The Art Gear Guide is your one stop shop for the most recent, up to date, honest reviews on all your favourite art supply products.
I think after this review, a lot of people will be upset with me and the wonderful people at Faber Castell will not be too enamoured with me either. But I would like to say before I get started, when I complete my reviews, I am always thinking of the artists who watch or read them first and foremost; the financial struggles they may be facing and yet all they want to do is perform art and how much buying expensive art products effects their creative process.
I have been following, Mad Charcoal, artist Josh Hernandez, certainly the most amazing charcoal artist I have seen, for approximately two years now on Instagram. Not only does Josh produce some of the most amazing works of art I have ever seen, but his process is magical, to watch him throw charcoal dust at his canvas, plaster what to the untrained eye looks a mess, only to then, with a kneaded eraser, blending stump, painters tape and one or two other tools, pull an image out of thin air and finalise with a genuine masterpiece.
Woomer reached out to me a couple of months ago and asked if I would review their 72 set of Colored Pencils, now, at the time of the communication with Woomer, they had also just released a 90 set and 133 set. Ordinarily, when I review a product I try my best to review the full palette count as this provides a much more comprehensive account of the product, but on this occasion, Woomer had not yet devised a marketing campaign for the 90 or 133 set.
My favourite has to be the ease of inserting the pencil and sharpening it, artists with arthritis in their hands and wrists will find this sharpener very agreeable. The format of the sharpened results is purely down to personal preference, I personally can’t use a long core format and tend to waste a substantial amount of core, via my heavy handedness; but this is not to say the device is not creating a good sharp core.
In this review we take a look at the new high quality Etchr Watercolour Paper Block, paper is one of the most important aspects of your art process for all manner of reasons. Getting the paper right can help you as the artists avoid so many issues when it comes to watercolour painting or mixed media art. Etchr have a phenomenal reputation for delivering quality products to the art community and we get to test that trend in this review.
In this review we take an in-depth look at the Etchr Signature Watercolour Sketchbook, Etchr’s top of the range sketchbook, which, when you consider the amazingly high quality of their traditional watercolour sketchbooks, the Etchr Signature Watercolour Sketchbook really is a sight to behold. This is one of those art supplies that, you will wonder how you lived without before buying it.
The Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle and Holbein Watercolor pencils are similar aesthetically speaking, both pencils sporting hexagonal barrels with the Holbein barrel weighing in at 7.4mm and the Caran d’Ache barrel slightly bigger at 7.6mm. The cores of both pencils are approximately 4.1mm, a hugely generous core given the quality of pigments held within each core.
In this review we take a look at the 72 set of colored pencils from Ohuhu. A few years ago I seen the Ohuhu Colored Pencils on Amazon and given my love for the Ohuhu Alcohol Markers, I thought I would buy a set to review. However, as I mentioned, this was quite a few years ago and the quality wasn’t good.
In this review we take a look at the Derwent Watercolour Pencils, I have to say that in this review I will be doing a lot of grovelling and seeking of forgiveness from Derwent. Way back when I first started this website and YouTube channel, back when they were called “Colored Pencil Reviews”, I started the website reviewing products from the angle of a new comer.
Athough this is a really expensive selection of art supplies, the items in this list are those sets that you have been saving all your art career for. You have worked hard and so deserve a treat, the money that you have earned and saved all year should go on treating yourself to a life long art set that will serve you for the rest of your art carer. Perhaps your family are looking to club together and buy you something specially, this is the perfect list to send them.
If there is anything on this list that you like the look of but would like to know more detailed information about the product, I have supplied links directing to my original review of the product. Every item on all the lists I have published, has been reviewed and used by me, hopefully providing you with a detailed, in-depth look at the product.
I know I am a bit late to the game uploading my Christmas lists, but if you are stuck for ideas of what to buy your loved ones this Christmas, that artist in your life that has everything, here are some excellent stocking stuffer ideas they will love to have.
I will keep this review as short as I possibly can, there really isn’t that much you can write about a sharpener, it either works or it doesn’t. On that basis, this will not be my usual, “War and Peace”, writing style, which I apologise for regarding all previous posts, I know I need to get to the conclusion much faster. Any hoo, this will be a short and sweet written review but don’t forget to watch the AFMAT Professional Sharpener in action, producing result after result in my YouTube video review.
I have also used Holbein’s watercolour tubes and again, their quality is excellent, with consistent lightfast ratings and strong pigmentation throughout. For the longest time I always wonder why Holbein had never produced a set of watercolour pencils to the same standard as their watercolour tubes or pans and their Holbein Colored Pencils.
In this post I list my top archival papers for colored pencil art and the reasons why I think this to be the case. It’s important to note that the paper I have selected for this article and video review, is based purely on my own personal experience.
Derwent have finally done the unimaginable, one of the most sought after wishes that colored pencil artists have had, was for Derwent to expand the 24 set of Derwent Drawing Pencils. I can remember quite a while ago when the Derwent Pencil Museum was destroyed due to heavy rains and flooding in Keswick in the Lake District, I was invited to grand reopening of the Museum and got to meet the CEO OF Derwent.
In this review we are going to be testing, demonstrating and reviewing the Staedtler Pastel Pencils from the Design Journey Range. Pastels are one of those mediums that split and divide so many artists, whilst there is no doubting the beauty and skill involved in producing artwork with pastels the polarising division is not about the artistic value.
I am always on the lookout for new and different pencils to review, I look at the pencils and wonder if the pencils in question are designed to hoodwink customers. If I think this is the case, then I have to buy them and test them so that I can hopefully provide helpful information regarding them, information such as whether or not they are a good buy, if they are accurately represented on the package, if I think the manufacture has deliberately set out to dupe customers.
Art supplies for kids or young artists is such an important topic for me, I feel that when we are young children, we get distracted and bored very easily, so if you had a toy or art product to a child that is next to useless, the child will very quickly put it down and move on to the next thing.
