“The pigment in these markers is so intense, this allows me to mix them in improbable ways with a result that is both chaotic and elegant.”
Araks Sahakyan is a Hispanic Armenian artist who combines painting, video and performance. After an Erasmus term at Central Saint Martins in London, she graduated in 2018 from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Cergy (ENSAPC) in Paris. In 2021, she received a residency at the Paris Painting Factory.
She uses Winsor & Newton Promarker watercolors extensively to create large, vibrant “paper rugs” and sketches.
I’ve been drawing with markers since I was a kid. Their strong and saturated colors reflect my view of the world and my mementos.
For years I’ve been working on a rug and bookbinding inspired project made from free paper that is stored in a box that, once unfolded, turns into a painting. It is a project of fusion, different identities and collective geopolitical situations and human exchange
I always integrate my own experiences and life into collective history, because if history is not a collage of a few tiny intimate and personal stories, what is it? This is the basis of my drawing projects, where I use paper and a marker to try to express how I feel and what interests me about the world.
Since all of my work is about color and line, I would like to comment on my experience with Promarker Watercolour, which I use to paint my paintings.
In several of my recent paintings, I have used a range of blues to paint recurring elements such as the sea and sky, and the clothes in Self-Portrait in Autumn. The presence of Cerulean Blue Hue and Phthalo Blue (Green Shade) is very good. I used these two colors for the clothes in “Self-Portrait” to emphasize this calm “blue mentality” between the catastrophic situation in the storm outside and the flooding inside.
I also use a lot of pinks, so I’m always on the lookout for pigment markers in those bright shades. Magenta ended my search; it’s not a naive color, it’s very vivid and does exactly what I wanted. Lavender and Dioxazine Violet are other colors I use. These three shades are a nice contrast to the pale pink I’ve been using a lot lately, especially for backgrounds like the “My Love Sucks” painting.
In the same image, you can see how the different colors are combined. The pigments in these markers are very intense, which allows me to blend them in incredible ways, and the result is messy and elegant. You can also change the colors by deciding which ones to use next to each other; for example, when I use a pale pink near blue, red, green, and black, it looks very different.
Promarker watercolors have two nibs, one like a traditional nib and the other with the quality of a paintbrush. For a few years now, my art practice has been focused on painting with markers, and I’ve been looking for high-quality paint markers with rich and pastel colors.
For half of my work, I used the marker nib I was familiar with, but my artistic curiosity forced me to try a second nib as well. For large surfaces and backgrounds, I like the brush head. However, I also use it to refine some parts, such as the leaves on the painting paper of Self-Portrait in Autumn. You can see that I have used a brush to add details, which I found to be more precise than the tip. These two options open up more possibilities for drawing gestures, and this versatility is important to me.
I use Promarker watercolors for several reasons. Mainly for conservation reasons, as they are pigment based and therefore as lightfast as traditional watercolors. Also, they offer several ways to draw gestures using both techniques, and in the end, the bright colors are perfect for my work. In the future, I would like to see more light shades included in the collection as most of them are very dark.
Post time: Feb-11-2022