Kasey Golden: Honest, Enthusiastic Art Content for Illustrators and Supply Lovers

Kasey Golden is one of YouTube's most popular art educators and illustrators, with over 900,000 subscribers and a channel that has been a consistent source of art supply reviews, sketchbook tours, illustration process videos, and candid discussions about the realities of building a creative career. Since launching her channel in 2013, Kasey has built an audience that values her combination of genuine enthusiasm for art materials, honest assessment of what works and what does not, and a conversational style that makes her content feel like a conversation with a knowledgeable friend rather than a formal tutorial.

Kasey works primarily in traditional media, with a particular focus on watercolour, coloured pencils, and markers, and her channel reflects the breadth of her material interests. She is one of the most thorough art supply reviewers on YouTube, testing products extensively before sharing her assessments and being willing to say clearly when something does not perform as advertised. This honesty has earned her the trust of an audience that relies on her reviews when making purchasing decisions.

Art Supply Reviews: Thorough and Honest

The art supply review content is the backbone of Kasey's channel and the area where her influence is most directly felt. She reviews sketchbooks, watercolour paints, coloured pencils, markers, pens, and a wide range of other materials with a thoroughness that goes well beyond most YouTube reviews. Rather than simply showing the product and making a few observations, Kasey tests materials through actual use, creating artwork with them and assessing their performance across a range of techniques and conditions.

Her sketchbook reviews are particularly comprehensive, testing paper quality through multiple media, assessing how the paper handles wet media, dry media, and mixed techniques, and evaluating the binding, cover quality, and overall construction of the book. These reviews have become a go-to reference for artists trying to choose between the many sketchbook options available, and Kasey's assessments are consistently detailed enough to be genuinely useful for purchasing decisions.

The watercolour paint reviews cover both student-grade and professional-grade paints, with honest comparisons of pigment quality, transparency, granulation, and value. Kasey is willing to recommend student-grade paints when they genuinely perform well for their price, and equally willing to point out when professional-grade paints do not justify their premium cost. This balanced approach reflects genuine knowledge of the materials rather than a reflexive preference for expensive products.

Coloured pencil reviews are another area of strength, with Kasey testing pencils for blendability, layering capacity, lightfastness, and the specific qualities that matter for different coloured pencil techniques. Her knowledge of coloured pencil brands and their relative merits is extensive, and her reviews are among the most reliable guides available for artists choosing between the many professional coloured pencil ranges.

Sketchbook Tours

Kasey's sketchbook tour videos are among the most popular on her channel and provide a window into her illustration practice that is genuinely instructive. These videos walk through completed sketchbooks page by page, with Kasey discussing the materials used, the techniques explored, and the thinking behind specific pieces. The tours are not just show-and-tell. They are reflective discussions of the creative process, the experiments that worked and those that did not, and the way that sketchbook practice feeds into finished illustration work.

The sketchbook tours also demonstrate the range of Kasey's material interests, showing how she moves between watercolour, coloured pencils, markers, gouache, and other media within a single sketchbook. This multi-media approach reflects a genuine curiosity about materials and techniques that makes her content valuable for artists who are exploring different media rather than committed to a single approach.

Illustration Process Videos

The illustration process videos show Kasey working through finished pieces from initial sketch to completed artwork, with commentary on her decision-making at each stage. These videos are instructive without being formal tutorials, showing the actual process of making an illustration including the moments of uncertainty, the adjustments, and the problem-solving that constitute real creative work rather than a rehearsed demonstration.

The process videos cover a range of subjects and styles, reflecting the breadth of Kasey's illustration practice. Character illustration, botanical subjects, fantasy creatures, and decorative patterns all appear in her process videos, giving viewers a sense of how the same fundamental skills apply across different subject matter and styles.

Creative Career Discussions

One of the most distinctive aspects of Kasey's channel is her willingness to discuss the realities of a creative career honestly and specifically. Videos covering topics like pricing your work, dealing with creative block, managing the business side of freelance illustration, and navigating the emotional challenges of a creative career provide context and guidance that purely technical art channels do not offer.

These discussions are grounded in Kasey's own experience as a working illustrator and reflect the genuine complexity of building a sustainable creative career. She does not present a simplified success narrative but engages honestly with the difficulties, the uncertainties, and the practical realities that most working artists face. This honesty is one of the reasons her audience trusts her, and it makes her career content genuinely useful rather than merely inspirational.

The Community

Kasey's community is active and engaged, with a comment section that reflects genuine interaction between viewers and a Patreon community that provides additional content and direct access to Kasey. The community skews toward artists who are serious about their practice and interested in both the technical and business aspects of illustration, and the quality of discussion in the comments is generally higher than on more casual art channels.

The Patreon provides additional content including extended process videos, behind-the-scenes material, and direct interaction with Kasey, and it has been a significant part of her business model since the early days of her channel.

The Bottom Line

Kasey Golden offers a combination of thorough art supply reviews, instructive sketchbook tours, honest process videos, and candid career discussions that is genuinely rare on YouTube. For illustrators and art supply enthusiasts who want reliable information about materials, insight into a working illustrator's practice, and honest engagement with the realities of a creative career, Kasey's channel is one of the most valuable and trustworthy resources available.