Here is my last art supplies haul of the year! It includes everything I have acquired over the last six months and have been saving to share with you. From Apple Pencil tips to sketchbooks, a planner, new art book, paints, coloured pencils and more, this one has a lot packed in, so get a cuppa and settle in!
You can also watch on and subscribe to my YouTube channel. There are subtitles available, and the transcript is below if you need to read as well as watch. I’d love to hear what you think, so leave a comment here or on youtube, or email me.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Apple Pencil Pen Tips (15% off your first purchase with this linkº)
01:41 Tom’s Studio Lumos Pen*
03:01 Jackson’s Art Gift Vouchers*
03:36 Royal Talens Art Creations 13x21cm sketchbook*
04:56 Art Gecko Classy A5 sketchbook
06:36 Rendr A5 sketchbook (£5 off your first order º)
08:09 Feel it Out book by Jordan Sondler*
08:44 The Maker’s Yearbook 2023
09:39 Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolour Pencils set
15:04 Caran D’Ache Luminance colour pencils* set
16:24 Caran D’Ache Supracolor watercolour pencils* set
16:55 Crayola oil pastels
18:45 Uni Posca colour pencils* set
20:05 Holbein Acrylic Gouache* sample set
21:14 Airtight Mijello palette*
21:56 CSY Art Gallery gold paints*
26:17 Kuretake Brilliant Gold Ink*
27:26 Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens*
28:23 Tombow markers*
28:53 Pebeo mirror effect kit
29:33 Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen black and white set*
31:28 ProArte Miniature Painting Brushes*
32:03 Daler Rowney Graduate brushes*
32:48 Faber-Castell mechanical pencil 0.7mm*
33:08 Holbein colour pencils*
34:28 Kum automatic long point sharpener*
35:28 Frisk Maskaway*
36:18 A2 studio portfolio
36:58 Jacquard Marbling kit
38:38 Derwent drawing pencils set*
39:04 Gum Arabic*
39:18 Outro
Things I mention in this video:
Seawhite of Brighton clothbound sketchbook*
I am not sponsored by any brands and nothing has been gifted by brands either (some may be presents from friends and family).
Some of my links are marked with an asterisk (*) as I’m in the affiliate programme for Jackson’s Art*, Great Art* (indie art stores), Bookshop.org* (for indie bookshops) and other retailers, so may earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. It costs you nothing extra. Some may even give you a discount on your first order, especially referral links (marked with an º).
Some of my links are marked with an asterisk (*) as I’m in the affiliate programme for Jackson’s Art*, Great Art* (indie art stores), Bookshop.org* (for indie bookshops) and other retailers, so may earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. It costs you nothing extra. Some may even give you a discount on your first order, especially referral links (marked with an º).
Just ask any questions you might have in the comments! I’ll do my best to help you out.
Transcript:
Hi! I’m Arati. Welcome to my last art haul of the year. To be honest, I haven’t really bought all these things right now in one go. I have got them ever since my birthday back in September and some were for Christmas and some were just gifts from friends. Other things, of course, I’ve bought for myself because I thought that I needed them. However, they have been lying in a pile on my desk waiting for me to film this video and I’m finally here, doing it. So let’s clear all this away and we will get started.
The first thing I want to share with you are these Pen Tips (15% off your first purchase with this linkº). These are little silicone rubber tips for your Apple Pencil. Now, they come five in a box – I’ve already removed one. It’s a neat little box like that, that you can store away. I’ve already put one on my Apple Pencil. Now, the reason I got this is that without this little tip the Apple Pencil makes quite a sharp noise on the iPad… can you hear that? So with this little tip, which is basically just a little rubber cover for your Apple Pencil, it makes no noise at all. It makes a little rubber noise If I bang on it… but you can barely hear that. It does create a little drag but I don’t really mind that. It helps it feel more like a real pencil. I don’t find any difference in how it works. I don’t find any difference in the lag while it’s painting on the iPad. So, yeah, all in all very very happy with this one.
