Cut Price Sketchbook

In my defence I would never have bought another sketching journal if it hadn’t have been on special offer.

I saw that Amazon were offering lightning deals this weekend and as it was I was looking out for a new laptop, as my poor old workhorse I’m typing this on now is on its last legs, shedding keys and those that are left are not all working properly. While I was searching I found this.

It’s an A5 hardcover Derwent Academy sketchbook. I have considered trying one of these in the past, but being stocked up with sketchbooks to use even when I’ve filled the Royal Talens book I’m using at the moment the last thing I really need to be buying is another sketchbook.

But it was really cheap (not unlike my good self). To be precise, after the 37 percent reduction it cost £4.99. If you’re outside of the UK you’ll just have to accept that this is really cheap for a recognised brand.

So, what do we get for our money? Well, this is more like a traditional casebound sketchbook than a sketching journal as such. The main concession to the Moleskine type journal being the elastic fastening. There’s no document pocket at the back but then you don’t get one of those in a Royal Talens either. The hardcover has a traditional cloth covering and to be honest I prefer the faux leather of other brands I’ve used. The sleeve on the front cover boasts 128 sheets of 135 gsm paper. Now, to my mind a sheet of paper has two sides you can draw on, which means that the book actually has 67 and a half sheets, and 135 pages. It’s a small thing – I would not expect a book this size to have so many pages anyway. I’m not sure that I would want a sketchbook with paper any lighter than 135. I don’t often use watercolour on a journal sketch but I’d like to feel that it’s an option should I desire to add a light wash. Seawhite of Brighton manage it, so I will be interested to see how this matches up.

The paper is a clean bright white and it’s pretty smooth too. I’d say that it’s smoother than Seawhite and even Royal Talens. I’ll be honest, as long as the ink doesn’t sink far into the paper so that I can get nice, clean lines I don’t really mind whether the paper has a little less tooth like this, or a little more tooth like Seawhite or the Canson Graduate book that I recently finished. I’ve only made one test sketch so far and based on this one sketch I’d say it’s fine for ink sketching. If you look at the photo of the sketch that I made you’ll see that the finer lines made with a 0.1mm unipin fineliner are fairly crisp, while the black background was made with a 0.8mm and there is no showthrough on the other side of the page.

The cover sleeve makes it clear that this book is specifically for dry media, and I commend the makers’ honesty on this. However I can’t help thinking that it would be worth trying a light wash, and when I do eventually start using this on a regular basis I’ll let you know how I get on.