Hello, and welcome back to Jenna Gets Creative! Today we're doing a ScrawlrBox unboxing and
challenge completion video, and this box managed to get to me sooner than it usually does.
So with any luck that means I'm putting the video out BEFORE Kasey, Rin, and Marie do,
and people will actually still be looking for ScrawlrBox videos for this round when
my video goes live. Fingers crossed! This is the January 2020 box, box #53, and
for the very first time in my history with ScrawlrBox at least, possibly their first
time too, this box features pastels. As usual, I'll be reading through the info card and
giving my commentary as we go, and then when I'm finished with that I'll talk a little
about the piece to wrap things up. If you watched last month's video you'll know my
December box didn't have the info card in it, and they told me when they sent the digital
file that they were sending it out in the mail. I haven't received it yet, so I don't
know if I've got any extra goodies coming. I guess I'll have to update you on that in
the February box video, which naturally won't be in February, it'll be in March.
If that statement was confusing to you, these subscription boxes always ship part way through
the month. Some of them, like SketchBox, name their boxes for the coming month, so most
customers get the box in the month it's named for and those that don't get it early. ScrawlrBox
names their box for the month it was packaged and mail in, so UK subscribers get it in the
quote-unquote "correct" month, and all us international customers get it late. Oh well!
I was back in BC over the holidays visiting family, and since it was both Christmas time
and so close to my birthday (which was back on Sunday, the 2nd), my Mom kinda spoiled
me a bit. She let me pick some stuff out at my favourite art store from my childhood,
Opus, and I was SO close to picking up some of the pastels that came in this box. Total
coincidence! This box hadn't even shipped yet, never mind arrived at my house, and if
it had I wouldn't have been there to open it anyway. But I didn't end up picking these.
I got a big set of Conté à Paris crayons and a couple half pans of Van Gogh watercolours.
The featured artist in this month's box is Marlene Rye, and you can pause the part where
I showed the back of her print if you want to read her blurb and check out her links.
Gorgeous piece! I'm not entirely sure which way is meant to be up, it kinda works any
which way and there's no obvious signature on it that would help with orientation, but
it's beautiful. Before I get into the info on the card, I
just want to run through my usual spiel. If you're new here, don't forget to subscribe
and turn on notifications. I upload twice a week at minimum, every Tuesday and Thursday,
and some weeks I also have bonus videos. I'm getting close to qualifying for the YouTube
Partner Program now, and I'll be holding an international giveaway to celebrate when I
qualify. If you want to be eligible make sure you're subscribed, and if you want it to happen
sooner rather than later, make sure you watch all the way through to boost watch time!
And of course, if you like this video, don't forget to hit like and leave a comment down
below. If you also got this box, I'd love to hear what you thought of it. What do you
think of the supplies? Do you normally like pastels, or not? Was this an easy and inspiring
prompt, or did you struggle with it? I've been seeing a lot of posts on Instagram where
people have added black silhouettes to their pieces, but there are no black items in this
box and the silhouettes are done far too cleanly to be a mixture of colours to get black, so
I see a lot of cheaters! (laughs) Alright, time to read the card. The blurb
at the top says, "Happy New Year Scrawlrs! This month we have taken inspiration from
our very talented featured artist to put together a great selection of supplies to help you
explore an artistic medium that you may not have tried before. Soft pastels are a great
tool for bold, vibrant colours and expressive marks. Try using the ends, sides and tips
of each tool to see what different marks and textures you can create. Try smudging and
blending, combining the colours together too. Then use these various techniques to bring
your artwork to life. We want you to let go a little and not worry about the subject itself,
but more about the marks you make and how the colours interact and blend. Start with
a sunset or sky visual that reminds you of a certain time or place, and then try to convey
that feeling with your work. "Scrawlr Tip: An advantage of using sanded
surfaces (like the paper included) is that the pastel can be erased and reworked to some
degree. Keep in mind that soft pastels fill the grain of the paper rather quickly. Test
it out and check the limits before you get started and don't forget to keep your eraser
clean to avoid contamination." First up is the "Rembrandt Soft Pastels Half
Stick Set. A set of 10 half stick soft pastels from Royal Talens Rembrandt professional range.