The second thing is this Tom’s Studio Lumos pen*. I ordered this a few months ago when it first came out for pre-order and it is basically a pen to replace all these thin pigment liners that I’ve been buying for years and years and years. These are disposable, they are not refillable. So every time one finishes or every time the fine liner tip deteriorates I have to go and buy a new one, and each of them comes in an individual size. The beauty of this one is that it comes with several different nibs. They’re interchangeable and it’s refillable just like a fountain pen. So here is the Lumos*.
I have not yet set this up because there was one part missing. It is a double-ended pen so I can have two nibs at a time in it and two different colours if I wish. I will do a full unboxing and a full review of this pen in a separate video so like and subscribe if you want to see that one. I ordered some fountain pen ink* with it and I think it came with an ink bottle which I didn’t realise. So that’s black ink from Tom’s Studio* and also it came with a full set of nibs* that I purchased separately. All these things I will show you in detail when I do the review which should hopefully be in a few weeks time.
I did get a few gift vouchers for my birthday and for other things and a lot of the supplies that I bought did come from Jackson’s Art*. So if you click the link down in the description of this video, it is an affiliate link and you will get a little bit off your first purchase and I will get a little bit of commission which does not affect the price you pay. So a gift voucher has bought a lot of these things. I still… I actually still have some of the gift vouchers* to spend so I might get a few more bits and bobs even though I am doing the no-buy year again for 2023. I’ll talk more about that later.
I also got myself some new sketchbooks. Now you would imagine if you saw the pile of sketchbooks in my shelves that I have enough. However, these are three that I really really wanted to try out. The first is the Art Creations Royal Talens sketchbook*. It has 80 sheets, and let me just quickly open this for you… Alrighty, so there we go. I did open the other two while I was at it.
This is the Royal Talens Art Creations sketchbook* with 80 sheets, 13 x 21 centimetres, so slightly smaller than A5, as you can see from the other one. But this is a sketchbook that a lot of people that I follow have been using and it seems like a really nice option to alternate with my Seawhite of Brighton ones*. It has slightly more yellowish paper… I don’t know if you can see that on screen, let me put something white next to it… so that’s white and that’s kind of ivory-yellowish. Slightly more yellowish than ivory, I would say. It might be a good one to try. I know… I think Katie Moody uses this. April of Monkey Mintaka uses this as well. Oh, that’s interesting! None of my other sketchbooks have had a ribbon holder. So yeah, I’m really happy that I’ve got this and I’m going to try it out on several of my videos coming up in the future. So that’s number one.
The second one is this Classy Gecko sketchbook. I have actually never heard of this brand before. It is also the same size, approximately, as the Royal Talens. This one is A5, so it’s slightly wider and it’s an all-media white cartridge paper for a medium surface. Now, having never heard of this, it is made in the UK, which is one of the reasons why I got it and the paper is from responsible sources. So the reason why I chose this one is, first of all it has this lovely matte cover which feels really nice, and it is my first landscape sketchbook. I’ve never bought this kind of format before. All my sketchbooks have always been portrait format because that’s how I prefer to draw. However – oh, interesting, I didn’t realise that came in there – however I can also use it portrait if I wanted to, but it would be interesting especially in my group drawing sessions if I could just draw in this fashion… so I think that going forward after I finish my Odd Orange sketchbook before I buy another one I will use this one for my drawing sessions with Odd Orange – Morgan Grice as she’s otherwise known, and also Sarah van Dongen’s Patreon and any other Patreons or group drawing sessions that I might join. It is quite a chunky sketchbook and the paper is really nice and thick so I think watercolour pencils might work on this as well. It is much whiter than the Royal Talens. I think if I put them like this you can really see the difference in the paper colour between the Royal Talens and this one. So that’s sketchbook number two.
Sketchbook number three is actually something that April of Monkey Mintaka suggested. I was given a set of alcohol markers and although I don’t really get along with them very well I don’t want to waste them. But they do leak through the paper in every other sketchbook I have so it’s impossible to use them in a sketchbook. So the Rendr A5 sketchbook (£5 off your first order º) apparently has no-show-through paper and it… okay again it has this really nice velvety textured cover, not as nice as this one, but this is really nice, and it does say that it won’t show through. So hopefully that should work with those alcohol ink markers. Oh my gosh, this paper is really, really white! I do prefer a kind of ivory paper… pardon me for all the messiness and the noise.
