Moleskine - Are you Just Paying for the Name?

During the last week I finished my Amazon Basics sketchbook, less than a month after starting to use it. Yay. So, just a few days ago I decided to bite the bullet and go for a finish on one of my Moleskine sketchbooks. Just to bring you up to speed, in the last year I’ve bought quite a few Moleskine alternatives which I’ve been using instead of Moleskine. It struck me in July that I wasn’t actually finishing any of these books before buying new ones and that this really was not a great state of affairs. Since then I’ve cover to cover finished three of my alternatives. So now that I’ve switched back on to Moleskine, how does it compare?

Well, first of all, let’s look at the bottom line:-

These are my current sketchbooks. Those in green are either finished, or more than half used. Those in the light amber are as yet unused, or only have one sketch in them.

The table is organised on price per page. Top of the list is the Amazon Basics portrait notebook. I haven’t used this yet but I think it should be made clear that Amazon don’t claim this can be used as a sketchbook – and although I couldn’t find out how much the paper weighs, the fact that there’s 240 pages suggests it’s very light. The Derwent Academy book was on special offer – I think Amazon were getting rid of stock at the time as they don’t stock this product now.

So at the bottom of the table we have Moleskine. At today’s price of £20.99 that’s almost 21p per page, which is a huge price compared with the other green products in the table above. There is a school of thought that you’re paying a hefty premium for the name with Moleskine. The price suggests you’re getting a better, more premium product for your money. True? Well . . .

You know, Moleskine was the first ever proper casebound sketchbook I ever used. I began urban sketching almost 10 years ago. My youngest daughter gave me a Wilkinson’s own brand sketchbook she’d never used for her At A Level. It was A5 sized with soft faux leather covers and elastic fastening. I used it on several overseas sketching trips, and always enjoyed using it, even though the paper was relatively thin and even fineliner showed through so much that you’d only use one side of the page.

For Christmas a few years ago my oldest daughter asked what was a good make of sketchbook and I told her that I’d heard a lot about Moleskine, so she bought me one for Christmas. And I admit that it was a cut above what I’d been using before. I thought that my Moleskine book was a nice piece of kit. Then I started reading reviews on line which really didn’t like Moleskine very much, and I started roadtesting alternatives. My Moleskine was removed from my rucksack. Now, after using 4 of these alternatives extensively over the last year, how does it feel going back to the Moleskine?

The Moleskine feels like a serious piece of kit. But then so do a lot of the alternatives. The covers are reassuringly solid, while I found that the Amazon Basics tended to bow a little with use. There’s not a lot in it but I slightly prefer the more tactile pastel covers of the Royal Talens Art Creations sketchbook. But then, with the Royal Talens you don’t get the document pocket and with the Amazon Basics even thought the product description says that it has a bookmark, it doesn’t. The Canson book has both of these but the covers don’t seem to be as hardwearing as the Moleskine.

The majority of the pictures I use these sketchbooks for are made in fineliner. I thought I’d use some photographs of similar subjects to compare.

In the first photo are two pictures I made of Oliver Hardy. As a rule I find that you get slightly darker crisper lines on the Moleskine paper, which works well if you’re using ordinary fineliner for monochrome work. But in all honesty it’s difficult to make out a case that it’s several times better for ordinary fineliner than either the Amazon Basics is or the Royal Talens, if you look at photos comparing some of the animal sketches I’ve made in all three.

As regards the experience of using fineliner, well, Moleskine has smooth pages. They can be a bit less forgiving, but I do enjoy drawing on them more than the more textured pages of the Amazon Basics, where the paper tends to give a bit of resistance to the pen.

But then the paper of the Royal Talens is pretty smooth as well, and it’s hard to make a case that the fineliner sketches in the Moleskine are noticeably better than they are in either of the other two.

I also wanted to test compare how well coloured fineliners work in the Moleskine. I liked results I got in a Moleskine with coloured pens in Edinburgh a few years ago.

Now, I don’t think I’m imagining it that the Moleskine gives you clearer lines with coloured fineliner. Okay, I used dark blue in the Moleskine and dark green in the RT, and you can see that RT has a more yellowy paper, but I can assure you it’s the same with dark blue – there’s a slight fuzziness you don’t get with Moleskine. Compare it with this dark blue sketch in the Amazon Basics book - 

I think this is because the coloured ink for some reason has the effect of going through the RT paper, and it shows in conspicuous dots on the other side of the page. This is also true of Amazon Basics, while it hasn’t happened with Moleskine.

