Around a month ago I finally signed up for one of the monthly art box subscriptions and decided on SketchBox based on price to content considerations. So, today, the first of my 12 month subscription boxes has arrived!
Opening it up, you're greeted with the contents fairly loosely packed into a cardboard box. I don't think the bits of blue paper are adding any protective value, but not sure it's all that necessary.
Content wise, this box comes with:
- Chameleon Marker - Sky Blue
- Chameleon Color Top Set
- 3 Prismacolor Premier Brush Tip Markers
- Crescent RendR 3.5 x 5.5 sketchbook
- Artist of the Month card
- SketchBox sticker
The Chameleon markers are interesting as these have been something of an idle curiousity for me for a while. The colour choices are a bit interesting, probably not what I would select, but that's okay.
In term of general thoughts on some of the products:
The RendR sketch pad is kind of useless. Not so much for the size, I like small sketch pads for ease of carry, but because the binding doesn't allow for fold flat and that makes for awkward drawing. Compared to my Moleskine watercolour pads at the same size, this not even in the same league.
The Prismacolor brush markers are very similar to my Faber-Castell Pitt brush pens in feel. The colour was sharp and vibrant, the feel wasn't quite brush like, but not too bad. You can definitely get some good line variation with them.
The Chameleon markers and tops are definitely interesting. So, the basic marker comes with a dual tip of a brush and bullet point. In addition, it comes with a toner that is used to lighten the marker's tone to allow for gradient colour toning for a more seamless increase in tone. I found that to be pretty tricky, at least at first attempt, to get right based on the size of the area to cover. I think this is a practice sort of thing!
The colour tops are there to alter the colour to allow for a seemless transition between two colours. Again, I found this a bit tricky to judge the right amount of application, but it definitely works! The concept is certainly really quite interesting. It doesn't look like these are actually on the market yet, at least from what I could see on the website, so that's actually kind of cool to get a first look at them.
Anyways, you can tell from the above that I had a few challenges with the markers, but I think once you get the hang of the toning, they could be a cool way to approach marker art.