Hi all!! As I mentioned in my last post, I have a really exciting review this time around! Recently I purchased the new Mossery brand Gouache Painting Kit, which was a collaboration with the one and only Sibylline Meynet!! (@sibylline_m on Instagram)
Sibylline has been one of my biggest art Inspirations for as long as I can remember, and I was excited to receive some cool goodies from her and also get a chance to use the art supplies she uses in her beautiful paintings!
I want to quickly mention: I plan to make a full painting (and many more) of my own using these supplies, and have already began on said artwork. However, I am a bit crunched for time to work on this review, and I don't really want to rush that artwork. So I will still be finishing it and posting it to my Instagram, but for now, this review will mainly show the supplies and how I have enjoyed using them so far. I did do some little test paintings using the included guidebook, so you'll have that to see the paints in action! Now, on to the review!
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I wanna start by listing the items included in this box and where you can get one! You can find the kit at Mossery's official website, and there is also a direct link to it in Mossery's Instagram Bio (@Mosseryco).
The Sibylline Meynet Gouache Art Kit is currently priced at $179.00. Mossery's site does claim this is a discount and that the original price is $199.00, but the Kit isn't sold anywhere else and I have never seen this price budge, so it may just be a marketing technique.
This is a pretty expensive purchase, so I'll go ahead and say I have found the kit to be very, very worth it. If you really like to paint, especially with Gouache, and/or are a really huge fan of Sibylline's work, I'd say go for it! It's been a really fun splurge and has met all my expectations in terms of enjoyment and quality! (And also, if you're at all interested, the sooner you order the better, because the next batch of kits won't be shipped till April, and this shipment continues to get later the longer you wait to order. Thankfully the delay between shipment and ordering is getting less as the kit has been available for a little while, as I waited nearly 3 months for mine to reach me!!)
Here is the Full List of Items included in the Sibylline Meynet Gouache Art Kit:
300gsm Watercolor Sketchbook with Customizable Cover (Includes Name Personalization, and currently 2 Cover Design Options)
Sibylline Meynet Gouache Practice Guidebook
Sibylline Meynet Gouache Practice Workbook
10 Set Holbein Acryla Gouache
3 Set Princeton Velvetouch Paintbrushes
Mossery Porcelain Palette
0.5mm Pentel Orenz Mechanical Pencil (+ Lead Refills!)
MT Washi Tape
Staedtler Mars Plastic Eraser
2 Large Art Prints
4 Postcard Sized Art Prints + Envelopes
2 Sticker Sheets
Mossery Art Pouch
So yeah, a pretty big haul!! I wanna talk about all the items in more detail, but first, I thought I'd show a little unboxing! Now I actually unboxed this off camera so I could just enjoy checking out the items first, so I then had to stuff everything back in the box for this video. So don't worry if you see anything unwrapped - everything came nicely wrapped up and in great quality!
Here's the Video Below:
I also took Pictures in case you want to skip the video, which I'll show as I discuss each item. Let's talk about it!
300gsm Watercolor Sketchbook:
This Sketchbook is super nice!! The cover turned out beautifully, as you can see it has artwork from Sibylline on the front and back, and I was able to get a Personalized name on the cover as well! I of course chose Raine, which is my middle name and how I sign my work, but you can get anything 15 Letters or less, with two font options available as well. The Paper is 300gsm so it's nice and sturdy, which should help prevent any buckling as well. It also has a really nice texture to it, I tried to take a picture at an angle where you could see the tooth of the page if that helps at all. It's definitely more textured than Canson Watercolor paper for reference.
This paper is of course perfect for
Watercolor or Gouache paints. The actual Kit did not list the dimensions of the book, but I found the book seperatly on Mossery's site, so I believe the sizing is 200 mm H × 136 mm W. It comes with a nice folder area inside to keep pieces of paper, a bookmark, and an outside strap. I'm also pretty sure it's refillable.
Overall it's a really nice book and I can tell by the painting I've done in it so far that it holds up very well to the paint and the tape! I'm really happy with the quality of it overall, which is no surprise because Mossery books are always incredible quality. Worth the priciness for sure!
Sibylline Meynet Gouache Practice Guidebook:
This is a really great addition to the kit. The guide book is a small booklet filled with tips and step by steps from Sibylline, featuring the same art as is used in the Workbook so you can see direct reference of how she did each painting! She even includes her own swatches of the included paints to help you see the full range of mixes achievable with the 10 paints. It's also just really pretty to look at!!
Sibylline Meynet Gouache Practice Workbook:
This is probably my favorite part of the kit personally!! The Workbook includes outlines of many of Sibylline's paintings and Swatch Sheets to use as gouache painting practice! The paper seems to be the same as used in the sketchbook, as it is really thick and holds up super greatly to the paint. There are up to 65 ILLUSTRATIONS included in this workbook!! That's so many!! It will be so long before I can paint in all of them! It also includes places to swatch the paints and all their mixes, test your brushes, etc. It's just so useful and fun. I only had the time to paint two of the half body outlines and two swatch rings over the course of two whole nights of painting, so I can't imagine how long it will be before I can finish all the illustrations included in this book.
