Sketching Journal Reviews and Recommendations

I greatly enjoy urban sketching and I have made the best part of 20 city break sketching trips since 2016 so It's important to have a decent travel sketchbook on the go. Over the last few years experience has helped me clarify what I'm looking for from a travel sketching journal. I want something that isn't overly large - small enough to be carried in a large jacket pocket but large enough to allow for quite detailed ink sketching. It must be robust enough for some pretty rough handling, so hard covers are better. As well as taking ink comfortably it's nice if the paper is heavy enough to be able to cope with a little watercolour as well. 

I should probably say at this point that for most of my life I have been a career cheapskate and this has cost me at various times. I still want value for money but I've come to learn that cheapest doesn't always mean best. Even for a skinflint such as myself it’s useful to have a wider concept of value for money which encompasses more than just price. The things which matter to me when I’m choosing a travel sketchbook are :-

Price per page. On the surface a £5 sketching journal looks better value than a £6 one. However if the former has 70 pages, and the latter has 110, then it’s a different story, which is why I do try to work out the price per page within the book.

Durability. A sketchbook is not great value if it falls to pieces after a week living in my rucksack.

Ability to handle dry media. Again, a sketchbook is not great value if fine liner ink shows through to the other side of the page.

Ability to handle wet media. I don’t use watercolour extensively but I like to know that I can when I want to.

Enjoyability of Use – how the paper feels when I use it, and how appealing the book is in itself.

The list I’ve just given you is very much my own personal one and you might feel that other things are more important to you. Still, at least it will give you an idea of some of the things you might want to consider when choosing a sketchbook. One of the things you’ll want to think about is whether you prefer a cahier style book, a casebound journal style book, or a spiral bound book.I started using cahier (exercise book) style sketchbooks but found that they don’t have a lot of pages and being staple bound fall apart quite easily. I have used spiral bound books but I just don’t like resting my hand on the spiral binding. It’s hard to make a double page spread with them too. So my style of choice is the casebound, hardbacked journal type book, and all of the sketchbooks I review are of this type and approximately A5 sized.

So if you’re ready, let’s ask and answer our first question :-

Are Own Brands Worth Considering?

Whether you’re a dedicated cheapskate or an enthusiastic amateur, when you’re looking for value from a travel sketchbook an own brand might well seem like a decent place to look. With many types of products you find that a retailer’s own brand can be significantly cheaper than a proprietary brand without being hugely inferior in quality. In my time I’ve used several British own brands of sketchbook, but I’ve rarely found anything comparable in value to my favourite proprietary brands.

As I said, I travel as much as I can around Europe and I’ve made many sketching trips since 2016. I wanted to find a cheap but decent, usable sketching journal. Now, when friends and family learned that I was so into my sketching and painting they would often give me materials, and my first real travel sketch journal came to me this way. It is actually a soft cover journal, but it has the integral book mark and the elastic fastening popularised by Moleskine – and I will come to them later. It’s a Wilco own brand. Wilco was the own brand of now- defunct British retailers Wilkinson.

 I actually really liked this journal, but it’s fair to say that I didn’t know any better. There’s about 120 pages which sounds fine, however the paper is so thin that even ordinary fine liner shows through with the result that you ended up being unable to use both sides of a lot of the pages. Watercolour buckled and waffled the pages very badly and I always thought the colours looked bland and washed out.

I bought my next own brand journal from the British supermarket Morrisons. 

Superficially it looked like a Moleskine – black covers, elastic fastening, document pocket attached to the back cover and integral bookmark. However it felt terribly cheap. The covers are thin card and the paper is thinner even than the Wilco book, with the same issues of show through and inability to cope with watercolour. Morrisons discontinued this product some time ago, and at £4 several years ago when I bought it, it wasn’t even that cheap.

Even retailers who are known for selling art supplies don’t seem to be able to produce a really acceptable casebound sketching journal. Towards the end of 2025 I bought a sketching journal produced by Crawford and Black.

Crawford and Black is the own brand of UK retailers The Works. At £6 it looked cheap, and with elastic fastening, hard black covers and integral bookmark it looked like it might be a decent product. However with only 80 pages of fairly thin 115 gsm paper appearances proved deceptive. Basic fineliner sketches show through from one side of the page to the other, and coloured fine liners show through badly. I’ll be honest, I was too discouraged to even try watercolour.

