But do test the paper with your paint first. The coldpress surface texture is a bit rough for coloured pencil use. No good in the sense that paint does not move as far on wet surfaces, and when charging in paint to a wet surface, the blend is not as soft. Wet on wet techniques are possible but not as good compared to Arches watercolour paper. While the binding is tight, water can still seep through if you use too much water. There's some watercolour that has seep through the binding to the page with the gouache.
And watercolour paint is able to remain on the surface of the paper so transparent colours appear vibrant.Įven though this 300gsm paper is thick, alcohol markers can still bleed through the paper. The quality of this paper is fantastic and it works great with watercolour. The paper in this particular sketchbook I have is Fabriano Artistico with 100% cotton 300gsm watercolour paper. Shown above are some pen and ink sketches with watercolour. The first and last pages are glued to the endpaper of the cover though, so those are the only pages that can't open flat. The binding allows the sketchbook to be opened flat. Each signature has two pieces of paper that makes up eight pages. Such elastic band usually lose their elasticity with time so it's great to know that when it does happen, the band is not stuck to the sketchbook. I like the fact that the elastic band is not stitched to the sketchbook. These are some ideas on how you can use the elastic band. The band can also be used to keep the paper flat. The sketchbook comes with a wide clothed elastic band that you can use to strap your tools together with the sketchbook. The covers are available in black, gray, dark blue, white and pink(?).Įach sketchbook has all the details of the watercolour paper written on the front. The surface feels slightly rubberised and seems durable. The hardcover is made of veneer that looks like leather. The sketchbooks that I've received from Tomasz for this review are hardcover sketchbooks that come with the corners cut sharp. They are available with different cotton content (50% and 100%), surfaces and paper weight. The sketchbooks use Arches, Arches Expression and Fabriano Artistico paper. The line of sketchbooks are called Sketchbook Pro.
However, there's a free Express version on the Mac App Store – with a limit of three layers, a stop on how big you can make images and minus the ability to create custom brushes.Koval is a company founded by Tomasz Kowal in Poland that specialises in making watercolour sketchbooks that uses cotton watercolour paper. When it debuted on the Mac App Store it was a steal at £18. If you've got the talent, it will fit around you. There's no real limit to what you can do with SketchBook Pro. Some of the more complex brushes, when using multiple layers and blending modes, can crawl a bit on older machines. One thing – if you're creating large, complicated pieces, you will need a fast machine. You can create your own custom brushes and sets. Along with layer blending modes, this is a great app for getting quick ideas down, as well as creating full-on digital paintings. The painting tools themselves are superb with an excellent sense of realism. To appreciate the control that this offers, you'll want to be using a Wacom.Īll of this, along with fact that tools can be accessed in so many different ways with different ways of controlling and tweaking them, makes this one of the best UIs out there – a true masterclass in catering for the needs of its users without getting in the way. By clicking and dragging on this you can quickly change the size and angle of your brush – a brush preview appearing on the canvas as you do so. This small, circular dial sits anywhere you like on your canvas. You can also undo and redo using the red and green arrows.Īnother great UI element is the Brush properties control. Similarly, you can jump between colours, layers and other tools.
You can also open the Brushes palette for more control.Īt the very left of the curved toolbar, you can reposition it or flick between different interface views. By clicking and holding on a tool, a number of options appear, then you select which one you want by dragging your stylus over to it.įor instance, by clicking and holding on the brush tool, you can quickly swap between Pencil, Airbrush, Paintbrush or other drawing tools. The way you use this toolbar soon becomes second nature when painting in the app. In fact, you may as well turn the top toolbar off, because everything is accessible from the bottom bar.