Holiday Sketchbox 2020 Review and Artwork

Sketchbox has done it again!  I ordered the special holiday box from them, and was SO surprised when it shipped immediately and was here within days!  My daughter and I had a blast swatching everything out and creating initial pieces with the supplies: 

Initial Artwork - A Shimmery Wreath

I LOVED the metallic elements of this box!  

Below I go through each supply and my detailed impressions of that supply!  This box was so fun!  

Holiday Box Contents and Impressions:

2020 Holiday Sketchbox Contents

Swatch Card

Kuretake Custom Irodori Kobako Kit - Watercolors, Water Brush, and Brush Pen/Liner:

Watercolors: These seem very similar to the Gansai Tambi Kuretake watercolors.  The colors were vibrant and worked nicely.  They do not move the same way as traditional watercolors do on watercolor paper, but I knew that before I started and so I was prepared for that challenge.  These paints did mix to a decent variety of colors, and I found the color selection to be a fun challenge!  

Water Brush: This was a standard water brush.  I'm not a huge fan of water brushes in general and would rather have a regular round brush.  It worked well though for the artwork that I made.  

Mangaka Brush Liner: I like this pen and will use it in the future, BUT it is not waterproof!  Considering that the description of the watercolor palette is that it is "great for watercolor illustration," I was surprised that the liner included wasn't waterproof.  This is totally fine, but it definitely made me rethink how I used the supplies for an initial art piece!  

Silver Brush Chisel Blender Size 4: I really liked this brush!  It did a really nice job laying a lot of color in the middle of my piece and was able to get details by using the edge.  If this box had come with a round 6  and this brush I would have felt that an upgrade from the water brush.  

Sketchbox Signature Watercolor Pad: This is GREAT watercolor paper, though I think this box would have done better with a hot press paper.  I love 100% cotton cold press paper usually, but in my opinion the Kuretake watercolors would have worked better on a hot press paper and the other pens and markers would definitely not get as damaged on smoother paper.  So, while I LOVE this paper and will use it quickly, it won't be with these supplies.  

Copic Ciao - Copper, E18:  Fabulous copic.  It blended BEAUTIFULLY with the other alcohol marker in the box.  I want to go back and do another piece with these supples that focuses on these two markers!  Maybe a reindeer!  =)  But again, I'd likely do that on smoother paper.  

Sketchbox Signature Brush Pen - Praline: Also a fabulous alcohol marker.  I'm all about alcohol markers and this one did not disappoint!  

Marabu Graphix Aqua Brush Pen - Aqua: This was a nice pen that reacted well with water!  I really REALLY wish this color had been an olive or sap green.  One of the colors in the watercolor palette was very close to this, and I think a warmer green would have been a lovely addition to the box.  But the performance of the marker itself was great and I will definitely use it in the future! 

Koh-i-Noor Technigraphic Lead Holder: This was a cool supply to have!  I don't have a technical pencil like this and I really enjoyed using it!  I would never have paid retail price for this item, but having gotten it in a box I really am glad to have it - which I think is the exact thing you want to happen with something like sketchbox.  

Molotow Liquid Chrome Pen, 2mm: I have one of these in a smaller size and I was SO EXCITED to see this one in this box!  These pens are amazing.  There really is no other paint pen on the market (that I have seen or used) that shines like this one!  

Koh-i-Noor Polycolor Pencils, White and Black: These pencils were ok.  They were not water based, which is fine but it's hard to live up to the prismacolor white standard.  I wanted to use this for highlights on my piece and I found it difficult to get small details highlighted with this white pencil.  The black pencil worked well.  

Higgins Acrylic Ink, Metallic Copper: This is another gem of the box.  I absolutely love this ink!  The dropper that is inside of the container doesn't work very well, but that's an easy problem for me to fix.  A little goes a long way with this product and it layered over the markers and watercolors like a dream.  It really moved well with water also and I loved using it to add shiny details!  

Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen, Gold and Silver: These were also great!  While not as shiny or vibrant as the liquid chrome pen, these were a fabulous way to add sparkly details to my piece.  They layer well with paints and other markers and I know I'm going to get a lot of use out of them!  

Total Retail Value: $101.71

Cost of the Box: $69.99

**Overall, I think this box was a great value!  I will use most of the supplies in this box regularly, with the exception of the white pencil and the water brush pen.  I think the best upgrade to this box could have been a smoother paper medium like a hot press paper or a mixed media paper.  I also think even a gray toned paper could have been really neat to highlight the metallic elements of the box (which were all amazing!)  I also think a smoother paper might have made the white pencil work better, or maybe having a better white highlight medium and no black/white pencils would have been good for me.  But again, I LOVE the elements of this box and can't wait to play with them more on other surfaces! **

I hope you enjoyed reading this review!  If you also bought this box OR have used any of these supplies, please let me know what you think!  

November SketchBox 2020 - Review

Hi everyone!  I *finally* decided to try Sketchbox because I’ve heard such great things about it, and the November box is here and I’ve been playing with it for a few weeks! 

The muted colors plus the bright pink immediately made me think of Princess Peach, so I was excited to draw her with these supplies!!!  