Pastels are a soft type of chalk based on kaolin (china clay) and pigment, with which
drawings can be made in a style similar to painting. Artists who work with pastels tend
to see their work as a painting rather than a drawing. These pastels offer excellent colour
release and intense, pure colours. They have a good degree of lightfastness and very high
colouring power due to high concentration of pigment. Rembrandt soft pastels owe their
quality to the close collaboration with professional artists, combined with traditional expertise
and more than a century of experience in pastel manufacturing. Each colour is made according
to a unique formula, and the necessary raw materials go through very strict controls
for each new batch." The suggested retail price in British Pounds Sterling is £12.95.
As usual I'll have the box contents and subscription info in the description box down below, and
I'll have all the prices and value calculations converted to USD and CAD as well.
Like I said, I almost picked these up over the holidays, so I was very excited to get
these. I love pastels as long as they aren't oil pastels, and these colours are absolutely
gorgeous. If you're not familiar with the different types of pastels, traditionally
there are oil, hard, and soft pastels. If you've ever heard people refer to "chalk"
pastels, they're talking about hard pastels, which are much harder sticks, as the name
implies. Soft pastels are a much looser stick. The differences are in the amount of binder
used and how the stick was pressed and formed. Soft pastels are better for covering large
areas and making expressive marks, whereas hard pastels are better for sketching and
fine details. You can also get pastels in pencil form, and usually those will be hard
pastel cores, but some brands also make oil pastel pencils. Then of course there's PanPastels,
which are basically the pigment and binder mix of non-oil pastels, but dried as a loose
powder and pressed into pans like makeup, and then you pick it up with a foam tool,
a brush, or your fingers, also like makeup. Art crayons, although they look and feel very
similar to pastels and might even be called pastels in some parts of the world, aren't
true pastels. Crayons are wax based, and some of them are water soluble, like Conté crayons.
Compressed charcoal sticks are another thing that some people might refer to as pastels,
but once again, not pastels. If you guys want a video on the different
types of pastels and how to use them, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I've got
all the types, and I can even compare to artist crayons and compressed charcoal.
But I'm getting a little off topic now. This Rembrandt set is the desert colours palette,
and it's beautiful. It really lends itself nicely to a sunset type painting, which is
probably why they picked it for this month's challenge. I think maybe next time I have
the opportunity to get Rembrandt soft pastels I'll go through with it. I can't wait to make
use of these in my other works. Next up is three "Bruynzeel Design Pastel
Pencil(s). As with watercolour, it's helpful to use pencils to add finer details to your
work. You can work more precisely than with pastel sticks, ensuring that you're not limited
to bolder strokes and can take that extra step to refine your work. These Bruynzeel
Design pastel pencils are essentially superior quality pastels, encased within a pencil.
