Forgive me father for I have sinned. I have bought another sketchbook.

So what is it, a week since I last bought a new sketchbook? Eight and a half days actually. Look, I’d just done a bit more business on Etsy and I wanted to reward myself. I think that I’ve mentioned how much I enjoy reading reviews comparing art materials – it’s a vicarious pleasure which is almost as enjoyable as visiting specialist art supplies and stationery shops in person. Several brands tend to come up a lot in dispatches, and one of these is Hahnemuhle.

Hahnemuhle is a German company that began as a paper mill in the late 16^th century. Amongst quite a wide range of products they offer their own travel sketching journal. It’s in the familiar 13x21cm format, and it sits at the more expensive end of the market. Looking today on Amazon the Hahnemuhle 13x21cm travel journal is quite a bit more expensive than the Moleskine equivalent and more than twice as expensive as the Seawhite A5 Classic Sketching Journal. It has about the same number of pages as the Seawhite too. So I bottled it. I didn’t by a Hahnemuhle travel journal. I did, however, buy a rather cute little product that Hahnemuhle make. It’s their Draft and Sketch mini sketchbook, and you can see it in the photograph below. The other sketchbook in the second photo for comparison is the Royal Talens 9x14cm journal I bought a fortnight or so ago.

Mini? My friends, It’s absolutely tiny. It has 60 sides of paper, but the important thing is that the paper is the same weight – 140 gsm – as the Hahnemuhle travel journal. So at least, I thought, at least it should give me some idea of what to expect from the journal.

Okay then, first impressions. It’s lovely paper for fineliner sketching. It has just the right amount of tooth so that the ink makes very neat crisp and clear lines, so much so that I could use a 0.1mm nib for the finer lines as opposed to the 0.05 I’ve been using on other books, and even this I would abandon for a 0.2mm nib. The first sketch I made was the ink outlining for an ink and watercolour copy of a 1908 illustration Harry Rountree made for his 1908 set of Alice in Wonderland illustrations. I enjoyed this so much I decided to gamble and try to make the next illustration for my Alice story “Alice’s Adventures at the Pole”. And another. And another. Learning from my experience with my Royal Talens I decided to distance myself a little, and while I could still be objective about it, put it to the watercolour test.

Hahnemuhle make it perfectly clear in the packaging and promotional material that this mini sketchbook is suitable for dry media. Most sketchbooks of 130 gsm or more make claims that to be suitable for light watercolour. I did think that it was a bit odd for Hahnemuhle not to say something similar, and decided, what the hell, let’s give it a go. Here’s the result.

At first I thought that it was buckling a bit, but frankly it’s not noticeable at all now. It looks like the watercoloured pages in my seawhite sketchbooks do. And if anything, I’d say that the colours are maybe a little brighter and more vibrant. Blow me down. Comparing the pages where I’ve used watercolour I’d say it has performed better than either the Moleskine or the Royal Talens, and at least as well as the Seawhite. And this little feller is not twice as expensive as the Royal Talens equivalent. However that’s a little misleading since there are more pages in the Royal Talens. There’s no pocket in this and no elastic binding, but then it isn’t claiming to be a travel journal. So is it better or worse value than the small Royal Talens? Well, that all depends on what value means to you. But I have to say, using it today has been like using a little bit of quality. Would I buy a Hahnemuhle travel journal now, knowing what I know? At today’ s Amazon price I probably wouldn’t. But I’d love to be given one!