Perfect Coloring
Charise Scrivner
Markers are my favorite coloring supply, because they're so easy to use! Below you can find an overview of some of my favorite brands. I've organized them into two sections: alcohol-based and water-based. For a more detailed look at art markers, such as the difference between water-based markers and alcohol-based markers, be sure to check out my in-depth article - Markers: a buying guide.
I've provided links below to the relevant products so that you can easily find them on Blick Art Materials, my favorite online art supplier. I'm a member of Blick's affiliate program, which means if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links, I'll receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you). Your purchase helps support this site, keeps it free of ads, and enables me to continue creating more free content for everyone to enjoy. Click here for more info.
Blick Studio Brush Markers are one of the best options if you're looking for a cheaper (but still professional-level) alternative to Copics. They're very similar to Copics - they're artist-quality, double-ended, refillable, and the nibs can be replaced - but they cost $3 less per marker! The brush tip provides a wonderfully smooth application of color, and they come from a reliable brand that's been around for decades (Blick). The only downside when compared to Copics is that they come with fewer colors (144 vs. 358). But for most people, 144 colors is more than they'll ever need!
Sharpie colors are bold and vibrant. You can buy them individually or in limited edition sets (such as the 80s Glam Set or the Electro Pop Set). They also come in Neon, which is wonderful for eye-popping color! Of the different types available, I mostly use Sharpie Fine Point Markers (this links to Blick Art Materials, and if you make a purchase I get a small commission that helps support this site).
Chameleon Markers can be fun to work with because they're designed to simplify the blending process. They have a unique system that's different from other markers. Basically, by touching the "clear" end of the marker to the "colored" end of the same marker for a few seconds, the clear alcohol ink soaks into the colored part. Then you start coloring with it on paper and it starts out clear (or almost clear) and after a few seconds the color starts to return to the marker tip, creating a nice gradation of color. If that sounds confusing, don't worry - the markers come with an illustrated instruction pamphlet.
We'll start right at the beginning with basic blending techniques and blending theory, and work our way up to more intermediate and advanced alcohol marker techniques. With 11+ hours of detailed video divided into 65 bite-sized lessons, you can follow along at home at your own pace, with over 50 pages of downloadable resources to help you along!
Tombow markers are actually called "brush pens" but to me they feel more like markers rather than what you'd traditionally think of as "pens". They have dual tips - a pointy brush tip and a hard fine-point tip. I typically use the brush tip to color in fine details and the hard tip to draw in extra details. I don't use Tombows to fill in large spaces because I've found that they can create lines where the marker overlaps (unlike Copics, for example).
Yes, Crayola makes my list! Even though Crayolas are meant for kids, they are cheap and vibrant and come in a nice range of colors. They're best for filling in smaller areas rather than large areas, because they leave lines where the marker overlaps. Of the many different types of Crayola markers, I prefer the Crayola Super Tips Markers. The biggest downside of Crayola markers is that the colors do fade relatively quickly (some colors, within days or weeks), as opposed to the other markers I mentioned in this list, whose colors last longer. It's another example of how you get what you pay for. If you don't mind that the colors will fade, then Crayola markers are a wonderfully affordable option for "in the moment" coloring. Then, if you scan or photograph your finished masterpiece, it'll be preserved for posterity even if the marker colors fade!
The Recommended Products below are there to help you browse for art supplies, and if you make a purchase I get a small commission that supports this site and keeps it FREE! Thanks in advance.
Colored pencils are wonderfully versatile tools for coloring. They're lightweight, portable, don't require any preparation other than sharpening, involve minimal clean-up, and the best brands offer rich colors that blend beautifully. They can be used to fill both large and tiny spaces.
Gel pens are fun to work with because they come in a variety of styles that can add special effects to a coloring page, such as metallic or glitter. They're also perfect for filling in tiny spaces and adding extra details on top of markers!
