I took a watercolor class a few months ago that left me frustrated. Using a limited palette of pigments, I wanted to learn to mix colors. As I tried to achieve the hues I was looking for, my paint mixes would become increasingly diluted. I’d add more paint to get a thicker concentration, but then I’d have to adjust the mix again, over and over. With practice and help from my instructor, I got better at it eventually, but I started to see the benefit of having lots of pigments easily accessible, all on one palette – without mixing!

Ana had reviewed 36 of the Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolors a few years ago, and I liked the range of colors I saw. Kuretake now offers a total of 48 colors, sold as a single set or in two sets of 24 colors each. I decided to try color set A (24/$29.50; color set B is 24/$38).

Just as I was thinking about all this, I suddenly remembered that I had a set of 24 Akashiya Gansai Watercolors ($37) that I had purchased years ago but hadn’t used much. My product reviewer’s mind clicked into gear: Wouldn’t it be fun to compare these two sets!

Their presentations are very similar: Unlike what I think of as a typical watercolor set, with paint pans fitting solidly together in a box, both Akashiya and Kuretake sets are made of loose, individual pans that can be removed easily from their cardboard box and rearranged or replaced (JetPens sells open stock pans for both lines). This form factor makes them impractical for field use, as it would be more than easy to drop the box in transport and see the paint pans go flying. (Kuretake does offer a version of its Gansai paints in a portable palette.)

The upside of this form factor is that the pans are larger than standard (Western style) full-size pans, so it’s possible to use large, flat brushes to make wide washes without a mixing tray. (I also have a Sakura Koi Watercolor Field Sketch Box, but without mixing, the tiny pans can only be used with small brushes.) The Akashiya pans are 1 3/8-inch squares, while the Kuretake pans are 1-by-1 ¾ inches.

Both products consist of artist-quality, lightfast, non-toxic paints. They are made in a traditional Japanese way that can give the result a slightly glossy, opaque finish when heavily applied. Like watercolors, some pigments are more opaque than others, but I wouldn’t say any are as opaque as gouache.

My Akashiya set is more than 10 years old, and some paints have cracked and shrunk so that they are now loose and rattling around in their pans. I don’t think the paint quality has degraded, however. I’ve sometimes seen aged gouache pans shrink in the same way, so perhaps these watercolors contain some of the same binders as gouache.

Akashiya helpfully puts the color number and name on the side of the pan for easy viewing (but unhelpfully in Japanese only).

Kuretake includes the same information in both Japanese and English on the less accessible bottom of the pan. It also includes the number and Japanese color name on the box tray itself. This feature I find less useful, since I might want to rearrange the colors to suit the way I work.

Next I’ll show the color ranges. Each set includes a blank color chart on the inside of the box lid for making swatches. Unfortunately, in both cases, the cardboard lid’s paper doesn’t show the colors to best effect, so I made additional swatch charts in a Hahnemühle watercolor sketchbook. The black grid lines are intended to show opacity (and apparently, I can’t count when I’m drawing lines).

Akashiya colors:

Kuretake colors:

In general, this Akashiya palette is more muted, while the Kuretake set is more saturated. (Kuretake’s Set B looks like a more muted range.) Interestingly, the Akashiya set includes metallic gold and silver, which are unusual in any watercolor set.

With basic comparisons done, it was time to put the pedal to the metal. I had just purchased a bright bouquet of peonies from a family of flower growers who have a weekend kiosk at our neighborhood gas station. Despite my initial impressions from swatches that the Akashiya paints were less vibrant, I had no problem achieving intense hues in this sketch (the rough lines and marks you see on some flowers were made with watercolor pencils). My method was to dip a Kuretake water brush into the paints and apply them directly to a Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook page with no mixing or blending except as it occurred on the paper. Looking at my swatch sheet as a color guide, it was fun not to otherwise test the colors first to see if they were “right” (which I am constantly doing when I mix in a separate mixing tray). Aside from my enthusiasm resulting in a bit of overworking, I was happy with this test sketch.

The following weekend, I bought another bouquet, this time to take to the cemetery on Memorial Day. Using the same methods and the same water brush and sketchbook, I painted the bouquet with the Kuretake set. This bouquet had lighter pink blossoms than the first one and a challenging white peony, too. I was thrilled by the hues I was able to achieve with no laborious mixing. And even though the paints look intense in my swatches, giving my water brush a squeeze as I dipped into the paints gave me nice pale tints for the lavender and pink blossoms. Again, it was great fun being able to simply dip and paint without all that mixing fuss! In fact, I know now why I like to paint this way – it’s more like using colored pencils!