So you can see the three different colours of paper… so that’s really bluish-white, this is more of a slightly off-white that I prefer to work with and the Royal Talens* is super yellowy in comparison to these two. I don’t think I like the white of this but since I’m going to cover it with colour anyway it doesn’t really matter. This one is beautiful. I need to do more research on this Classy Gecko Art Gecko brand. I’ve never literally never heard of them, and I was just… I just saw it when I was ordering this one, so yeah. So those are the three new sketchbooks that I have – let me just put this back so I don’t forget what it was – and they’re going to go on my shelf with the others, and I will use them in future videos.
Continuing in the theme of books, this (Feel it Out by Jordan Sondler*) was a Christmas present from my sister. She did not know that I have been following Jordan Sondler for quite some time on instagram and I love her work. But she saw this book and thought that, firstly, I needed it this coming year, which I do, and secondly, that I would like it, and she is absolutely 100% right. Now, I will do a full review of this book as I did for the printmaking book (watch the full review here) earlier this year and you’ll be able to see exactly what I thought of it. Now I’ve just started reading it since I’ve just got it… that is very exciting! I’m really, really happy that I got this, because it has been on my wish list for quite some time as well.
The other book format thing that I got for myself this time is the Maker’s Yearbook. This is a goal-setting workbook and planner for artists, makers and handmade business owners. I actually have a full review of this in the works and that shall come out probably just before New Year’s, once I’ve filled in the beginning pages of this book as well. It’s basically got a year review at the start and then monthly sections where you can set your goals and do your monthly planning as well and have a month-end review, notes and so on and so forth. Now, I used to do bullet journaling, until the pandemic happened, actually I think I kind of went off track then.
So I’m looking forward to this bringing my both my mental health with the Feel It Out book and my work health with this journal and planner. Hopefully that’ll work out for me in 2023.
Now starting off with some of the art materials… this Faber Castell (Albrecht Dürer Watercolour Pencils set) I found in Cass Art. I was just walking around getting a few other bits and this caught my eye, because, first of all, it was half price! And it is watercolour pencils. So let’s open that up and it comes in a really nice gift box. I don’t know if I will keep the pencils in this, but oh, how nice it looks! This is actually the first time – I’ve just taken the plastic off of it – but this is actually the first time I’m opening it. I really wanted to open it with you. Oh my goodness… oh, so that’s a little bit about the pencils and how to use them, yep. Oh, and it comes with a sharpener, an eraser, a regular graphite 2B pencil, a water brush for use on the go… And this is a curated set of colours so it’s got – pardon me, I’m not doing that – it’s got walnut brown, earth green yellowish, dark phthalo green, helio blue reddish, mauve, light ultramarine, deep scarlet red, dark cadmium orange, cadmium yellow, cream, warm gray (2) and middle purple pink. Now, it does not have a black; it does not have a white. I thought these would be really interesting to use as a limited colour palette for various projects that I’m planning, and I also ended up getting another set for my little niece as a present. So these make really good gifts, although I’m kind of gifting this to myself, aren’t I?!
Let’s just try out a few of these colours while I have one of my sketchbooks… oh that lid could be quite annoying because it doesn’t really stay up if it’s pushed against other things… so here is a sketchbook page… oops, just ignore those. That’s something I just drew while I was watching a live stream… so let’s swatch these colours a little bit. That’s middle purple pink… let’s do it down here. Oh, they’re super soft! I really like the chunkiness of these pencils or they… although that might get a little annoying after a while. That is warm gray 2… they’re a little bit annoying to get out of this case. That’s cream… cadmium yellow… this is I have to say my favourite yellow, so I’m glad that they included this in this set. Dark cadmium orange… scarlet red dark… light ultramarine… mauve… oh my gosh that’s a lovely colour! I think I’ll be using that a lot. Helio blue reddish… oh my goodness, the blues in this are amazing. I love that… that’s so close to indigo yet not. Dark phthalo green – a little bright for me. Earth green yellowish… I think this will be more me, I think. Yep. And walnut brown. Yep, a very useful brown again, and if I mix this with some other colours I can get a darker shade as well.