Sakura gel pens are my favorite. The ink glides smoothly and they have a fun range of colors and styles, such as Metallic, sparkly Stardust, pastel Souffle and vibrant Moonlight. I love the glittery appearance of the Sakura Stardust gel pens, which is great for adding eye-catching accents to a coloring page. I like to color in areas with marker and then add details on top using a white Sakura gel pen or Souffle gel pens. The ink in the Souffle and Moonlight gel pens are so opaque that they can be used to color over the black lines in a coloring page, which can create some cool effects.
Here's a page from my Detailed Mandala Coloring Pages that I colored using Sakura Gelly Roll Pens. Notice how the opaque ink was able to cover the black line art of the coloring page.FiskarsFiskars is another good brand of gel pens that are quite affordable when you purchase them in a 48-piece set. The colors are bright and include varieties such as neon, glitter, metallic, and swirl. They don't color as smoothly as Sakura, and they tend to skip a bit more, but they're good value.
If you love glitter, Pentel SparklePop gel pens are the best! The glitter is really vibrant and sparkly, adding something special to your coloring pages. In Australia I noticed the same gel pens are sold as "Hybrid Dual Metallic" so keep that in mind if you're outside the US and you want to find these pens.
Staedtler Triplus Fineliner pens have super-fine tips so they're excellent for filling in tiny areas of detail with color. They're also great for adding details to a coloring page. They can be purchased individually or in sets.
While these Paper Mate pens don't glide as smoothly as the other pens and markers I've mentioned in this list, they do have nice vibrant colors and the tips are small so they can be used to fill in tight spaces or to doodle extra details onto a coloring page. Plus, they're inexpensive - always a plus!
Another brand of paint markers that I really like are these Arrtx Acrylic Paint Pens. They come in a pack of 32 colors, with a brush tip on one end and a felt tip on the other. For coloring in paper, I much prefer the brush tip, because I've found the felt tip can pill the paper a little. All in all, these Arrtx Acrylic Paint Pens are an affordable entry into paint markers, with a variety of fun colors!
In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of graph labeling; it is an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of a graph subject to certain constraints. In its simplest form, it is a way of coloring the vertices of a graph such that no two adjacent vertices are of the same color; this is called a vertex coloring. Similarly, an edge coloring assigns a color to each edge so that no two adjacent edges are of the same color, and a face coloring of a planar graph assigns a color to each face or region so that no two faces that share a boundary have the same color.
Vertex coloring is often used to introduce graph coloring problems, since other coloring problems can be transformed into a vertex coloring instance. For example, an edge coloring of a graph is just a vertex coloring of its line graph, and a face coloring of a plane graph is just a vertex coloring of its dual. However, non-vertex coloring problems are often stated and studied as-is. This is partly pedagogical, and partly because some problems are best studied in their non-vertex form, as in the case of edge coloring.
The convention of using colors originates from coloring the countries of a map, where each face is literally colored. This was generalized to coloring the faces of a graph embedded in the plane. By planar duality it became coloring the vertices, and in this form it generalizes to all graphs. In mathematical and computer representations, it is typical to use the first few positive or non-negative integers as the "colors". In general, one can use any finite set as the "color set". The nature of the coloring problem depends on the number of colors but not on what they are.
Graph coloring enjoys many practical applications as well as theoretical challenges. Beside the classical types of problems, different limitations can also be set on the graph, or on the way a color is assigned, or even on the color itself. It has even reached popularity with the general public in the form of the popular number puzzle Sudoku. Graph coloring is still a very active field of research.
The first results about graph coloring deal almost exclusively with planar graphs in the form of map coloring.While trying to color a map of the counties of England, Francis Guthrie postulated the four color conjecture, noting that four colors were sufficient to color the map so that no regions sharing a common border received the same color. Guthrie's brother passed on the question to his mathematics teacher Augustus De Morgan at University College, who mentioned it in a letter to William Hamilton in 1852. Arthur Cayley raised the problem at a meeting of the London Mathematical Society in 1879. The same year, Alfred Kempe published a paper that claimed to establish the result, and for a decade the four color problem was considered solved. For his accomplishment Kempe was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and later President of the London Mathematical Society.[1]
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