Illustrations, Sketches, and Art Supply Reviews
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Leuchtturm1917 A5 Sketchbook New 2020 Version Review
I really love drawing in the Leuchtturm1917 Plain Journal lately. I’ve been using it for the last month, and I’ve just grown to love the paper. The way it handles ink and pencil is really amazing, I just wish the paper was thicker because it folds and creases easily, especially when erasing. I even prefer it to those Moleskine Cahier’s I reviewed a while back. So when I saw that Leuchtturm1917 put out a new 2020 revision to their A5 Sketchbook, I wanted to try it out.
I tried their first sketchbook back in 2016, and I just wasn’t a fan. It had a lot of issues with feathering ink in my experience. Would I like this one any more than the old version?
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Mitsubishi Kohitsu Shosha Pencil 10B Review
I’ve been on a wild pencil kick lately. I’ve stayed mostly in the HB, B, and 2B range of graphite core hardness, but I was wondering what the really soft pencils were like. I ordered a Tombow Mono Professional 6B, and I thought I could get something darker. Then I tried a Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B Pencil, and that was much darker than the Tombow Mono Professional 6B, I’d say near perfect. The last thing I can think of to try is the Mitsubishi Kohitsu Shosha Pencil in 10B, so I ordered it up to see if it was any darker.
Spoiler Alert: Just stick with your Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B.
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Moleskine Cahier Journal Large Plain Brown Kraft Review
The Moleskine Cahier Journal, in the Large Plain “Brown” Kraft option has been my absolute favorite sketchbook over the last 2 months. Starting August 1st of 2020, I went out and got a pack of these (they automatically come in three packs, 80 pages per, for around $14.99) at Target, I even returned a extra Moleskine Art Sketchbook that I had bought from them because I was getting tired of pages being inconsistent with ink (certain pages were like Bristol board in how they accepted ink, then the next page feathered like crazy), and it was also hard to justify the price per page to just doodle in the thing ($21.99 per sketchbook for 104 pages).
It was hard for me to just use the Sketchbook Moleskine as a sketchbook. I described this problem in my LEUCHTTURM1917 Plain Journal Review a few months back. One of my problems with that sketchbook was that there was ghosting to the back side of every page. Meaning a book that had 250 pages effectively only has 125 pages now, since I’m not drawing on the back of the sheets. I’m not really saving money.
That’s where the value of the Cahier comes in.
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Mitsubishi Uni HB Pencil Review
I’ve really been wanting to try out the Mitsubishi Uni HB pencils since I found out how amazing the Hi-Uni HB pencils are from Mitsubishi (honestly all of their pencils I’ve tried from them have been great thus far). The concept of the same core, but a cheaper pencil sounds like a winner to me.
As it turns out, the Uni is a very hard pencil to come by in America. Jetpens, CW Pencil, shoot even Amazon or Ebay doesn’t really have them. I was only able to source a box via The Thackery (same with my box of Kita-Boshi 9500’s), though you can get some vintage pencils from some Etsy sellers (which I generally don’t care that much about vintage). So, are they worth it?
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Kitaboshi 9500 HB Pencil Review
I have gone very, very far down the wooden pencil rabbit hole these last few months. I just purchased a box of “Super Drawing” Kita-boshi 9500 HB Pencils (love that they mention drawing, most just say some form of writing), and they’ve been pretty darn great for drawing and sketching thus far.
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Zodak Commission
This was pretty fun, a full 11”x17” commission of Zodak (or Zodac, apparently) from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe for L Jamal Walton with a request for screentone specifically! It let me cut loose and not be quite as reserved as i am in my personal work with it (it is a finite resource!).
Want a commission of your own? Shoot me an email! and we’ll work out the details.
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Möbius+Ruppert Grenade Brass Bullet Review
I’ve really gotten into pencils lately. First I started playing around with different sized mechanical pencils and leads (0.5 mm, 0.7mm, and 0.9 mm of the Pentel Sharp line mostly), then to 2mm lead and lead holders, then re-discovering Prismacolor Col-Erase Colored Pencils, finally to just embracing the grand daddy of them all, the simple wood encased pencil. I blame this mostly on Caroline Weaver (no relation), the owner of CW Pencils in NYC, and the book she mentioned in her shop, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski (who also just happens to be a professor at Duke University here in Durham, NC).
I got a bit obsessed, and I’m just barely getting out of being obsessed. In future posts I’ll go over a few of the different brands of pencil I’ve been using, but the thing I’ve used the most (and kind of fine the most interesting) has been the Möbius+Ruppert Grenade (sometimes called “Granite”) Brass Bullet.
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Balloon Girl
This is a study, apparently from a meme. I just thought it looked pretty cool, awesome color palette. I wanna grab a whole set of colored pencils now, I’ve really been digging using them lately.
Took a photo of this because my scanner is insanely awful for color, especially subtle color.
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