Crafters Corner : Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens

Hi friends, Dr Sonia here and it gives me great pleasure to write a post on the amazing Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens .
As you know when Shalini brings a product series to Crafters Corner, you can be assured she is bringing you a top quality product and she goes all the way to get it to you at fabulous competitive prices!
These amazing pens are all the rage in the paper-crafting industry and I am sure so many of you will be thrilled to know that Crafters Corner now stocks Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens in different sets to suit your budget.

Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens

And if you use the coupon codes on the website you can grab these for even more discounted rates!

Okay for those of you who don't know what I am raving about...here goes a brief intro:

What are Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens ?

These are watercolor pens with tips in an actual brush format and the brush is of such high quality that you can get fine lines as well as broad brush strokes.

Why are they so popular in the paper-crafting industry?

They are one of the easiest ways to color stamped images
Fine tip allows you to color even small stamped images easily
Vibrant color palette
Easy to blend colors
You can create beautiful projects with just a few colors
Learning to use them is much much easier compared to copics
Amazing range of colors with fabulous shades of grey and brown especially useful to color cute animals .
Very high quality- these pens don't leak , brushes stay good even with rough use and the pens as such last a long long time !

Materials required to effectively use Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens

Paper : These pens work best on water color paper. If you are impatient and try them on normal card-stock the whole charm of these pens will evade you!

Watercolor papers

I have tried the Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens on

Canson Montval and Brustro both of which gave similar results . I also tried it on a local Watercolor paper I picked up from a local stationary shop.It was by Shipra and though made in India it was a tad expensive; but the paper is acid free, recycled and had a lovely texturing which was surprisingly easy to watercolor even for an amateur such as myself. The Scrapberry Bunny in this card was colored on the Shipra paper

Brustro Watercolor paper is available at Crafters Corner at this link

Brushes

Though the Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens can be used on their own to color the charm of the pens can be best appreciated if you use water with them either using a normal brush or a waterbrush .

The Koi waterbrush seems to be very popular with crafters but somehow I never could get it to work for me . I started enjoying water-coloring only after I got a waterbrush from cosmic shimmer[ from creative expressions] and though many crafters use regular paintbrushes to add water I somehow have better control with the waterbrush

So the important thing is dont give up if something doesnt work for you...keep trying to find out what clicks for you!
Ink /water mixing surface

There are many ways to apply Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens to your image ....

you can directly brush on the watercolor from the pen
you can smear ink from the pen onto a craft mat/ acrylic block or water color palette/or any plastic piece and use a brush to apply more controlled amount of ink onto your paper
you can touch tips of the pens to blend two colors and use one pen to color the image!

Paper towel

I just have to mention this as a tissue paper/ paper towel is indispensable while watercoloring with these pens.

You can use it to wipe your waterbrush tips to remove a bit of ink or use it directly to lift pigment off your colored image while the paper is wet !

Using Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens

There are beautiful videos by experts in coloring on how to use Zigs in rather elaborate ways to achieve fabulous results.

I will share with you tips on how to use just the minimum of supplies[ meaning a limited palette], with the least effort and time to get lovely colored images!

Tip 1 : When you are starting with Zigs start with a large flower image...these are the easiest to color and get good results without a lot of effort!

Here I have used a Penny Black Cling Rubber Stamp called "Sweet Dahlia"

Tip 2 : the tricky thing about water-coloring is controlling the flow of colors.Heat embossing your image in a vibrant gold or other striking color allows you to let your color pool in areas and work your way more easily!

Tip 3 : Start using just a single color as you don't have to worry about perfectly blending colors!Here I used "Pink" Zigs Brush pens and used the water brush to achieve the gradient shading of color.

Tip 4 : Let the lines of the stamped image guide you in deciding where the color needs to be the darkest.Mind you I am no coloring expert and I don't have the patience to sit hours coloring but even I could create beautiful vibrant flowers in minutes!

Tip 5 : White Embossed Images are more tricky to color as its difficult to see where the lines are! So once your confidence builds then plunge into coloring white embossed images but the vibrancy of zig colors looks so good against the white background that most mistakes are muted! The flower below was also colored using a single color!

Tip 6 : Is a mini step by step

Apply a dark color to the base of the petals or other area where you want the color to be the darkest. Just apply a thin line of color.

Dont let it dry but bring your water-brush into the are and go over the whole line first.

Then pull the colors outwards to easily achieve a beautiful gradient shading of your flower petal! If you feel the colors are dark as you pull the brush...wipe the brush on the back of your hand [ a paper towel will remove more ink so I prefer the back of my hand!] and continue pulling ink outwards!

Tip 7 : Easily create background washes using different zig colors. Either use the pens to blend into each other or use a brush pen to pull colors into each other. A background such as this with texturing is perfect to hone your skills in blending 2 or 3 colors as the blending need not be perfect to give gorgeous results!

Here I used Scarlet red [ yes it looks like orange] on the Dahlia and a blend of fluorescent yellow and green on the background .

Tip 8 : Watercoloring an image stamped in normal black ink [ use a waterproof ink such as Versafine] will be frustrating when you begin using watercolors for the first time as the colors may bleed and smudge into areas you didn't want it to !

As you can see the accidental creation of a bit of "green" by the yellow and blue mixing in the center of my dahlia!

So if coloring simple stamped images frustrate you switch to embossed images till you get better control over the brushes.

I hope the tips I have shared for crafters starting with Zigs will be useful.
Sharing a few more images to show just how amazing these brush pens are!

Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens are simply amazing to color cute animals as there are beautiful shades of grey and brown and face colors to achieve the perfect shading!

The hedgehog from Penny Black " critters in love" was so easy to color!

The cute little mice are also from the same stamp set and here you can see just how lovely the shades of brown and grey are.

I was able to achieve a lovely fur effect using stippling with several shades of grey colors!

The best thing about zig brush pens is that you can really layer on the colors if you are in the mood for some in depth coloring or just quickly whip up a batch using single color shades!!

The 3 images of the little mice holding hands were all achieved using single color shades!

I have the 80 set and what I love especially about it are the dozen shades of greys alone! The browns are also cool. The only "I wish..." is I wish they had more shades of red!

Here is love from a hedgie I took some time to color using many shades of grey and a single shade of red to achieve a 2 tone look to the cartload of hearts !!