Art Medium Reviews 2025
This year, I tried a ton of new traditional mediums and learned what I prefer. This was mostly possible through Michaels accidentally refunding me few times.
Liners and Markers
I got only a couple of Copics in grey shades, and I mostly use them for sketching or shading when I don't have the convenience of safely using other mediums. They have great blending, but they're costly. I can't imagine buying the full range of shades.
These were drawn with a Sakura fine point brush pen, a .20mm Micron, and one Ciao C-3 shade.
On the other hand, the Sakura brush pens have been a game changer.
I referenced museums.
If you don't enjoy perfectly defined lineart, I'd suggest picking a brush pen up. They offer for lots of variation, experimentation, and ways to adapt to your own mistakes. They can really help shake off a "perfection" mindset.
Fountain Pens
Fish!
My fountain pen friends led me on my beautiful journey. I currently have a Preppy F tip, A Preppy Maki-E F tip, and a Pilot Kakuno EF tip. All are extremely inexpensive, with the regular Preppy being $7 USD, and the Kakuno being $10 USD on sale. My fancy preppy Kingyo was $13 USD.
In general, I prefer the Preppies for writing. The Preppies glide on paper perfectly, while the Kakuno is more scratchy on everyday paper. This, however, makes for a great sketchy feel.
I use regular and Carbon inks with my Preppy and Namiki inks for my Kakuno. The Preppy Carbon ink is a waterproof beast, and can handle watercolor perfectly. The Kakuno, on the other hand, runs a little, so beware what ink you buy if you're someone who uses wet mediums.
They're both amazing for the price.
Watercolor and India Inks
At first, I was dissappointed with how Watercolors felt to use. I had gotten a Koi-24 color set, which did well in blending and had some good variety for the price.
This changed when I got India Inks. These made me VERY happy. They solve the problem of vibrancy by allowing for a strongly saturated base layer of color that then can be watercolor painted over. I would describe them as being able to paint with marker. They also are excellent for inky, flowy lines.
For all of these, I ended up using water brush pens for convenience.
Bombay Inks on the top, watercolors on the bottom. I held a "Red" poll on the upper palette that was extremely divisive.
The Kois have a good color selection, with my only complaint being that their true brown is quite transluscent even for a watercolor. They blend well, but some darker colors dry less evenly than others. The worst offenders for me tend to be #143 and #149.
The Dr Martin's Bombays also are also very pigmented, with the Terracotta color being a transluscent oddball. I was, however, a little puzzled by the amount of purple and teal the palette has. It's sometimes so difficult to tell "Red Violet" and "Cherry Red" apart, along with Teal and Aqua. The Red selection is... interesting. "Bright Red" sometimes looks a lot more red than "Red" itself.
Overall, they're easy to mix, so you can just mix up whatever color they lack. I really recommend doing this before you start for colors very different than the palette. You will be VERY surprised with how bright some of these dry, and they'll dry before you're able to mix them on paper.
Both are pretty well priced. The Sakura Koi was about $40 USD for me, and came with daubing sponges and a brush. Each set of 0.5ml 12 Bombay Inks are about $28 USD.
Watercolor Pencils
It's probably because I'm adjusted to wet mediums, but I got some Prismacolor 12-set Watercolor pencils and did not like using them at all. I gave them away to my friend who now treats them lovingly.