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Artfulbox : Lino Printing

I am back again with another Artful Review! Like I mentioned last time I got multiple boxes, including some older ones when I made my subscription in September, that’s why I have so many to review^^ But for the people who don’t know what Artful is, it’s actually a quarterly subscription box from the UK meaning that you will get a new one every 3 months. Every new box will focus on a specific theme, exploring different art mediums and supplying you with different materials. Some of the old boxes’ themes include water coloring, calligraphy, and drawing with ink. This month’s box is themed after Lino printing, let’s take a look into it together!

The first thing we get in the box is a Lino cutter from Essdee with 10 extra cutting blades in different sizes, then a 112-page magazine with tutorials and interviews, 3 lino sheets (200mx150mmx3.2mm), two tubes of special block printing ink in red and black, a block with 25 sheets of premium heavyweight cartridge paper, a clear 200 micro A4 Acetate sheet and a 100mm ink roller. Compared to all the other Artful boxes I have reviewed up till now, this seems to be the one with the least amount of items in it. I can’t tell if that’s because these items are very pricey, meaning all boxes have the same value but some might be fuller and some less. Or maybe this was one of the first boxes and the budget wasn’t as high. I don’t necessarily feel like something is missing, since I actually don’t know anything about lino printing yet and all of the items seem to be of very high quality. After taking a look into the magazine in more detail, I might come back to this though.

Now that I have read through the magazine in more detail, I have actually already found something that bugs me a little bit. As I have just mentioned I was not sure if something was missing, but now I am. There are at least 3 things, which are talked about in the magazine, which could have easily been included. The first thing is tracing paper, which they say “you might have laying around in a drawer”, I personally never use that for anything, so now I have not. The second thing is sandpaper, which seems to be used for the ink sticking better to the lino or making textures, which they might think we get together with the third missing thing, being recommended by them in the magazine, an “anti-slip matt” from a hardware store. I do agree that all of these things could be already in a household of either an artist who has to trace for their work or maybe a handyman, who used sandpaper to make his wood creations smoother. But that’s not how a subscription box like that should work, I should be able to open it and begin working with what they supplied me with. The tracing paper and the sandpaper sound to be somewhat essential and also don’t cost much I assume it would have been no problem to put it in. The “anti-slip matt” seems to be more optional, but is still recommended, so why not include it?

What I really like about the magazine is that it feel way more beginner-friendly than some of the stuff in the previous boxes. In the beginning, they encourage you to use the 3 sheets they supplied in the box to start and experiment at first, not get into creating ASAP. That will be very hard for me to do, for the exact reason they state in the beginning pages “Not wasting resources” but the way they explained it, it’s not wasting, it’s kinda like creating your own color shart to know how the colors will look like on paper. That’s what you are doing, trying out the different nibs and what kinds of shapes and lines you can make with them and to make notes about it, maybe already planning a future masterpiece. When you are about to get started but have no idea what to carve yet, they have some templates with easy to recreate shapes to get on exploring the medium. Nothing as crazy as some of the tutorials seen in the ink boxes magainze(review coming soon ;)! They also tell you many important things about the shelf-live of Lino, the right methods to store and wash it, and how to carefully use the tools right. All of that information got me really hyped up to finally try out some lino printing myself, but first, let’s get on to carving 😉

Since I am trying out the box in October I was in the mood for some spooky designs and I had some pretty finished ideas in my head already. I wanted to make a Halloween stamp with a pumpkin and a potion bottle design(the ghost kinda appeared :P), but to get it from my head onto the Lino was a pretty challenging process. I used an H4 graphite pencil (which was not included) to draw my ideas directly onto the Lino, which did only partially work out. I did not want to put too much pressure on the pencil, because I did not want to leave marks in the lino, which I would not be able to get rid of again. But the graphite did not really stick to the surface that well, so I needed to go over and over it again. I then traced the lines of the design I wanted to have with the cutter and then made an outline in form of a rectangle. After finishing that task I tried to work my way inward, regretting small details like the pumpkin face xD But I did it in the end and was pretty proud for it being my first try, but also kinda nervous about if it would look the way I wanted it in the end, after applying the printing ink and transferring the designs onto paper…

