Hello! It’s been a while since I uploaded an art post and more importantly, I’ve a bunch of new and yet-to-test art supplies which I guess need to be reviewed:) While I was away on vacation some weeks ago I sketched a bit but mostly ate, explored book and art supply stores. It’s nice to break away from routine for a bit. Without wasting any time, let’s get started with the FIRST ART HAUL on my website (drum roll please)…

As you might remember, I had sketched my Art Supplies Wishlist a while back and most of the things you’ll see below are featured somewhere in here. In case you don’t recall, here’s the (sort-of) wishlist I had posted:

1- Noodler’s inks

I bought six bottles of Noodler’s Ink in the shades (i)Baystate Blue (ii) Apache Sunset (iii) Antietam (iv) Black Swan in English Rose (v) Heart of Darkness (vi) Golden Brown. These were purchased from http://www.desertcart.com

You only see five here in the picture because one of them is yet to arrive (I shall post pictures once I receive it). These are all 3oz (around 88.7 ml) bottles with the exception of Heart of Darkness which is 4.5 oz (133 ml) and comes with a free Noodler’s fountain pen. The pen is nothing great and I passed it on to my niece because I wasn’t going to use it. The inks, however, are gorgeous- my favorite so far is the Baystate blue which I have been using in a lot of my sketches.

You can use these inks in fountain pens or with a paint brush or however else you feel like- the color swatches though can look very different on your screen. I had browsed through hundreds of webpages checking out the shades of these inks and after I received them and tested them out, looked nothing like what I had expected. Anyway, the inks are amazing though they have a strange, strange *makes a face* odor.

Check out the swatches and the video below and see for yourself- the colors really are beautiful! That smell though…ugh. I didn’t swatch ‘heart of darkness’ because it is regular black ink.

Apart from these beauties, some other Noodler’s inks that you might want to check out (beep beep wishlist alert) are Cayenne, Ottoman rose, Gruene cactus, Shah’s rose, Widow maker, Baystate cape cod cranberry and First emperor of China. I guess I’m partial towards the reds for some reason. The colors are deep and brilliant- you should check them out for yourself!

I wish though that the samples were available because these ink bottles are huge and a lot of times all you want to do is try it in a few sketches or maybe even a single art piece.

2- Fountain pens

I bought three fountain pens- two from Lamy and one from Faber Castell – from Kinokuniya. I already use Lamy Safari pens in a variety of colors and love them so much, I decided to buy another in case I felt like using other shades of ink in newer sketches. I lost a Lamy Joy recently and bought a replacement with a wider nib. It’s nice to have line variations to experiment with and also because I use some textual elements in my work, it looks pretty good! The neon Lamy Safari has Noodler’s Baystate Blue and the Joy has Noodler’s Black Swan in English Rose.

3- Paint brushes

I have wanted to try out the Pentel Aquash water brushes for a while now, especially after using the ones from Kuretake Zig and Sakura. Pentel brushes can be bought individually or as a set of three with different brush tips- small, medium and large. I bought the set and was quite happy with the barrel size of these and the brush tips are pretty utilitarian. The thing I dislike about brush pens in general is that the tip wears out quickly.

I also bought a Japanese Sumi brush from Kinokuniya.

4- Water colors

Sennelier watercolor tubes I purchased online from http://www.creativehands.in

I ran out of two colors- Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna and had to get their replacements as well as some new colors for a bit of variety in my sketches. The colors you see in the image are (in no particular order) 565 French Ochre, 116 Titanium White, 641 Sennelier Orange, 856 Cobalt Green, 843 Turquoise Green, 813 Olive Green, 705 Warm Grey, 587 Yellow Sophie, 252 Yellow Ochre, 599 Quinacridone Gold, 211 Burnt Sienna and 407 Van Dyck Brown. Also, there’s an offer going on where they send you a free Arches watercolor A4 sketch pad on ordering 6 watercolor tubes.

5- Sketchbooks

I bought four sketchbooks from Stillman and Birn- Gamma, Beta, Delta and Zeta from http://www.desertcart.com

With the exception of the Gamma series (150gsm), the rest are extra heavyweight 270 gsm paper. The paper I use regularly is Moleskine 200gsm so I knew I didn’t want to work on anything below that thickness which is why I didn’t purchase the Alpha or Epsilon. If you check out my recent twitter or Instagram feed, you can see how well watercolors washes work on Beta, Delta and Zeta paper. I have yet to try out Gamma and as soon as I do that, I shall post an update. So far, I’m quite happy with these sketchbooks although I guess I prefer a larger working area so the next time I’m going to get something A4-ish or similar. Check out these sketchbooks, they’re really good quality paper and the binding is great too.

6- Miscellaneous

I guess I won’t need very many supplies for some months now! Hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you have any questions, leave a comment below 🙂

*Desert Cart Delivery (for those in U.A.E.)

I have had too many people ask me about desert cart delivery so I’m just adding it here to my post. I have ordered a bunch of various things from http://www.desertcart.com and always had a good experience. Most items were delivered within 10 days- some even in a week’s time and I was overjoyed especially because those items were not available in stores. I got the wrong item delivered once and contacted them for a return/exchange and it was super quick too. The replacement took a while but in the end, I have a good review for them. It would be great if they could work on their customer service a bit. Good service from desert cart, says a happy customer 🙂

*Creative Hands Delivery (for those in India)

Creative Hands delivers within 2 days mostly if your order qualifies for fast shipping- I guess there’s a certain amount you need to spend to qualify for it. Once they took longer to deliver but I recommend you order directly from them as opposed to ordering from their Amazon store because you have to pay shipping and they are slower- I don’t know why. It’s just that way somehow. They have some good stuff on their website, take a look and order away! 🙂

Something I didn’t like- I had asked them to mail me a watercolor shade chart from Sennelier so I could choose colors to buy. They didn’t respond until I first placed an order and asked then (Have some faith people!)

*Kinokuniya Dubai 

Anything artsy that sells as ‘Japanese’ in Kinokuniya, you will mostly find at Daiso for less than half the price. Not kidding. Also, Kinokuniya will themselves not give you the box/packaging for any pens you buy. You have to ask for it and when questioned about it, they also act like jerks. This apart, they have the coolest collection of funko pops 🙂