Artsnacks Review: Nov 2017

Bawk bawk boxing time!
Get it? Because it’s Thanksgiving time and turkeys make... bird... noises
… shut up

This is the first review where the candy actually survived up to the photo shoot. I would like to reassure all of you that, at this point in time, it no longer exists. This is also the first box that I’ve gotten that does NOT contain a brush pen! Which I’m kind of relieved about honestly. 

LOOKIT THE CUTE LITTLE GUY! This is YUPO Medium mini paper pad. It’s approximately 2x3.5 inches. Like you might be able to see, this brand of paper is tree-free, non-absorbent and water proof. It’s an extremely interesting item that takes a bit of patience. Since the paper is non-absorbent, your mediums are going to dry a lot slower, and are very prone to smearing. The plus side to this is that mistakes are easily wiped clean. I’ll be using this paper alongside my standard test sheets so you guys can see how it compares to normal paper!

I’ll get the less-interesting item out of the way first. I’d like to clarify: when I say that I don’t mean the product is bad, I’m just saying I personally as an artist don’t get excited about graphite. Here we have the Caran D’Ache Grafwood Pencil in 4B. If this brand sound familiar, it’s because I also reviewed a duo of their Aquarelle Pencils and had my mind blown by them

Congratulations! It’s a pencil! It blends like you’d expect it to, and remnants of the darker lines get left behind when you erase with a standard plastic eraser
As is tradition, I sketched some chibis of my tiefling children. Cadence may not have been the best character to doodle with a dark graphite since she has a very light color scheme, so I drew Codex on the Yupo paper, and, uh, wow? This isn’t so much about the pencil as it is the paper, but his drawing came out significantly smoother. Without tooth, the graphite just slides on like melted butter. Not rough or scratchy at all. Bueno.

LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO THE PEN OF THE FUTURE. If I didn’t already have it, I’d have sold the souls of 17 infants and a puppy to obtain it. This is the Molotow Liquid Chrome and it’s one of the coolest things currently available on the planet.

See that tip? Like maybe the nib is missing or the pigment has completely worn off? That’s the ink baby.

It’s alcohol based and permanent, thus waterproof. As you can see, it dries to a wonderful metallic shine on porous paper and a HIGH-GLOSS MIRROR FINISH on non-porous. So I did a test of the pen on the Yupo paper, and guys. Oh my god. Oh. My. God.

GAWD. Did I mention it’s refillable? Use it for everything. 

These cute twins are the Tombow TwinTone Dual-Tip Markers. They have both an extra fine fiber tip, and a broader bullet tip. The colors are quite nice, though maybe go down a bit darker than the body would imply if you’re layering them and doing this on an absorbent paper

Does not play well with water – but it does say they can be ‘blended out’ using water? I didn’t quite have the supplies on hand needed to try that out effectively, so I’m not sure if that’s the case. Unless by ‘blended out’ it means ‘remove completely.’ Because that’s basically what happened. For the Yupo, because it’s not absorbent, the paper basically ‘resisted’ the ink and kept it this really pretty pastel range. It also blended together much nicer.

The final piece in this collection is the Amsterdam Titanium White Acrylic Marker. Artist that work traditionally can vouch for the value of white ink. I myself remember struggling to find a good white that I could apply to my pieces, because for some reason I could not find white gel pens anywhere. It describes this as a useful ‘blending’ tool, but I, uh, haven’t quite figured out how to do that with an opaque ink. ​

So this was super interesting and I now understand what it was talking about! Being water based, it can also pull the ink from other water based inks and blend them. The green you see was a wet-erase marker, so it reacted. This is also the only tool in the batch that does not work better on the Yupo paper (nothing for the white ink to soak into if you’re layering, I’d guess?)

Pink and blue markers - how could I NOT go the cute fairy Pokemon route? I think the constraint on paper size was more challenging than getting these mediums to work together. The Yupo paper is an absolute treat to work on overall, and I may price out larger sheets of it to test out with marker work. 

The total retail value of this box is approximately $24 and change, which breaks it right at the cost of the subscription. 

​And is probably how much I'm going to spend in refills for this Liquid Chrome Marker