I don’t use watercolour a great deal in these sketchbooks, but for the sake of comparison I made a similar direct watercolour painting in the Moleskine to one I’d made before in the Canson. I find it a tricky comparison because the Canson paper is so white, while the Moleskine is more yellow. So the colours and contrasts do tend to pop a little more. However I have to say that there’s really not a lot in it. Where there is a difference is the way that the 200 gsm pages in the Canson tend to flatten out far better. If you look at a closed Moleskine side on you’ll have no trouble seeing which are the pages you’ve used watercolour on, even with the elastic binding the book shut.

If you compare it with a picture from the Amazon Basics book in the last photo you can see that the colours are more muted in this Castle picture, although they’ve combined better, and the page has dried a lot flatter than the Moleskine did.

The Verdict

Let’s start with the positives. I find that a Moleskine sketchbook is a nice thing to work in. I like sketching on the smooth pages. I get better results with coloured fineliner than I do in the books I’ve finished this year. There’s not a huge difference in the results you can get with ordinary fineliner, but I think that they’re at least as good as you can get in all of the alternatives. I’ve achieved some decent results with watercolour, but it doesn’t flatten out well, and I don’t find it easy to get subtle gradations of colour.

The Royal Talens has the lowest price per page of any sketchbook I’ve used extensively. I couldn’t say that the Moleskine book is even twice as good. Yet it’s well over 3 times more expensive. Yes, it’s a nice piece of kit, but in all honesty it really does appear that you’re paying a premium for the Moleskine name. As I said, the majority of my sketches are made in monochrome fineliner, and there really is no point in paying for a Moleskine when the results I'm getting elsewhere are pretty much as good.

Amazon Basics large landscape sketchbook - First thoughts

This time last week I explained how I’ve now moved to my Amazon Basics classic sketchbook. It’s landscape oriented, in 21x13cm format, and has the rear document pocket and elastic fastening that you’d expect from this type of casebound notebook or sketchbook. It contains 76 pages of 200gsm paper. Here’s some of the sketches I’ve made in it this week.

The book has lived in my rucksack which I use every day and shows no ill effects yet. I will be interested to see how well it stands up to the next few weeks. The only reason why there’s a question in my mind is that more than one of the reviews on Amazon does complain about pages coming away. Well, at the moment it seems perfectly secure to me.

I’ll be honest, as you can see the majority of sketches I make in a daily sketchbook are monochrome fineliner sketches. Which in some ways makes me more undemanding than many sketchbook users. I wouldn’t say that the quality you can achieve with fineliner is quite as good as you can in the equivalent of Moleskine or Seawhite but I really wouldn’t say that there’s a great deal in it. The paper does have a bit of tooth to it, more than the Canson Graduate Mixed Media even though they are both 200 gsm. It’s much more textured than the paper in my Moleskine or my Royal Talens and more than the Seawhite. This means its not as enjoyable for me to sketch in, as there’s more resistance to the pen than I like. This is all a matter of personal preference. I will say that it deals with a set of coloured fineliner better than the Royal Talens which shows through more.

Bearing in mind that I do most of my sketches in fineliner I have never yet brought a specifically watercolour journal. The best that I have used yet for watercolour is the Canson Graduate Mixed media. The Amazon Basics is not as good as that one in my opinion. The first picture I made in it, of two trams in Lisbon showed it handling a light wash pretty well. The colours remained really bright. However the next two, while brighter and better than they appear in the scans above are a little more muted. While painting the amphicar I found the paper pilling quite badly, and though they flatten quite well , it’s not as well as the Canson.

One of the big selling points of the Amazon Basics large Classic sketchbook is the price. Last week saw it briefly offered at £3.80, more usually it is £4.42. That looks like value for money working out at about 5p a page. But then the Royal Talens sketchbook that I finished earlier this month has a whopping 160 pages and that works out at today’s price as better value than the Amazon Basics. There’s not a huge amount in it, but if you were like me a sketcher who primarily works in dry material then the Royal Talens looks more like the standout product to meet your needs.

One sketchbook down . . .

