My second box arrived in December, and it was packed with goodies.  December’s featured artist is Rebecca Loechler and the challenge is to design a colouring page. If you’re not familiar with adult colouring books, Scrawlrbox has you covered with a beautiful A6 colouring book and a colouring sheet designed by Rebecca Loechler herself.

I’ve had a lot of fun this month doodling different sea creatures and using my new light box to fill  two different pages and ink up some colouring pages.

Again I’ve included Amazon links to the included goodies if you want to grab any right away. Note these include affiliate links to help cover my site costs/art supplies stash.

Box contents:

• 8 pack of Spectrum Noir Colorista pencils
• 2 Spectrum Noir Colorista markers (canary and nectarine)
• 1 Sakura Identi Pen (black)
• 1 Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen
• 1 Spectrum Noir Colorista A6 Marker Pad
• Spectrum Noir tips & tutorials CD-Rom
• 1 colouring sheet
• 2 blank sheets of paper
• Sweetie! – Werther’s Original.. yum!

 

Spectrum Noir Colorista A6 Marker Pad – http://amzn.to/2kSbPvg
(Exquisite Florals Taster Pad)

This little pad is a great testing ground for playing with different markers. The paper is sturdy and a delight to work on. You get a blank page to put between pages to prevent bleed. Some sheets are outlined with metallic gold, silver and other glittery colours. I used the first page to test the canary and nectarine markers with some other pens in my stash (see below).

You could easily use the completed pages as front covers for handmade notebooks. I’m planning on having the snazziest sketchbooks this year!

 

Spectrum Noir Colorista pencils – http://amzn.to/2jwO77t

I love the colours in this set – they’re bright and pigmented enough to add a real fun pop of colour to your work, versatile for sketching in the garden too. The selection of colours is spot on. They blend nicely and seem well pigmented. I’m already using these to do little sketches and colour illustrations.

Spectrum Noir Colorista markers (canary and nectarine) – http://amzn.to/2khH4fT

These pens have alcohol based ink and dual tips. Both are bullet shaped, one fine end and one ultra fine. The ink seems well pigmented and I can blend the colours and layer over to add subtle shading. The Colorista pens are a bit chunky but still comfortable to hold and use. The caps can be a wee bit fiddly.

Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen – http://amzn.to/2jW9ZFg

I love this pen!  The ink is colourless with glitter so you can add a shimmer to any colour you have already. It’s very similar to a water brush – you have a synthetic brush tip attached to a reservoir. You squeeze the reservoir gently to get more ink flowing down. I tried mine over some pen ink and coloured pencils. A bit of colour can lift onto the bristles but I put a few drops of water on my palette and used it to clean the pen. That left me with some glitter water that I could re-use for a more subtle sparkle. I have a lot of experimenting planned for this pen!

There are some tutorials over on the Spectrum Noir website to help you get the best out of the sparkle pens.

Sakura Identi Pen – http://amzn.to/2kT5lc9

This is a handy little black pen intended for ID marking things, but it comes with two handy tips and contains waterproof archival quality ink. The 0.4mm extra fine tip is sturdy and capable of some sharp fine lines, the fine 1mm bullet end gave me a nice range of line widths when I held it at an angle. Being compact, with waterproof ink and the range of line widths, I’m thinking this would work well in a portable sketching kit. I used it for some inking to do this month’s challenge making my own colouring page.