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.