It's the beginning of April, which means it's time for a NEW Sketchbox!
This was a mostly fun box - and right up my alley because of the water soluable mediums!!! Here are the swatches and the thoughts on each item:
Sketchbox Supplies:
- Ecoline Brush Pen - Chartreuse
I've never had an Ecoline Brush Pen before but I have heard amazing things about them - and they were ALL true! This brush pen is amazing! The tip is high quality and the pigment output is amazing. The brush pen moved really well when having water added to it too - which is ideal for a water brush marker. This was a great addition to my waterbrush marker collection!
- Marabu Graphix Aqua Watercolor Ink in Pyrrole Red, Sunshine Yellow, and Quinacridone Gold
These are very nice watercolor inks! I always forget when working with watercolor inks that they stain WAY more than traditional watercolors, and so I definitely had to adjust to that during my artwork. But I really liked these inks! I would have liked having another color (a blue or green) instead of the sunshine yellow. The sunshine yellow was VERY close to the brush pen, and so I felt like I had 3 very close yellows and that wasn't as useful as another color would have been.
- Daniel Smith Watercolor Stick - Genuine Sodalite
This is my favorite thing in the box! I LOVE this gray color and this is basically a stick of Daniel Smith watercolor! I will cut this up and use it in a palette - using it dry doesn't work as well but I know these sticks are basically the same as the pan paints! This is going to be a great addition to my watercolor collection! - Staedtler 0.6 Dark Brown Pigment Fineliner
I liked this fineliner! I always enjoy having some brown and colored fineliners to go with my arsenal of black ones! I enjoyed the challenge of a non-black marker this time! I even used some of the liner ink in the dark parts of my artwork!
- Stoneground Watercolor Half Pan - Hudson Bay Blue
This is a BEAUTIFUL shimmery watercolor! I really love this paint and will use it in tons of pieces going forward. It would have been nice to have a non-metallic cool blue in this box for mixing with the inks, but it did mix nicely to create some beautiful greens and neutrals!
- Silver Brush Crystal Series 02 Filbert
This was a quality brush and I don't have a filbert in this size! The brush had nice control and worked really well for me to even make trees! I used a larger brush to lay down my background just for convenience, but this is a wonderful brush!
- Magnani 300 GSM Accordion Watercolor Sketchbook
The biggest disappointment in the box. I cannot figure out this company and their paper. I loved the idea of this sketchbook, but the ink bled through the paper when I made a washed background. 300gsm cotton paper shouldn't do that. I thought the first time I got this paper from sketchbox that it might be a problem with my personal book of paper, but it seems that this just isn't the paper for me. Arches, Bee Creative, and Arteza (Expert) all have more quality 300gsm paper that I prefer to work on. I also use EtchrLab's 230gsm cold press 100% cotton paper is DOUBLE SIDED and I never have bleedthrough. So this book was a huge disappointment. I also found it hard to get the book to lay flat.
Here is a video of my full process with my artwork. You can see in the video where I discover that I need to put something under my paper to stop bleeding, and how staining the inks are right away. You can also watch me make trees and mountains! Enjoy the video here:
And here's the picture of the final artwork:
Overall, this box has a lot of great stuff that I will use over and over again because I use watercolors as my primary medium. My main complaints here were the 3 yellows in the box, and the pretty disappointing sketchbook/paper. I still think this box was worth it to me, but I'm hoping the next sketchbox will have a more consistent color palette and better paper.
Did you get this sketchbox? What did you think of it? Did you have better success with the paper? Let me know in the comments below!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment