January Sketchbox - All About Ink

It's Sketchbox time!  When I opened up this box I was excited and scared all at once because it was all about INK:  

I'll admit that at first glance, I was very excited by the fact that we had three primary colors AND a boss looking fine liner to start out with.  PLUS, the paper looked to be quality as usual, so I was excited!  

I ended up having a LOT of fun and mixing some really vibrant colors, and ended up with this Yoshi:  

He isn't my best work by any stretch, but after a LOT of struggle he turned out better than expected.  

I'll start by laying out the contents of the box and what I thought of each item:  

Swatches

Color Mixes from the Inks

1.  Sketchbox Signature Plastic Palette

This was a perfect little palette to accompany these products.  As shown above, it allowed for secondary mixes and cleaned easily after the project.  I love having little palettes like this around my art space for all sorts of wet media projects.  

2.  Caran d'Ache Grafwood Pencil, 3H

This pencil was a fabulous surprise in this box!  I've never used fancy pencils before (always just been an HB girl), and so I found that I absolutely LOVE sketching with this pencil!  I've already used it to sketch several other pieces and it's got a home in my main stationary bag.  This was a great item!  

3. Dynasty Dagger Brush, 3/8"

I found this to be a very high quality dagger brush, better than the one I've been currently using! For the size of the paper pad, this brush seemed a little bit large at times, but the pointed end did allow for a decent amount of detail.  I will say that having this size of a brush made me think that this in should be able to lay down large wet on wet areas, which I found to be very frustrating with this paper/ink combo.  

4. Staedtler Pigment Liner, 0.3 - 2.0mm

Again, another fabulous addition to this box.  I loved the chisel tip on this liner and thought it worked fabulously.  I did have smudging in a few spots but that was because of my own impatience!  Overall, this liner layed beautifully down on top of the inks and didn't bleed if you let it dry before applying water overtop.  

5. Inks: 

Holbein Acrylic Ink, Naphthol Red 

Speedball Acrylic Calligraphy Inks, Primrose Yellow and Indigo Blue

I greatly preferred the packaging of the Holbein ink, and felt like I wasted way more of the other ink by having to use and clean droppers to put it into the palette. In all other ways I felt the inks could be talked about together.  

When I saw these colors I was SO excited, because they were vibrant and I knew I could get good mixes with them!  They did not disappoint in that department.  HOWEVER, as someone that works primarily with watercolor, I had a hard time with these inks on this paper.  If you layed down color, it DID NOT MOVE.  And yes, they are inks, it's to be expected.  BUT, I wanted to get gradients or looks that were a little more muted and so I watered down the inks to achieve this.  That *seemed* great until I realized that the inks were feathering on the paper WILDLY.  So, if I put them straight onto the paper I got really bold colors with very little buildup ability, and if I used water to lighten the colors I had much less control than what I wanted.  If you look at Yoshi, you can see that on his back there was definite feathering.  I even ended up using a white posca pen to cover over the white details to make them look cleaner in the end.  I don't usually do that but I was too far into the piece to start again and I knew using a Posca would fix the feathering issue.  I am not faulting the inks for this, but the paper.  

6. Magnani Cotton Pad, 140lb Cold Pressed

This paper seems AMAZING for typical watercolor and I'm excited to try it for that purpose in the future.  But I really REALLY think with the supplies that we were given that we should have been given either hot pressed paper or mixed media paper.   This would have slowed down the absorption of the inks on the paper and allowed for watery ink mixes to be applied with more control.   This Yoshi was my second attempt at a picture and I do not think this paper made working with the acrylic inks "fast and easy" as described by Sketchbox.  

**UPDATE** - I tried this paper with my watercolors and also had HUGE feathering issues with wet on wet techniques involving layers. It still feathered after letting the paper dry for a really long time, and so I think that I either got a bad paper pad OR that there is something wrong with this paper.  I watched several videos where people did not seem to have a problem with the paper, so I'm wondering if it's just my pad.  

Overall, I do feel like box was worth my money and I'm looking forward to using these inks with a calligraphy pen for fun AND maybe on some different types of paper to see what I can do!  I'll use the watercolor paper, pencil, liner, brush and palette for other projects too, so this box will definitely get plenty of use in this house!  My daughter did a picture too where she used a much more pigmented version of each color and I love how her rainbow/pot of gold/sun picture turned out!  Here is her piece, posted with her permission:

We always have a lot of fun working together on these boxes, so thank you Sketchbox for another fun challenge!  

What would you have drawn with these supplies?  Do you think I should redo Yoshi on a different paper?  Let me know in the comments below!