Review of "Unwind in the Wilds" a Colouring Book by Derwent

  There's a new colouring book being sold at Art Friend. It's "Unwind in the Wilds" by Derwent and the illustrations within it are by Sarah Taylor. It's retailing at $18.50 (or $16.65 if you have membership). Go buy yourself a set of Coloursoft coloured pencils while you're at it. (What do you mean I have an obsession with Coloursofts... Shhh~)

  It's a colouring book based around a theme on nature... Lots of little critters- bunnies, bugs, owls, deers, song birds, swans... Lots of leaves and trees... There are some pages with just repeating patterns.

  The first few pages are really interesting, too. There's a little guide on how to blend coloured pencils to achieve different tones of colours, and some super basic colour theory. And then you also have two fully coloured pages to give you an idea on what you can do. 

  And scattered throughout the book are a couple of little Complete-It-Yourself pages. For example, one has an owl and you have to draw its feathers and hat. I haven't attempted any of those kind of pages cause when I am drawn to my colouring books, I usually am just craving to handle some colouring materials. So I wouldn't be in the mood to draw. There are other fun activities in the book, too.

Like mazes...

And item hunts...

  Some of the drawings are two-pages spread, and we all know what happens when that's the case... The middle part of the drawings get swallowed up by the binding. *sad face* But I'm happy to say that most pages are single spreads, and some even have nice borders so they'd look wonderful if you cut them out of the book to frame. I prefer to keep my pages IN the book, but to each his own, eh?

  And here's a quick flip-through of the book:

  I coloured a really cute mouse with just less than seven colours:

Yep. Mostly greens, blues, and a yellow. The mouse is actually orangey-red. No browns were used.
Even the background is red plus dark blue. No browns or purples..

And here's a song bird. One of the advice that Sarah gave was to not be afraid to leave certain areas white. That's why I left the flower-y patterns on the bird's throat white.

I rather like the page left this way. Pretty birb.

  Wanna' see another awesome colouring book? Try Enchanted Forest.

Cretacolor Monolith vs Derwent's Onyx

  I recently got a set of Cretacolor pencils, and I wondered how they fared against Derwent's Onyx pencils. To make the comparison fair, I pit Cretacolor's Monolith Woodless pencils against Derwent's Onyx pencils because they're both graphite.

   Cretacolor's Monolith uses graphite formed into a 7 mm solid stick with a protective lacquer coating.

  Derwent's Onyx comes in two tones, medium and dark, but it is easy to build up darker shades if you need them by increasing the pressure.

  Here's how they compare:

  (I realise here that I misspelled "monolith" the first time by forgetting an "o", but shhhh~)

  I did a basic swatch test for each of the pencils; then I tried going as dark as I could with the dark Onyx pencil and the 9B Monolith pencil; and finally, I did a smudge test.

  I think the Onyx Medium and the 2B Monlith pencils are comparable, but the 9B Monolith pencil is ever-so-slightly darker than the Onyx Dark. They're all wonderful pencils, though, so I guess it's really down to availability, and personal preferences.

Derwent Art Bars, Aquatone, and Inktense

  Last night, I had a bout of creativity at around midnight... And I decided to play around with some Derwent loot. Before you ask, Derwent Art Bars, Aquatone, and Inktense (both the blocks and the pencils) can be bought from Art Friend.

  I wanted to do background washes with the products so that I could tangle on them. I used Fabriano postcards as my support (the paper). It's 300gsm, cold-pressed paper; and it takes watercolours and ink beautifully. I also love these postcard papers because they marry the awesome quality of Fabriano paper with just the right size of a postcard. Plus they even print a few lines and a space to stick your stamps on the back of each postcard. How cute. ^-^

  First up was the Art Bars. Basically, Art Bars are triangular bars of solid, highly pigmented wax-based colours. Their entire Art Bar line is split into four categories- Brights, Pales, Earths, and Darks.  I only have the set of 12, which contained; 

Brights:

Process Yellow, Tertiary Orange, Primary Red, Process Magenta, Tertiary Purple, Primary Blue, Process Cyan, and Tertiary Green

Earths:

Raw Umber

Darks: Paynes Grey, Black, and Opaque White

  I'm actually quite intrigued by what the "Mixing Bar" would be like. I imagine it to be like a colourless blender for coloured pencils.  But anyways, I laid on some colour onto the paper. The sticks did stain my hand and fingers, so I had to be careful of where I placed my hand in order to not get transfers of colours onto places I didn't want them to be. The colours washed off my hand with soap and water, though.

You can see the tooth of the paper really clearly.

The Art Bars felt almost like oil pastels. Really creamy. Beautiful vivid colour, even when dry.
And then I added water.

Gorgeous bright colours. The red looked warmer in real life. In the picture it almost looks orange...

  Whilst I let that dry, I did another, this time using the Aquatone. Aquatones are pure sticks of watercolour. (Think "watercolour pencils minus the wood casing on the outside".) I don't have a "before adding water" picture for this piece... But what I can tell you is that the Aquatones felt almost like pastel pencils on the paper- a sort of scratchy, really dry feel to them. The colours they put out are also no where near as vivid as the Art Bars. However, I can imagine building up colour with multiple washes, or making sure that your paper is saturated with colour before adding water to ensure a more solid fill.

