What we color with

Paper, markers and printing, answered properly. Still stuck? Write to hello@linekindpress.com.

Every week someone asks us the same thing: which markers should I use with these books?

It is a fair question, and it deserves a better answer than a shopping link. Below is what actually matters, in the order it matters, starting with the part most people get wrong.

The paper matters more than the markers

You can put a cheap marker on good paper and get a good result. You cannot put a cheap marker on bad paper and get anything but disappointment. If you only change one thing, change the paper.

Print on 120 gsm or heavier. Standard office paper is 80 gsm. It is fine for colored pencils and it is not fine for markers: the ink spreads sideways through the fibres, edges go fuzzy, and a second layer turns the sheet to mush. 120 gsm is the point where things start behaving. 160 to 200 gsm is better still. Smooth or lightly textured, not heavily toothed.

Always slip a spare sheet underneath. Even on heavy paper, alcohol markers will find their way through eventually. A scrap sheet under your work protects the table and, more importantly, stops ink pooling back into the page.

Set your printer to 100 percent scaling, not “fit to page”. This keeps every line at the weight it was drawn at. “Fit to page” shrinks the drawing by a few percent, which thins the outlines and closes up the small spaces.

How these books are built for markers

This is not marketing language, it is the actual design brief every page has to pass.

• Bold outer contours. Confident outlines that stay visible under a marker tip rather than disappearing beneath it.
• Large and medium coloring regions. Enough open space to lay color down properly, blend it, and let it dry evenly. Detail where it earns its place, not everywhere at once.
• Background texture drawn finer than the subject. So the important shapes stay separated and you always know where one thing ends and the next begins.
• Single sided, blank backs. Every page in the paperbacks and every page in the PDFs. Whatever soaks through has nowhere to ruin.
• A4 and US Letter in the same download. Print whichever matches the paper you can actually buy where you live.

And one rule the pages have to pass before they go in the book: if you cannot color inside it neatly, it does not make it.

Choosing a marker set

Alcohol-based or water-based?

Alcohol markers blend beautifully, dry fast, and give rich, even color. They also bleed through most paper, so they want heavier stock and a backing sheet. They are the choice if you enjoy blending and building up shadows.

Water-based markers are far more forgiving on ordinary paper and much less likely to bleed. They are slower to blend, and repeated layering can rough up the surface. They are the choice if you print on whatever is in the drawer and want to start coloring immediately.

Neither is better. They are different tools, and plenty of people keep both.

Nibs. A chisel nib fills large areas quickly and gives you a broad edge and a fine edge in one tool. A fine or bullet nib handles small details. A brush nib does both if you have the hand for it. For our pages, a chisel plus a fine nib covers almost everything.

How many colors? Somewhere between 40 and 80 is the sweet spot for coloring books. Below 40 you will keep running out of the mid-tones that make shading possible. Above 80 you are mostly buying variations you will rarely reach for. Greens and skin tones are where thin sets disappoint first.

A colorless blender is worth having from the start. It softens edges, lifts mistakes, and turns two flat colors into a gradient.

Do not overlook cheap extras. A white gel pen for highlights and a black fineliner for repairs will improve your pages more than doubling your marker budget.

A technique worth knowing

Markers reward a particular way of working, and it is not obvious until someone tells you.

Work one enclosed area at a time. Trace just inside the printed outline first, then fill inward with short overlapping strokes moving in a single direction. Keep the nib moving so the edge stays wet: if you let one part dry before you reach it with the next stroke, you get a visible line where the two meet. Lay your lightest color down first and build the darker shades on top.

Rotate the page rather than twisting your wrist. Your strokes will stay more even and your hand will thank you two hours in.

Do I need expensive markers?

No.

The gap between a budget set and a premium one is real, but it is much smaller than the gap between 80 gsm paper and 160 gsm paper, and smaller again than the gap between rushing a page and taking your time over it.

Start with an affordable set and good paper. Upgrade when you know which colors you actually run out of.

What we are testing

We are not going to recommend a specific set until we have colored a full book with it and can tell you honestly how it behaved on our paper: how much it bled, how it blended, whether the nibs held up, and where it disappointed.

That testing is underway. When it is finished, the results and the recommendations land here.

Questions

Can I use colored pencils instead?
Yes, and they work on ordinary paper too. Pencils also layer beautifully over a flat marker base if you want to combine them: marker for the fill, pencil for the texture and shadow.

Will markers ruin the next page in the paperback?
No. Every drawing is printed on its own sheet with a blank back, which is exactly why we do it that way.

Can I print the same page more than once?
Yes. Your PDF is yours to print again and again for personal use. Ruin one, print another.

What if my printer only does US Letter, or only A4?
Both formats are in every download, so use whichever fits.