Crawford and Black A5 sketching journal - fur coat and no knickers

 Okay. It is a truism that just because a product is expensive it doesn’t automatically mean that it’s good and just because something is cheap it doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad.

From time to time I pop into a UK chain called The Works. They do their own brand range of art supplies, under the name of Crawford and Black. I’ve noticed that Crawford and Black have their own entry into the casebound A5 hardcover elastic fastened sketching journal market. I couldn’t resist buying one to see if it’s any good. I will answer that question shortly.

So, here it is. It comes with all of the features of this type of sketching journal that you’d expect. Elastic fastening that you can’t see in the photo and ribbon bookmark. However it does not have a document pocket attached to the back.

£6 gbp does not sound like a great deal of money. But is it as much of a bargain as it seems? Well, you get 80 pages for your money which equates to a price of 7.5p per page.

Compare this with the Amazon Basics large sketchbook – slightly smaller at 21x13cm – which has 76 pages at today’s Amazon sale price of £3.75 for 76 pages. That’s 4.93p per page. Or the Royal Talens Art Creations 21x13 sketching journal at today’s Amazon price of £7.49 for 160 pages. That’s 4.68p per page. These are the two journals I’ve used whose price per page is cheapest. The Seawhite A5 classic travel journal, a fine jack of all trades sketchbook, retails today at £8.95 for 124 pages. That’s 7.21p per page.

Now, The Works and their Crawford and Black brand have a reputation for being cheap and cheerful. But that price per page isn’t even cheap! Maybe, I thought, maybe the quality will justify the price.

Well, to an extent the Crawford and Black book does rather look the part. The huge embossing of the name on the front cover I do rather like, even though most brands go for embossing that it much more understated. I worried about the quality of the paper since it is only 115gsm. The lightest paper I’ve fund to be effective in a book of this kind if the Seawhite’s cartridge paper which is heavier than this. I was worried about showthrough.

Here's the first sketch I made with 0.3mm fineliner. The sketch itself is okay. However if you look at the photo underneath of the other side of the page, even on the photograph you should be able to see that the image is to an extent visible on the other side of the page.

This is ordinary fineliner, and no other sketchbook I’ve used in the last two years shows through like this. Now, okay, you might say - well, it's a pretty faint, ghostly  image, bt for the price per page it should not be there at all.

You can see it even more clearly on this picture that I used coloured fineliners on.

Now, it is a funny thing that with coloured fineliners I do get a bit of showthrough in many of the sketchbooks I’ve used. But this is usually no more than a few dots.

I find myself so disheartened that I have not even tried to use watercolour in it yet. So maybe something miraculous will happen with it when I apply watercolour to its pages. But it somehow seems unlikely. Now, okay, you might say, well, for light black fineliner, graphite and charcoal it’s okay. But at more than 7p per page it should be just so, so much better. There’s an old phrase that my granny used to say for things which looked good but had very little substance – ‘fur coat and no knickers’ – and it seems to me a perfect description of this sketchbook. 

Awful. I do not know how The Works can possibly justify the price. Avoid it. By the by, I have submitted this review to the Works' own website. I'm not holding my breath that it will be included.