Shall we add some water to that mix? So I’ve just filled this brush up – it just unscrews here, you fill this up with water and there you go. So let’s get a little bit out – there we are! Oh my goodness, how nice! I do have another set of watercolour pencils I’m going to show you that I got quite some time ago that are also really very good but they do leave a little bit of grain. Oh so lovely… the other reason that I got this set is that it’s a very useful set for travelling, because it has enough colours that you can do quite a lot with it but also doesn’t overwhelm you and you don’t have to carry too much either. Oops I didn’t wash off the pink. That’s a lovely colour, actually, that’s a really good neutral. The cream, the yellow – oh lovely… I think that yellow is my absolute favourite. And that blue. And the red. That’s a really great set of colours, actually. It’s a lovely basic set as well for anyone.
Okay so let’s put that back and let’s see what this 2B pencil is like. I don’t think it’s a pure black. It’s a graphite aquarelle… oh so that’s a water-based pencil as well. So let’s try that. Ah, so they do have a black, it’s just not the same kind of pencil. Okay, so let’s add a little water to that. Oh, that is going to be a great sketching pencil, that! You could just take that and this brush and a sharpener and maybe an eraser and be on your way and do some amazing things. You could take that and one colour and that would work beautifully as well. I’m so pleased that I got this set. Very excited about it. It also has an eraser which I’m not going to open yet because I already have a couple of erasers in use and it has a sharpener with two sizes, one for the graphite pencil and one – let me bring this a bit closer – for the larger aquarelle pencils. So yeah, I’m very, very happy with this set of colours – and that’s what it looks like in the box. There is a nice logo on the inside as well. Yeah, great gift.
Continuing with the colour theme. I did get a whole set of Caran D’Ache Luminance pencils*. Now I got very lucky with this – I got this second hand off of Vinted, when I was searching for something completely different. It just popped up in my feed and I got it at about 40–45% off. It’s a full set – oh pardon me that’s something I just put in there, it’s just a… it’s just a colour chart – it is partly used but the lady who used it only used it for colouring books, I believe, so… and there was one blender pencil missing. But I don’t think that’s a big loss, I can just replace that. But a full set of Luminance* colour pencils, which I have since been using, so some of these have gone down in size because of me. So you… I don’t know if you’ve watched some of my previous videos but you’ll probably know that Luminance* pencils are some of my favourite pencils ever and they’re quite – I wouldn’t say very expensive – but they are quite expensive so I did hesitate to buy a whole set. But when I saw this for the price that it was I was just taken aback and I had to have them. So here they are and I’ve been using them ever since. You will see them in some upcoming videos as well, particularly when I’m drawing with others. They’re really handy to use because there’s a whole range of colours and it’s really quick and easy to use them as well.
Caran D’Ache again – I’ve got a whole set of watercolour pencils (Supracolor)*. I have been using these through the year, they’re not new anymore – I’ve had them for probably I would have to say over six months. I have been using them, but I included them in this haul because they are part of the things that I’ve got for my birthday and other things (anniversaries etc.) as well. So yeah, very happy with these again. There’s a video for these* already in the making and that will be coming up within the next few months.
