Am currently uploading new products into my Storenvy post...

Am currently uploading new products into my Storenvy post AniRevo (finally). But first, just wanted to give a sneak preview of my Neko Atsume double-sided acrylic charms because they’re so cute and I love the way they turned out.

I got them done at @acornpress​ and they were lovely to work with. They can do small orders (important), great service, and my package came early. Two of my charms had some printing issues but Acorn Press threw in some extras so no harm done.

Looking forward to my next project with them!

More dip pen tests

So, it'll probably be a while before I end up posting for the month so here's a belated haul post thinger-ma-jigger.

Finally got a proper caligraphy ink set to go with my dip pen set.

Silver, black, white, and gold ink.

Don't you love the backdrop of the math homework I should be doing now but is instead writing this? Yeah yeah.

Oh, and can you guess what this is?

I'll give you a hint: it makes the big bottle I bought not too long ago a big waste.

They're even the same brand as the nibs, Speedball, too, so I know they should work fine with them.

And fine they did:

Ink tests

Holy shit man. If you actually bothered to read the writing chicken scratch, you'd see that I spent a considerable amount of time ranting about how awesome the black ink was. Also found a new favourite nib. Amazing what proper ink can do, right?
As for the other colours, the chunks of glitter in the gold and silver ink produced an overly thick and heavy line for me. Plus, combining the ink with smaller nibs makes the line too transparent and not glittery enough. I have no choice but to stick with the bigger ones. Oh well. Still beats using marker ink instead.
And, I probably don't need to say it, but I also tested the white ink out there, but being white, you can't see it.

What else is cool is that, unlike Sakura Pigma pens or something, this stuff is permanent when it dries. You can actually feel the texture, man. It dries 3D.


Drawn on a piece of index card.

Dip pen tests among other things

I get excited over art supplies. No surprise, no?

Check out the stuff I bought over the weekend:

Speedball sketching set

WOOT. The coolest and the most recent thing I've gotten: a dip pen set. Comes with six nibs and two pen holders. Now all I need is some gold ink and I'm all set for what I had been planning to do all this time.

Did some trial runs with them on a piece of index card. I used some green ink I had which was supposed to be used for refilling Tria markers. Only used the three big pen nibs, though, because they looked a little easier to clean.

Dip pen tests

Serious ink blotting, much? I partly blame that towards my inexperience, and to the fact that I couldn't really dip the nib into the ink as it only had a spout used to refill empty markers with.
I love how the tip of the nib always catches onto the paper when I draw with it, too.

Always good to practice good care taking, too. Thus, I got an excessively big bottle of pen cleaner.

Pen cleaner - 150 mL - imagine that it's flipped counterclockwise for you

I was about to buy a slightly smaller container of it I found on the sale rack because it was used and was dripping the stuff everywhere. However, my dad had a problem with the dripping.
Sucks that I got such a huge bottle of that when I bought a puny tub (if I can even call it that) of brush cleaner:

Old Master's Brush Cleaner - 1/4 onz

And I just started to get into watercolours, too!
I love the smell. Reminds me of lemon dish soap, except less strong.

Oh, and I bought a Moleskine notebook.

Dark blue Moleskine

 Nope, still don't see why people love them so much. Maybe it's because I bought a notebook instead of a sketchbook. Because I really wouldn't be able to do any paintings in mine's when I can't even write in pen without it showing on the other side.

I think you guys all say my Artist's Loft watercolour set, too. I don't know, though there's more colours, I kind of prefer the Talens one over it. Just *something* about the paint that bugs me.

ArtRage: First Impressions

If you guys don't know already, I'm a huge art application junkie. To name a few I have/had:

• GIMP (this is the only one I no longer have, but as it's freeware anyways...)
• Photoshop and all the other Design Suite apps (I downgraded my CS3 to my current CS2 because the icons are prettier :D)
• openCanvas 1.1
• openCanvas 4 (tool of choice)
• Easy Paint Tool SAI
• MS Paint - of course

Now I've got another to add to my collection. After reading a few forum topics about art applications, this name kept coming up: ArtRage. (And openCanvas never came up.)
So here's my first ever "review" thingamajig.

So I got ArtRage Studio 3. My first impression was the interface - it looked really nice! They took the time to round out the corners, for one, and give everything a sort of cohesiveness.  Here's a screenshot of ArtRage compared to PS CS2 and SAI.

Easy Paint Tool SAI... sadly, I forgot to open a new file so you can see the canvas.

Photoshop CS2.

ArtRage Studio 3 - obviously the prettiest one of the bunch!

One of the first things I noticed were how the brushes were displayed and how it mirrored the colour wheel. I think almost everything is collapsable.

ArtRage is very simular to the concept of Corel Painter in the sense that it tries to imitate real artistic medias.

Test run:

I'm quite fond of the paint tube combined with the pallette knife, which is what I used to make that huge sploch of colour in the background. I drew the face in with a pencil and a pastel. The birds and the beads on the left are stickers.

The reasons why I chose Studio 3 was for the watercolours. It looked so enticing in the preview image as it really looked, well, real. The eye in the top right-hand corner was painted using watercolours, and I have to say, I love the brush. It really imitates the qualities of watercolours. It can create vibrant strokes of colours as well as mix together to create a beautiful gradient effect. Other tools I used for the eye was a pencil.

Other brushes I tested out:

• Brush: a oval brush which imitates something akin to acrylics or oils. Streaks are left on the paint as if the brush hairs were really sweeping into them. It's a harder brush compared to the others.
• Fineliner: a circular, opaque brush. It work well for fine lining if the sensitivity was increased. I'm not much of a fan of it because it's blocky colour is so jarring against gentleness of the imitated brushes.
• Palette Knife: it's also featured as one of the blending in tools in many graphic programs. So this is really just the "mixer".
• Paint Tube: can only be used effectively with the knife, or else it'd look like this funny tube of colour.
• Crayon: a scruffy, textured brush.
• Pastel: simular to the crayon except softer as has a chalk-like quality.
• Pencil: akin to the crayon except the chunks of colour are closer together as well as the brush being generally thinner. I personally don't see the pencil like quality of it.
• Glitter: the weirdest thing about this is that it can also be smudged by the palette knife. This can be used for some cool effects.

One of the special things about ArtRage are the stickers. It's akin to some of the decorated brushes in PS, especially if the brush was a picture. I really enjoy ArtRage's birds in flight stickers, though. It looks like a good way to cheat my way out of painting a proper background!
Also, you can adjust how metallic the brushes should be, which is a first of any program I've seen for sure! All it does is turn up the contrast - and at 100% it looks like an ugly filter has been put on top of the line. Kudos for the innovation, though.

Also, I'm not too crazy with the lag, but my computer seems to be lagging regardless nowadays so this point can hardly be valid. I don't know if it's ArtRage's exceptional GUI, but I think that could be one of them. Well, it's a big problem because this really hinders how often I will use the program.


All in all, ArtRage is a good solid program, especially if you're into simulating traditional mediums. I recommend it for people who just like doodling or people who are new to CG art and have trouble transitioning from traditional to computer. One day I'll get Corel Painter, but ArtRage seems like a good replacement for all the poor people!