The Art Gear Guide is your one stop shop for the most recent, up to date, honest reviews on all your favourite art supply products.
I was sent these wonderful brush pens from Arteza a while ago now for review and with the pens I decided to try a botanical piece. The images below have been taken at various stages of completion of the drawing / painting, from start to completion.
I was so honoured and excited to receive a set of the Derwent Lightfast Coloured Pencils in advance, quite a bit before their official release date. With the pencils I decided as this was quite a momentous occasion for Derwent, I would try to create a piece of art with meaning to the company and in essence the pencils.
As I have mentioned in my review of the Stabilo CarbOthello Pastel Pencils and my YouTube Review I have been so excited about getting my hands on these pencils and trying them out as well as reviewing them. I personally feel that any pastel artist can get excellent result with these pencils.
This was one of the first drawings that I used almost every art supply I had at my disposal. Normally when I am dong a drawing, I am doing it with a particular company in mind to coincide with a review I may have already done or be in the process of doing and so I use just that companies products.
I was incredibly surprised at just how amazing these Arteza Colored Pencils turned out. Taking into consideration their very inexpensive price point, not a lot was expected in terms of pigment quality or lightfast ability, once again however, I am happy to report I got it wrong.
The Koh-I-Noor Extra Soft Pastel are cylinders of buttery gems, when you remove the sleeve from the box and remove the box lid, you are greeted with a spectrum of brilliant color gently nestled in between black foam slots to protect their delicate composition.
I purchased these amazing Caran d'Ache Grafwood Graphite Pencils a while ago and am only now getting round to reviewing them, to see the full detailed review, you can either check out my written review or the full YouTube demonstration video.
The Stylefile marker systems is completely unique in a number of ways, however, to find out more about these outstanding markers, check out my full review by following the link. This drawing is another piece hopefully demonstrating, to potential Stylefile customers, just how outstanding quality they really are.
Since the announcement of these new pencils from Derwent, there has been a lot of worry that Derwent are doing away with a pencil line in order to make way for the new range, I can tell you now with good authority that this is absolutely not the case. The new Derwent Lightfast are simply an addition to an already amazing range of pencils to fulfil any artists thirst for creativity.
Caran d'Ache have been running a competition over the past week or so asking for artists to draw an original superhero. At first the instructions of the competition were a bit unclear, at least I pick them up wrong.
As a result of my career, I always get quite sentimental around this time of year, remembering lost friends and so I wanted to try and paint something with a beautiful set of Unison Pastels I have had for some time now.
I absolutely love looking at botanical art, especially colored pencil and watercolor art in this genre, so I decided to give it a go for the very first time. Ordinarily if I was going to do a piece like this I would have recorded it for a speed drawing and I would have used my special paper, the Strathmore 500 Series Bristol Plate, however, I wasn't very confident and was quite cautious.
I wanted to draw something for Halloween and also something using just colored pencils, in particular my new 150 set of Prismacolor Premier pencils on Strathmore Toned Tan. As always I have included a speed drawing of this process on my YouTube channel and here on the site I have added progress images from start to finish.
I completed this drawing using my awesome Stylefile Markers, I have made a review video explaining how amazing these markers are along with another speed drawing of Black Panther the Marvel Superhero.
I know, I know, I know, what is a forty something year old bloke doing drawing SpongeBob SquarePants. Well, I have just done a video talking about Art and Depression, which I hope to edit and upload soon, but in that video I talk about the importance of color in the healing process.
A while ago, I was fortunate enough to have been sent some of Spectrum Noir's Illustrator and Graphic Markers. At the time, there were very little reds in the sets I had been sent and I commented about this in my review, not long later, I was very lucky to be sent a couple of sets containing beautiful shades of red.
As always, even though I have done the speed drawing, I have taken images of the art work at various stages, so that you get a chance to see the process. The drawing was completed using StyleFile Markers on Strathmore 500 Series Bristol Plate, my favourite paper. I also used Caran d'Ache Luminance and Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils for detail.
I love combining marker and colored pencil mediums, the markers allow for a rich underpainting with the ability to deliver soft gradient and remarkable flesh tones. The colored pencil then allows you to achieve the detail required to make the drawing as life like or as close to the original as possible.
My youngest daughter loves, Wonder Women, Harley Quinn, Super Girl and all the other awesome female superhero's we have today. I was asking my kids for something to draw as I occasional just run out of ideas to try and DC Superhero Girls was mentioned.
This is my drawing of R2-D2, that loveable droid from Star Wars. I was sent Spectrum Noir's new Graphic Markers and with them I drew this bit of art. Along with the new Graphic Markers, I have also used Spectrum Noir's ColourBlend pencils.