And then I ended up getting these Crayola oil pastels. Now, these are not to be confused with the Crayola wax pastels that come for kids in like the whole set of 96. These were used by another YouTuber (BlackBean CMS) I follow as well who does oil pastel work, and he said that they are almost as good as Sennelier for oil pastel painting. Now, they’re harder than Sennelier* of which I… I do have a full set but I really thought that they would be handy to mix with the Sennelier and get details and accents where I don’t want to use the super soft pastels. Now I don’t know whether I’m going to swatch all of them in this video, but let’s do a selection, shall we? Oh, they are nice! They do blend really well actually they have a little bit of scrub… what are these little scrub-bits, like when you scrub the pencil things come off?! Let’s try blending them… oh, that’s a lovely yellow… oh, yeah, they do blend fairly well… let’s try that with the white on top… oh yes, lovely. They’re not as soft as Sennelier* obviously, but I can see where they would be handy in creating detail, adding a base and then adding Sennelier on top. Oh lovely! Actually, I’m quite surprised that Crayola makes oil pastels as separate from wax pastels. Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I waited so long to use these! But that’s what happens when you try and do YouTube videos. You want to film them for YouTube so you wait! Oh yes, I can see how you could just create lots of detail in this because it’s quite scratchy and pointy. Yeah, okay, happy with these!
The other full set of pencils* that I got was the Uni Poscas*. I did not know that Uni Posca makes not just pens but pencils* as well (individual pencils available*). They are absolutely lovely pencils. They’re oil-based. They work on a variety of mediums and, in fact, I actually took them out because I wanted to try them on top of the oil pastel and on top of the Albrecht Dürer watercolour pencils as well. Now, I’ve already made a full length swatching video of these, testing them out and everything. That should be out shortly after this one, so I won’t actually swatch all of these pencils, but just one over here to see how lovely and soft they are. They have a beautiful colour to them. What I actually wanted to do was run them over this pencil… oh, yeah they do work, that’s great. And then run them over the pastel as well… oh, look, how lovely! So I could actually use this on top of that. Let’s see how a lighter colour works – yep, to do the scratchy-scratchy as they (BlackBean CMS again, LOL!) say! Yeah that’s great even the lighter colour works on top of these, and that’s pretty clear. Let me lift that up so you can see that. Yeah, so as I said there’s a whole video of these already, so I won’t be swatching them right now.
From Jackson’s (Art) I got this set of acrylic gouache*. Now, I have never used acrylic gouache before. I use acrylics and I use gouache but this seems to be a good combination of both. It is a tester set of five assorted colours, very conveniently. Carmine, lemon yellow, sky blue, jet black and titanium white. Now, they’re really nice basic colours*. I can mix a variety of other colours with them and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they do. I think that I would probably use them more sparingly. I would probably use them as a base for other materials rather than by themselves, but we’ll see how I get on with them. They will dry fairly quickly because they’re acrylic gouache* and they won’t be able to be blend-able once they’re dried, so I will have to use them more like acrylic – more like actual acrylic, and less like gouache. But I think that the matte texture might be what would attract me to them so I’m going to try those and see how they do.
Now to put these in, I will probably have to get some sort of palette that I can scrape out or I’ll just use my acrylic palette with them. But my current stay-wet palette* did break, so I’ve got myself – it says watercolour palette* but I would probably use it for gouache. So this is smaller than my current palette but it does have bigger wells and a blending tray here as well. I could take that out and then use this as a third blending tray, so I’m pretty excited about that. I will probably do an updated acrylic… acrylic gouache and regular gouache swatch video because my colours have changed since I did the last one two years ago. So I’ll re-set-up this palette* and put those in, and do a swatch video alongside that. Let me know if you… in the comments… if you would like that one.
