Artsy Birthday Presents!

BEWARE: LOTS OF IMAGES

First of all, here’s the ADORABLE card my husband got me. I’m only showing the outside because the interior messages are private.

He drew in Tundra’s paws! SO cute.

This year I received quite a few art supplies, and you KNOW I love art supplies, so we’re going over them.

First, Crayola’s Colors of the World colored pencils! These are for realistic skin tones, and I was super excited when they first came out and I saw art YouTubers reviewing them. They come in water marker and crayon too, but I really wanted the pencils.

A rough set of swatches, slightly out of order on cheap paper because I couldn’t wait:

The skin tones are split into almond based, golden based, and rose based, and they go from light to dark. Very nice!

Then, the markers.

Alcohol markers dry quickly, don’t streak as much, and they’re easy to color over with colored pencils like Prismacolor, of which I have a set. This lets you stretch your colored pencils because the marker fills the ‘dips’ in the paper that like to stay white, and you don’t have to burnish as much.

The first two sets are Arteza alcohol markers, one in skin tones and one in grays. They’re triangular, so they don’t roll easily, and come in sets of 36. Of course I swatched them right away!

The gray packaging:

And the markers with swatches:

Then the skin tone packaging:

And then, I received a 200 Ohuhu marker set! Now, Ohuhu are nice, but they’re student grade – not like Arteza can be or Copics. THAT SAID. They’re like fifty cents a marker. Copics range between $6 and $8 a marker usually, and they can easily be more expensive.

That’s EACH.

Fifty cents is a real bargain. They aren’t color fast, but I don’t care because I’ll be coloring over them AND I store my art in filing cabinets in the dark.

This set is alcohol based as well and came with swatch sheets, so you know I sat down and filled them:

The markers are chisel and fine nib, which are cheaper than the brush nibs.

They didn’t come presorted, but I roughly grouped them to make them easier to find.

And I can store the swatches in the bag!

Several years ago, my little brother got me a set of Ohuhu markers as well. These were water based with brush nibs, so fun to play with and use, but they don’t play nicely with my alcohol markers.

I stuck a sticker with the matching swatch on each marker. A peek at them:

I still use them, but I wasn’t aware of the difference between water based and alcohol markers at the time… my bad. So their uses have been limited to within their own set.

My dad has a set of paint markers that I love and drool over, and he got me a set to match! These things write on EVERYTHING, but I didn’t swatch them. I won’t get the paint going until I need them so they don’t dry out prematurely.