It's another totally legitimate ArtSnacks box, I swear! I mean it actually is, this
physical box I've been using lately IS an ArtSnacks box covered in printer paper so
I can slap logos on it, but... Hello, and welcome back to Jenna Gets Creative!
Today I'm doing another No-Box Art Box challenge, and in case that intro wasn't clear enough,
today's victim is an ArtSnacks offering. If you're not familiar with the No-Box Art Box
challenge, or you need a refresher, it's quite simple.
Step #1: Pick any art or craft subscription box service out there, pick one of their boxes
that was already sent out, and research what was in it. This is easier with companies that
sell backdated boxes or post their own official unboxing videos because then you'll have it
all written out somewhere, but if other people unboxed it somewhere on the internet, you
can find out what was sent. Step #2: Match the box contents as close as
possible using your own supplies, without using the actual box you're replicating. Exact
matches are fine if you own it from any source other than the exact box you're recreating,
but if you are using this challenge to re-do a box you actually received, try to match
with different supplies. Step #3: Do the challenge! Create artwork
or make your craft using only the supplies you've matched for the box. Only add missing
essentials such as paper, a pencil, or an eraser. If the original box had a prompt or
theme, try to stick to it. If you're sharing your creations from the
No-Box Art Box challenge anywhere on social media, use the hashtag #NoBoxArtBox, all one
word, and feel free to send it to me as well if you want to make sure I see it. I am the
originator of this challenge, and I do curate a master playlist of No-Box Art Box videos
posted here on YouTube. Having your video appear in a playlist improves your views and
discovery, so why not, right? Today I'm recreating the latest ArtSnacks
box, May 2020, and I'll be doing the Plus edition with the extra supplies and specific
paper type. I'm going to go through what came in the actual ArtSnacks boxes, both tiers,
and what I've matched them with first. I'll put product clips up in the corner so you
can see what I'm talking about; clips borrowed from ArtSnacks' own unboxing video for the
real box supplies, and clips from the pretend unboxing at the beginning of this video for
the supplies I've matched. Just like with any other subscription box
video I do, I'll have prices, subscription information, and a cost and savings breakdown
in the description down below, and all prices and calculations will include USD, CAD, and
Pounds Sterling. ArtSnacks usually uses the manufacturer's recommended retail price (RRP)
in USD, so I've grabbed those RRP values off of Dick Blick, but I've also gone and done
some research on what these supplies from the original box actually cost out there in
the wild, and I'll compare the RRP total and real world totals in my calculations.
And of course I'll talk a little about the piece I'm creating as well once we're done
introducing the supplies. ArtSnacks has two tiers, the regular box which
comes in the skinny box I used for the mock unboxing, and the Plus box, which comes in
a box big enough to accommodate 9x12inch pads and canvases, and those boxes contain everything
the regular box has plus a couple extras and a surface.
All May 2020 ArtSnacks boxes contained a four pack of Kingart Real Brush pens, a Tombow
Irojiten coloured pencil, a Higgins India Ink pump marker, a Marabu Aqua Pen Graphix
marker, and a Copic Multiliner. Plus boxes also contained a four pack of Marabu Fineliner
Graphix in the Skyline set, and a 15-sheet Strathmore Bristol pad. Let's talk about those
and what I matched them with. The Kingart Real Brush pens seem to be a new
product, as I wasn't able to find them "in the wild" anywhere, but product photos from
the ArtSnacks shop look like Kuretake's clean colour brush pens, Arteza's Real Brush watercolour
pens, or basically any other company's watercolour markers with brush nibs made up of individual
strands. Kingart packaged four different colour sets of four markers for ArtSnacks, and which
set each subscription box got was random. The sets were Cool Tones, Warm Tones, Nature
Tones, and Jewel Tones, and the ArtSnacks shop site claims that these four packs retail
for $6.99 USD, which works out to $1.75 per pen.
I will be matching these with my Karin Brushmarker PRO watercolour markers, and I liked the look
of the warm tones set, so I'm matching that one in particular. I'm using red, red orange,
amber, and gold. These are liquid ink watercolour markers with flexible nylon Japanese style
brush nibs. The Tombow Irojiten coloured pencil is a high
quality wax based pencil. Irojiten is the "professional" line coloured pencil from Tombow,
though unlike most western art supply companies that call some of their products professional,
Tombow has not released any lightfastness information on these or frankly any of their
pencils. I haven't used Irojitens myself, but from what I've heard and read they're
firmer than Prismacolor and lay down quite translucent layers of colour. These can be
purchased open stock or in "color library" sets that come in cute little book-like cases.
RRP on these open stock is $2.63 USD and any place that sells them open stock seems to
stick to that, but most retailers do start pricing the sets at a discount.
Since I don't have any Irojiten pencils, I'm using a Derwent Colorsoft pencil in the shade
blush pink. The colours for ArtSnacks subscribers were random, so I grabbed a pencil at random.
No particular reason for the colour choice beyond that!
The Higgins India Ink Pump Marker sent in the ArtSnacks boxes is specifically the 2mm
chisel nib, and RRP on that item is $11.30 USD. This is, as the name implies, black India
ink in a pump marker. Like most India inks, you can get watercolour effects if you act
quick enough, but once you let it dry thoroughly, it's permanent and waterproof. These markers
used to be called Higgins Black Magic markers, to go along with their Black Magic bottled
inks, but they rebranded the markers sometime in the last two years. These are cheaper in
the wild in North America, but UK ArtSnacks subscribers are getting a deal. The only UK
listing I could find for this marker was nearly £5 more than the converted RRP.
To match this, I'll be using my tapered fine nib version of the same marker. Mine has a
copyright year 2016 on it, and I received it in a 2018 SketchBox. It's still kicking!