The next step seemed fairly easy, but it was not xD After carving the pieces I cut them out with scissors to be able to print them onto the paper individually. I only used a small bit of the black printing ink, which can be compared to very thick acrylc paint, and apllied it to the right side of the roller, because my lino pieces were fairly small. I then went over the lino pieces multiple times, hoping for an even covarage, but intially also filing the small cravices which ment to stay ink-free. You can also see that in the first results, my small ghost is basically a black blob on the page. As for my potion bottle I actually regrett my choice of having the liqguid inside stay white and the glassy ouside be black. I can’t really say I planned it liked that, I only thought it about those two things being able to be distinguished from each other. That at least workes I guess 😛 My halloween stamp came ou the best I think, you can make out the shape of the pumkin and it’s face, even if it’s not perfect and the seem around the stamp is visible too, even though you could see that the bigger space made it even harder for me to get it covered evenly. But with practice, especially with the aplling ink part, I can see this workng very well for me and I can take all the information I got out of my errors to make my next lino pieces came out better 😉

This was actually the first Artful box which let me work with materials I have never used before. I did caligraphy as a hobby and I used water colors in school as I mentioned in the previous reviews but Lino printing was never something on my radar, I don’t think I would have picked it up to try out by myself. But it was actually quite fun, maybe because it was so diffrent! Carving out my designs instead of creating them step by step on the paper, was a very intresting experience. It was both easier and harder than I thought, if that makes sense 😛 For my very first try it did not feel as if anything was missing, though some tracing paper and maybe a marker of some kind which would stick better to the Lino would have been nice. But I guess the other things were not as needed as I thought when reading about them the magazin. I am still curious about the sandpaper and what could be done with it. But the Artfulbox is supposed to just ignite the curiousity in my and this one really succeded. Mabye I will buy sandpaper and try it out some 😉 And maybe you will too, I can highly recommend this box and the idea behind Artufl as a subscription as well^^

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art, Artful, Mystery Box, Subscription Box | LEAVE A COMMENT

July 21

Review of the Artful Box: Calligraphy

If everything goes according to plan, you have already read my review on this quarters Artfulbox with the theme: Watercolor. If you have not, but want to, just click on the unterlined text to get there 😉 If you are new to this: Artful is a quarterly subscription box from the UK, made by OhDeer the same people that came up with the Paperganboxes! Due to some Brexit issues most of my subcription boxes from April-Mai got lost in the mail, so did this one, which is why I am reviewing it only now. Gladly I got a replacement for all of my boxes and I was especially looking forward to this one, because I already have some experience on the fiel of Calligraphy and Handlettering. Though I have to say that the box itself does not really match it’s contents, I think Calligraphy has nothing to do with the ocean and fish, so I was a bit confused at first. The Artwork is great of course, but I would not have choosen it for this theme. But enough talk about the outside, let’s take a look inside!

Inside of the box: Many diffrent colored tombow markder lay beside a pencil and an earaser, ontop of a small book and blank greetingcards.

The box was made together with the company Tombow from Japan, which is a well established brand in the community of letter art and it’s actually diffrent from the newest Box where they made their very own supplies. Just something I have noticed, maybe getting what is needed for a good watercolor set was easier than making theirown brushpens or it was a matter of money and they just had more to put into the watercolors box 😉
In this box we get 8 Tombow Dual Brushpens in a very limited color scheme(we don’t get a yellow for example), 5 Tombow Twin-Tone Dual Tipmarkers, a Tombow MONO Ereaser and a HB graphite lead pencil, aswell as an A4 Bristol 250gsm drawing pad and 4 blank greeting cards plus envelopes.
Let’s talk about the 112 page magazine! Structuerwise it does not make a lot of sense to me… The table of contents begins on page 10 after a “the brief history of typography” and an editors note, after which the first thing we see is a making off of the boxart itself. A making off is always intresting to me, but not when I waited to get into the process of creating art, after waiting so long to get my box. Then comes the first interview and a tutorial which has nothing to do with Calligraphy or Hand Lettering at all. On page 30 we get the first glimpse of what creating letter art could look like with the first tutorial of blending colors together. But that also is a bit nonsensical because we get to know about the basics of how to use the brushpens and how to create letter art on page 50 and 66! Please tell me what was the thought behind that…? I guess you could argue that the box was not meant for beginners, but if that’s true we would not have needed the basic tutorials at all and could have used the space for some more interviews and advanced tutorials. Maybe they wanted to show first, what different kinds of letter arts could look like, but I don’t think they made the right call here and for a beginner that might even be a bit overwhelming. I know they already got better in the next box, so I don’t want to complain about it too much, since they seems to have noticed their errors, but I still wanted to mention it.

