New Art Material: Testing Out Montana Paint Pens

Recently I purchased some new art supplies to trial: Montana Paint Pens through Hobby Hoppers, which is an Etsy shop in Australia.

For years & years & years I've used the same supplies. A matte flow (as apposed to a structured) acrylic paint in a few select colours (just 4 different tubes can you believe!?) and a gloss medium. For years. Did I mention that already!? It's just that I feel a little sad that all that time I could have been hanging around with some exciting new studio buddies!

Recently, (in the last couple of years) I started experimenting and branching out to try other colours, mediums, techniques and media, and I'm so glad I did. You never know when you're going to fall in love with a new colour or medium, and what effect it will have on your work. I have branched out to use turquoise colours, deep red (cool) hues (I only used to use warm reds), stencils, printing techniques... I have always tried lots of different crafts, but within painting I seemed to just stick to the same limited tool box. Too safe!

I was reading an art book recently where it talked about using paint pens. I was intrigued and just had to try. These opaque acrylic pens that go over just about any surface, including gloss paint/ medium! Which is super great because I love my gloss medium.

The Montana brand was one of the brands that was recommended in the book due to their lightfastness, their quick drying ability, and their ease of use. You can write over the top of your artwork or block in some colour. You could use them to draw a picture over the top and then paint it in. Polka dots, lines; the options are limitless. I bought three pens in the fine 2mm size.

Before I used the paint pens here, I started with my sketch book and started quickly filling in the page with colour and texture using a 7B pencil (I love those pencils, they are more like a soft black pencil than graphite) and acrylic paint. 

I used thin washes of acrylic paint & scungy thick brush strokes coupled with the pencil. You can see from my strokes this was quickly done. I also used a bit of matte medium to thin down some paint and do some quick washes.

I usually like to fill in all my background, whether I'm working in my sketch book or a wood panel or canvas. Even if none of the colour or marks will appear in the final, it always adds more interest and depth to the finished works in my opinion. It's like adding a bit of history.

I also love to use acrylics watered down instead of watercolours. Because I usually work in multiple layers, I would get annoyed with the underneath watercolour layer shifting underneath, hence the reason I use my acrylics.

Time to experiment with a paint pen. I bought a bright pink, a lime green, and white. Apparently the pens are refillable too, which is great to know.

I added some geometric shapes.

Then some cactus-y shapes

Here we go, the finished (for now anyway!) art journal entry. The green wasn't as opaque as the white and pink, you can see a few scribbles there, I think it still works well.

I've also started incorporating the paint pens into some of my other works as you can see in these snippets of artwork. (This is a section of a unicorn print in my shop.)

The white is quite opaque, which is fantastic. I love the white.

Testing the white out again on this small canvas. I think I went too far, and added too much. (Yes, that happens whilst creating artwork.)

The pink really stands out here in this section of a painting. It's quite opaque too.

So if you're wanting to try out the Montana paint pens I found a few colours available in Australia from Hobby Hoppers. 

I hope you enjoyed this post. Any techniques you'd like me to show you how to do on the blog? I'm all ears, just let me know in the comments.

Jules :)