Which Materials? 1) Travel Sketchbooks

So, a few days ago I completed my self-imposed challenge to draw all of the locations on the London Monopoly board (allowing me to use a few earlier sketches which are of the required quality. ) As a reward for this and for selling some prints on Etsy and gaining a commission for a sketch, I decided to buy myself a new sketchbook. Yes, I still have a few pages in the current one left, but what the hell? And it strikes me that I’ve never yet posted about sketchbooks. So let's rectify that and begin with travel sketchbooks.

I greatly enjoy urban sketching and I have made the best part of 20 city break sketching trips since 2016 so It's important to have a decent travel sketchbook on the go. Over the last few years experience has helped me clarify what I'm looking for from a travel sketching journal. I want something that isn't overly large - small enough to be carried in a large jacket pocket but large enough to allow for quite detailed ink sketching. It must be robust enough for some pretty rough handling, so hard covers are better. As well as taking ink comfortably it's nice if the paper is heavy enough to be able to cope with a little watercolour as well. 

When I first discovered Urban Sketching I just didn’t want to be carrying A4 spiral bound books around, so I started using books like this. It’s Daler Rowney again, this time staple bound soft cover. I did find some packs of these discounted, but generally they’re slightly more expensive than a red and yellow spiral bound sketchpad, which has five pages more. Also the paper in the staple bound book is only 130 gsm. It’s fine for ink, graphite or charcoal sketches but isn’t heavy enough to take a watercolour wash. Also, it’s hard to get a decent scan from an exercise book style pad like this than it is from a spiral bound book.  

As I said, I travel as much as I can around Europe and I’ve made 17 sketching trips since 2016 – and

lost the time we were locked down for covid as well. Ideally I wanted to find a decent sketching journal. Now, when friends and family learned that I was so into my sketching and painting they would often give me materials, and my first real travel sketch journal came to me this way. It’s the one on the left here, while the one on the right is the Moleskine travel sketching journal that has been my journal of choice for the last few years.

The book on the left had a label on it – now gone – which said it was from Wilkinson, a British retailer that is sadly no more. The cover is essentially a soft cover, but with a sort of faux leather vinyl. The vinyl is now coming away from the paper covers which is a shame, however the book has withstood a fair amount of punishment, and all the pages are still secure. I used this book in many places. There are about 100 pages in it, and you could use both sides of each page for ink sketching. That’s pretty good considering the paper doesn’t feel very heavy at all, in fact I’d be surprised if it was more than 130 gsm. As you can see from the photograph above, it does take watercolour, but you could never plan on using the opposite side of the page for anything else. I have tremendous affection for this book, and I did try to obtain more when I was coming close to filling it. Sadly, Wilkinson stopped stocking them and I couldn’t get any. It’s a real shame, because as budget sketching journals go you could have done a lot worse.

For example – there’s this one here. Morrisons is a British supermarket chain. I was in my local Morrisons one day a few years ago when I treated myself to a walk along the stationery aisle. I found this sketching journal, very cheap, and bought it. Now, it’s almost exactly the same size as a Moleskine travel journal, slightly less than A5. Like a Moleskine, there is a document wallet at the back. Here the comparison ends. The covers are card, and don’t seem very hardwearing. As for the paper, well it is very thin and light, lighter than the paper in the Wilco book. So I always used the Wilco book in preference, and by the time I’d finished the wilco book, I had been given my first Moleskine. So all I used this for was making written notes. So when I started writing this post I decided that I would only be fair

to test it by making a sketch. So I made a sketch of my hero, Tom Baker as The Doctor. Well, it proves that you can make ink sketches in it. I didn’t enjoy sketching in it as much as I did in the Wilco, or the Moleskine, and don’t think it brings out the best in a fineliner sketch – if anything it looks more like biro and the image shows quite badly through the thin paper. Well, I will go to great lengths for you when I’m making a post, so I made another sketch in it. This is based on a photo of Piccadilly Circus in the 1950s. The photo underneath it shows you the same picture after watercolour had been applied to it. Now, I have to admit that I am rather surprised about the way that it turned out. The lower part of the sketch, with the car , in act, everything from the rooftops

downwards is a lot more vibrant than I thought it could possibly be on this paper. The sky though is the real telltale. When you’re painting wet on wet on this paper it waffles la lot. In fact the page underneath it does so slightly as well. To be fair it  dried well enough hat I could use the page underneath it the next day. But it is an issue with cheaper sketchbooks like this. If you only wanted to use it for a light medium like graphite I reckon it wouldn’t be too bad. But anything much heavier, including fineliner which is my weapon of choice and you won’t be able to use both sides of the paper. Which means it’s maybe not such great value after all.