This is how the Aquatone looks like with just one layer of colour.
The yellow looks really delicate and beautiful. However, I wanted the purples to look darker.

  I was, however, too lazy to build-up the colours. So instead, I switched to my Derwent Inktense blocks. I have the 72 sets of both pencils and blocks from the Inktense range, so you can tell that I really REALLY love them. The Inktense blocks look like pastels. They're drier than the Art Bars but produce equally vivid colours and they're permanent once dry. 

  I liked the softness of the yellow, so I left it alone. Added purple and pink tones, and...

Ahhh~ So so much better. Look at that contrast!I might do a side-by-side comparison of Art Bars and Inktense blocks some time in the future, maybe.

Note to self: Don't use Inktense blocks on your white study table without laying some newspaper/scrap paper on the table first.. Otherwise you get ink stains that don't wash off afterwards. *sighs lightly* 

  So that's about it for this post. I'll show you how the final art works look like when I'm done. And if I do more of such projects, you'll be sure to see them on here at everythingis-art.com. :)

January 2015 Giveaway

[Originally posted on the 15th of January 2015. Reposting to boost.]

  Here's to my third giveaway~

  This time, I'll be giving away two lovely Fabriano sketchbooks and one Derwent Fine Art Pencils set.

  Art Friend has recently started selling loads of new Fabriano loot, so I decided to grab a few of them to try out. And since I already love Fabriano, I thought it'd be great to let one of you lovelies to try out something from them too.

  I've chosen Fabriano's Eco-Qua sketchbooks. They're made from ecological Bioprima Book paper and are 85 gsm. Acid free, and has a slight ivory tint. They're lovely to hold and I'm sure you'd love to use them. The larger yellow one has ruled paper, while the orange one is blank.

  Eco-Qua's come in a variety of sizes... There are three different types of finishing- stapled papers, spiral-bound, and with the elastic band to close it. They also come with three variety of papers- blank, ruled, and grids. With that wide a variety to choose from, you'd be spoiled for choice.

  As for the Derwent Fine Art Pencils set; it's not a new product but I love that their pencils are watersoluble. The set even comes with a little brush. :)

Rules:

• You must live within Singapore to join this giveaway. I'll cover the postage fee so you don't have to worry about that.

• Giveaway starts on 15th January 2015, 20:00, Singapore time and ends on the 23rd February 2015, 20:00 Singapore time. 

• Please provide an e-mail that I can contact you with if you win the giveaway. The winner will be contacted by email within 48 hours after the giveaway ends.

• If you have any additional questions, feel free to send me an email- stephanie_jennifer@ymail.com

Other than that, you can join via the widget below. Anddd~ Good luck!

Update: Here's a post with proof that I sent out the prize to Russell ---- (click me)

Try Out Thursday: Derwent Blender Pens

Review of Derwent's Blender Pens that I bought from Art Friend..

  I actually had these blender pens for a while now but never got around to using them....

  They come in this pretty yet simple packaging. Nothing fancy. The back of the pack says, "Derwent Blender pens are designed specifically for use with pencils, allowing the artist to blend away pencil lines for smooth and even colour. They are effective with both colour and graphite pencils. ... Pencil can be layered over the top if required. Use the smaller nib for fine detail."

As you can see, the pack comes with two pens- one 4mm and one 2mm.

The smaller nib is a brownish tone, whereas the larger nib is white. In the picture, the larger nib is slightly blue because of the colours I used it on. However, even though the nib is stained the colours don't transfer if you take care to wipe it on a piece of scrap paper after each use.

  The pens smell kind of like whiteboard markers which might bother some people. I think you just have to use some common sense and keep the room well-ventilated (even pastels are harmful... so.)

  My only grief is that I think a bigger nib would be so useful for coloured pencil artists cause some of us work large scale. A flat and broad nib would be really useful. This would really speed up the time taken to finish a drawing, and I loved how you could still layer more colours on top of it.

I drew a jellyfish and then layered Coloursoft pencils as a background.
The colours dissolved very well. The black ink is from Derwent's Graphik line maker pens, and they didn't smudge. I'm really happy about that cause I now know I can ink the things I draw first, erase the pencil markings, and then colour in the background without worry.

  You might think that the gradation isn't very smooth, but this was from my sketchbook and I didn't lay the coloured pencil strokes down very well, plus I didn't add a second layer to it. But I can tell that the blender pens would work really well for my future works.  I'll definitely be using the blender pens more often in the future.

  Update: To see a before and after comparison of using the Derwent blender pens, click this link to see the magic.

  Now, I need to get my hands on Derwent's blender and burnisher pencils to try them out....... ^-^

Try Out Thursday: Inspire Me Sketchbook

  It's...... Try Out Thursday! ^-^

  The product I'll be reviewing today will be Derwent's new Inspire Me sketchbook.

  The Inspire Me sketchbook is a 20cm by 20cm (7.87") hard-cover, thread-bound sketchbook. Derwent says that the 80 pages within are 120 gsm bleedproof marker paper. If you remember me raving about Derwent's Graphik pens... I'll also mention that this sketchbook is from their Graphik line, so let's find out whether this sketchbook is just as good as the pens.

