“If you arrived on this product page in a state of excitement because you received an email in which this product was captioned "Watercolour Sketchbook", relax, the website is more restrained, and much more accurate, in its description. This is a sketchbook, and a fine one. And it is indeed fountain pen and watercolour "friendly". Very friendly. Whether it contains what you might call "watercolour paper" is debatable, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
There are limitations. The paper is only 120gsm, so it will cockle a bit when wet, but it flattens after drying and it has been sized to stand up to wet media. The texture is very smooth, which is what makes it an absolute delight for fountain pens and ink generally, but it means you can't achieve some of watercolour's more beautiful effects. You can, with care, lift out colour, but don't try wet-on-wet techniques or layering. Think of it more as a sketchbook where, after making an ink drawing, you could with success add simple, vibrant washes of colour, or achieve some nice effects with watercolour pencils. Similarly, the paper responds well to water-soluble graphite, or ink wash.
The binding is excellent and every spread lies flat without coercion. The vaguely "rubbery" texture of the cover feels like it will be durable and the thickness of the card backing is just right for when you're sketching without a table.
And the proportions! The "cropped A" format that Any Day Now has adopted is just fabulous for art making. It gives that extra bit of relative width and, when working across a whole spread, the page height doesn't feel too short by comparison. As it happens, the proportions are nearly identical to the F0, F1, etc. adopted by Midori for their cotton notebooks; the "A5 crop", for example, is a very slightly scaled up F0. So that makes this sketchbook a real pleasure to use for sketching.
The strength of this sketchbook is the way it embraces genuine versatility. I wouldn't take this sketchbook to a dedicated sketching session, but it is exactly the kind of sketchbook that I'd adopt as an "everyday carry" chuck-in-my-bag sketchbook. I can write notes, treating it as a notebook; make ink and pencil sketches; and yes, add light watercolour if the mood takes me. This sketchbook definitely fills a niche.
I have only one complaint (and this is the reason for the four stars): the perforations on every page. Perforate a few pages at the back – sure – but not every page. It runs counter to the spirit of a sketchbook/notebook. In that respect the copywriters got it wrong in saying: "When you've finished your latest piece, the perforated pages make it a breeze to pop out your new work and put it on display." If I'm planning to make finished work worthy of display, I'll be working on a pad or block or loose paper that's optimised for the medium, and that's not what this book is. In fact, a notebook/sketchbook needs to retain its integrity because its real beauty and value lies in the completed whole.”