The most recent own brand I’ve bought is a Shore and Marsh A5 Sketching journal.

Shore and Marsh is the own brand owned by UK chain Hobbycraft. I had hopes that this might be okay. It has hard back, cloth covers, no ribbon, no elastic fastening, but 184 pages of 140 gsm paper and all for £6. Some of the proprietary brands I’ve used have paper of pretty much the same weight, so I really thought that this might be good. Unfortunately the texture of the paper is rougher than I like, and I didn’t find it very enjoyable to draw on. For some reason as well even when I used ordinary fine liner dots of it showed through on the other side of the page.

However:-

I have found one own brand that is good enough value that it might be worth your while considering. This is the Amazon Basics Large Art Sketchbook (landscape).

’Large’ is a little bit of a fib considering it's slightly smaller than A5 at 21x13 cm. You get 72 pages of 200 gsm paper for a really cheap price. The surface of the paper is a little rougher than I like, but it copes well with watercolour and fine liner, although I did get a little show through of dots when I used coloured fine liners. It coped fine with a few weeks’ living in my rucksack, and it’s definitely the best own brand that I’ve yet come across.

So the best answer to the question – are own brands worth considering? - is that for the majority, no. However if you’re just starting out, or if price is your overriding concern, then if you find a retailer offering you a cheap own brand sketching journal or notebook - 

Check out the weight of the paper. Even if you can't find the gsm of the paper, feel it. If it feels thin and flimsy, then it certainly won't be any good for applying a watercolour wash to. It may even let fineliner ghost through meaning you can only use half of the surfaces in the book.

Think of the punishment that the book is likely to take, and how well it's going to survive. If the book falls apart before it's even half complete, then however cheap it is, it's a waste of money. Of all of the own brands that I’ve used, only the Amazon own brand (not to be confused with their classic A5 notebook) is probably a good option for you. Next question.

When it comes to proprietary brands, is a higher price a guarantee of higher quality?

The simple answer is no, not always. Of all of the proprietary brands that I’ve used, generally the most expensive are usually better quality than the least expensive. But not necessarily enough to justify the difference in price. So at this point, let me consider the brand that is supposedly the market leader.

Moleskine 

My oldest daughter asked me one day in late 2019, a propos of nothing, which was a good make of travel sketching journal to buy. I told her that in my sessions with the South Wales urban sketching group, and in Facebook art groups I belonged to the name that kept coming up was Moleskine. Lo and behold, on Christmas day 2019 she gave me my first Moleskine travel journal.

In terms of quality, Moleskine is certainly a cut above the own brand sketchbooks I had used up to this point. Mind you, it is a lot more expensive too. Its dimensions are slightly smaller than the Wilco book, but I like this size for travel sketching. This is a hardcover book, and those covers can take a lot of punishment. They give you a nice support if you’re sketching with the book on your knee, for example, or even sketching standing up. There are 104 pages, a bit of an odd number. The paper is pretty smooth and it takes a fineliner well. The paper is 165 gsm, and this is pretty forgiving. I’ve been able to use watercolour on sketches in it, and although there’s a little buckling, it’s nowhere near as much as I got in the Wilco book. It’s so watercolour friendly that you can draw or even paint on the other side of your painted page without any show through. I was always quite happy with the way that my Moleskine book took colour. One other feature is a handy document wallet attached to the back cover. So I always enjoyed using Moleskine. However I should admit that I have never bought one for myself, and just been given them as Christmas presents. Now, the big question I had about Moleskine was with regards to the price, how much were you paying for quality, and how much for the name? Which is why I started buying and using other brands as well.

Seawhite of Brighton

Seawhite of Brighton are a new kid on the block challenging Moleskine for the crown. And they're a British company too! My first ever Seawhite sketchbook was an A5 concertina style Octopus sketchbook I was given, that I used in Spain in 2018. It has 70 painting surfaces, and is 150gsm. I liked using this a lot. 

