How could I possibly pass up a book that would teach me how to make my own ink? Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking by Jason Logan was an insta-buy for me. The swashes of color on the cover alone were enough to get it in my cart. Then, I was at a…
Review by Tina Koyama My daily-carry is a Rickshaw Bags messenger bag that tidily fits my sketching stuff as well as all my usual “purse” stuff, and I easily take it everywhere. The only time I don’t like to carry it is when I’m taking a 3-mile fitness walk around my neighborhood lake. For that…
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,…
Oops. So, I said last month that the Birmingham Pen Parcel was supposed to be their new “bright” collection. My mistake. This month is the bright collection. Which, I suppose, makes more sense. Last month was not so bright. I cannot resist the Pen Parcels. The price is right. I love ink. Regardless of whether…
For the holidays, Ana gave me a lovely gift a MYO String Tie A5 planner from MochiThings. In a quest to fill it with lovely notebooks, I hit up JetPens in search of A5 notebooks. The first thing that fell into my cart were the Midori A5 Color Paper Notebooks ($3.25 via JetPens). This fun…
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…
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…
