Which Travel Sketchbook? Supplementary

To paraphrase Tina Turner, I don’t need another sketchbook. I mean, I always like getting a new sketchbook, but I don’t actually need one. Especially a travel journal sketchbook. By my reckoning I have an unfinished Moleskine, two unopened Moleskines, and an Amazon Basics that I have only made 1 picture in so far, not to mention a couple of cheap n’ nasty own brand books. Well, here’s the first thing. A couple of days ago I had a letter from the Inland Revenue promising to give me back some of my tax money. My first thought was to spend it all before they ask for it back. However it pays to be a little cautious with this sort of thing. The other thing is that I have a mega sketching trip booked for August, in celebration of my retirement and my 60^th, to New York and Dublin. With the best will in the world I want something that will give me my best results.

Now you may remember that in a previous post I mentioned that when I was looking at online and video reviews I kept finding reviews that compared the large Moleskine travel journal with the Seawhite Classic A5 travel journal, the majority of which reviews saw the Seawhite coming off better. You can see where I’m going with this I think.  

So I ordered off Amazon on Thursday, with the promise of free delivery with Amazon Prime yesterday. Then I got an email late in the day saying that there had been a delay and I wouldn’t get it until Monday. So of course it arrived today. I don’t think you can complain too much about the delay and anyway this post is not comparing delivery processes. I think I probably waited for at least 30 seconds before I started opening the package. At first glance the unopened Seawhite journal looks very like one of the unopened Moleskine journals I mentioned earlier. Notice the positioning of the

open book logo on both. To be fair, though, the dimensions of the Seawhite are just a little bigger than the Moleskine as the Seawhite is a true A5.

Once opened there are other similarities and differences. Both are elastic bound – the Seawhite’s elastic feels tighter. Both have folding document wallets at the back and both have silken ribbon pagemarkers. That’s also true of the landscape Amazon basics book too.

The cover of the Seawhite is just a wee bit more glossy than the Moleskine. I prefer the Moleskine covers, but in all honesty there’s not a great deal in it and others may prefer the Seawhite.

Right let’s get down to the tale of the tape. Priced today on Amazon, the three contenders are:-

The Amazon Basics travel sketchbook (landscape 13 by 21cm) gives you 72 sides of 200gsm paper for £4.42. That’s 6.13p a page.

The Moleskine large travel sketchbook (portrait 13x21cm)gives you 104 sides of 165 gsm paper for £19.50 on Amazon. That’s 18.7p a page.

The Seawhite Classic portrait A5 travel sketchbook gives you a massive 128 sides of 130 gsm paper for £9.99. That’s 7.8p. a page.

Now, I’ve used Moleskine books on all of my sketching expeditions for the last four or five years. I like using Moleskine and I like the results I get. By very careful shopping around you might just be lucky and get the lage travel sketchbook for as little as £15 – or just over 14p a page. So when I compare books, what I have to ask myself is – is a Moleskine sketchbook twice as good as the Seawhite?

Here's an ink sketch I made in Denmark in the Moleskine notebook (above) compared with my first sketch in the Seawhite(below). The paper in the Seawhite is a purer white while the Moleskine has at least a hint of ivory about it. Looking at both I wouldn’t say that there’s a huge difference in quality between the two. Maybe because the paper of the Seawhite is a brighter white I would say that the darker shading tends to zing a little more in it, and this is something I also found in my A4 Seawhite book. I only have this sketch to go on, but there was absolutely no ink showing through on the other side of the page and this surprised me a bit since it’s an issue I’ve had with some sketches in the A4 book. I really enjoyed ink sketching in the Seawhite book. The paper in the Moleskine is very smooth while the Seawhite is a little more textured, and I like the very slight resistance to the pen that you get.

So this encouraged me to add some watercolour. Received wisdom tells you ever to add watercolour to any paper less than 130 gsm. My Seawhite A4 sketchbook has 140 gsm paper and takes watercolour well with some buckling, so I was hopeful. Here’s the result. Now, I like this. It’s taken the watercolour quite well. The colours are relatively bright (considering the subject matter). But how on Earth have Seawhite managed to get 130 gsm paper to behave like this under watercolour?! This is not camera trickery – there is very little buckling, and I could happily use the other side of the page for another watercolour sketch. Compare this with Moleskine. You can see the buckling on the edge of the Moleskine. Also the colours seem just a little more muted in

the Moleskine. So, granted, I have only made the one picture so far, but I don’t think it would be easy to argue that the Moleskine is twice as good as the Seawhite. I fact I think that I can understand why people seem to prefer the Seawhite.

Let’s have a look at the way that the Seawhite compares with the Amazon Basics travel sketchbook. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yes the colours look brighter in the Amazon. It’s early days with both. While I liked ink drawing in the Amazon book I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did in the Seawhite. I’ve only made one picture so far in both books so it’s maybe a little early to draw definitive conclusions. Still, I have to say the Amazon book hasn’t suffered in comparison with the other two at all. Both the Amazon Basics and the Seawhite classic travel sketchbooks so far seem like very serious contenders to be carried across the Atlantic in the Clark backpack this summer.