Now, for Christmas 2023, instead of buying me another Moleskine travel sketchbook, my daughter bought me two books, one of which was a Seawhite of Brighton A5 landscape spiral bound sketchbook. Now, it’s not specifically a travel sketchbook, but there’s no law against using it as one.There’s no issue with using fineliner in it, but then the paper in it is 160gsm, only five less than Moleskine. The texture is not quite as smooth as the pages in the Moleskine, but I don’t mind that at all. The covers are very thick, very tough card. This is a pretty useful piece of kit, and I’d love it if it wasn’t for the spiral binding. I like to take a casebound book on a sketching trip.

So I was encouraged to try out the Seawhite Travel journal, although it is only 130 gsm. At first glance the unopened Seawhite journal looked very like one of the unopened Moleskine journals I mentioned earlier. Both have opened books on their covers – as does the Leuchtturm 2017 which I bought later. 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. What I have found with the Seawhite is that in my experience it does everything at least as well as a Moleskine journal. I ended up carrying it in my backpack for months and it stood up to the punishment pretty well. I would say that the cover maybe isn’t quite as robust as a Moleskine. However it is pleasant to draw in – the paper has a little more tooth than Moleskine paper, it is a purer white and it takes watercolour surprisingly well considering it is only 130 gsm. To my eye watercolour seems brighter and less washed out than Moleskine.

You get your page ribbon, your elastic fastener and the document pocket at the back just as you do with Moleskine. However you also get a good 20 pages more than you do with Moleskine. For less than 2/3 of the price of a Moleskine. So does that make it the best? Well, let’s consider a few others first

Royal Talens Art Creations 21x13cm Sketching Journal

In September 2024 I bought a Royal Talens 21x13 Travel Journal. The price was cheaper than the equivalent Seawhite journal, however it does have about 160 pages. I liked 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 in the Moleskine, although when I scanned both the RT came 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. Maybe it’s my imagination but ordinary fine liner marks maybe aren’t quite as crisp as in the previous two books, and coloured finelinner certainly produces results which look a little fuzzier to me. The paper is smoother than the previous two books, and I like the way that a fine liner seems to almost skate over the surface. I enjoyed using the book so much  in the week that I was inwardly saying ‘please don’t let me down.’ when I finally dared to use watercolour in it. My first feeling on finishing my first ink and watercolour in this book was one of relief. The colours are, to my mind, at least no less vibrant than they tend to come out in the Moleskine book, which gives them more of a grainy, muted quality. 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 noticeably better than either.

After I bought it I carried around the RT book in my backpack for weeks on end, and it stood up to the punishment at least as well as the Moleskine and a bit better than the Seawhite did. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I just really like using this Royal Talens sketchbook a lot. It isn’t because the results are noticeably better in it – they’re not that much worse either, although I do find that you’re better off using a small nib – 0.05mm or 0.1mm – lines can get a little fuzzy in anything larger than 0.2mm I find, which is not as good as Seawhite, Moleskine or Canson. The cover is the most tactile of any of them, and I like the range of pastel colours you can choose from.

Canson Graduate 1x21.6cm Mixed Media sketching Journal

My first sketching journal purchase of 2025 was the Canson Graduate Mixed Media Sketching Journal. The price was almost the same as the Royal Talens. It has only 80 pages – only half as much as the Royal Talens. However the pages in the Canson are 200 gsm. It also goes the full Moleskine in as much as it provides you with page ribbon, elastic fastening and rear document pocket – the Royal Talens doesn’t have the pocket.

I did find that there was just a little durability issue with the covers. This has cloth covered hard covers and whatever they have been treated with began to rub off noticeably when living in my rucksack. 

The paper in the Canson is a pure white, like the Seawhite and it has a little more tooth than a Moleskine, again like the Seawhite. I enjoyed using ink in it and found it a little more forgiving than the Royal Talens. I used a variety of media in it – ink fineliner – coloured fineliner – watercolour, watercolour pencils, and I have to say that I didn’t encounter any difficulties using any of these media. I don’t see much to choose between this and the Seawhite. If I was being extremely picky I would say that for fineliner work the Seawhite just about shades it. I’ve achieved pleasing results using Stabilo coloured fineliners – again of a comparable quality to the Seawhite.As for watercolour the tones seem to be brighter and more vivid even than the Seawhite and the Amazon basics – although I do find it’s more difficult to get fine detail with watercolour in the Canson than it is when you use specialist watercolour paper.

Derwent Academy A5 hardback casebound sketchbook

I bought this in mid 2025 when I didn’t really need a new book. Why? Because it was on sale on Amazon and looked really good value. I got it for a remarkable sale price of £4.99. That’s a ppp (price per page) of 3.89p. That’s extremely cheap. However, Amazon have not stocked this item since and on average other stockers ask an average of £9.99. That’s 7.89ppp. It’s okay but not outstanding, and comparable with the Seawhite, which is my favourite ‘jack of all trades’ sketching journal.

Throughout the 35 days it took to fill the sketchbook it lived in my rucksack, which I use daily, and suffered no noticeable ill effects. This is good because it’s cloth bound rather than vinyl/faux leather. The Canson and the Amazon Basics were also cloth bound, and the Canson showed wear and tear on the edges of the cover, while the Amazon basics covers began bowing outwards.

The paper is very white, and amongst the smoothest of any paper that I’ve used. It is only 135 gsm which beings its own problems. When you use it for ink sketches you do get a very clear contrast between the marks and the paper background, and because the texture is smoother there’s no real resistance to the pen, which means it seems to skate across the page, and I like this. The sketchbook is clearly labelled as being for dry media and makes no claim to being any good for wet media, and this is just as well. I made a pretty OK watercolour sketch in it, but the paper pilled very badly and the waffling made the other side of the page a very difficult and unpleasant surface to work on. With coloured fineliners the dark blue bled right through the page.

I would be tempted to buy another of these and put it to one side purely for ink, graphite or charcoal sketching, but only if I found it on special offer again. For the money I think you’re probably much better off buying the versatile Seawhite journal.

Leuchtturm 1917 A5 Sketchbook

In the Autumn of 2025 at the same time that I bought the Derwent book, I bought this, the most expensive sketchbook I have yet bought (I’ve never actually bought a Moleskine, which is the only other journal I’ve used which has a comparable price. ) 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 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 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.

Which do I recommend?

My current favourite sketching journal is the Seawhite A5. Getting down to brass tacks, I don’t find that a Moleskine journal does anything that a Seawhite doesn’t and in fact there are areas where Seawhite outdoes Moleskine in my opinion. And you get a significantly greater number of pages. And it is considerably cheaper than a Moleskine. Maybe I’m just being the chauvinistic Brit here, but I honestly think that it’s better than a Moleskine. For me, this is the best reasonably priced tall purpose travel sketching journal.

I don’t honestly know what it is about the Royal Talens that makes me like using it so much. I don’t think it’s as good a product as Seawhite’s Travel Journal. I don’t think it takes ink quite as well as either the Seawhite or the Moleskine and it certainly doesn’t take watercolour as well as the Seawhite. Yet if I’m sitting at home and I have the urge to make an ink copy of, let’s say, an illustration of Alice in Wonderland, then it’s the Royal Talens that I reach for. If price is a primary consideration for you, then Royal Talens is a perfectly acceptable alternative.  

Generally the Canson Mixed Media journal has stood up pretty well to living in my rucksack for some months. If you’re the kind of sketcher who likes to try a variety of different media and are looking for a value for money all purpose journal, then this may very well be the product that you’re looking for.

With regards to price point I don’t think you’ll find much better than the Amazon Basics. For me it worked perfectly well with ink, and performed better than even the Seawhite with watercolour. The only thing I will say is that there are a couple of reviews on Amazon which say that the pages can come unbound. I haven’t experienced this myself but then I haven’t gone carrying it around in my backpack or weeks on end yet. If you plan on using watercolour with many of your sketches I’d say that it might well be worth buying one and seeing how well it fits your needs. It’s so cheap that even if it doesn’t work out so well for you, you’ve not wasted a lot of money.

As for Moleskine, it is a nice product but I just can’t see any justification for the price. Cheapskates like me don’t want to pay a premium just for a name and this is what Moleskine seems to be charging you.

As for Leuchtturm 1917, similarly it is a nice product, but I cannot see how they can ask twice the price of a Seawhite when it’s not even quite as good, in my opinion. Yeah it’s got two bookmarks, but so what? Paying through the nose for an extra bookmark is not the cheapskate way.