It's basically a gouache coloring book and it's so much fun, perfect for when you feel like doing something artsy but also just want to relax, because you can just paint without thinking about the art itself. Just make sure when you're using it to use an appropriate amount of water in your gouache so that when you paint over the outlines, you can still see them a bit underneath so you can paint them back in with your super thin brush.
10 Set Holbein Acryla Gouache:
The paints themselves!! Each tube is 10mm and this set includes the colors:
Shell Pink (DO11)
Vermillion (DO12)
Deep Yellow (DO33)
Light Apricot (DO41)
Blue Green (DO72)
Ultramarine Deep (DO92)
Light Blue (DO100)
Burnt Sienna (DO131)
Titanium White (DO151)
Primary Black (DO193)
I absolutely love the colors included with this Kit, I can definitely tell they were hand selected by Sibylline as they are very reminiscent to the colors used in her work. I personally really love the specific tones included here, which is part of what sold me on getting myself this kit, it's tilted towards the colors I prefer. Instead of a pure green, this kit supplies a Blue Green/ Dark Turquoise color, but it's very easy to make true green with the colors provided. I personally really like the colors here, but I think it'd be a real challenge trying to make a strong purple or hot pink color with them, just as a heads up. The blues included mixed with the Vermillion, which is a more orange red than a brick red, results in more of a gray mauve than a purple. And while there is a pink, it's really light. But again, it felt like these colors were picked for my preferences, so I don't really see myself having to mix those colors because.. I don't really tend to choose them. Also, DO100 is pretty much my favorite color of all time.
I have seen so many big artists using Holbein Acryla Gouache for so long and have always been eyeing it, it looked so high quality! I typically have stuck to the more mid-range paints in the past, and have only ever used Reeve's brand Gouache paints. They were very nice and definitely helped me to realize Gouache was my ideal paint. I love how you can work it like watercolors but it's so much more saturated and opaque. I've always thought the Reeve's paints were very good and sufficient for my painting needs, and that the Holbein would be a luxury for the better pigment alone.
I have seriously been proven wrong by these paints. They are by far the nicest art supply I have ever worked with. I looked it up, and a 12 pack of Holbein Acryla Gouache is priced at around $45 while the 10 Pack of Reeve's Gouache is $10. So yeah. You pay for the difference here. But oh my goodness, is it there. These were the smoothest and glossiest paints I've ever seen! They come out of the tubes so easily and make such a perfect little circle of paint.
The biggest difference I noticed was that, unlike my Reeve's Gouache, the Holbein are perfectly mixed. I always had issues with the Reeve's paint separating in the tube, and causing oily bubbles to come out when I squeezed the tube instead of nice smooth paint. So I'd always end up squeezing the paints first on to a paper towel to get rid of the odd separated bits before putting some on to my palette. No more of that! These paints are also even more opaque than my Reeve's, and it's important to mix a decent bit of water with them so that they apply cleanly to the page without all the tooth showing through. Of course because it's Gouache, you can also add a lot of water to make it more transparent and similar to watercolors. These are just really great paints and I can't see myself going back to the old ones now.
Additional Supplies:
Also included with this kit are 3 paintbrushes, a porcelain palette, a mechanic pencil, a roll of washi tape, and an eraser. All of these items are of such high quality, I was honestly shocked, because I didn't even know they could BE so much nicer than what I had been using.
The 3 Princeton Velvetouch Paint Brushes included in this box are the best paintbrushes I've ever used for sure. We're given a Mini Round (Size 0), Liner Brush (Size 10/0), and a Filbert, aka a Big Round brush (Size 8). These brushes are great for two reasons. One, they of course have wonderful brush tips. It's super soft hair that was used, and it's really nicely glued in to the brush, unlike many brushes that I've ordered which have hair falling out with every stroke. Two, the handles are wonderful. I've always noticed with cheap brushes, they save money on the handles. They're usually coated in a paint that ends up flaking and chipping off the actual wooden handle underneath after getting any water on it. Which.. kind of happens when you're cleaning brushes. These brushes are coated in a "Velvetouch" finish, it's a really nice feeling and has a sort of softness to it. I can tell it won't be coming off.
The Pentel Orenz Mechanical Pencil is a really nice pencil. I was glad a mechanical pencil was included as opposed to a standard pencil as I much prefer working with tiny lead. I usually just use cheap Bic mechanical pencils just because, and while the difference here isn't really that huge, the Pentel pencil is definitely nicer and a good inclusion in the kit. It is metal so it's got a better heavy hold to it. The lead included also seems to be a bit on the lighter side to the average mechanical pencil lead (if I'm correct, I could be wrong) which makes it nice for painting right on top of, which you can do easily with gouache without the pencil showing through. It also DOES have an eraser, I thought it might not since the kit comes with an eraser and I couldn't find it at first, but it is hidden underneath a little metal cap at the bottom of the pencil, which is nice to have.