Looking at the two sets together, the palettes complement each other well. I like the selection of greens better in the Kuretake set, but the Akashiya set includes some lovely muted tones (not to mention gold and silver). I don’t think I can say one is better than the other in terms of quality, so the choice is more a matter of colors included in the sets. In terms of packaging, I prefer the Kuretake’s tray, which may be slightly more secure than the Akashiya box, which has nothing but the box itself holding the pans together.

Some would point out that it’s more economical to buy tube paints and fill my own empty palette. But what’s the fun in that? Both of these Gansai (which means “vibrance”) sets are the colored pencils of paints: An instantly gratifying rainbow in a box. Get yourself one for the next time you feel compelled to paint a bouquet (which I heartily recommend for an immediate lift in your spirits).

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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Although I’m mostly a colored and graphite pencil sketcher, sometimes I get into a painty mood. If I haven’t used paints in a while, though, I get a bit overwhelmed by choosing and mixing colors; I just want to grab a brush and hit the page with it. That’s what I love about a watercolor set like the Kuretake Gansai Tambi Graphite Colors (palette of 6/$16.50). The neutral, near-black hues require no mixing to have fun with.

The set comes in a cardboard palette of six pans that are larger than traditional watercolor full pans (though a bit shallower). The color name (in English and Japanese) and color number appear on the underside of the pan, and the number also appears on the palette. I find the color name on the pan to be especially handy because the subtle, dark hues can be difficult to identify when dry. (Apparently, these paints are not available individually at JetPens.)

When swatched, the hues become more distinct. The lightfast colors recall the Boku-Undo E-Sumi Watercolor Palette that I reviewed a while back. While that set evokes the rich blackness of ink, the Kuretake set is more subtle and matte like graphite. (I love having both pen- and pencil-like watercolor sets!)

According to the JetPens product description, “the surface of the paint can be polished to reveal a metallic luster.” That statement piqued my curiosity, so I took a paper towel and rubbed the concentrated ends of my swatches. It was difficult to photograph to show the luster, but with light reflected directly, the paints do show a subtle, graphite-like sheen.

To make test sketches, I first used green and red to sketch a portrait (reference photo by Earthsworld).

Then I sketched my friend Skully (inspired by the X-Files character, of course) twice in a gray Stillman & Birn Nova sketchbook – once with blue and once with violet. (The white highlights were made with an East Hill Tombstone white brush pen that Ana and I both reviewed several years ago.)

I used a standard-size East Hill Kumadori water brush to make these sketches. With a finer brush (and a finer hand), I think these graphite-inspired paints would be lovely for calligraphy as well as painting.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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It’s planner prep season, and it’s also time to start thinking about (say it ain’t so!) the holidays. I took care of both with one set of brush pens: the Kuretake Zig Fudebiyori Metallic set of 8 colors (8/$17 or $2.50 each).

Although I have a gazillion brush pens and use them frequently, most are black, and I’ve somehow managed to resist color. In the daily scribble journal I’ve been keeping, however (more about that coming soon), color is essential. Since I already know and love the basic black Fudebiyori, these were an easy choice. (If you need more than metallic colors, Fudebiyori brush pens come in 48!)

First I tested them in a Leuchtturm 1917 A5 notebook, which is what I’ll be using for next year’s daily journal. Only silver shows a significant metallic sheen, but it may be because the pigment-based, acid-free ink contains no stinky, toxic xylene or other solvents. I have several metallic pens containing solvent-based inks, and while they are shinier, I’m fine with the tradeoff in using safe, non-smelly markers. I’m showing both a photo, which shows the metallic effect better, and a scanned image, which captures the colors more accurately.

The bold inks ghost on the back of the page, but no bleeding is apparent.

Next I tested them in my red and black Shizen journals, where these metallic brush pens pop and shine. Red even shows up on red paper, and black shows on black! That’s when I saw potential for holiday cards and other festive uses. 

Of course, I also love making winter nocturne scenes on the black pages of my Stillman & Birn Nova Trio sketchbook, so I couldn’t resist a pre-dawn sketch of the front porch and car across the street (I used silver and black brush pens).

These will do nicely for festive writing, daily journal scribbling and even sketching!

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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Unfortunately, once the ball bearing is in place, these cartridges are not reusable.It is possible to buy a set of empty cartridges (5 cartridges for $4.75). Theoretically, Platinum converters are interchangeable with Kuretake and have been known to work with other brush pens though I have not tried it yet with these pens. Since the pens ship with two cartridges, I’ll test these first while I wait for a Platinum converter to arrive in the mail. I am sure I must own a dozen of them but can’t find one.

