First I tried Arteza and they were disappointing on a few levels, the major disappointment was the way they blended (not very well), and good luck finding a colour name or number on the pen barrel to make it easy to swatch or see which colour your using whilst working if shades are similar! Then I saw a set on Amazon by a company called Chromatek. I have to be honest and say that initially I thought that the pens were made by the same company that makes Zig's and were just a budget brand, but I was very wrong!
Lots of reviewers out there focus on colouring with the pens, not being the best colourer in the world and liking to experiment, compare and test as well as seeing what the companies that are getting my hard earned cash are like to deal with, my review is a little different. Before I go any further I must stress that I HAVE NOT been paid to review these pens by Chromatek, nor do I get any kick back or affiliation perks from reviewing them. I paid for the pens myself and my opinions are all my own, that given I believe that Chromatek are a breath of fresh air in the desert of craft suppliers!
From what I've gleaned so far, the customer is very important to them, they seem to go out of their way to provide customers with all the tools they need to explore their creative water colouring side, quality, access to information, customer service is all brilliant.
On their website https://www.chromatek.net/ the first page sets the tone of what you can expect from Chromatek once you've purchased your pens from them, they say that their aim is: -
- To provide you with the highest quality art supplies at a reasonable price.
- To provide you with comprehensive video tutorials and downloads to ignite your imagination and get you colouring, drawing, painting and most importantly PROGRESSING faster than ever before.
- To be here for you if you need any additional support or have any problems with your products.
So to the pens...... Zig Real Brush pens contain water-based dye ink and Chromatek is also the same (although not the same formulation) Chromatek describe what is inside their pens as paint and that's what it is a paint pigment mixed with water. When I use Zig's I usually use the ink straight from the pens, blend colours together and sometimes blend with a sparkle pen, very rarely do I blend using a water brush, so I don't have a lot of experience water colouring with water based dye ink pens, Chromatek pens if you view the tutorials lay down some ink then blend out with a water brush pen to dilute and move the ink and create shades and tones of colour, and that's what they are designed to do. You can of course use them undiluted but just be aware that you will use up the ink inside the pens a lot quicker than if you use them how they are intended to be used.
Arteza pens also contain a lot less pigment than Zig or Chromatek and to my mind Arteza blend patchy as can be seen in the photo here. I tried to chose colours that were similar in all three types of pens, which was hard. I don't want this to become a three way comparison, but I thought it useful to share some basic observations between the three brands.
Putting them side to side, Chromatek and Zig pens look very similar, so you can see why I thought they were the same company? The brush nibs on Zig's are finer than Chromatek and appear to contain less in the way of bristles. It's still possible to get fine lines with the Chromatek if you use a light touch. Chromatek's appear to have a little less pigment than Zig's but lots more than Arteza pens.
That said, there is something about the formula of the Chromatek blends that makes then blend out a lot smoother than Zig's. If you check out the look at the 2 thin lines in this photo you can see how much more evenly blended the ink is after being allowed to dry for a few minutes then gone over with a water brush.
The Chromatek do leave behind a line when blended out after allowing them to dry, but they do not bleed colour like the Zig's do! I think that the Chromatek blend out a lot more evenly, although the colour doesn't stay as bright as Zig's after blending, but I think that is a good thing, the images coloured with Chromatek's look more like a water coloured image and less like something done with alcohol markers. Another positive for me with the Chromatek is both the colour number and the colour name can be read clearly on the barrel of the pen, Zig's are labelled but the info is a lot harder to read, clear readable names make it easier for old eyes like mine to be able to grab the right colour and just get on with it!
The first is straight out of the box just scribbling on the paper with the pen, the ink flows beautifully and you can do a couple of layers with no piling of your watercolour card. Next I've used the pens to draw lines, the way you hold the brush and how heavy or light your pressure is when you touch the pen to paper will dictate how fine your line is. As I mentioned previously Zig markers have a finer brush so you can get thinner lines, but the Chromatek pens can achieve fine lines as well.
My next test was to blend the No. 38 Azure pen to bottom of my test area and the No. 41 Fuchsia pen to the top then take the Fuchsia pen and blend up from Azure into the Fuchsia to blend them together to make a lovely rich purple. As you can see in the next test area I then took the Fuchsia brush and scribbled on the card stock until the Fuchsia colour ran true again and it didn't take that long.
Finally I added two green boxes a test area and I then blended out the second box to see how far the ink will travel. You can see with lots of water the No. 37 Green goes a delightful mint green colour. In short I tested the Chromatek pens with all the techniques I'd use and I am thrilled with the results, Chromatek pens also blend well when added direct to card and then blended out with a shimmer pen, one of my favourite techniques 💖
You can see the official colour swatch from Chromatek here to see all the colours in the 54 set. I would like to see some more greens, blues and more pastel colours, but for the price the colour range is pretty good and you can blend colours to create yet more colours.
As I mentioned above, the Amazon description said that a water colour tutorial pad was included with the set to go along with the online videos, but I got an A5 blank pad (15 sheets) of 300gsm Cold Pressed Water Colour Paper instead. A little disappointing as I was looking forward to following the tutorials, but the pad I got is very high quality. Despite that fact, I think the 54 set is very good value, a set of 48 Zig's costs around £56 and you get no water brushes or card and there is very little support for using Zig's given by the actual company, so less than £30 for a set of 50 pens, 4 brushes, proper watercolour paper to work on AND tailored tutorials and support is very, very good value in my opinion.
By comparison Zig provide a "How to Use" guide on their website, but there are no tutorials or support or further information about Zig's 😞on the other hand Chromatek's website contains so much more product information, but more importantly LOTS of inspiration for using the pens. On top of that, Chromatek offer a money back guarantee, so if you're not happy with the pens (and you have done all the course work from the 6 tutorials and can provide evidence that you have done that) and do that before 30 days have elapsed after your purchase you will get your money back. Which is good, but if you're like me and didn't get the tutorial images and have had illness, Christmas and other things stopping you doing all the tutorials within 30 days its not so good, maybe a little more time would be useful, but its more than a lot of companies do.
As I said above, I would like to see more colours added to the range and would also like to see the pens available open stock (sold individually), the good news is that when I reached out to them yesterday Chromatek responded really quickly and told me that they hoped to be selling the pens open stock in the future YAY! So if you're like me and have favourite colour combo's (in my case blues/pinks/purples). I am so impressed with my Chromatek Watercolor Brush pen set that I'm going to invest in a set of their glitter pens next, for value for money, colour range and versatility, not to mention customer support, I think that Chromatek Watercolour Brush Pens could become my go to pens.
