Colored Pencil Review: Pilot Frixion – Standard and Adult

Colored Pencil Review: Pilot Frixion – Standard and Adult

Review by Tina Koyama I’ve been curious about Pilot Frixion erasable products ever since Ana reviewed the pens and markers and the “color-pencil-like pens” several years ago. But it wasn’t until Pilot came out with actual erasable colored pencils (as opposed to gel pens that are called “color-pencil-like” but are not, in fact, color-pencil-like at…

Watercolor Review: Viviva Colorsheets

Review by Tina Koyama Concentrated watercolor paint stored on paper has intrigued me for a long time: Thin and lightweight, it seems like the ultimate portable paint kit! Several years ago when I first began urban sketching, I bought a booklet of Nicholson’s Peerless Water Colors with that thought in mind. Around the same time,…

Tag Team Pen Review: East Hill Tombstone White Brush Pen

Review by Tina Koyama (and Ana Reinert, with art from Hannah Carey and Cory Say) Here at the Desk, we love brush pens, and we also have a penchant for white ink. Imagine our excitement when a white brush pen appeared on the market! By way of explaining the product’s unusual name, JetPens describes the…

Notebook Review: Clairefontaine A6 Graf’book

Notebook Review: Clairefontaine A6 Graf’book

The Clairefontaine Graf’Book is a simple, blank notebook with black card stock cover and an exposed thread binding. The Graf’Book is made up of 100 pages of 100gsm bright white paper. I got the A6 size but the Graf’Book is also available in A4 and A5 size with portrait or landscape binding options. The exposed…

Colored Pencil Review: Tombow Irojiten (36-color set) Colored Pencils

Colored Pencil Review: Tombow Irojiten (36-color set) Colored Pencils

Review by Tina Koyama I have been known to look askance at and even mildly mock packaging that seems gratuitously fancy. And yet I’m the first to admit that I bought the entire original nine-volume (90-pencil) slipcased set of Tombow Irojiten Color Dictionary colored pencils for packaging alone. With most colored pencils, I like to…