Each pen comes with a pipette to aid in filling. Though I recommend filling over a towel near a sink because I still managed to drip ink down the cartridge.

I filled the felt tip with Colorverse Extreme Deep Field and the brush pen with Hubble from the new Colorverse series.

The brush pen version has very soft bristles. Because it has actual nylon bristles, it can achieve extra fine lines as well as bend to lay down a thick, wide stroke.

The felt tip is much finer but still has some give and play in the tip allowing it to achieve a range of thicks and thins.

I tested the empty brush pens on Tomoe River because both of the Colorverse inks have been known to sheen and I wanted to see if it was noticeable in a brush pen. In the finer felt-tip marker pen, I did notice the sheen of the Extreme Deep Field ink. In the softer brush pen, the sheen of the Hubble ink was not noticeable.

Both pens performed smoothly. Ink wicked to the tips quickly and both the felt-tip and brush pens kept up with my writing speeds without missing a beat.

I have been regularly using the Kuretake Karappo “wicking” felt tip pens which have been going strong since the day I filled them. I use them at work for writing on post-it notes, adding notations to my task list, etc so I thought I’d also compare the performance of the wicking pen to the newer cartridge-based designs.

The tip of the wicking pen is firmer and finer than the cartridge felt-tip. I would compare the cartridge style to a Fudenosuke soft pen and the wicking pens are more like a traditional fine tip marker pen — think Paper Mate Flair but with the ink of your choosing.

Because the cartridge-based Kuretake Karappo Empty Brush Pens are softer and more flexible than the wicking pens, I would recommend these to anyone interested in using their fountain pen inks for art making, calligraphy or other more creative uses. If your goal is to have new, different ways to write with your fountain pen inks, then stick with the wicking versions.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

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I purchased the pens because I wanted a chance to find new and different ways to use my fountain pen inks. Would these Karappo pens work with sheening inks? Would they work with shimmer inks? I needed answers to these questions!

I also wanted to experiment with the difference between the brush pen and the 0.4mm fine pen.

First, I wanted to know how long it took to fill the pen? Answer? About one minute with regular fountain pen ink.  I did not use any special tools. I just dropped the cotton-y looking inserts into a bottle on ink and watched as they wicked up the ink.

I filled two of the “fine” 0.4mm on the left and three of the “fine” brush pens on the right.

I tested a sheening ink — Diamine Skull & Roses in one of the 0.4mm fine tipped pens and the sheening qualities of the ink are still visible. The advantage, for me, of theses pens over other pens which accept fountain pen ink is that they are fiber-tipped rather than rollerball. As a lefty, I tend to choke rollerball pens or I don’t hold them at quite the right angle to get them to write. With the fine 0.4mm and brush tip Karappo pens, I had no issues with ink flow!

The other fine tipped pen was filled with a delicate grey ink: Colorverse Matter. All the shading properties remained! I like how the 0.4mm pens write. They are very similar to the width of a Sharpie Pen, IMHO.

The brush pens were not super flexible or brushy but just gave a nice bit of line variation and would be perfectly acceptable for embellishing the titles or headers in a notebook or addressing an envelope. Since I tend to buy a lot of very light inks and very fine nibbed fountain pens that do not show the inks to their best  result, these pens are a great opportunity to give some of the paler inks a second life.

My last experiment was to put Pen BBS #111 (a shimmer ink) into one of the Karappo brush pens. While the color looks amazing, none of the shimmer is evident. I don’t think the material was able to absorb any of the shimmer particles. So… that answers that question.

Each package of pens comes with a set of stickers to mark with the color of ink in your pens and attach to the cap.  (Please ignore my winter parched hands.)

Of all the fountain pen ink-fillable pens available, the Kuretake Karappo Brush and Fine Pens are by far my favorites even if shimmer inks don’t shimmer. Now to decide what inks to put in the other empty pens…

Tools:

• Paper: Col-o-ring Folio (available soon)
• Pens: Kuretake Karappo Empty Brush Pen – Fine (Pack of 5 for $17.50), Kuretake Karappo Empty Felt Tip Pen 0.4mm Fine (Pack of 5 for $15.00)
• Ink: Diamine Skull & Roses (currently unavailable), Colorverse Matter ($30 for set), Tono & Lims True Story Hyogo ($22 for 30ml bottle), Robert Oster Sydney Lavender($17 for 50ml bottle) and Pen BBS #111 (no longer available).

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

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