Akashiya CA200/20V Sai Watercolor Brush Pen - 20 Color Set (1, DESIGN 1)

I'll get the bad out of the way first: It's a rather odd mixture of colours - I suppose that, in 20, they're trying to give an all-round selection. It's better than others where you have to buy a "summer colour pack" and an "architectural colour pack" and a "designer colour pack" - so you end up with the colours you need but have 4 lots of about 6 colours (duplicated across all the packs). So this is only a MINOR quibble. Now the good: The brush-pens are about 6 or 7 inches long and about 1/4 inch diameter. The brush tip is an inch long taper from about 1/8 inch at the base to a fine and strong (as in, it keeps its shape well) tip. I'm not sure I'd use them to lay down a large sky wash but they are gorgeous for lightly starting trees and bushes, even a lake area, and then water-brushing the colour away from the stroke to make the delicate colours we love in watercolour. These are bloody fantastic! The colour goes on smoothly and cleanly. Bright and vibrant colours. Then you can brush over them with a water-brush pen and the colour softens and flows superbly - that rich colour becomes a translucent beauty on the paper. For the price of them, they are truly great fun to use. A small quibble might be that the first lay-down of colour can "stain" some thinner and cheaper papers (so that when you water-brush them you do have a darker brush colour than stays where you originally started) I don't mind that - if you start with a long stroke around a shadow area then brush out from that you end up creating a beautiful translucent highlighted area with the original starting stoke still being the shadow area. I'd suggest not using a paper that is too absorbent - the initial colour stroke might stay behind a little too strongly absorbed. They arrived from Japan in a padded box, very speedy delivery (especially for end-of-year time). I strongly urge you to try them - the price is decent and they are surprisingly good!

Updated 16/1/2016 A good selection of colours, which are water soluble. Neat, the colours are quite strong and blend nicely with or without water. The yellow and light pink are almost fluorescent so a little goes a long way. To get translucency from the paper on a line drawing or stamped image you only need a little colour round the edge in the shadow areas pulled out with the brush - only a thin line with deep colours produces a nice effect. Interestingly these Japanese pens state 'made in China' in small letters on the bottom right hand side of the back of the packet, so it's a Japanese company but the pens are manufactured elsewhere apparently. There is a company website so Google it if you're curious. I now also own six Zig Clean Colour real brush pens and the two brands play nicely together and with other watercolour dye based markers. This means that you can get colours that you feel you can't get by without. These Akashiya Sai pens are an economical way to start a collection. The Zig pens are more expensive but can be purchased individually at reasonable cost from UK online pen specialists. It's cheapest and more interesting to get mixing though, so dig out your palette, tile, old CD, laminated sheet or some other resistant surface . I can't comment on the light fastness of the colours but I've heard it's not great. I've drawn and painted on acid free cold pressed watercolour paper in an album and so the drawings are rarely exposed to light. If you have Tombows' or other watercolour markers (I have Letraset Aquamarkers) you probably don't need the Akashiya Sai... but they are a joy to use and hard to put down.

Update after 1 year of use (from 3 stars to 4 stars): After using them for brushlettering for a while, I gave the brushes to my 4 y.o. boy (see older review below why I don't use it as a watercolor medium). He likes drawing with these pens. After nearly 1 year of use, a few of my boy's favorite colors are worn out due to intense use and one pen is nearly out of ink. I felt guilty by just throwing these pens when out of ink and buy another set due to environmental concerns. So I tried to open the cap with pliers padded with kitchen paper to avoid damage of the cap. It was super easy to open the cap. I made watercolor ink from a watercolor half pan and filled the pen with a pipette (see picture). I used ~1ml but I guess you can fill in more ink. After putting the tip downwards for a few minutes, the pen was usable again. I'm super happy I don't have to throw the pens when they are out of ink and you can mix different watercolors to match the pen color. So now I raise to 4 stars for the pens. ------------Older Review------------ Based on the reviews I was expecting very good watercolor brushpens. Unfortunately I was very disappointed after testing it. I have a few Kuretake zig real brushpens and I'm pretty happy with them. But I wanted to try other brands and Akashiya was on my list. 20 of Akashiya pens cost £22.42, whereas Kuretake 24 for £28.40, so their prices are comparable. The quality of Akashiya brushes are pretty decent and brushes are a bit bigger than Kuretake. But the performance of Akashiya is a bit disappointing for blending. As you can see from the picture, a few pigments are really not colorfast and kind of dirty after blending with water. Also different colors diffuse into totally different sizes after touching a wet surface. Whereas Kuretake has stable performance in these aspects. So if you just want to use the pens to sketch sth they are ok. But if you want to introduce watercolor technique, be aware of the weird pigment separation and unpredictable diffusion upon wet surfaces. Due to the spontaneous nature of watercolor, this problem might not be obvious though.

Pens are amazing, shame I was only sent 19 instead of 20

Fair price and fair delivery time, and these brushpens are beautiful! Super easy to use and gives beautiful watercolour effects. The range of colours is limited to only 20 but I find them sufficient, you can mix colours and they blend nicely. The colour might be a bit harder to "shift" if the paper is dry and the brushpens can soak up water instead of laying down colour if the paper is too wet, but I don't like working with very wet paper so I just slightly dampen the area I work with and it goes wonderful. To be honest if you are used to working with very wet swatches then you might as well just get a water colour palette instead. They are great for quick drawings, with intense colours which do fade out nicely when diluted. The brush is made of bristles rather than some other brands' brush shaped felt-tips, which are really nice to work with, allows great control. When I did art in school, I never liked working with watercolours, simply they never work for me, but these worked amazingly. It gives me confidence in watercolours again. So if you have problems using watercolour palettes, these are great for you to start with. The picture is my 3rd time using them, after not drawn anything for 5 years....

have recently wanted to get into japanese style watercolour and ink techniques. My daughter bought me these as a birthday present. They are phenomenal.It's immediately obvious that they are different to western watercolour colours, but this just makes the more interesting. Do bear in mind that these are essentially water brushes, filled with watercolour medium. They are both vibrant and subtle at the same time (how do they do that?) and are an absolute joy to work with. `i am fervently hoping that, once they run out, refills are available, or I'm going to be able to refill them myself with my own diluted watercolours, since the brush heads are second to none for detailed and more 'open' work. I am thrilled to have come across these. Beautifully packaged and a nice note from the seller, offering to source any Japanese product `i might want. And, believe me, there will be a lot, since I've come to realise that Japan is streets ahead of any other country in the quality and range of their art products. Absolutely delighted!

These are the best watercolour pens I have tried. The colours are lovely, subtle and blend easily. The nibs retain their point and are less likely to be contaminated with other colours than other brush pens, I do use a water brush for blending though, dont want to push my luck. I have bought these pens four times (twice as presents). Highly recommended.

Before ordering these pens I asked if they were 'true' watercolour pens or glorified felt-tips. I was assured that they are watercolour/soluble ink pens. Firstly, they are lovely brush pens, but i'd not describe them as 'true' watercolour pens. The pigment is not completely soluble with the addition of water from a brush. Take for example the Winsor Newton watercolour markers - these will produce wonderful colours that can be blended and faded with the addition of water. With the SAI pens this isn't quite true. The initial brush stroke will not blend away, it's quite apparent below the watered down ink. That said, this could be an advantage in some instances where you need the initial detail to still partly remain. I still enjoy the pens, but they're quite what i'd hoped for, although still plenty of fun and worth a try.