New Sketching Journal - Canson Gradate Mixed Media A5

I’ve been reading reviews of art materials again. This is a dangerous thing for me to do as I’m sure you’re aware. But hey, sometimes you have to just live a little. Now, you may well be aware that I like travel journals for sketching in. A few years ago when I was spending time with my friends in the Cardiff Urban Sketchers one name of travel journal that kept coming up was Moleskine. So up until last year, that’s what I’ve used. And if you’re read what I’ve written in the past you’ll know that I’ve been pretty happy to use Moleskine. However, I had in the back of my mind the nagging feeling that just maybe Moleskine is a little bit on the expensive side and there may be something equally good if not better for quite a bit less money.

So in the past 12 months I’ve used Italian in Moleskine, British in Seawhite, Dutch in Royal Talens and American in Amazon Basics and now I’ve gone French, with a Canson A5(ish) mixed media Graduate sketchbook.

I’ve pictured it alongside my trusty Royal Talens sketching journal. The size is very similar, with the Canson being only slightly taller. The price is comparable too, the Canson being a few pennies cheaper. You get fewer pages for your money, but the pages are 200 gsm to the Royal Talens 140 gsm. The Seawhite is just over £1 more expensive on Amazon but you get half as many pages again – over 120.

Like Seawhite, Canson go the full Moleskine, by which I mean that you get your matte finish hard cover, your page ribbon, elastic binding strap, and document wallet at the back. Like Seawhite the paper is white, compared with the off white of the Moleskine and the ivory of the Royal Talens.

I will admit that I enjoyed drawing in ink in it. I’ve just returned from Disneyland Paris with my family and this test sketch is based on a photograph I took in the part of the park that is called Fantasyland (I think)

The paper feels as if it has a little more tooth than the Royal Talens. I love just sketching in my Royal Talens, but I do find that for anything detailed I can’t use anything much bigger than a 0.1mm nib, whereas the paper in the Canso felt a better medium for getting the kind of marks that I want to make. Still, I also wanted to see how it works with watercolour. I applied colour to the above sketch using my Windsor and Newton Cotman travel sketchers set. Here’s a photo of the result.

I took a photograph rather than making a scan, because I tend to find that a photograph will show us if there’s any buckling or waffling of the paper. This stood up pretty well to the watercolour. Mind you at 200 gsm I should hope so.

Here’s a comparison between the five brands of A5 travel sketchbook I’ve mentioned in this post.

Clockwise, from top right – Amazon Basics, Royal Talens – Canson – Moleskine – Seawhite of Brighton.

Not surprisingly the colours appear most vibrant in the 200gsm books, the Amazon Basics and the Canson, with the Seawhite coming out on top of the lighter papered books.

I’ve only made this one picture in the book so far, so it’s a little early to daw hard and fast conclusions. But it was nice enough to use, so we’ll just see how we go. If you’re looking for a budget, value for money all purpose sketchbook I still think you can do a lot worse than Seawhite, though.