My oldest daughter asked me one day in late 2019, a propos of nothing, which was a good make of travel sketching journal to buy. I told her that in my sessions with the South Wales urban sketching group, and in Facebook art groups I belonged to the name that kept coming up was Moleskine. Lo and behold, on Christmas day 2019 she gave me my first Moleskine travel journal.

In terms of quality, it’s quite a cut above the Wilco book. Mind you, it’s a lot more expensive too. Its dimensions are slightly smaller than the Wilco book, but I like this size for travel sketching. This is a hardcover book, and those covers can take a lot of punishment. They give you a nice support if you’re sketching with the book on your knee, for example, or even sketching standing up. There are 104 pages, a bit of an odd number. The paper is pretty smooth and it takes a fineliner well. The paper is 165 gsm, and this is pretty forgiving. I’ve been able to use watercolour on sketches in it, and although there’s a little buckling, it’s nowhere near as much as I got in the Wilco book. It’s so watercolour friendly that you can draw or even paint on the other side of

your painted page without any show through. I know other reviewers who compare Moleskine with a similar product from Seawhite of Brighton, who feel that the Seawhite journal makes watercolours look brighter and more vibrant. Well, I haven’t used a Seawhite travel journal yet, but I’m very happy with the way that my Moleskine book takes colour. One other feature is a handy document wallet attached to the backcover. With this book it’s a case of you get what you pay for. Moleskine sketchbooks ain’t cheap. But in my experience you’re paying for quality rather than just the name.

Coming back to Seawhite, I’ve never had a Seawhite travel journal like this. However, I have had a Seawhite A5 Concertina style sketchbook, that I used on a few trips. It has 70 painting surfaces, and is 150gsm. I liked using this a lot. It took watercolour well, with the colours mainlining their brightness- see above -  and no show through at all. It took a little getting used to but once you’d got the hang of it you could use it just like a normal sketchbook. This is a quality item, the only issue for me being that it does have fewer pages than the Moleskine.

Now, for Christmas 2023, instead of Buying me another Moleskine travel sketchbook, my daughter bought me two books, one of which was this Seawhite of Brighton A5 landscape spiral bound sketchbook. Now, it’s not specifically a travel sketchbook, but there’s no law against using it as one. I haven’t used it yet, but again, in the spirit of investigation, I made a sketch in it for this post. Now, if you’re looking at it you maybe be asking yourself the

same question. Why do they put their label where they put it on their sketchbooks? Because that’s clearly the back of the book, not the front. Well, leaving that aside, I made this sketch of a tram in Rome. I have been to Rome, and seen trams there, but I was 19 and stupid so I never rode on one. There’s no issue with using fineliner in it, but then the paper in it is 160gsm, only five less than Moleskine. The texture is not quite as smooth as the pages in the

Moleskine, but I don’t mind that at all. So here’s the same sketch with watercolour. What do you know – I really like the outcome. There’s hardly any waffling, let alone cockling, and you can definitely use both sides of the page. The covers are very thick, very tough card. This is a pretty impressive piece of kit.

Beauty if in the eye of the beholder. I like to take a black casebound book on a sketching trip, which is the only drawback I see to the Seawhite book – aesthetically it’s not as appealing as the Moleskine books. This does not have elastic to hold it closed, and nor does it have a pouch at the back for documents. So I am encouraged to try out the Seawhite Travel journal in the future, although it is only 130 gsm. But as regards this sketchbook, if you can get over the fact that it’s not a black, portrait hardcover then this is a good budget alternative to the more expensive classic large Moleskine. 

For the record here's my rating of the books I've discussed - the higher the score, the better.

Make	Paper and pages	Sketching	Painting	Durability	Aesthetics	Cost	Total/ 60	Average Score
Wilco Own brand	7	8	6	7	7	9	44	7.3
Morrisons Own brand	5	7	6	5	6	9	38	6.3
Moleskine Large Travel sketchbook	9	9	8	9	9	6	50	8.3
Seawhite Concertina A5	8	9	9	9	8	7	50	8.3
Seawhite Spiral bound own brand A5	8	9	9	8	7	7	48	8