Product Review: Kraft Paper Sketch Book from Hahnemühle Fine Art #hahnemuhle_us #hahnemuhleproductreview

 For the past week I have been having a lot of fun

working in the Kraft Paper Sketch Book from 

Hahnemühle Fine Art. 

 Hahnemühle has entrusted me to do some product

reviews and they send me product to play with.

Which I love so much!

They trust me to play and give an honest review.

All the thoughts here are mine.

(But I can tell you a secret before you read any further -

I absolutely love this book!)

So let's go back to that first photo.

I noticed as soon as I opened the plastic wrap,

that this would be a super cover to tangle!

Or paint, or collage, or mixed mediapalooza,

whichever art style floats your boat.

Both front and back of the spiral book seems to be

covered in similar, but heavier, paper than the pages.

So I pulled out my Tombow Mono Drawing Pen

and started having some fun!

The pen work went on like a dream! 

Smooth, no skips, nothing on the surface of the

cover for my pen to hang up on.

Just smooth fun. 

I even used a little Cosmic Shimmer watercolor

and it was awesome!

Water did not bother this cover at all.

Piece of cake!

Then I moved to the inside pages.

There are 80 sheets of paper which means 160

work surfaces if you work on both sides of the page.

I don't typically do that, but I could if I wanted. 

What color are the pages?

As the name implies - they are the color of

craft paper. A sort of tan color.

With undertones of grey which my camera and

scanner both pick up.

It was really difficult to get an accurate shot

of the color.

With tan pages I like bringing in brown pens with

white highlights and lots of shading.

And the Kraft paper did not disappoint.

I tangled a garden on the first page of my book.

For tools, I used the Tombow Mono Drawing Pen, 

a Zebra Zensations Sarasa Fineliner, 

a brown Micron, a gel pen and a 

General's white charcoal pencil for highlights, 

the Zentangle woodless pencil for shading, 

and probably something else I am forgetting.

Hahahaha! That was like a few days ago.

So.

How did the first page go?

Awesome! Absolutely no problems with the pens

or the gel pen or the shading/highlighting tools.

The surface of these pages feel slick to the touch

and I expected that to be an issue with pens,

but it was not. All my tangling tools worked great!

The particular book I have is about 6" x 8" and is 

the perfect size for a tangled garden!

With the spiral binding, I could easily remove this

page for framing or for gifting.

Next, I wanted to see how a large amount of 

black ink would work on these pages.

Remember I said the surface was slick?

And at 55 lbs the paper isn't all that thick.

I didn't really know what to expect,

but it worked great!

No bleed through of black and I got a good solid

coverage of ink.

No feathering, no bleeding, no smearing.

I used the same basic tools that I used on the

garden drawing, but was heavier handed and more

intentional.

Awesome sauce!

I should point out that I really love the way shading works in this book! 

Smoothing and pushing with my tortillon worked very well! 

I was able to get a smooth, almost buttery look. 

Yay!

I had a maroon and a blue micron that I hadn't used much. 

I wanted to see how they would look when used on the Kraft pages. 

With the tan backdrop.

The blue held up really well, fairly true to life in color.

The maroon looks a little darker here on the Kraft paper,

but I can still tell it's maroon. 

For this drawing I used Zebra Pens' Drafix pencil to shade.

It went down very well. 

A little harder to smooth and 

push with the tortillon - an issue with the pencil itself. 

By this point I had already used my normal go-to

pens and pencils and gel pens.

So I pulled out a black StayzOn Ink pad and this cute

little stamp and stamped my girl onto a page.

I used Copic markers to add color

Copics are alcohol based markers and they literally

bleed through pretty much everything!

Sometimes through more than one layer of paper. 

Considering this paper is only 55 lbs,

this bleed through is not that bad.

(And there was none on the next page.)

One thing I noticed is the StayzOn ink did not bleed through, 

it stayed on the front of the page where it belonged.

The color quite literally has 5-6 layers of copic in most places. 

Knowing that - the bleed through isn't

that bad. 

I kind of like her little bow-legged look on the back of the page. 

Hehehe.

And if I want to - I can recreate the front here 

on the back with perhaps pencil. 

So it doesn't mess with the Copic color 

on the front.

Then I could have two cute little girls

blowing dandelions.

Win-win.

 These next three pieces of art used the same

StazOn ink pad - I really don't use any other.

The color is Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens.

The colors in all these stamped images are a little

subdued because they are on a tan colored paper - 

but that was part of my process -

to see if I could still get pretty images.

And I think I did. Absolutely.

 I had no problem coloring with markers.

No soaking up of ink, no feathering, no smearing. 

And these Pitt pens did not bleed through 

to the back at all.

The back of these three pages are pristine

and ready for more art. 

The Pitt Artist Pens are perfect for the

Kraft Paper Sketch Book.

The colors even remained pretty much true.

I wanted to see how the paper handled a little water. 

For these sweet little owls, 

I used a water brush and Amazrock Watercolor Pencils. 

Granted, it wasn't an overwhelming amount of

water like I am prone to use, but I used a fair amount

of water to move this color around.

And I had no warping or rippling of paper.

None at all.

Just a cute little row of owlets being all cute and stuff.

 For this last one, I brought out my

Wink of Stella Glitter Pens, the Tombow Mono

Drawing Pen, a regular black Micron, 

a Sharpie fineliner, and a golf pencil.

And they all worked splendidly.

I tell you this paper is beyond wonderful

for all the different tools I used.

I had no problems at all. 

My recommendation to you would be this.

Buy it.

Hahaha!

Simple and to the point, that's me.

You can not go wrong with this paper

for tangling, stamping, colored pencils,

non alcohol markers, gel pens, glitter pens.

This Kraft Paper Sketch Book

from Hahnemühle can do it all and be your 

new go-to journal.

And you might want to get more than one!

Here are a couple places you can purchase

the Kraft Paper Sketch Book line:

Amazon 

BHPhoto 

New Egg  

Ken Bromley Art Supplies 

Wet Paint 

Buy with confidence and have fun! 

I'd love to see your results!

This product was given to me by Hahnemühle.

All the projects shown and ideas mentioned are mine.