Princess Peach Using Box Supplies

I wanted to give a full review, so below I broke down how I felt about each item and my overall impression!  Here is my impressions, along with my swatches and doodle sketch:

Swatches - Explained Below

Initial Doodle Sketch - Just to get a feel for supplies

Copic Sketch Marker - What can I say, it’s a Copic Sketch.  It was perfection!  

Tombow ABT Pro - A surprisingly lovely alcohol marker!  This one was GREAT and blended perfectly with the Copic.  I will definitely buy more of these markers to go with my alcohol marker collection!

Kuretake Zig Brown Brush Menso Pen - this was a great alternative to a typical, black fineliner.  I really loved working with this pen and look forward to using it in the future.  It worked lovely with the paper too!  

Faber-Castell Pitt Brush Pen - this was the most disappointing item in the box for me.  It was labeled as “alcohol based” but didn’t behave like an alcohol marker at all.  It was streaky and did not perform well on the paper either.  Also, the tip began to fray after only a few uses.  

Monami Color Twin Brush Pens - these were ok but also disappointing.  The colors were muted, and that was fine, but they really didn’t perform well on the paper.  They were streaky and did NOT blend very well - I’ve used other water based brush pens that performed much more nicely and were more affordable.  Layering them also frayed the paper, so that wasn’t too much of an option. 

Spectra Colorless Blender - this blender was fine, but I’m super confused at it being in the box.  It worked perfectly with the Tombow and the Copic, but they were the lightest colors in the box AND they blended together beautifully already.  This blender didn’t do ANYTHING with the Faber Castell Pen, which is the color I would have liked to have had it work with.  It will work well with my own alcohol marker collection but didn’t serve much purpose in this box.  

Hahnemuhle Layout Marker Paper Pad - at FIRST I thought this paper was junk, BUT after I realized that the Copic and Tombow were working perfectly with it, I tried the paper with my own personal set of alcohol markers and I FELL IN LOVE.  This paper is excellent for alcohol markers and I’ve almost used half of the pad.  The markers do NOT bleed through, and blend beautifully.  I included a picture of what I was able to do on the paper with my Ohuhu markers and a white gel pen for highlights:

Overall - I really enjoyed this box for the most part BUT I feel that the Pitt Artist Pen and the Water Brush Pens were 4 markers that were not worth their cost.  I would have MUCH preferred 3 more alcohol markers in similar colors and a white medium of some kind for highlighting.  That would have made the box more cohesive for me and really made that marker paper shine like the star that it is!  

I’m really looking forward to next month’s box - thanks Sketchbox!  I overall really enjoyed the challenge and can’t wait to see what we get next!  

Easy Watercolor Christmas Cards

Christmas cards, already?  I know, I know, it's not even Thanksgiving yet in the states!  But if you know me, you know that I make Christmas cards pretty much all year so that I have enough to send out to our very wonderful and large list of family and friends!  By the time we reach November, I'm pretty much looking for a quick and easy type of card with maximum wow factor but minimum effort.  Honestly, that's pretty much ALWAYS the goal!  

This year, I really wanted to get more use out of my metallic watercolor set.  I love this set of paints from Paul Rubens:  

This is the second most expensive watercolor set I own (behind my artist-grade watercolors), and while I love it, I rarely get it out and play with it!  I made it a point last weekend to just get it out and use it, and I ended up with some really great designs!  

1. First, I cut black paper down to 4.25 by 5.5" squares.  I ended up trimming a few of them down and leaving the others the size of the card front.  I used Strathmore black mixed media paper for some of them and Astrobrights black 65lb cardstock for others.  I did NOT buy expensive black watercolor paper for this project - so use what you have!  

2. I painted!  My first picture was a fir tree that I let dry and then spattered on lots of different colors.  The second was a bunch of holly.  The third was a round ornament that I used as the O in Joy.  The fourth was a Christmas wreath that took me a little longer, but I just layered and played with leaf and pine shapes until I got it where I wanted it, and then added berries for a pop of color.  

3. Assemble!  For 3 of the 4 pictures, I added a sentiment (the JOY card didn't need one!).  To do this, I used Christmas sentiment strips that I bought at Simon Says Stamp, and I die cut some words from a Christmas die cut set that I have from Newton's Nook.  For this step, I'm using supplies I already have.  If you don't have Christmas word die cuts OR premade sentiment strips, you could use stamps, write a sentiment with a gel pen, or paint a sentiment with brush lettering!  The point of a handmade card is for it to look handmade, so don't fuss too much if it isn't perfect!  

It felt really good to spend some time using some supplies that I don't use normally.  I was really pleased with how all four of these cards turned out - and I can't wait until they spread some Christmas cheer to family and friends!  

I hope this post gives you some holiday inspiration to get out there and create!  

Welcome!

 Hi everyone - welcome to Artsy Bits by K - the blog!  I just decided that I don't love long Instagram posts, and that sometimes I'd like to say more about my art process than just a tiny blurb.  

I am just someone that is having fun with art supplies.  Please know that I'm not an expert by any means and that my opinions are just that.  I've been having a lot of fun in the past year using art as a creative outlet during this year of quarantine and it's been a blast.  

Here are two of my favorite pieces that I did for Linktober this year - a picture of Levias from Skyward Sword and the Koroks from Windwaker.  I was super happy with how these both turned out and have learned that for character creation I'm really in love with hot press watercolor paper.  

I hope that you enjoy my journey and feel free to leave a happy comment here or there!