Collage of the before mentioned book with text that says "Let's learn about calligraphy + other stuff" on the right and on the left it's a picture of the bristol paperpad from tombow.

As I said in the beginning I have some experience when it comes to this topic, which is why I was confused again. When I think of Calligraphy I think of quill pens with metal nips tipped in ink, sliding across the paper. But I have to say, that’s western-style Calligraphy over in some Asian countries Calligraphy was always done with brushes. Calligraphy itself might be a kind of umbrella term, describing the art or lettering. So I would say they did nothing wrong with the title, but I would have loved to maybe let it be more specific. Because what we got in the box, were supplies for what I and many others call Hand Lettering. The difference for me really lies in the supplies you are working with and the different techniques you can use because of it. You can’t do the same strokes with a brush of course, that you can do with a metal nib and vice versa. I can’t really speak for Asian Countries and if their traditional style of Calligraphy is different from that, like maybe what I think is traditional western Calligraphy is, is using metal nibs and old fonds, recreating the traditional feel of it. Maybe traditional Asian Calligraphy is using special brushes, with only black ink, which might be why they too would say the supplies given are more for a modern type of Calligraphy. For me both of these types of letter art are cool, so I am okay with getting some great Tombow supplies, but I think some people might expect something different and get disappointed because of it, so maybe boxes like this could use a longer title like “Modern Calligraphy” or “Calligraphy: Hand Lettering”. And I would also love if maybe traditional wester and Asian Calligraphy could maybe be a future boxes topic 😉
The tutorials themselves are interesting, I will separate them into tutorials for beginners, advanced techniques, and tutorials that are not tied to the topic. The tutorials for beginners are very good, you can’t really go wrong with that, to be honest. But I would have loved to maybe get a separate sheet to practice on(there is one in the magazine, but maybe a separate one would have been better, since who likes to write in books, right?), since I to this day struggle with what the right amount of pressure to put on the brush to get he result I am imgaining. I think especially for beginners that can’t be hard and a sheet like that can always be very helpful.
The more advance tutroials would be the ones talking about blending and using the special twin-tone markers, since that’s not something a beginner need to learn ASAP. You can go a long way just with the basics and being creative 😉 Since I have never worked with the twin-tonw markers before, I am looking forward to creating something with the help of the tutorials.
The last typ of tutorials kinda used the brushpens in diffrent way to create drawings. Of course, you can use your brushpens for drawing, but including these tutorials felt like as if the people behind the box though using the markers only for lettering purposes did not do them enough justice. The lettering is not “real art” or something like that. I really did not get the need behind including them if I am honest. We could have used some more inspiration or maybe diffrent alphabeth and fonds to copy better, especially for beginners, but I am also up for learning new alphabeths even though I am lettering for some time now.

