Copic Markers vs. Artist Loft Markers

  I haven't posted in forever!!! Only reason I have time to do it now is I'm on vacation. I took inventory of my art markers this past week and cleaned them up. I thought I should share what I found over time with respect to durability and sustainability. Copic Markers are considered by many to be the best alcohol markers by professional artists and illustrators. I first bought some when I was taking an architectural drawing class from "My Garden School" and couldn't stand the odor of the ones they recommended. They used Chartpak and wow what an instant headache. But Prismacolor wasn't a whole lot better. Then I heard about Copics and I've been in love ever since. Then Michael's Artist Loft line came out with a cheaper version also called Sketch markers that were obviously a copy of Copic's Sketch Marker line. I bought some to try and at first they seemed very similar. However, now that I've had both for awhile, there are huge differences. 

1. The Artist Loft nibs (tips) are not replaceable nor are they durable. Even if you don't run out of ink, your AL marker will likely become unusable after a year or so. 

2. The Artist Loft marker is not refillable and even if you bought Copic ink and nibs it wouldn't work. The Copic nibs won't fit in the Artist Loft marker. Very sad because that means my AL markers are not sustainable. If they'd release replaceable nibs I could at least buy similar Copic ink to keep them going. 

3. The nibs become are not flexible and then become pom-poms. They go from a nice brush tip to worthless very quickly. 

4. They don't blend as well on marker paper as Copic. A few colors do but they are inconsistent across the colors offered. Notice how hard it is to get a good blend on the grays. 

Overall the Copic markers are $7.99 apiece at Michael's compared to $3.99 for the Artist Loft version if you bought them at the suggested retail price without a coupon and not in a set. The best price around for Copic is on Dickblick.com and there you can get them for $5.85 each. Refills are $5.39 as well and on Michael's they're $5.99. However, Michael's has some great coupons that could bring the price down a lot if you buy a marker at a time or a set. 

Let's pretend we won the lotto and we were going to get set A which has 72 markers. Copic has 5 sets for 358 unique colors. At Michael's they're $574.99 but at Dickblick.com they're $421.20. I wonder if the Michael's coupons usually exempt the Copic marker sets....It is not excluded!!!! Currently they have a 20% off coupon but next time they have a larger one I'm going to check again. With the 20% off one, the individual markers are now $4.79 even less than DB but the big set is $459.99, which is more than DB's online everyday price. 

To Be Continued!