The other set of paints that I got is this CSY Art Gallery set of metallic colours* now sorry it’s CSV (sorry, don’t know why I keep saying SBV / CSV!) CSV Art Gallery colours. Now, this comes in a little box and in a little tin like this… they are handmade honey watercolours with German materials*. I’ve never heard of these people before, but this again, I saw this on YouTube somewhere and I definitely thought I should have it because it would be really useful to use these watercolours in my sketchbook. Oh, it comes with a little silica gel and some… oh, I guess these are magnets to attach these to the bottom of the… I think… oh, that’s annoying, I’m going to have to unwrap each of these…
So here we are, all unwrapped and ready to swatch. We’ve got Arabic gold, rich pale gold, 24 karat Merck gold, crystal gold, moon gold and classical gold. Now I’m just going to use that water brush from the Albrecht Dürer set and see how we go with this. So here we are… let me just clean off that brush and let’s start with the Arabic gold, and just put a little water on each of them to start. Okay, Arabic gold*… oh it does… oh that looks… look can you see that? How creamy it is. I actually don’t know anything about these watercolours so… oh my goodness… I don’t know how colour-fast they are… I don’t know anything, and it doesn’t come with a little swatch (I meant information sheet!) or anything. Oh my goodness, that’s really nice! Let me actually zoom you in a little bit there so you can actually see. So can you see how shiny that is? This one is rich pale gold*. Really almost a gouache texture to them. Oh, beautiful! Let me actually see how they go on top of this… oh, so nice, look at that! Rich pale gold is lovely. They have so much pigment in them – really surprised. Then there’s 24k Merck gold*. Oh, that’s a really beautiful one. I wonder if they work on top of the oil pastel… they do, what!!! That’s brilliant, that is brilliant! And they work on top of Poscas as well. Now this one is the crystal gold*… not sure what that means… um, I don’t see a huge difference between this and the other golds. It’s a bit more greenish. And then there’s moon gold*… oh, putting a bit of water was a good idea. That’s pretty much silver, isn’t it? That’s really nice actually to have a silver in there. So yeah. And then let’s do classical gold*. It’s really almost gouach-ey! So here we have all the metallics. Look how beautifully they shine! I don’t think I’ve ever seen any watercolours so far that have so much of a shine to them. It’s really, really nice and even the moon gold has a slightly yellowish tinge to the silver. I’m pretty pleased with this. I have to say – yeah, I think these will be getting a lot of use and they’re in such a cute tin* as well, aren’t they? Super cute. I will need to write the names on the side because these are just stickers. So if I take them out of this then I will have a problem identifying what’s what. So I will do that in a bit. So yeah, these are super fun. I… I’m not going to make a recommendation just yet, but once I’ve used them for a while, tested their colour-fastness and so on… but I’m pretty happy with how they work on top of other mediums as well. So yeah, I think this deserves a video on its own just to test and see how it goes.
Now, I’m always looking for a good gold, so apart from those I’ve also got a Brilliant Gold Ink Mica*. Now this is from Kuretake* who make the brush pens as well so let’s open this up and see how it is. First of all, while it’s sealed – unfortunately everything comes in plastic – I’m gonna shake it up so everything’s nicely mixed in there, and then open it up. Oh, that does look good. That looks amazing, doesn’t it? Look at that. Let’s try that next to these colours… mm, yup, pretty gold! So yeah, that’s good. That’s good to know. Let’s see if it works on these. It does. Works on top of this? Yeah, it does. That’s lovely. Works on top of that – it does, brilliant!
Now I have a bunch of gold colours that I can test. See that in comparison to the other gold ones? It has less of a shine but it might be more colour fast because it’s a known brand.
Okay, on to the next. Continuing with the gold theme, I got these two metallic pens*. Now, I don’t know how well they’re going to work on paper, but I did get them to work on ceramic and baubles. So yes, the paper kind of absorbs all the metallic-ness of them. But there’s a rose gold and a gold and they’re both Pitt Artist Pens from Faber-Castell*. Um, yeah. You can’t really see any of the glitter on here. Let me see if I can try it… on let’s try it on the box of the oil pastels! Yep a little bit more metallic there… I think it has to be a non-absorbent material. So yes, a bit more metallic there, but not as metallic as I would have liked. They’re definitely not like a chrome pencil or anything like that.
I also got two of the Tombow pens*. One is a grey*. This is mainly for sketching, especially during the group drawing sessions. Sometimes I just want one colour. And the other one is a black* because I’m running out of the black pens. They have a smaller side on the other side… you can hardly see the grey one but that’s basically how they look.
And I also got this mirror effect thing. So that is glue and then there are two colours of foils in here. Now, when I do pet portraits I really like to add gold leaf but this could also be a different option, specifically with the silver, because silver leaf doesn’t show up as well. So I thought the mirror might be good to try. So there are instructions on here… you put the glue on and then you stick the foil on. So we’ll see how that does. I will test it out and let you know. I think it’ll take a long time for the glue to dry, so I won’t try it right now. I do have my doubts about this which is why I only got a small one, but we’ll see how it works.
