November SketchBox 2020 - Review

Hi everyone!  I *finally* decided to try Sketchbox because I’ve heard such great things about it, and the November box is here and I’ve been playing with it for a few weeks! 

The muted colors plus the bright pink immediately made me think of Princess Peach, so I was excited to draw her with these supplies!!!  

Princess Peach Using Box Supplies

I wanted to give a full review, so below I broke down how I felt about each item and my overall impression!  Here is my impressions, along with my swatches and doodle sketch:

Swatches - Explained Below

Initial Doodle Sketch - Just to get a feel for supplies

Copic Sketch Marker - What can I say, it’s a Copic Sketch.  It was perfection!  

Tombow ABT Pro - A surprisingly lovely alcohol marker!  This one was GREAT and blended perfectly with the Copic.  I will definitely buy more of these markers to go with my alcohol marker collection!

Kuretake Zig Brown Brush Menso Pen - this was a great alternative to a typical, black fineliner.  I really loved working with this pen and look forward to using it in the future.  It worked lovely with the paper too!  

Faber-Castell Pitt Brush Pen - this was the most disappointing item in the box for me.  It was labeled as “alcohol based” but didn’t behave like an alcohol marker at all.  It was streaky and did not perform well on the paper either.  Also, the tip began to fray after only a few uses.  

Monami Color Twin Brush Pens - these were ok but also disappointing.  The colors were muted, and that was fine, but they really didn’t perform well on the paper.  They were streaky and did NOT blend very well - I’ve used other water based brush pens that performed much more nicely and were more affordable.  Layering them also frayed the paper, so that wasn’t too much of an option. 

Spectra Colorless Blender - this blender was fine, but I’m super confused at it being in the box.  It worked perfectly with the Tombow and the Copic, but they were the lightest colors in the box AND they blended together beautifully already.  This blender didn’t do ANYTHING with the Faber Castell Pen, which is the color I would have liked to have had it work with.  It will work well with my own alcohol marker collection but didn’t serve much purpose in this box.  

Hahnemuhle Layout Marker Paper Pad - at FIRST I thought this paper was junk, BUT after I realized that the Copic and Tombow were working perfectly with it, I tried the paper with my own personal set of alcohol markers and I FELL IN LOVE.  This paper is excellent for alcohol markers and I’ve almost used half of the pad.  The markers do NOT bleed through, and blend beautifully.  I included a picture of what I was able to do on the paper with my Ohuhu markers and a white gel pen for highlights:

Overall - I really enjoyed this box for the most part BUT I feel that the Pitt Artist Pen and the Water Brush Pens were 4 markers that were not worth their cost.  I would have MUCH preferred 3 more alcohol markers in similar colors and a white medium of some kind for highlighting.  That would have made the box more cohesive for me and really made that marker paper shine like the star that it is!  

I’m really looking forward to next month’s box - thanks Sketchbox!  I overall really enjoyed the challenge and can’t wait to see what we get next!