In the middle of July I finished my Canson Graduate Mixed Media A5 sketchbook. Almost immediately I bought a new Leuchtturm A5 book, but almost immediately after making my first sketch in it a littlee reality crept in. Only a little mind you, because I have bought another sketchbook since. But I did make up my mind to try to finish another of my unfinished books. Before I bought the Canson my day to day book had been my 21x13 Royal Talens, so that was the book I was going to work on.

I had about 110 pages left in it. You get a lot of pages for your money in a Royal Talens. It is good for dry media, but not in the same league as the Canson for watercolour. So  basically it meant that I was going to need to make that many ink sketches. Now, I have in the past set myself the target of making a sketch everyday for a year and I managed to do so, so I reckoned that I could use 1 sketch in the Royal Talns everyday to set a target. So that gave me a finish date of November2nd.

Giving myself a challenge does tend to act as a spur to me, and makes me a bit obsessive. I was keeping up during the week, but doing so many sketches at the weekends that I reached a stage where I was doing at least 14 sketches a week. That brought forward the target date, which in turn made me want to work harder on it. The target date came down to mid October. Now, on Monday I went for a few days’ holiday to Liverpool, and this became a full blown sketching trip. By the time I sat down back in the house, I had one page left in the RT. I used that yesterday morning and didn’t let myself have time to think about it. I was afraid I would stall because I’d build it up in my mind, telling myself the last sketch needed to be something special. No it didn’t. What you have to tell yourself is that it’s your sketchbook, and it’s there to be used however you want to use it. I used to get a little scared of starting a nice sketchbook, because of the same feeling. So much so that now, when I buy a sketchbook I always make a sketch on the first page pretty much straightaway. That way I won’t be worrying and holding back from using it later.

Here's some of the last sketches in the Royal Talens

So – the Royal Talens is finished. Cards on the table, I really enjoyed using it. As a dry media sketchbook it’s pretty good. The price is great. It’s fine for fineliner, and can take a light watercolour wash. There’s absolutely tons of pages in it, and it’s hardwearing. It’s lived in my rucksack for months with no noticeable ill effects.

So, having finished two sketchbooks now, the question facing me was, which one’s next? It’s a serious question. Not including A4 and A5 sketchbooks, of which I have several, I currently have:-

2 casebound Moleskine 21x13 casebound totally unused sketcbooks still in their cellophane

1 Seawhite of Brighton A5 spiral bound book – one picture in it

1 Amazon Basics 21x13 casebound landscape sketchbook – 1 picture in it

1 Leuchtturm 1917 A5 casebound sketchbook – 1 picture in it

1 Derwent Academy A5 casebound sketchbook – 1 picture in it

2 casebound Moleskine 21x13 casebound sketchbooks both half filled

1 Seawhite of Brighton A5 casebound sketchbook – c. 50 pictures in it

I settled on the Amazon Basics. Basically I’ve used the journals from Moleskine and Seawhite enough that I know what they’re like. But I’ve only made 1 picture so far in the Amazon Basics. I’ve never consistently used an A5(ish) landscape book before. And it only has 76 pages in it, so I should be able to push myself to finish it quickly. It intrigues me how Amazon are able to make a product like this and retail it for less than £5. Yes, there’s only 76 200gsm pages, but that’s comparable to the Canson Graduate book, which also had 200gsm pages but was almost twice the price. So I’ll be popping it into the rucksack later today and there it will stay until either a decide to stop using it, or I finish it.

I’ve made 4 more sketches in it today. 2 of them ink and watercolour and two of them just fneliner. I’m a little disappointed because I tried in one of the watercolours to use it as I would use watercolour paper, and there was buckling and pilling, which I didn’t get wth the Canson. The page flatted quite well. As for fineliner, well, the page has quite a bit of tooth, which make it less pleasurable than the RT to use fineliner in. The results aren’t bad though, so we’ll soldier on for now. 71 pages left means that the 1 a day target finish date is 1^st December. So obviously I’ll be trying to bring that as far forward as I can. Watch this space.

Racing to finish my Royal Talens

 OK then. So you know I've bought a couple of sketchbooks since finishing the Canson Mixed Media book. I've set myself the target of making a sketch everyday, and when I started on this challenge it would have taken me up until early November. However in the last fortnight I've been averaging more than 2 per day. If I was to average one a day now I would finish the book on October 13. If I maintain the current pace, I'd finish within the next fortnight. So, here's the sketches I have completed since I last posted. 26 of them are illustrations for a hypothetical A to Z of Doctor Who.