Draw with acrylic paint!
Schmincke Aero Color Liners are empty marker pens that can be filled with Schmincke Aero Color Professional Finest Acrylic Ink, which is liquid acrylic paint, or with any other brand of low viscosity acrylic, to allow you to paint fine lines or wide even lines. The tips are a solid felt that won’t dry out and go hard as long as the lid is replaced. So you can draw with real paint!
The markers come in six different sizes of tips .8mm to 15mm. The different size tips each require a different size body to fit onto, so each body is a different size. The 1mm width tip comes with a regular length body (Liner No.2) or an extra short body length for fitting into a small space (Liner No.4). You can buy replacement tips if you wear yours out. The labels of the pens include a small blank block in which you can note the number of the colour you have filled it with.
Schmincke Aero Color Professional Finest Acrylic Ink
Schmincke Aero Color Liners
I made markers in the colours I wanted.
I tried them out and found the following interesting things.
- The Liners are easy to fill with the Schmincke Aero Color Professional Finest Acrylic Ink because the liquid acrylic colour comes with droppers on the bottles, so you just squeeze a few droppers-ful into the body of the empty marker.
- The liquid acrylic is just the right thickness and it takes just a few seconds for the acrylic to fill the marker tip.
- You can mix your own colour markers! And using the dropper can measure pretty accurately to keep making the same shade.
- The Supra White is very opaque!
- The paint lasts a long time, a half filled pen still looks half filled after a lot of drawing.
- When drawing on canvas the fine tips can catch a bit in the weave and stutter and spray fine droplets of colour around.
- If you press as you draw you can get more flow, so you can control it with pressure.
- The Aero Shine range of special effects colours are thicker and need to be thinned with a touch of water to work in the Liners. The Aero Shine Red I used was barely visible on light or dark colours, very subtle.
- The markers can be used to draw large shapes in acrylic colour or to add small details on top of other paint.
- You can change colour in a pen, if you rinse the tip out and then are happy to draw for a while as it changes colour. Actually this is a nice effect, it creates a gradient from the first colour to the second.
- The chisel tip is very versatile- used wide end flat it creates a sharp-edged wide line, turn it sideways and it makes a fine line and turning it while drawing creates a painterly variable, thick and thin line.
- The 1mm can be used on it’s side like a brush pen.
- The .8mm has a metal nib collar that is good for running along a ruler for very straight lines.
The Liners are easy to fill with the Schmincke Aero Color Professional Finest Acrylic Ink because the liquid acrylic colour comes with droppers on the bottles, so you just squeeze a few droppers-ful into the body of the empty marker.
This chart shows the control you have using acrylic paint with these tools. Click to see image larger.
The red is Scarlet 300 plus 1 drop of Turquoise 406 in a chisel tip No.3, drawn with the thick and the thin sides.
The dark yellow is Gold Ochre 600 in a chisel tip No.3 drawn with the thick and the thin sides.
The light yellow is Supra White 101 with a drop of yellow in the wide liner No.6, used thick and thin side and the tip picked up a bit of blue when I drew over a wet area in the earlier painting.
The light blue is Supra White plus some Turquoise in a No.5.
The dark blue is straight Turquoise 406 in liner No.2.
The black is a mix of the red, yellow and blue in liner No.1.
In the bottom left area there are some faint vertical lines over the other lines. This is Aero Shine Red 912 in a No.5. It is very subtle.
The red is Scarlet 300 plus 1 drop of Turquoise 406 in a chisel tip No.3, drawn with the thick and the thin sides.
The dark blue is straight Turquoise 406 in liner No.2.
The black is a mix of the red, yellow and blue in liner No.1.
The light yellow is Supra White 101 with a drop of yellow in the wide liner No.6 and the tip picked up a bit of blue when I drew over a wet area.
The light blue is Supra White plus some Turquoise in a No.5.
The chisel tip No.3 is very versatile- used wide end flat it creates a sharp-edged wide line, turn it sideways and it makes a fine line and turning it while drawing creates a painterly variable, thick and thin line.
You can change colour in a pen, if you rinse the tip out and then are happy to draw for a while as it changes colour. Actually this is a nice effect, it creates a gradient from the first colour to the second. This was changing the Gold Ochre tip onto the Scarlet body.
The liners can paint on top of heavy body acrylic without resistance.
A Painting using the Aero Liners
I thought a cityscape would be a good subject for a painting done with lines. So I sketched an acrylic cityscape on a 24x30cm Jackson’s Linen Panel.
During the painting process I discovered many of the things that I mention above.
For the first step I used the AeroColor acrylics with a brush for the river
I painted the rest with the different sized markers shown earlier.
In addition to architecture I think these would work for many painting elements that need some line control including sail boat rigging and even your signature on the painting.
Click on the underlined link to go to the current offer on the Schmincke Aero Color Liners on the Jackson’s Art Supplies website.
Postage on orders shipped standard to mainland UK addresses is free for orders of £39.