Jet black, hard-cover, and thread bound.
I still haven't decided whether I like the lime peel green color of the elastic band or not.

The Derwent Graphik logo printed in gloss on the inside of the sketchbook.

It’s all in the small details… All in the details...

First impressions
  I love the feel of the faux leather cover. The sketchbook feels very well-made; the lime peel green elastic band that keeps it close has not loosened even after me using the sketchbook for a while now, the thread-bound pages feel very secure, and the sketchbook is able to lay flat when opened. The pages are a bleached white color.

  The one I have is the medium sized one. There is also a small version of it that is 14cm by 14cm which might be handy to bring around with you whilst you're out. Keeping in mind, though, that the sketchbook is meant more for pens and ink; I've not tried watercolours or my Inktense pencils in it because the paper is super smooth and I don't think it'd manage well without buckling.

  There is, however, this weird chemical smell on it, but it has lessened over time. I think this is a problem that a lot of marker pads/sketchbooks have and that it comes from the way the papers are treated to make them bleedproof. I don't see an indication of the sketchbook being acid free, so I'll assume that it isn't acid free... Update: A Derwent representative has confirmed with me that the sketchbook, is in fact, acid free. I really think that Derwent should, then, change the packaging of the sketchbook to state that it's acid free.

Fun bits
  The actual sketchbook is actually slightly longer than the measurements stated. The paper inside the sketchbook is indeed 20cm by 20cm, but the actual sketchbook is 22cm by 20.5cm. Why's that? Well, for one, the 0.5cm is to protect the pages within the sketchbook, but the other 1.5cm in the length of the sketchbook is there because the pages are perforated.

  Now, I know some artists absolutely love perforated edges because if you don't like a certain page, you can tear it out and dump it and not have to see it ever again... Or if you really like a page, you can tear it out and frame it and such. Other artists think it justs makes the pages easier to fall out. Derwent has designed their Inspire Me sketchbook very well, though, and I don't feel as though the pages will tear out without me really tearing them out. The weight of the paper also helps a lot with that.

  The sketchbook also has four different types of printed paper within, and each pattern has eight pages each within. The rest of the pages are just plain white.

Squares

Triangles

Honeycomb

Dots

Plain white

Close up of each of the prints

  And finally, the sketchbook also has a little pocket glued to the inside of the back cover, so that you're able to keep loose bits of paper and such in it. I don't really like to keep anything in it because it actually will make it difficult for me to draw properly, especially when you're on the last few pages of the sketchbook.... But that's just me.

Little pocket thingy...

  The texture of the pocket reminds me of Derwent's black paper. I don't know whether it is indeed made from their black paper, or whether they made new paper just for the pocket. It feels sturdy, though, and I'm sure it'd be useful if I ever needed to keep some loose bits of paper in it.

And of course, the obligatory drawing-in-sketchbook-using-Graphik-pens.

  In all, the Inspire Me sketchbook is a very decent sketchbook that I think would be very suitable for on-the-road notes taking or idea generating. I love that it's smooth and yet bleedproof. It's a pity that it isn't said to be acid free, otherwise I would use it very often for my zentangle drawings.  Update: A Derwent representative has confirmed with me that the sketchbook, is in fact, acid free. It has also come in very handy for my design works (logos, typography, etc.) due to the grids that it contains.

  Overall, a solid 9 out of 10 stars.

Derwent Coloursoft Review

  With the recent quality drop in Prismacolors after they changed their manufacturers from USA to Mexico, I've been on the search for a brand of coloured pencils that lay on smoothly just like Prismas... Lo and behold, Coloursoft seemed to be the perfect substitute.

  Coloursoft is a line of artist grade coloured pencils by Derwent. The colours are creamy and lay on beautifully on paper. Most of their colours are lightfast. And if I were to find their only shortfall, it would be that the pencil range falls short of Prismacolor's 150 selection. What they lack for in colour options, they make up for in sheer craftsmanship, though.

  I own the tin set of 12 and 72 Coloursoft. Derwent sells something called blister packs, where they put a couple of products within one package for you to sample the range and decide whether you like the product enough to buy it. I really like that. However, having heard plenty of good things about Coloursoft, I decided to go ahead and purchase the tin set of 12. 

  They were lovely and I soon had to get the full set of 72.

Derwent's wooden box set is compatible with all of its pencil range. This used to house Derwent's Studio range- I didn't really like that range. Admittedly, the Coloursofts fit better in the box than the Studio pencils...

The lead of my black broke because I angled it wrongly as I stuck it into my electric sharpener. :x Ooops. But just look at those delicious colours, though... So pretty~

  Above is what I've done with the Derwent Coloursoft.

  As you can see, the colours are really easy to blend and the transitions from one colour to the next look very smooth. The colours are also very vibrant and pure. With all these awesome qualities, Coloursofts have become my ultimate favourite brand of coloured pencils.

  You can purchase them from Amazon.com, DickBlick.com. If you live in Singapore, and were wondering where you can purchase them; look for your nearest Art Friend.