Royal Talens Art Creations Travel Sketchbook - My 1 week verdict

It’s a week now since my new Royal Talens sketchbook arrived. Long enough, I think, to make some observations and comparisons. Since it arrived I’ve made 11 sketches inside it. 10 of them have been ink fineliner sketches, 8 copies of Harry Rountree illustrations of Alice in Wonderland, 1 copy of a Mervyn Peake illustration of Alice through the Looking Glass and the other was an original illustration for my own unfinished Alice story, Alice’s Adventures at the Poles. However I was very conscious of the fact that I had not tried watercolour within it before his morning.

Illustrator Harry Rountree illustrated two editions of Alice in Wonderland – one in 1908 and the other 20 years later. All of his illustrations I’ve copied up to now have been from the 1928 edition. I found some of his 1908 illustrations on the net, and many of them are ink and watercolour. Now, I often fight shy of trying to copy watercolour illustration. When you get right down to it I don’t have the skills to make a decent job of it, which I can do when I’m just sketching in ink. But, here was the perfect opportunity to test how well you can use watercolour in a Royal Talens sketching journal.

Up to this point I have enjoyed using the book so much that I was inwardly saying ‘please don’t let me down.’ I don’t know what it is that I’ve quite enjoyed so much. I like handling the book, the covers feel very similar to a Moleskine but are just a tiny bit nicer to the touch. I like the ivory colour of the paper. My untrained eye can hardly distinguish any difference between the colour of the paper in the RT, and the colour I the Moleskine, although when I scan both the RT comes out far more yellow. Drawing in ink fineliner in the RT is a very similar experience to doing the same in both Moleskine and Seawhite and I haven’t found any of the three to be worse for ink sketching.

So, here’s the Harry Rountree ink and watercolour copy. I’ve posted the scans and photographs, because I don’t feel that my scanner picks out watercolour as well as a photograph does.

My first feeling is one of relief. The colours are, to my mind, at least a little bit more vibrant than they tend to come out in the Moleskine book, which gives them more of a grainy, muted quality. In fact, I think that the RT book takes the colour as well as the Seawhite does. With 140 gsm paper you have to expect some buckling, and it’s similar to the Moleskine on this score. This is one area where the Seawhite – which has slightly lighter 130 gsm paper – performs better than either.

Now, I haven’t yet gone carrying around the RT book in my backpack for days on end, so I don’t actually have any proof whether it would stand up to it as well as the Moleskine and the Seawhite do. But my gut feeling is that it would.

So, of the these three branded travel sketching journals, I would still say that the Seawhite is the best all round option. But I think that Royal Tales is a very acceptable alternative. To me it either matches or outperforms the Moleskine in every way – apart from the lack of the document pocket at the back. And even after you factor in the cost of card and glue to make your own pocket for it, the RT is still considerably cheaper than the Moleskine. I like it. I like it a lot. And before you ask, nobody has offered me a penny to say so (more’s the pity).