The Montana Empty Marker Pens are useful if you want to paint fine lines, small shapes, wide even lines – basically to have more control than you would with a brush. You can fill them with ink or acrylic paint and incorporate the marks into your acrylic painting. It is also a great way to have a marker in the colour and transparency of your choice.
My initial concern when I first used the fillable markers a few years ago was that the acrylic would harden in the nib. But I found that if the felt tip stays wet with paint and the cap is tight it, then is like it is in a bottle. See the bottom of the article for more about this.
H Locke chose to test a fill-able marker with Jackson’s India ink in the earlier Marker Comparison Testing article.
Montana Empty Marker Pens in 5 sizes
Ways you might use the pens filled with acrylic colour
applied with brush and marker pens.
I wanted to layer Phthalo Blue and Quinacridone Gold as I like the resulting greens.
So I filled a .7mm marker with Golden High Flow Quinacricone Gold and a 2mm marker with Golden High Flow Phthalo Blue and a bit of water so it would be paler. Then using the 2 marker pens as well as the same two paints with a brush I made some quick tests to give an idea of what can be accomplished in this way.
(click to enlarge)
Tips for filling the empty pens
Steps to filling and using:
1. Take empty marker apart.
The nib screws off in the opposite direction to most things in life. This is to prevent it unscrewing if you try to unscrew the lid as the ink would go everywhere.
Do not lose the ball from inside, it is needed for agitation.
2. Fill with liquid colour of your choice.
This can be ink, acrylic ink, watered-down acrylic paint or another experiment.
Golden High-Flow Colours are particularly well suited to the empty markers – they are the right consistency and come in some beautiful very strong colours. Golden High Flow colours are just as strong as the Golden Heavy Body colours, they are not heavy body thinned with water to be weaker.
Filling can be a bit messy, though not always. To make it easier Montana have empty squeeze bottles to fill with the ink or watered paint and then fill the empty pens.
Take care to fill over scrap paper or absorbent paper in case you dribble.
3. Screw the nib on in the correct direction.
Then pump the nib on a piece of spare paper until the colour saturates the nib.
(click to enlarge)
4. After painting replace the cap tightly.
The nib remains soft enough to absorb the colour from the pen body for many weeks. I have had some dry out after a few months of sitting and they are too hard to absorb the fluid – when pumping it just leaks around the edges a bit but doesn’t draw properly. I have also had some that are perfectly soft after 8 months. I am not sure what the difference has been, possibly a wetter mix of colour in the pen body or a better fitting cap.
If the nib is no longer usable you can replace it. Nibs are sized to different body sizes so you cannot change to another size nib, except for the three sizes of spare nibs that are extra.
Spare tips for Montana Acrylic Markers are available in the regular 0.7mm, 2mm, 15mm, 30mm & 50mm sizes. We also have 0.5mm and 1mm tips (to fit the 0.7mm marker body), and chisel shaped 6mm tips (to fit the 2mm marker body).
(click to enlarge)
14 thoughts on “Empty Marker Pens to Fill With Ink or Paint”
Very grateful for the practical and, most importantly, the visual explanation.
hello I am interested in buying
Hi Vince
Apologies, we need to fix that link.
Here are the empty marker pens
I too want to buy,asap , where ,how much,etc.
Hi,
Thanks for reading – click the link in the article and you’ll find all the different empty markers and their prices on jacksonsart.com 🙂
Best wishes
Lisa
Omg I was just wondering if these were a thing! I really
need some now! Question: if I fill it with paint, will it
still get opaque enough to colour over other colours?
Hi Sydney
You can fill them with transparent acrylics or opaque acrylics (some pigments are naturally transparent and other are naturally opaque, this is listed on the bottle). To make an opaque colour even more opaque we have a product – Opaque Medium – that you can add a few drops of
https://www.jacksonsart.com/search/?q=Schmincke+%3A+Aero+Opaque
The pens are great fun to work with!
Has anyone tried using them with
masking fluid? Trying to find a
solution to my masking tiny areas on
ACEO
Hi Jacqueline
They will not work with masking fluid as it needs to be very fluid to get through the sponge tip.
But we have the perfect solution! An applicator with a needle tip that works great.
https://www.jacksonsart.com/brands/masque-pen
The Masquepen Applicator has a fine tip and the Super Nib add-on has an even finer tip.
It’s a good masking fluid and good tips, it should work great for you.
If you try it please let us know what you think.
This blog post might also be helpful:
https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2013/02/22/comparing-masking-fluids/
Hi Jacqueline.
I noticed your comment as I was answering a more recent comment on this post. We recently started stocking a Masking Fluid Marker from Molotow. It works really well and doesn’t tear the paper when you remove it either. It might be just what you are after.
Hope that helps!
Hi I am artist from india it’s geart to find ur prodect
emte felt pens it’s lik thinking of teknic for painting it is
there in ur website universe is geart how to by ur emte
felt pens and sum liquids for thken acrylics and ples
send me sum catalog i ned it i am excited ples thanks
and ples tel my thanks to person who invented this love
raghavan
Hi Raghavan
Yes, they are very exciting, and wonderfully versatile – a way to paint with precision yet freedom!
You can see the whole selection of empty pens in our two brands, Schmincke and Montana here.
You can order a catalogue or flip through them online here. But the catalogues don’t have everything only the website has all our products.
I hope that helps.
Julie, just discovered your website & read
all of it to better understand what is
available.With sssooo much info we need
help.I make the stretcher frames, linen,
cotton etc and my wife is the artist. We
find that more & more we need a ‘marker
pen’ to show an outline to the images.
Now I know there is a refillable pen. To
use acrylic, which pen would you
recommend. With Thanks…David &
Sandra
We stock 3 brands of empty marker pens to fill with fluid acrylic: Schmincke, Molotow, and Montana.
They all work well, you just need to choose by the size of the tip you need.
If you need a few sizes, maybe you could get each one in a different brand to try them all and see which you prefer.
Empty Acrylic Marker Pens
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