About Ethan Cole
Ethan Cole is the artist, illustrator, and lead reviewer behind Drawings Easy. He has been drawing for more than a decade, working across pencil, charcoal, ink, colored pencil, and digital illustration on tablets like Wacom and XP-Pen. His work focuses on helping new and intermediate artists build skill without the gatekeeping that often comes with traditional art instruction.
On Drawings Easy he has personally written or reviewed every tutorial, technique guide, and product roundup published on the site. The reviews you read here are not aggregated affiliate listicles. Each product Ethan recommends has either been used in his own studio or evaluated against the same criteria he applies when picking supplies for his own work: paper performance, lightfastness for colored pencils, tip durability for fineliners, blendability for graphite, and value relative to comparable products in the same price tier.
Areas of Expertise
- Pencil and graphite drawing: shading techniques (hatching, cross-hatching, blending), value studies, and paper selection for graphite work
- Colored pencil work: layering, burnishing, color theory for skin tones and portraits, and brand comparison (Prismacolor, Faber-Castell, KALOUR, Castle Art)
- Charcoal and mixed media: compressed vs willow charcoal, blending tools, and fixative application
- Ink and fineliner illustration: manga, comics, and architectural sketching with Sakura Pigma Micron, Faber-Castell PITT, GETHPEN, and similar pens
- Digital illustration tablets: hands-on testing of XP-Pen, Wacom, Huion, Gaomon, and Bosto pen displays and screen tablets
- Sketchbook and paper testing: Moleskine, Strathmore, Canson, Leuchtturm1917, Leda, and Pentalic across mediums
How Reviews Are Conducted
Every product roundup on Drawings Easy follows the same review process. Ethan starts with a shortlist drawn from his own studio supplies plus reader-requested products. Each item is tested across two to three real drawing sessions covering the use case the post is about: a sketchbook for travel sketching is taken on actual trips; a fineliner for inking is used to ink a finished comic page; a colored pencil set is layered on the same reference image alongside competitors. Picks are ranked by performance against the use case, not by affiliate commission rate.
When a review notes that a product is currently available on Amazon, that has been verified at publication time. Ethan refreshes the live availability of every linked product across the site on a recurring cadence so the recommendations on the page reflect what readers can actually buy today.
Background
Ethan started drawing in childhood and went on to study traditional fine art before transitioning into digital illustration during the early 2010s. He has taught beginner drawing workshops both in person and online, and he writes Drawings Easy with that teaching mindset: assume nothing about prior knowledge, show the steps, and explain why each technique works the way it does. He believes the right tools matter, but technique and consistent practice matter more, which is why every tool review on the site sits alongside detailed technique tutorials in the same category.
Editorial Standards
Drawings Easy participates in the Amazon Associates affiliate program. When you buy a product through a link on this site, a small commission goes back to fund continued testing of new supplies and the ongoing publishing schedule. This commission has zero influence on which products are recommended. Ethan has declined to recommend products that paid for placement, and several roundups exclude well-known brands when those brands underperformed in side-by-side testing.
If a recommended product goes out of stock, gets discontinued, or drops in quality after a manufacturer change, the post is updated to reflect the new state. Tutorials and technique guides are reviewed for accuracy on a rolling basis, and the “Last Updated” line on each post tells you when it was last refreshed.
You can reach Ethan with feedback, questions, or product suggestions through the contact form on the contact page. Reader-suggested products are welcomed and frequently make it into upcoming reviews.