The high-quality pastel pencils are crafted with the finest lightfast pigments and Kaolin
clay. The 3.7mm wide-gauge, perfectly centred and double-glued coloured cores combine with
the finest light cedar casings to make them very resistant to breaking. They also hold
a point better than most pastel pencils, and are a joy to sharpen." Suggested retail price
is £2.29 per pencil, which works out to £6.87 for the trio. These really are nice pastel
pencils. I didn't know Bruynzeel made them! I've only ever heard of Bruynzeel for their
traditional coloured pencils. Normally when I'm reading about pastel pencils, it's Faber-Castell,
Derwent, Stabilo, or Conté. The three colours we got compliment my CarbOthello set nicely,
so that's a plus. I wish one of them had been black, though, so we could do crisp black
silhouettes without cheating and using supplies from elsewhere. These pencils don't have a
colour name on the barrels, just the number, but if I compare across to the Bruynzeel product
listings on Jackson's (affiliate link in the description, by the way), it looks like we've
got Vermillion, Dark Pink, and Ultramarine. They come in 48 colours in sets of 12, 24,
36 and 48, as well as open stock. Looks like you can save about half a pound per pencil
off the suggested retail price over at Jackson's, right now at least. They're comparable in
price to Faber-Castell's PITT pastel pencils, and a bit more than the CarbOthellos, if that
gives you any indication of quality. The sharpener you'll see me using for these
pastel pencils is the one that came in my CarbOthello set. That set also came with a
paper blending stump, but you can get rubber ended blenders for pastels, and the eraser
that came in that set was a kneadable eraser. If you're just trying pastels for the first
time, those are the tools you're going to want to have on hand. A pastel pencil sharpener
is just like any other manual sharpener, except the hole it a little wider because pastel
pencils tend to be a bit wider in diameter. Sharpeners meant for crayons or for a lot
of different Derwent pencils, since those tend to be girthier too, will do fine. Don't
try to sharpen pastel pencils in your electric or hand crank sharpeners that are sized for
more standard pencils. I made that mistake recently! If the pastel lead breaks off in
the sharpening mechanism it's ridiculously hard to get it out, because when you try to
poke and prod it loose it'll just crumble little by little. I tried to dissolve it out
with some rubbing alcohol and ended up making blackish brown fluid run out of the crank,
which was probably some sort of grease in the gears, so oops! My fancy Mitsubishi sharpener
lost some lubricant. By the way, again all the prices and calculations
are in the description box below, but based on suggested retail price alone this has surpassed
the basic subscription price of £15 per box. We're sitting at £19.82 and there's about
£1 worth of paper, so even international customers paying month to month with shipping
at the very least broke even on the suggested retail price value here. Good box!
And on that note, the included paper is "Canson Mi-Teintes Touch Paper 350gsm. The unique
surface texture of Mi-Teintes Touch paper allows for many creative possibilities and
layering of pigments. These high quality paper sheets retain all dry pigments perfectly because
they have micro abrasive surfaces created by a sanded primer. Mi-Teintes Touch paper
is the ideal surface for dry pastels, allowing them to perform beautifully. Give your artwork
a new dimension, while allowing colours to really pop due to the thinly sanded surface."
There's no official price given on the paper selection here, but based on some quick research
I did for this line of products on Jackson's, I'm estimating these two A5 size sheets alone
are about £1 worth of paper. I was really surprised to find that this is
sanded paper. I've heard of Mi-Teintes pastel paper before, quite often in fact, and it's
never been mentioned that this is sanded paper. I never hear it called Touch, though, so I'm
guessing Touch is a separate line of sanded paper. This paper feels like extremely fine
grit sand paper. I've been curious about sanded paper since the first time I heard about it.
A lot of coloured pencil artists really swear by it, and it's the only type of paper you
can use if you're using powder blender for coloured pencils. Now I'm torn on whether
I'll use the other sheet for another pastel piece, or if I want to try it with coloured
pencil. The challenge prompt for this month, as you
already saw way at the beginning when I showed both sides of the card, is "Reflective Skies."
I chose to do a warm toned sunset sky on a shoreline, reflected in the water. It was
a lot of fun to blend the colours and try to get a matching sky and water blend. I had
a little trouble with blues and purples from the land portions clinging to the sanded grain
of the paper where the water was supposed to be warm coloured when I started shaking
and blowing those loose pigments away, but I was able to fix it with more warm layers.
Again, my only regret is that we weren't given a black for sharp silhouettes. The photo I
saw that gave me the idea for this composition had a person fishing in a little row boat
just off the edge of an island or peninsula, and the person and boat silhouette was entirely
black. The landmass was black fading out to blue, and the sky and water was coloured a
lot like what I've done here. Let me know what you think of this box and
my reflective skies piece in the comments down below, and tell me where I can see your
challenge piece if you got this box as well. I'd love to see it! Bye guys.