The Mossery Porcelain Palette is actually my favorite of the supplies included in this box, believe it or not! In the past I have used plastic palettes off of Amazon, because I figured what difference did the quality of my Palette make? It's just the texture of the thing, right? I always struggled with putting gouache or ink in those palettes, if they sat for more than a second, it would not only stain the Palette, but get stuck big time. But it's also very difficult to A. Clean wet gouache off a Palette, and B. Keep your paints any bit wet until it's time to wash your Palette. Gouache dries within 30 minutes out of the tube at the most, so unless you're making full paintings in a half an hour, you WILL have dried paint on your Palette before you're ready to clean it off. So my solution was to get huge sets of the cheapest palettes I could find so that, once the whole palette was unusable after maybe three uses at the most, I'd have another one to replace it with.
If this sounds like a horrible system, you're right, it really was, but I wasn't painting enough to do a ton of research about the problem. I was excited to have such a nice looking palette included in this kit, but I had no idea the huge difference it would make to my experience.
All it takes to clean this palette back to 100% clean and white, is to let all the paint fully dry on to the Palette, and then run hot water on it for maybe just a minute. The dried paint literally just slips off the palette in big chunks, with no hassle and no staining. I was kind of blown away by this!! Just be sure to let it dry all the way first because it actually makes it easier to clean, at one point I had filled my Palette with semi wet paint but needed an empty spot for fresh paint, so I tried to wash it then. It still came up completely clean in the end, but the wet paints tried to smear on the Palette so I had to scrub it with my fingers just a bit. Just let the paint sit there and set it in hot water for a second, you'll come back to a perfectly clean Palette. It's seriously amazing!!
The MT Washi Tape, Staedtler Eraser, and Mossery Pouch are all great supplies as well, not a ton to talk about but they work just as expected and are very nice quality. I love the color of the tape as it matches Sibylline's artwork, it has a good amount of stickiness so that it can be used as masking tape for the paint, but is also not so sticky that it damages the paper. The Eraser is solid, I like that the eraser shavings come off in big chunks rather than lots of tiny ones. And the Mossery Pouch is a nice bonus inclusion that would work well as a way to store art supplies when you're going some place. It's got a nice texture to it and is nicely made so I know I'll be using it as a pencil pouch in the future!
Sibylline Meynet's Artwork:
As I mentioned above, I'm a huge fan of Sibylline's work, so I was very excited to have some of it in my own hands! Included were two larger 200mm x 145mm prints, four small 108mm x 140mm postcards/prints, and 2 180mm x 130mm sticker sheets with 22 Stickers each. And a bonus bookmark I didn't even know was coming! So many goodies!!
The prints and stickers are all beautiful quality and wonderfully printed. No mess ups, the paper is a nice texture, the colors are vibrant and accurate, and the pictures crisp and clear. I can't wait to find a place to display all of this stuff!! My personal favorite is Knight print, it's just so pretty and the color scheme is perfect!! You can tell a lot of thought was put in to these and they turned out so well, thank you so much to Sibylline for putting hard work and thought into these prints, it really makes a difference.
So, as I'm sure you can tell, I'm crazy happy with this kit and very satisfied with everything included, from the art supplies to the prints. As expensive as it was, I would definitely say it was all worth it! I seriously cannot think of one con about anything included in this set. It is all so unbelievably nice, and for me, clearly the highest quality supplies I've ever gotten to work with. I have nothing but good to say for it! Truly the only downside is the price, but it is certainly a deal as opposed to buying all the include items separately. If you're looking for something fun to splurge on, this is a great option, I think you'll definitely find the items worth the price. And it's the only way to get Sibylline's Guidebook + Workbook.
Before I go, I wanted to share some painting process with you all of using the Holbein Gouache! Like I said before, I wasn't able to finish a personal painting with these before it was time to write this review, but I did have time to do some work in Sibylline's Workbook, so that's what I'll be showing below. It includes the paint swatches and also the process of me painting one of the portraits Sibylline included. Unfortunately, I was having a lot of issues with my recordings, and so there is missing footage here and there, specifically of me finishing the portrait, as my camera just kept ending the video on its own. I hope you'll enjoy what's included, and keep an eye out for my own painting which I'll post on my Instagram soon.
I was unable to upload this video directly to the article due to the file size, however you can watch it as part of my Gouache Kit Unboxing Youtube Video by going to the comments and seeing my Time Stamps Comment - click the middle option to view the swatching + painting I could not upload in to this article. (The top link shows the unboxing video I showed above.)
The link to the Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9UkSawmK8M&t=37s
I'm really happy with the way I painted these and the colors I used!! Especially the one with the blue box painted around, I used some of my favorite colors and I think it turned out so pretty! Makes me kind of want redraw the piece myself. My goal for the workbook is to color each illustration in differently than Sibylline did to challenge myself with my color choices. What do you guys think of the colors I used for these? And which is your favorite?
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