Review: Scrawlrbox #092

Image shows contents of Scrawlrbox #092 art subscription box. Items included are: Postcard of featured artist’s work (butterfly), a pad of A5 paper, a bottle of masking fluid, a sticker, a tin of Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils in orange, green, yellow, light blue and grey, a challenge prompt card, a wrapped candy and a white paintbrush.

Faber-Castell is a brand I use regularly in my own practice, so this box was a fun one for me. 

The colours included made sense, and the inclusion of a grey pencil was welcome as it meant I could tone down the brighter colours included the tin.

Previous experiences of masking fluid have been quite hit-and-miss for me, so I was interested to try this brand and I was not disappointed.  The fine nozzle left crisp lines, and although it takes some practice to learn to control the flow of masking fluid, once you find your own technique, it’s really fun to use, and you can get some interesting effects.  One thing to be aware of is that the masking fluid will peel off if you use too much water. It also copes well with a heat gun if you wish to hasten the drying time.

I also tried the masking fluid with acrylic inks and various brands of watercolour, and all worked equally well.  One thing I would say is to try and keep layers of masking fluid thin as if it’s applied too thickly, it will tear the paper when you try to remove it, regardless of which brand of paper you use.

Images show results of masking fluid used in conjunction with acrylic inks, watercolour pencils and Winsor and Newton Cotman Watercolour paints.

I really like ProArte brushes, so I give this one 10/10.

I’d give the paper 8/10.  It handles wet-in-wet techniques well and colours bleed into each other seamlessly.  The only reasons I gave this paper 8/10 is because if you use too much water it pills quite easily once wet, and it does curl with relatively small amount of wet media and doesn’t flatten when dry, but this could be rectified by placing your dry piece between two heavy books.

All in all, I’d recommend this box if you’re already a fan of watercolour pencils or you’d like to try them.