Ikea Art Supplies

Months ago now, there was a bit of a trend on YouTube of using art supplies from Ikea to make a piece of art.  Well, I say a trend.  I can recall about one video.

But when my sister sent a message to the family chat asking if anyone needed anything from Ikea, I had a quick look on the website and requested a few things.

I got these Förnyad pencils – which are no longer on the website.

These Måla fineliners, which you can find here.

These Måla markers, which you can find here.

These Fullfölja ink pens, which you can find here.

And then this Fullfölja sketchbook, which you can find here.

The first thing I noticed is that none of the packing was reusable.  Once all the pen packs were opened, they were rubbish.

The pencils were nice and sharp, which I like.  I hate having to sharpen new pencils.  They work well.  They’re pencils.  They erase well, which is important I guess.  The inking pens were nice and smooth.  They smear under water-based marker though.  The fineliner pens are gel pens and they’re lovely.  There’s a shiny silver and a shiny gold and the others are highlighters.  Again, nice and smooth.  I assumed the markers were double ended from the image on the pack, but it was just one nib.  It’s a pointed bullet nib, which allows you to make both the thin and thick lines shown on the pack.  They’re quite smooth as well.  No signs of pilling the paper with the initial swatches.

I did have a go at blending them, but they don’t.  They layer nicely to create new colours though.

The book is just a book.  It didn’t have a distinct front or back.  It came with a template page which I used as a backing paper to collect ink that leaked through.  The paper was thin, but nice and smooth (is it just me, or have I used that word a lot in this post?).  It bleeds through, but most of the books I’m used to do that.  I tested how many layers of ink would start to tear the paper and they did pretty well.  I think I got to about 6 layers before it got rough.

After I’d done all that, I did a grid of layering the markers to see what other colours I could come up with.

I also tested going over the inking pens with the markers, and then using the black marker as an inking pen since the inking pens bled so much.

I had a little doodle with some of the fineliners and the inking pens.  These are really nice to draw with – especially doing grid-based stuff with a grid template page.

These pens post too – meaning that the caps fit on the ends of the pens.  Very satisfying.

And then I got on to the art.  Naturally it had to be one of my little dome monsters. I sketched it out…

…and then I coloured it.  I did this first because of the way the inking pens bled.  The marker pens almost post, but not quite.  Not the end of the world, but it is nice when the caps do fit on the end.

The markers were the worst supply from this little haul I think.  They felt right away like they were drying out.  And of course it’s hard to get smooth colouring with water-based markers.  I guess there must be a way, but I have yet to find it.

Then I outlined the piece.  I didn’t wait long enough for the paper to dry, and the lines bled in a few places – like the legs.  Plus, I messed up when outling the eyes.  I have problems outlining sometimes – there’s a whole other blog about that in the works somewhere.  So instead of white eyes with black pupils, I settled for black eyes and used the silver gel pen to add highlights – which didn’t work.

It’s not great art.  I like the monster, but in terms of colouring I think the horns are the best bit.  Ikea is not an art supply company, and these are just cheap items.  All but the markers are pretty good.  And to be honest, I haven’t really used water-based markers since I discovered alcohol markers – so I couldn’t tell you if these ones were good or bad.

I did this project back in September 2019.  The pictures and notes have been festering in my “blogs to write” folder since then.  Now that I’m actually writing the blog, I feel like giving the supplies another shot.

I still have them all, nicely sorted and put away with all my other supplies.  I even have the book.  Perhaps they’d work better with a different type of drawing?  Perhaps they’d be awesome for a lettering piece, or for a Zentangle style piece.  Time to find out.

I re-swatched everything, just because I could.

Then I started doing some lines for a random colouring doodle thing, except I wasn’t happy with my first attempt, so I had another go.

My colouring isn’t the neatest, but this was just a doodle.

I also used the gold gel pen to do another random thing – inspired by an image from Pinterest.

Of course, I had to draw and colour a dome monster.

I coloured before I inked, because of the smearing.  I got about this far in and decided it was going to be as much of a disaster as the first time.

But by the time I had finished and inked, it actually looked pretty good.

It isn’t the smoothest colouring, but I think it’s quite good.  I do want to do a bigger, more detailed version of this particular monster.

I transitioned to using the gel pens by drawing little dome shapes of all the markers and all the gel pens, and turning them into little monsters.

Then with the gel pens I did a Zentangle piece.  The pink is a tangle called Bysomnus.  The orange is a tangle called Membranart – although there’s an extra layer to that tangle that I couldn’t really fit cos of the small space.  The yellow is a tangle called Doo Dah – which is a freaking awesome name.  The green is a tangle called Chard.  The blue is a tangle called Vlace.  The purple is a tangle called Safflower.

I really enjoyed doing that piece.  I need to do more Zentangle, but I think I’ve said that a few times already in recent months.

And then, since I’d said that maybe these pens would be good for lettering, I decided to do a lettering piece with the markers.  But I couldn’t settle on anything to letter – so I went with ROYGBIV.