 Hey everybody, welcome back to The Average, I'm Steph, I'm the Average Artist in case you're new here, hello and welcome. Today I'm unboxing some post that I received from Artex, an art company who are very kind to me and often give me stuff. So I received this mystery pass. I'm excited to see what's inside. Okay, that took about 5,000 years to open but here we go, I'm very excited because I caught a peek of some stuff inside. And first of all, oh my gosh, look at these poor Ruben pastels. Look at that packaging, Artex are way too kind to me. Oh my god, I am super excited. Look at this, oil pastels, right? Well I've never used oils and I don't really like oil pastels but this is a good experiment, a good chance to experiment with them, right? Because I've never really used them properly. They sent me the banana sketching rubbing sponge which is what I had my eye on which I asked them for because they look so adorable. Basically they're like painting and sketching rubbing sponge and for making a hazy and rendered effect on a picture when painting and they look like bananas so those are super cute and I can't wait to open them. And they sent me loads of masking tape which I always need when painting and this is super cute, it's just, they're, okay, they sent me way too much honestly. This is so kind of them, I can't believe it again, they've been so nice to me. They sent me these masking tapes, Artex masking tapes and yeah, they look really pretty and I can't wait to use them for painting. One last thing at the bottom of the box which I did not know that they were sending me anything other than the sponges. So this is like really nice surprise, I can't get to it. It's really in there guys. Here we go, here we go, what's it gonna be, what's it gonna be? Whoa, they sent me more oil pastels, these look beautiful. I love the packaging so much, it's like really high end looking and I've never really used oil pastels like I was saying so it'd be exciting to try them out especially with the sponge I guess. It's a good combo, let's try them. I think I'm gonna unbox this beautiful box first, unbox this beautiful box. I'm like severely blown away whenever I get sent stuff, I just can't believe it, I have to kind of pinch myself. I don't understand why anybody would want to send me stuff so it's super nice of them. I can't get this off, why can't I get this off? This looks like a luxurious box of chocolates or something doesn't it? Wow, oh my gosh they're like metallic, oh and there's like a little pamphlet of how to use them which I will definitely need because I don't use them. Oh my god guys, is this like the most luxurious art supply you've ever seen? Wow, so they're like metallic oils, oil pastels. Look at this one, it's beautiful, look at that colour, my god, my god guys. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to try these. I broke the box a little bit because I'm a complete klutz. This is embarrassing, I mean we can see the washi tape but I will open one for you guys just to like check it out. If it wasn't complete idiot, we would be quicker. Oh my god please, these new nails don't really help. So there we go, there's the masking tape, it's beautiful, it's gold, it's luxurious, it says Artex on it which reminds me of my good friends Artex who are now like my best friends because they always send me what? Yeah, they send me the best, they send me free stuff which is like super nice so yeah. Okay, that didn't peel off as slickly as I wanted it to. Okay, whatever. We can see the masking tape, yep, one of the middle masking tape, pretty luxurious, pretty cool, very nice. And let's open the oil pastels and then we'll get to sketching out stuff with our new oil pastels I guess. Don't worry, the best will always inadvertently show up, may you have the courage to move forward and ease to step back. Pretty cool quote actually, pretty cool quote. Whatchie, can I help? Can I help you with something? Can I help you with something? Kitten Attack. Kitten Attack. Is that a song? You're so cute. But you gotta go. You're so cute. I bet you think this song is about you. You're so cute. Thank you for watching. You would think these nails would be really good at like opening things but apparently not. Okay, there we go. Let's open these up. Again, it's looking pretty. I really like the artwork that they have on these like flyers and stuff and here we go. Here are just some normal colors I guess. There are a couple of the metallics but we've got a whole box of those and they have all these different colors and people who like probably always use oil pastels are probably screaming of jealousy right now but I'm pretty half excited, half intimidated, I guess apprehensive to try and use oil pastels but you know what, you know me guys, I just want to jump right in so let's get to testing these. But look, they're all like metallic. These soft pastels are soil. They're oil. Soil. Oil pastels. Soil. I didn't say soil. I said soil. I said soil. I also want to open these banana things as well which I've definitely used with these. What is that? It's a banana sketching sponge and I think it's the cutest sponge I've ever seen and like you can use water. So cute. Okay guys, you know me, you know I'm not really one for swatches but this is a material that I'm not comfortable with or I haven't used before really so I want to