591 – Scrawlrbox Challenge (Jan)
on January 12, 2016
So, I got a little subscription to Scrawlrbox for Christmas, it’s a thing where they send you a box of random art things each month so you can play with new toys. It also comes with a little challenge using the items they sent you. This month’s challenge was to scribble all over a piece of paper with your eyes closed, then use markers to pick out the shapes and make a picture. This is what I ended up with…
Loved this, is the rest of the Scrawlrbox package just as good??
Let’s see:
I got some Faber Castell markers, they’re pretty decent quality. I think my promarkers are probably a little better, but they’re beyond the scope of the value of one box. The Faber Castell pack is quite a nice light portable set of markers though.
I got a 0.2mm Micron Pigment Liner. This one is contentious for me, because I use Pigment Liners for pretty much every piece of art I do on this site. Micron are often hailed as top quality, and a lot of people use them, especially in America, so can’t complain, but personally I think the Mitsubishi Uni-Pin and the Faber Castell Graphik are better pens. The Graphik is really amazing quality, and a very dark ink that doesn’t rub away, and the Uni-pin gives a smoother line than the Micron whilst the pen doesn’t wear out as fast. (Cheaper too.) – But the Micron isn’t bad. Honourable mention to the Staedtler pigment liner, which is similar to the micron, and to the Rotring, which is absolutely fine, apart from being three times as wide as the same measurement from any other brand. I used the micron for the thin lines in the above image, and for tidying up the thick lines.
I guess if they’d include the Graphik as their choice of pigment liner the box would have been a bit Faber Castell heavy, and I think the Staedtler and the Mitsubishi have been in previous boxes (at least, there are pictures of those pens on the Scrawlrbox homepage, so they must have least had consideration before my subscription started.) – and the Micron is still a decent pen.
The package contained the Faber Castell Pitt big brush artist pen. It’s a lovely thing, although it’s no use for this challenge. I used it to block out some lines at the start, which is why some of the bright sections look a bit grubby in places. THe Pitt Big Brush is fun to play with, but I have no idea what I’d actually use it for.
The last pen in the box was a chisel tip permanant marker from a company called Montana. It’s quite a dinky little package, and it packs quite a punch, so I really like it. I don’t normally carry a permanent marker other than a sharpie, because I rarely use them, but the quality of this thing is pretty nice. The thicker lines were run with it.
The final art item in the box was a clutch pencil from Koh-I-Noor, (the Toison D’or 5900) – I’ve never used or owned a clutch pencil, so it’s quite welcome to have one to try out, drawing with it is very different from my usual fare. I probably won’t use it for comic work, but it is a nice piece of kit, and I like that the button detatches to reveal a tiny sharpener for it (and it works pretty nicely.) – Koh-I-Noor pencils are pretty good all round, and this one isn’t at all bad. I have no reference point to compare to though.
All in all, everything in the box is decent quality, and the value is pretty fine compared to the cost of the box, and it encouraged me to make a few pieces of marker work that I wouldn’t normally have attempted, so box one is a thumbs up from me. The main thing I’d have liked to see is more than one sheet of paper to experiment on with the materials. The “challenge paper” that this image was drawn on was a nice high GSM piece of card, but there was only one sheet in the box. A bit more generosity there would really improve the box.
Photo of the box and contents Here. (Missing: One lollipop)
Thanks for the detailed info, my daughter is really into Manga style artwork, generally using Letraset Pro-Markers so it would be good to get her to broaden (or at least try out) difference pens/markers.
Regards
Darrell