With my last box, I tried to make a greeting card for someone’s birthday and since many people’s birthdays are coming up, I made another one with this box too! For this one, I used the twin-tone markers and the faux calligraphy technique. I have to say I really like the bright colors(which we have not gotten with the big Tombow markers) but I might have used them wrong… when going over a certain spot multiple times, the paper flacked very fast, which was quite surprising to me, since it was specially chosen for this box. But I have to say, it might be a user error, still something I wanted to mention. The tutorial on how to use them did not help me much since actually the person in the “tutorial” also used them for the first time xD And the “tutorial” was more about using the thin tip for outlining and the bigger one for coloring in the lettering art. So I have to say it was not very helpful :/ The other tutorial about putting a shadow behind the letter, was as helpful to be honest. It basically goes like this:
1. Write a word(not showing hot to do that with the brush pen the best way)
2. Put shadow behind it in different colors.
3. Done
I have to say I am a bit disappointed since that’s kinda what I could come up with myself, a tutorial would really take its time to guide me through the process step by step more, especially when I either have problems using the brush pens or have never used them before. I felt kinda let down. But I am still kinda happy with the card I have made, maybe I can put some more details in later, but I really like the colors, I have to say I rarely work with them, so it was nice to do that for a change.

Greetingcard done by me with the paper and diffrent pens from the box. It has a white backround and a text in tghe middle saying "Alles Gute zum Geburtstag"(meaning Happy Birthday in German). Left and right of the text are two party canon that fire simply drawn streamers and confetti. — “Alles Gute zum Geburtstag” is the long version of german people saying “Happy BIrthday” 😛

All in all, I have to say that I was pretty disappointed in the box. The supplies we got were high quality, but I can’t really understand why we got those limited colors for example(still kinda mad about not getting a yellow), why there was no blending pen or a sheet of a practice alphabet. It just kinda feels a bit random to me. As random as the order of the chapters in the magazines, to be honest xD The whole box did not feel very thought through or maybe put together by someone, who does not enjoy Calligraphy very much. Maybe that’s why I am so disappointed in it, because Calligraphy is something I always liked to do, which is why I was looking forward to it so much! But I have to say again, this box came out before the watercolor one and it feels like they found and fixed many of the mistakes they made in this box like for example having a more structured magazine and less random supplies! So I will keep an eye on future boxes and their themes and I will definitely try another one sometime in the future 🙂 So you too should maybe not only judge them on this particular box and keep an eye on them, if you are interested in the general idea of these boxes! Now that I think about it, I am quite happy that I accidentally bought the watercolor box too, so that I was able to review both of them and see how the company has improved^^

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art, Artful, Mystery Box, Review, Subscription Box | LEAVE A COMMENT

July 7

Review of the Artful Box: Watercolor

I am back with another mystery/ subscription box review, this time it’s all about the Artful box, which is done by the same people who do the Papergang boxes too, so I had to test it out eventually 😉 The concept of both boxes is pretty similar, only that in the Artful box instead of stationery you get art supplies for a certain project and you don’t get it every month but one box every quarter of the year. I did not have the money for it in the first quarter of 2021, so I had now reordered the box and got it shipped in May.
Sadly same way with my Papergang boxes, there was a shipping/ delivery problem that led to the box that was shipped in May being lost. I did get sent a replacement box of course, but in the whole chaos, I kinda overlooked that instead of just buying one box, I actually made a subscription, so I got sent the next box already too. But to be honest, I am not mad about it, since it also sounds very interesting. Let’s have a look at it together!
So many things can be considered art, so there are many possibilities of what could be inside an Artful box. The people behind it thought it would be the best idea to highlight a certain type of art with every box, focus solely on that, and give the best supplies needed to start a project. This Mai box’s theme was Hand Lettering, which I actually did some years ago, so it was a great box for me to restart an old Hobby! The next box I got has watercolors as its theme and since the watercolor box actually arrived first, I will also review it first 😉

Insides of the box: a small glas container with white liquid, a blue box, a big aquarallpaper pad with an orange cover, blank greetingscards and a light blue metalcase for the watercolors.

The box came with a set of 24 watercolor half pans, a 29.5ml masking fluid bottle, special watercolor paper, 4 blank greeting cards, 5 different brushes, a pencil such as a pipette, and a 100 pages magazine with tips and tricks. The book was actually what I was interested the most in since the last time I painted with watercolors was in primary school and I absolutely hated it. I really hoped to get new motivation and learn new techniques which helped me use this type of art in a different way. The artwork on the book and within is very pretty, they even show how to draw one of my favorite animals a red panda! They start with some pages of general information about watercolors, assuming that you don’t know anything about it, which was great for me! But this information only uses up about 10 pages in the book, so if you already know how to work with it, you could start right away and still have enough input and ideas for your new projects 😉 So only judging from the book, I would say the box is both beginner-friendly, but also useful and interesting for people who search for art prompts, step-by-step guides, or interviews with artists who work with that particular craft.