just do some swatches to sort of figure out the the landscape of what we're working with here. So I'm just gonna do some tests and see how it is. Okay so they're super like smooth pastels right and yeah they're like waxy kind of feel in case you haven't used them before I guess most of you have or have some kind of inkling of how they work. So I'm just gonna do some random like swatches and tests and see how I feel. I think they can quite easily get murky which is something to look out for and I also want to use my little sponge and see how that works out. It's really kind of cool like textures I'm getting with this so it can be fun to see how it goes. I have the feeling that it's going to be like you know when you use watercolor and you can't take back the mistake I feel like that's what this is going to be. Let's try this gold out because I'm looking attracted to that. That didn't make any sense I'm so sorry. I will sell this piece for 500 pounds in the market because it's covered in gold. Sorry with any kind of medium that you use right like any new medium you always get a little bit apprehensive because you get that feeling of like whatever I'm going to do is going to not look good so let's just see how we do. Oh my god I really like the smudging technique with the banana. I really like this brush um brush sponge I think is really cute and uh yeah let's let's dive into like trying to draw something shall we draw paint pastelate pastelate. Right let's begin our experiments. I think I'm noticing that a little goes a long way with this but I'm still not totally sure so I'm just gonna dive in and see how we do with this. I'm kind of going to approach it like watercolor and try to be very careful with well this is me being careful by the way guys but very careful with what I lay down and see how we do. Uh I really like this smudging technique I think this is the way to go for me um I especially like it because it comes in the form of a little banana 10 points if you can guess what I'm drawing. Not sure if I'm using it to um like sharply but I'm gonna try it out I'm gonna try it out. I'm just gonna keep layering up this and see how it does so let's just get down to it and I will give you my thoughts as I go but so far so good I think um yeah I am enjoying them. So these are paintbrush and water so it's really cool we use water. Are you sure? Yeah it's water. I tried water and it doesn't do anything because there's loads look at that. I'm sure I think this is really that brush is mad dirty. I'm really enjoying just experimenting right now um I understand that I'm probably not using these correctly but it's just fun to like just go for it and see how stuff turns out. How it's looking so far I'm not sure I totally enjoy using oil pastels which is a super shame because look how amazing these are. I do like the quality of them like the wispiness of it and like the dreaminess of it but I think they're really difficult for me to use so I'm just trying to get to grips with it a bit more but for now I think I'm gonna call this test done. I do like the way that it looks it's kind of fun and it was fun to use and like it was super tactile to like get in there with my hands and using the sponge and stuff. It was fun so I'm definitely going to use these again and uh have fun with them but yeah I'm not sure I'm the best at using them but I think there's some like really dreamy stuff happening within the textures in this that I could probably play with in the future with doing like landscapes and stuff maybe I tried to do a two like too much detail in like one because if you can't tell what this is I was trying to do like a bouquet of flowers and I think it's kind of difficult to do with your first try with oil pastels so I think next time I'll just do something a little bit more I don't know dreamy and I think you can get such a dreamy quality with these which is really cool so if you're like a fantasy artist definitely definitely check these out so thanks again to Artex for sending me this stuff it's really really nice of them I really appreciate it and it's super kind and also I get to make a video on this stuff for you guys to like look at I'll link these items down below I will in case you're interested in I don't know grabbing some if you like so thanks again for watching and supporting guys I would like to thank my patrons you guys are awesome and also if you guys want to grab a ticket set and a monthly print for this month's print reward on Patreon then please check out the link down below I would super appreciate it and also my comics are up for sale and Etsy still so thanks a lot bye bye see you next time bye meanwhile Chris has taken a bit of a liking to them what do you think uh yeah it's cool so does Mochi Gigi calm down they're cool I don't know really have to get used to them again I guess but I was saying like when I did that it was hard to like I picked kind of a detailed thing to do would you say it's difficult to do like a detailed thing with them um I think it's quite a messy medium at first maybe with a bit of practice you could do more detailed stuff I'm not really sure it's been a long time since I've used them but yeah it's quite they're quite fun that you can smudge them all right that's enough no one asks for your whole encyclopedia anyway follow me at Chris 500 I submit 500 it doesn't exist