Review: Inktober 2020 x Viviva Colors Sketchbook

First off big thanks to Viviva Colors for providing the sketchbooks for this review.

Vivava Colors and Jake Parker have teamed up to release some custom sketchbooks and colorsheets for Inktober 2020. These sketchbooks will be available through crowdfunding on Indiegogo and at the time of this review, they have already reached their funding goal seven times over. The crowdfunding will end on September 17 and all items should ship and arrive before October just in time for Inktober.

So these are the custom design colorsheets and sketchbooks.

That's the Inktober 2020 designed Viviva Colorsheets that also comes with a brush pen.

Viviva Colorsheets are actually booklets with colour paint palettes. The colours are so vibrant that I think they are probably dye based colours.

This is the hardcover sketchbook with 64 pages of 240-page Lessebo Design paper. This sketchbook is A5 sized and comes with an elastic band.

This is the hardcover sketchbook with 300gsm 100% cotton watercolour paper. This is 7.5 by 7.5 inches.

These are all official licensed products. If you don't know Jake Parker trademarked Inktober so any Inktober related products have to be licensed.

Both sketchbooks have rounded corners.

Both sketchbooks use the same type of binding. The spine of the signatures are not glued to the spine of the cover.

It's difficult to open the first few pages of the A5 sketchbook.

Subsequent pages can be opened flat.

The binding is the type that doesn't use any strings. It looks like the pages are all glued to the spine. I'm not sure how durable this binding really use because I've only used the sketchbook for a few days. Aditya, creator of Viviva Colors, told me the binding should last. Hopefully.

Just behind the back cover is a pocket.

The 240gsm Lessebo Design ivory-coloured paper is smooth fine grain paper that's good for pen and ink.

You can use light watercolour washes on it but since this is not watercolour paper — it's not sized — certain watercolour techniques will be challenging to use on it, more specifically wet on wet techniques.

Click the images for a larger view.

Blending colours require you to move the paint yourself rather than have the paint move on its own more freely such as on 100% cotton watercolour paper.

Once you paint watercolour on it, the watercolour will sink into the paper and won't want to move. This means colours will have sharp edges and colour blends are difficult.

Pencils work fine.

Alcohol markers will bleed to the opposite page. Water-based markers should work fine.

Binding for the watercolour sketchbook is similar to the other one.

The first few pages of the watercolour sketchbook are easier to open flat.

This watercolour paper is off-white and texture is coldpress.

The paper is handmade so there are going to be some blemishes.

Both sketchbooks will come with the Inktober 2020 prompt list.

The watercolour paper is able to handle heavy washes without much issues. The paper is thick enough so there's no significant warping.

The off-white colour is actually kinda close to newsprint colour. I kinda wished it was more white but it not a big deal. The paper does make any sketch I have on it look old due to the off-white warm hue.

To get these sketchbooks, or find out more information, just visit https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/revolutionary-sketchbooks-for-inktob…