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Public Service Announcement for anyone who uses alcohol markers.
So there are a whole bunch of competing brands for alcohol markers, but a lot of the cheap ones use the same color name and numbering system, which has lead people to suspect they are using the same ink and just changing the name on the barrel for some reason. Most of these cheap alcohol markers are fine and even this bad experience hasn't really dissuaded me from buying random art supplies. (I have a handful of favorite art supplies, but otherwise I'm not terribly brand loyal about things.)
I'm very glad that I saw a YouTube video from someone who had the same experience not long before this happened so instead of imagining I was going crazy, I went, "Oh, I bet it's that thing I heard can happen" and tested it out on a larger swatch. Thus this only damaged the back pages of my sketchbook that I use for messy swatches and no harm was done. (The person whose video I watched on YouTube had some artwork ruined and was thus justifiably distraught.)
So the brand mentioned in the YouTube vid was Ohuhu which surprised me a bit because while they have a reputation for being "cheap", they are very much a brand that's been pushing their YouTube advertising and thus not considered a "knock off" brand really. However, Ohuhu *is* one of those brands that shares the same color name and numbering system with a bunch of clear knock-offs so I think there might have been a bad batch of ink at some point.
Anyway... what sometimes happens is that the marker will go down looking normal and days later a yellowish stain appears on the *facing* page as well as the page behind. It's some kind of chemical reaction that affects the paper that touches the ink even after it's dry.
So I had swatched out all my "TouchNew" markers and then a few days later noticed a little rectangle of yellow on the page opposite the swatch. I matched it up to just two of the markers and did a larger swatch to test for sure. (Super lucky that out of a large set only two markers were bad.)
This is the blank page opposite my swatch page.
In addition to swatching out the markers that I was pretty sure were the bad ones, I also swatched a "TouchYouchYouch" (who names these?) marker with an identical color name and number, which did not transfer any staining to the opposite page.
So, just some advice, if you are going to buy cheap art supplies, swatch them and give the swatches a few days to test if any chemical reactions have occurred on your facing pages before you use them for art.
(It really starts out subtle so like a day or two after my test I was questioning whether I was imagining things, but by day three it was dramatic enough that if you tilt your head to the side, you can even sort of see the letters "T.NEW" inverted on the page.)
So there are a whole bunch of competing brands for alcohol markers, but a lot of the cheap ones use the same color name and numbering system, which has lead people to suspect they are using the same ink and just changing the name on the barrel for some reason. Most of these cheap alcohol markers are fine and even this bad experience hasn't really dissuaded me from buying random art supplies. (I have a handful of favorite art supplies, but otherwise I'm not terribly brand loyal about things.)
I'm very glad that I saw a YouTube video from someone who had the same experience not long before this happened so instead of imagining I was going crazy, I went, "Oh, I bet it's that thing I heard can happen" and tested it out on a larger swatch. Thus this only damaged the back pages of my sketchbook that I use for messy swatches and no harm was done. (The person whose video I watched on YouTube had some artwork ruined and was thus justifiably distraught.)
So the brand mentioned in the YouTube vid was Ohuhu which surprised me a bit because while they have a reputation for being "cheap", they are very much a brand that's been pushing their YouTube advertising and thus not considered a "knock off" brand really. However, Ohuhu *is* one of those brands that shares the same color name and numbering system with a bunch of clear knock-offs so I think there might have been a bad batch of ink at some point.
Anyway... what sometimes happens is that the marker will go down looking normal and days later a yellowish stain appears on the *facing* page as well as the page behind. It's some kind of chemical reaction that affects the paper that touches the ink even after it's dry.
So I had swatched out all my "TouchNew" markers and then a few days later noticed a little rectangle of yellow on the page opposite the swatch. I matched it up to just two of the markers and did a larger swatch to test for sure. (Super lucky that out of a large set only two markers were bad.)
This is the blank page opposite my swatch page.
In addition to swatching out the markers that I was pretty sure were the bad ones, I also swatched a "TouchYouchYouch" (who names these?) marker with an identical color name and number, which did not transfer any staining to the opposite page.
So, just some advice, if you are going to buy cheap art supplies, swatch them and give the swatches a few days to test if any chemical reactions have occurred on your facing pages before you use them for art.
(It really starts out subtle so like a day or two after my test I was questioning whether I was imagining things, but by day three it was dramatic enough that if you tilt your head to the side, you can even sort of see the letters "T.NEW" inverted on the page.)
yellowing
Date: 2023-10-17 01:32 am (UTC)From: