New Sketching Journal - Leuchtturm 1917

 Well, I have now made over 40 pictures in my Leuchtturm 1917 sketching journal, so I think I’m in a position to make some more observations.

I began the sketchbook on the 8^th February, the same day I finished filling my Derwent Academy A5 sketchbook. Being as it was on sale the Derwent, with 128 pages, cost less than £5. The Leuchtturm with 112 pages cost more than £20. At that price you might well say that it’s writing a cheque that a sketching journal can’t cash. Well, look. I didn’t buy it with a view to making it my sketching journal brand of choice that I will loyally buy for the rest of my life. No, I bought it out of curiosity, really wanting to see what I might get for my money.

So let’s look at what exactly it is that I’ve got for my money. Durability-wise I’m not all that impressed. The Leuchtturm gives you 112 pages of 150 gsm paper. You get all the features of the ‘moleskine style’ journal that you might expect – elastic fastening, a document pocket attached to the inside back cover and an integral ribbon bookmark. In fact you get two bookmarks with Leuchtturm. I’m not entirely sure why you’d want two and if this is one of the reasons for the expensive cost then they could take it away as soon as they like. The covers are a matt black and similar to a Moleskine, although they are a bit thinner than a typical journal of this style, and do seem to me to be bowing just a little outwards – not as much as the Amazon Basics, but still something I would not have expected. So far it has not shown noticeable ill effects from living in my backpack.

As regards use I would say that there is a particular problem with this particular sketching journal. Most of the sketching journals I’ve used, not just the best ones, open and sit nicely flat, wherever you are in the journal. Leuchtturm does not. It’s a really strange oversight on the part of the manufacturers because it makes it harder to use all of the pages than it is in competitors like Moleskine and Seawhite.

Being more positive I would say that the paper works very nicely for fineliner – it’s up there with Moleskine and Seawhite. 

It’s certainly amongst the very best I’ve used with coloured fineliners. There’s no show through and the marks are every bit as clear and crisp as they are in Moleskine and Seawhite. There’s no show through at all either.

I’ve also used watercolour. The colours are pretty vivid, maybe a little more so than Moleskine and up with Seawhite. However the paper does waffle which the Seawhite doesn’t. When the book is closed you can clearly see the pages where you’ve used watercolour and in this respect it’s very like the Moleskine and inferior to the Seawhite.

In just over a week’s time I’m heading off on the first sketching trip of 2026, to Tallinn in Estonia. This will provide a good test of the journal. Basically, if I can’t take a journal and use it well on a sketchpedition then it’s no real use to me. In the past I’ve used Wilkinson’s own brand, Moleskine, Seawhite and Royal Talens for sketchpeditions and I’m sure that the Leuchtturm will cope well.