Now I know I said I won’t have to ever buy another micron pen, but white ink does not work in the Tom’s Studio pen*, so I did get this pack of Faber-Castell – it’s four Pitt Artist Pens*. There are three white and one black – so the black is kind of extraneous to me, but this is the pack if you want to get it. And these are the pens. There is a black, chisel tip, 1.5 and a brush pen. So the black is a thin one, I think – yeah, pretty good. I’ve used these before. They’re Faber-Castell Pitt artist’s fineliners*. But the ones I really wanted are these white pens, because, like I said, I use white a lot in my work, and the white fountain pen ink isn’t yet a thing. So here’s the brush pen… let’s see it on top of that. Let’s actually try it on top of these colours.. pretty good, pretty good. Might need a couple of layers of them. So that’s the brush one, that’s the 1.5… oh yeah, pretty good. Let’s see on top of the gold… yeah it does work. That’s the 1.5 and that is the chisel tip. So the chisel tip obviously is like that… not bad. They’re not super opaque either and this one is picking up colour from the page, but I think they’ll do for the purpose that I wanted them for, which is basically sketchbook work.
Now, I did also replenish my stock of brushes. I needed a few that work smaller because I’m doing a lot of detail in my work lately and I didn’t have those. I found these very interesting ProArte brushes for miniature paintings* specifically. So this is a 1/8 inch brush, but I don’t know if you can see… it’s a triangular brush. So it’s really nice to hold and I think I’ll have more control with it. So here is the size of the brush that’s a 1/8 flat brush*. I think it’ll give me really nice textures. I also feel like this would be great for doing bricks on buildings. So that’s the first one, and then in the same series there’s a ProArte miniature painting #2*. So I think this will give me a really nice detail as well. There’s the tip of that. And then I’ve got a Daler Rowney Graduate* 10/0 brush. This is for creating fine lines and details. I guess you could call it a rigger brush but I don’t think it’s (actually) quite a rigger brush. Then I’ve got this Graduate Daler Rowney* sword brush. It’s a 1/4 – one quarter inch, sorry – and I think this will give me really nice detail. It’s an alternate to my angle shader brush and I think this will be really, really handy. I don’t have a sword brush. This again is a miniature brush. It is [a] much shorter and it’s a 10/0 from Daler Rowney Graduate series*. It’s called a spotter brush so I think this will be good for like creating dots and things like that. So, you’ll be seeing these in many of my videos coming up.
I also ended up getting a Faber Castell 0.7mm*… another mechanical pencil. I love these because you don’t have to sharpen them. They give a really good line, and I can use any kind of lead that I want in them. I think this is a… hard lead in this pencil*.
I did also get some new pencils. I saw Sarah van Dongen using these Holbein artist colour pencils* and I wanted to get a few of the more unusual colours. Now, as you’ve seen I have quite a lot of pencils, so I really didn’t need any more. But I always need a good white pencil – I always try a white pencil whenever I can and yep this works this works pretty… let me get rid of those brushes there. This works pretty well as standard. Yep, nicely on top of… let me pull this over… nicely on top of the black. And then I got a sepia* because that’s always a useful colour to have. A[n] olive drab* which was a lovely colour, very nice. Oops, I mixed them up. A burgundy*… beautiful colour, don’t have this in any other colour pencils. And a[n] ash rose*, which was the colour that made me want to buy this. Oh my goodness, look at that colour, just look at that colour! It’s beautiful. All right, so that’s the five pencils that I got from Holbein. There were some reviews about the Holbein pencils* not being colour-fast and stuff but I think that has been debunked and they have released a statement about them being all right.
