Illustrations, Sketches, and Art Supply Reviews


  • Leuchtturm1917 A5 Sketchbook New 2020 Version Review

    Leuchtturm1917 Sketchbook Medium A5 Black

    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?

    Read More
  • Mitsubishi Kohitsu Shosha Pencil 10B Review

    Mitsubishi Kohitsu Shosha Pencil in 10B

    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.

    Read More
  • Moleskine Cahier Journal Large Plain Brown Kraft Review

    3 Moleskine Cahier Journal's in the Large Plain Brown Kraft option, sketched on and in by me with graphite and ink

    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.

    Read More
  • Mitsubishi Uni HB Pencil Review

    Sketch created with a Mitsubishi Uni HB Pencil

    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?

    Read More
  • Kitaboshi 9500 HB Pencil Review

    Kita-Boshi 9500 HB Pencil and Sketch

    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.

    Read More
  • Möbius+Ruppert Grenade Brass Bullet Review

    M+R Brass Bullet Handheld Pencil Sharpener Grenade Granite 0604

    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.

    Read More
  • Balloon Girl

    moms know best meme girl balloons

    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.

    Read More
  • Shelly Johnson

    shelly johnson from twin peaks sketch Mädchen Amick

    This sketch was based off a photo of Mädchen Amick in Twin Peaks. I’ve never actually finished Twin Peaks, and I wanna see the third season and that made for TV Movie.

    This was done in my LEUCHTTURM1917 Plain Journal mainly with my Pentel Pigment Ink xfp5m brush pen, but I added some Prismacolor Col-Erase color since I barely used any white out. If I mess up and have to use white out you can’t really color it anymore.

    Read More

subscribe via RSS