Deciding on the Best Sized Sketchbook
These are for sketching and drawingNOT watercolor!
Sketchbooks with watercolor quality paper - I like 140lb/300 g/m², cold press (textured) - come in a crazy variety of sizes. As I’ve mentioned before, the sketchbook page is 90% of the time my final version of a sketch/watercolor painting. I don’t usually sketch and draw on large sheets unless I’m doing a house commission, then I use 9” x 12” paper. Since people have asked about buying prints of my paintings I now also am thinking about the best painting size to scan for having prints made. Since I prefer smaller sketchbooks over larger ones and landscape over portrait orientation, I tend to like ones like my 8 1/4” x 5” Moleskine Art Watercolour Album though its paper is 135lb/200 g/m². The paper, however, is cold press paper and actually quite nice. It has 36 sheets, so 72 pages (sides) on which to draw/paint. I do tend, though, to only draw on one side in my sketchbooks. I recently purchased a Strathmore 500-Series Watercolor Travel Journal that measures 5 1/2” x 8”, so portrait, but not only is the paper 140lb/300 g/m², cold press paper it’s also 100% cotton. I’ve heard that 100% cotton paper has great durability and wanted to try it. This journal only has 10 sheets/20 pages and costs almost as much as the Moleskine.
I’m trying these different type sketchbooks because I’m thinking of only using homemade sketchbooks in the future. So optimum page size and paper quality is something I want to determine. Besides the two mentioned, most sketchbooks I’ve used have been about the same size, however, I find I’m taping the pages to restrict my sketch to about 6” x 4” which allows me to scan the final painting so it can print with a 1/2” border and be mated in a standard 5x7 mat. This means I’m usually wasting almost two inches on the long side. A better size would be 7” x 5” but I haven’t seen a commercial sketchbook that size.
Homemade and commercial watercolor sketchbooks.
I can buy a 10-pack of 22” x 30” sheets of Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper that is 140lb/300 g/m², 100% cotton rag paper at a cost of $4.80 per sheet. From one sheet I can get eight 5” x 15” sheets that, when folded, give me sixteen 7 1/2” x 5” sheets. This is six more than the Strathmore Journal with equivalent paper (In fact, I believe Strathmore uses the same paper!) for a third of the cost! However, to be fair, the Strathmore journal comes bound and after cutting my paper I will have to bind it. I’ve already invested in bookbinding supplies so that’s not a problem. And though it takes some time, I enjoy the process so it’s really a win-win solution. In fact, I will sometimes make sketchbooks with only eight sheets and may simply staple the four signatures together binding the end with gaffers tape. Once assembled and folded open the resulting available drawing size will be the 7” x 5” optimum size I want.
If you were being observant you probably figured out that from one 22” x 30” sheet I’m wasting a 2” x 30” strip. Ah, yes, but I can cut that strip into short pieces and use them as test strips in my painting kit! I can’t do that with the wasted paper in a commercial sketchbook. So, after about seven months of exploring various sketchbooks, I think I have a good workable solution for sketching and watercolor painting going forward.
