creating an in-between colour, or a yellow-orange, which makes that transition much smoother.this does happen with the bic markers as well, but i feel like it’s not as much. however,this effect is definitely more evident with the touch twin markers and also the copicmarkers, which you will see later. last, we have the copic ciao markers. so iam using a brush nib, which really helps with blending the colours nicely compared to abullet nib, which i used for the previous two brands. and the effect of the brush nibis clear on the pink flowers. before you saw me colour the petals pink then add blue tothe inner part of the petal. with the previous drawings, it looked like a ring outside theyellow. it wasn’t a very good blend, but
with the brush nib it doesn’t look likea ring anymore. it’s still not the best blend of colours because that’s blendingpink and blue together which are very different colours, but it’s much better than the harshshading on the previous drawings. aside from that i don’t really see a difference withthis and the drawing i did with the touch twin markers. the quality is very similarand like i said, it also gave that fading effect when layering a light colouron top of a dark colour. and so those are the demonstrations for thethree brands. a little disclaimer, i am not an expert with these three markers so it’spossible that i have not used them to their full potential. just keep that in mind. theremight be some hidden tricks and techniques
that other artists use and i haven’t discoveredyet that could make the bic markers act exactly like the copic markers. we never know.anyway, so that’s what i think about the markers. ultimately, it’s up to you to decidewhat brand and product you’re going to use for your own artworks, whether it’s thebic, touch or the copic brand or maybe any other brand that’s not mentioned in thisvideo because i’m sure there are heaps. so, if you are a starting artist, and yourecently found out about copic markers or graphic markers and would like to try them,but can’t afford them or unsure whether you’ll like them or not, then i recommendthe bic mark it makers. they are very cheap and can give you a general idea about howalcohol-based markers behave. then you can
decide if you like markers or not and if youdon’t then you only wasted $1.20 for each marker.however, if you have recently discovered graphic markers and you’re sure you want to usethem for many years, then i recommend either the touch twin markers or the copic markers.deciding between these two is really up to personal preference. i personally go for copicsbecause back in 2010 touch twin markers didn’t have a brush nib, were not refillable anddid not come with a wide range of colours. that’s why i opted for the copic ciaos.but now, touch twin markers have gotten better and better as a brand, so i’d really saythat it’s up to you. what are you looking for in a marker? do either of these brandssatisfy that need? when you’ve looked into
other possible brand out there, then you candecide which brand has that one vantage point that is able to sell their product to you.and it doesn’t even have to be a tangible benefit because i also chose copics becausei knew i could trust it. it’s an established brand and the fact that they’ve been aroundfor that length of time and that people have raved about them ensured that i would alsolike them. so that’s the 2 cents. i know both these are expensive, but like i said,if you’re sure you’re going to use markers for more than 10 years, then consider thisan investment. so that’s it for this video. i hope thisall made sense and that it was helpful for some of you who are thinking of using markersfor their art but can’t decide on what to
buy or would like to know what brands i startedwith before purchasing the copic markers. if you liked this video, please do give itthumbs up and subscribe for more videos. also feel free to check out the links in the descriptionbox for any of my social media. i’ve got twitter, facebook, instagram and tumblr. thatis it! thank you so much for watching this video and i will see you in my next one!
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