Moving on from the pencils, I got an (Kum*) automatic long-point sharpener*. So you basically sharpen the wood and then you sharpen the tip of the pencil, so you’re not losing any lead when you’re sharpening for pointy-ness. Here’s the details of this. So let’s open that up. I do have an automatic sharpener that I use on a daily basis but… there we go. So there’s that… so there’s… there’s where you sharpen the pencil and let’s try that with one of my Posca pencils, shall we? Let’s try it with a colour that I don’t use that often. So let’s close that and sharpen… oops… so now I’m going to put it in the lead sharpener*. That’s what I wanted it for and then on the side it has further lead sharpeners for your mechanical pencil so yeah, very happy with that one, and obviously creates a nice pointy lead to work with.
I don’t know why I’ve got all these little bits on my table…
Now, this was a suggestion (Frisk Maskaway*) from Ohn Mar Win. She’s an illustrator who uses a lot of watercolour and a lot of masking fluid with her watercolours. And apparently this is great for removing masking fluid. So here are the details that are over here… can be cut to shape for more detailed erasing. That’s really useful… can be used to remove a wide variety of sticky marks including adhesive tape and cleans dirty paper after using tracedown… so that’s really good to know. Oh, it is taking off some of these marks from here… oh, that’s great. Maybe it might clean my table as well. Oh my goodness, it is… it’s cleaning my table of all these ridiculous marks. That’s brilliant. Very useful thing. Awesome. Happy with that! Super happy with the Maskaway*.
Now the other thing I got was an A2 studio portfolio. It is too massive to show you on this screen so I will film a little clip and show it to you now. I use it mainly for keeping original artworks, keeping paper straight, storing works in progress and things like that. It is acid-free inside and there’s an elastic closure and it’s pretty sturdy so it keeps things really nice and flat.
On to the last couple of things. This has been a pretty big haul, but as I said I didn’t buy it all in one go, and a lot of them are presents. I probably should have pointed out what was a present and what wasn’t but I kind of forgot. Oh well!
But now, this one was a present… this is a present (Jacquard Marbling Kit) from my husband that I got quite some time ago and I still haven’t used it because it does take apparently a fair bit of pre… of… um, pardon me – it does take a fair bit of preparation of the fabric or paper but I’m really looking forward to using this. I love a good kit. So I’ll need a shallow tray, fabric or paper, newsprint paper, towels, comb, hair picks and skewers in addition to what’s already in this, which is six marbling colours, synthetic gall, alum, which is the mordant, carrageenan – and the instructions, clearly! Jacquard is the brand that I used for silk painting when I used to paint silk so they are a really, really good brand and I’m really looking forward to this. So let’s just take out the instructions and see. So the bottles are about this size. I would imagine they’d last quite a lot and there’s quite a lot of stuff in there. So… oops there goes the bottle! So yes, there’s quite a lot of stuff. I have to pre-treat the fabric or paper and then prepare the base, the size for the marbling base, and then apply the paint, so I think this will probably be… I don’t know if I’ll video this or not. I might do if you’re interested. Let me know in the comments. But yeah, I’m quite excited to try this and there’s a whole bunch of patterns and things that I can try. An exciting one and my husband knows me well because he knows I like a good kit.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the videos that I did when he gave me – or my sister gave me the Sculpdº (referral linkº for a discount) air dry clay kit. I’ll link those videos down below as well. So I’m really excited about this.
And the other gift that I’ve got is from a family member is these Derwent pencils* they came from outside (India) and brought me these. I don’t think they realised that they’re made in the UK, but, yeah. I mean they say England on them. I haven’t really tried them. They are drawing pencils*, which I haven’t really used much. I prefer coloured pencils. but I’ll try them and let you know how they go. So yeah, they came in this convenient case, which I might use for other things, but there’s that.
And the last thing that I ordered was some Gum Arabic* from Jackson’s (Art)*. I am going to try and make my own shell gold. I don’t know how that’s going to go, but we’ll see. We’ll see if I can do it and I’ll film it along the way as well.
That is the end of my art haul. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed my fiddling through all these little bits and bobs! There are loads more videos to come now that I’m back to making videos and I look forward to trying all these art materials with you. The next video that will be out will be the entire Posca pencil* unboxing, swatching and testing out. I hope you enjoy that. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in my next video! Happy Christmas and have a very, very lovely New Year. Bye!
Arati Devasher Illustration Blog 
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