Photo shows the metalcase from the inside, it's white, has 3 sides with diffrenty patterns and you can take the colors out one by one.

Like I mentioned, working with watercolors always felt like a chore to me, since it was the go-to color technique in almost all of my art classes and I still never seemed to fully master it. I also don’t think we were really introduced to how to work with them properly. For example, I never heard of a masking fluid before, even though it does sound like a cool way of creating certain patterns and would have been surely helpful!
As I am writing this part of the review, I still have not used the art supplies yet, but I wanted to let you know what I am planning on doing and later I can tell you if it has worked out of not 😉 I am actually a bit scared to try the very professional-looking animal drawings in the magazine and wanted to try something more abstract first. Since I also like to design greetings cards for my friends and family and there were some birthdays recently, I wanted to play around for a bit with the blank cards and use the watercolors to create an interesting background. Sadly there seems to be no real chapter on how to do that, only on some blending ideas in general. So I guess I will have to look for some other tutorials on the Internet. Maybe a small negative point: I would have loved to not only see realistic drawings, but some guides create abstract art too.

Close up of the artsupplies in from the blue bos: brushes, a pencil and a cartrage.

When starting to use the appliance from the box, I opted for watching videos on youtube in the end instead of using the magazine itself. I just learn better with visual input and the guides in the books were a bit too advanced for me. I watched a video by Shayda Campbell and tried to recreate a flower greeting card she made, testing out different colors and trying to blend them together.
One of the things I learned right away is that the colors are way more potent than anything I have used before! When using watercolors at school, we would mix them in the pan with the pigment itself and put it on paper, repeating the process over and over when the brush was dry again. With these watercolors, I take a bit of it on my brush, use the pipette to get some water on the mixing palate, and mix the puddle with my brush. Then I use this puddle for my illustrations and I only use the color again, when I am mixing a new one. It might sound kinda dumb to you, if you have worked with good watercolors before, of course, that’s how you would use it, right? But I have never done that, so it was all new to me xD What I realized because of it is that the half pans you get, which might seem very small at first, last longer than expected^^
The brushes felt like very good quality, but when working with watercolors, the liquid has a mind of its own. So even though they did not shed, but glide over the paper, the water often finds its own way xD If you will be more trained to use it, things like that won’t happen that often I guess, but for a beginner like me, it was not avoidable. The paper was really great to work with too! I did use a lot of water on it, because I wanted to try out different techniques and it never leaked or ripped, it only warped a bit, nothing some heavy books couldn’t fix. I did not get to test out the masking fluid, since it felt a bit too advanced for me yet, but I still appreciate having it in there for future use, when I got better 😉

Picture shows a greetingcard done by me, with diffrent colored flowers, vines and a text saying "Alles Gute"(german for Good wishes). — It’s was a birthday card, “Alles Gute” means “Good Wishes” in German^^

I would say I was pleasantly surprised by the box! The contents were very high quality, though all of them are produced especially for the box, which some people seem to be mad about(they even talk about it in the magazine). The way I understood it, there are certain brands being associate with “good art” and if you use any other brand, your art might not turn out as good, in some people’s opinion. I can’t really speak for them, since I have not used many different art brands when it comes to watercolor, but I would say it’s always good to try out new things 😉 And what I can say is, that the contents: brushes, colors, and paper were lightyears better than everything I have worked with so far and I can highly recommend it^^ The magazine itself is pretty interesting, especially the interviews, the guides are a bit to advances for a beginner. Of course, you could say that this box is just not made for beginners, but I do think it’s made to suit everyone. They are releasing a new box every quarter and it’s all about learning new things, so maybe there should be more projects for people beginning the craft. So I am looking forward to using my next box!

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art, Artful, Mystery Box, Review, Subscription Box | LEAVE A COMMENT