If you were to do this particular box and you don't have this marker, then depending
on the techniques you want to do with it, you've got two options: Match with a black
marker of a similar nib but not necessarily an India Ink pump marker, OR grab some black
India Ink and a paint brush. The Marabu Aqua Pen Graphix marker is a dual-nibbed
water based marker. One end is a felt brush nib, while the other is a fine nib. (Usual
PSA here: don't type the word "bullet" when referring to fine nibs in YouTube comments
unless you replace a letter with something else. It's a restricted word on the platform,
and your comment will be lost to the void. Not sent to spam, just gone.) The ArtSnacks
website claims that these have an RRP of $3 USD per marker, but you'll be hard pressed
to find a retailer selling them open stock. You can get these markers in themed sets of
6, or as a complete colour range set. If you do the math for per-marker prices on the 6
packs, once again, pretty much any retailer is going to give you a much better deal than
RRP, though for UK retailers only just barely. That may be due to stock shortages right now,
because this is a European brand, so it makes no sense that they'd be more expensive in
the UK like the Higgins product. To match this, I'm using the exact marker.
I have 8 of these, all from subscription boxes in the past, including two from an ArtSnacks
box from last year. The colour given out this time was assorted, so I got to choose. Unfortunately
the only nice warm colour I have to go with the warm Karin markers I picked is a yellow,
and it's far too close to the yellow Karin marker I picked, so I went with a mid shade
neutral grey. If you were to do this box and you don't have these markers, any water-based
marker will do. The Copic Multiliner is a black pigment ink
fineliner with a metal clad nib. These are a water-based pigment ink that is permanent
once dry, and they've been specifically formulated to resist smudging under alcohol inks. Everyone
got a 0.3mm nib. RRP on open stock Multiliners is $3.99 USD, but you can find them cheaper
in the wild pretty much everywhere they're sold.
I have a lot of Copic Multiliners in all sizes, so I'm using this exact pen, but if you were
matching it with something else, the important factors are 0.3mm nib size, and permanent
or waterproof black ink. Most fineliners that don't label their nib size are either 0.3mm
or 0.5mm. The Plus bonus art supplies was the four pack
of fineliners from Marabu, the Marabu Fineliner Graphix Skyline Set. This is a four pack of
water-based, non-permanent fineliners in 0.5mm nibs. They're all the same size, but different
colours: black, blue, green, and red. You can buy these in the Skyline set four pack,
or in two larger colour range sets, but I've never seen them offered open stock. RRP for
the four set is $7.49 USD. They're cheaper in the wild in North America, but for some
reason quite a bit more expensive in the wild in the UK at the moment. Again, possibly due
to current events and product shortages. Although I have lots of Marabu products, I
only have their permanent black fineliners, so I'll be using Staedtler Triplus fineliners
in the appropriate colours. I believe Triplus are also 0.5mm nibs, and they are water soluble,
so they'll do the trick just fine. Last but not least, the surface provided in
the Plus box is the Strathmore 400 Series Vellum Surface Bristol pad. This is 15 sheets
of 9x12inch smooth Bristol, and RRP is $12.59 USD. Like any Strathmore paper offering, though,
retailers in the wild always offer them much cheaper, sometimes as much as 50% off RRP.
Plus boxes always look like an awesome savings when you add up the RRP numbers, but remember
how much you'd save on just the paper alone if you bought the supplies from somewhere
else. I don't have the 400 series, but I do have
this 500 series Smooth Bristol pad laying around, and it's also 9x12, so let's go with
that. I cut a sheet in half so I could swatch my
supplies first, and I'm SO glad I did. Not even the Karin markers activated nicely with
water when applied directly to the paper, and that means this paper is soaking the ink
in way too fast. Good to know! So anywhere I wanted watercolour effects, which was pretty
much the entire piece, I scribbled with all my pens onto plastic, and picked up the ink
from there with my brush. And yes, by the way, that is a lid from a Gatorade powder
can. I collect plastic lids like this for use as mixing palettes and ink collection.
My husband is a big fan of Pringles chips, so you'll see me using those lids often.
I'm using a generic medium sized round waterbrush, and my sketching was done using a red Staedtler
Noris erasable coloured pencil. Near the end when I was playing around with texture in
the lion's mane I did pull out a couple other brushes – a Princeton Neptune script brush
and a generic round in size 2, but I ended up going back to the waterbrush. I think this
piece looks better with the less refined brush strokes in the spots where I meant for them
to show, and I like how easy it is to vary the concentration of the wash you're getting
with a waterbrush pen. I had been considering cheating and bringing
in a white gel pen at the end, but I didn't actually feel like anything really needed
it when I was done. Maybe a little shine on the eyes, but they are already quite bright
and well shaded. I'm not entirely sure what to call the art
style I ended up using here. What do you think? The lion's face is realism, but the mane definitely
isn't . Part of me wants to say surrealism, but I don't think that's quite right. I haven't
juxtaposed the lion with something completely ridiculous; I've just filled the rest of the
painting with his mane in an unrealistic combination of colours.
Whatever style it is, I like it! This was a lot of fun.
Did you know non-permanent fineliners can be used this way? Have you ever done it?
Don't forget to use the hashtag #NoBoxArtBox, all one word, if you try this challenge. You
don't have to do this particular box, do any body you like! You're even free to adapt it
to other types of boxes. If you're looking for more to watch, I've
got some suggestions up on the left side of the screen now. I upload art content twice
a week at minimum, every Tuesday and Thursday, and if you like living life creatively, whatever
that means to you, I'd love to have you along for the ride. Bye guys!