Strathmore 400 Series Visual Watercolor Journal, 90 LB 5.5"x8" Cold Press, Wire Bound, 34 Sheets

This 140 lb watercolor journal was under five dollars when I first started watercolor a few yrs ago and I only used it once. Now I’m really into quality art supplies and I decided to draw and paint my grandson a tiger and figured it wouldn’t turn out well so I didn’t use my Arches paper, let me tell you I was blown away on how good it looked! It’s a thick quality 100 percent cotton paper. You will not find a better journal with this kind of paper at this price, even with it being around nine dollars now, it’s still a steal! Just buy it! I plan on buying 10 more

I've bought these time and again and will continue to do so. Occasionally i will buy another brand if I'm in a bind and need something before these will arrive and every time I've been disappointed. THIS brand has spoiled me. The quality of the paper, the hold of the color, the lack of paper warping, the absorbancy, etc. all work so much better than the cheaper brands I occasionally try and this brand consistently ends up being worth the money.

Good quality, vellum surface, 100% cotton mix media journal! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is for fun. Takes watercolor and gouache (prefer gouache). Not bad - I'm enjoying it.

This is one of my favorite journal books to draw in but recently I found another great use for it. I can use it for my glue books. If you don't know what glue booking is, you can search on YouTube where there are thousands of channels devoted to the craft. I've made two glue books highlighting all my favorite things. It holds just the right amount of images per page. You can use this journal for just about anything.

Great quality for the price. I use these for sketches before moving to a block for a final work in watercolors and ink.

After discovering this sketchbook, as a die-hard Moleskine fan, I don't think I'll ever go back to anything else for drawing. Bristol board has long been my preferred drawing surface for its smooth, toothless quality and substantial paper weight. It suits my style of drawing which is very line and ink heavy.But bristol board has always been sold in formats that have frustrated me. Most come in low page-count pads that use an adhesive tape on one end as the binding, so whenever you turn the page you're forced to irreparably break the binding and tear loose the page you were working on. So they aren't really like sketchbooks at all, since as soon as you turn the page it basically removes itself from the "book". This suuuucks. I love collecting my art in actual sketchbooks I can save or pull from if I want and it's really annoying to have to instead collect loose paper drawings from these break away pads, just because I prefer the quality of bristol board. The solution for me until recently has been Moleskine sketchbooks. Their sketch models (as opposed to their other non-lined notebooks) have thick, smooth, bristol boardish, paper in an off-white color. My problems with this beyond the price, is the radical inconsistency in their paper. I've had some books with warm parchment color paper, some with subtle egg shell color paper, and one with a crazzzy acidic yellow color paper. And beyond that the color erodes as you lightly erase pencil over top, making finished pieces kind of obvious roadmaps of all the trickier parts of your drawing (ie: the paper around her eyes seems awwwwful white dude, had to erase them a lot huh). Also it's annoying that the books are bound in a way the only method of extracting art is to literally dismantle the entire thing.But this sketchbook has everything I've wanted after so many frustrating alternatives! It's just a ring-bound bristol board sketchbook! That's it! That's so weirdly hard to find I swear. If the paper were sub-par it would be notable just for the format alone, but the paper is great! The ring binding means you can flip the book in half when you're drawing instead of always laying flat, which is another problem I had with the larger moleskine book. It's annoying to flip open a book that lays flat like 16"x22" when you're only drawing on half of that. The pages here aren't perforated, but that just makes it less likely stuff will fall out with use, and you can see the rings so cutting out the art is about as easy as it can be.As far as the paper quality it's smooth (like realllllly smooth even for bristol) without any tooth to speak of. Pencils glide around as if on an ice rink, particularly ones with a softer lead, making this an ideal surface for more line-heavy illustration. Think like comic book or tattoo art. It also takes to ink incredibly well and pencils erase easily underneath, no bleeding around the edges of lines with either fountain or dipping pens. And the pages are thick (like realllllly thick) which is a quality I've always liked about bristol board. When you finish a piece, or a sketch accidentally becomes something more like a finished work, you have it on something really substantial and high quality feeling in your hands. It feels even thicker than most card stocks. I'm a big fan of the paper.Side note: this is a silly detail but when I ordered this sketchbook the cover on the listing really bothered me. It just felt kind of childish and not particularly serious. But get this... It tears away to reveal a hella classy hard cardboard cover!! Why this isn't pictured on the listing I'll never know, it's shiny brown carboard in a faux snake skin kind of pattern on both the front and back cover. Really pleasant surprise.-Mont

I worked at the art supply store at my art college years ago, in the 90s. My school collaborated with a local paper company to put out a variety of school-brand sketchbooks. One of them was a spiral bound book, 11" x 14", with a heavy cover and back. And the paper was 100% cotton watercolor paper, 140 cold press. There were around 25 pages in them. They were the best sketchbooks, and an incredible buy. (I can't remember what they cost, but if I found them affordable as a student, they were not expensive.) I wish I had somehow been able to stockpile them and store them in an art supply bunker, but those sketchbooks are now a thing of the past.The next best thing to building a time machine, and going back to buy one of my alma mater watercolor sketchbooks, is buying one of these. Strathmore 460-19 500 Series Visual Mixed Media Journal, Vellum, 9"x12", White, 34 Sheets.These are my requirements for a good sketchbook: spiral binding, so I can fold the pages all the way back without them getting weird, and tear the pages out easily if need be. The paper needs to be 100% cotton so it will stand up to multiple eraser scrubbings and multiple water applications without pilling. It needs to be of a decent weight so it doesn’t tear under the erasing and water. It should have a generous amount of pages. It has to tolerate a variety of mixed media. And- it needs to be affordable.I work wet on wet a lot. I use water soluble graphite to draw the basic design, and have to do a lot of erasing because my drafting skills aren't the greatest. Then I go in with water-soluble chalk pastels, gouache, ink, more graphite, and sometimes acrylic paint and water soluble colored pencils. I spray the paper with water for wet on wet, and will spray the work in progress and sometimes rinse off as much of the image as I can, and then go back in and work on it some more. When its finished, I will spray the work with either Workable Fixatif or Crystal Clear to seal in the media. Or I will put on a layer or two of polymer medium. I like to keep the work in the book. I do put glassine between the pages. But the paper gets loaded with media, and layers, and plastic- and with the exception of a little tearing at the top or bottom of the page, the books stay intact.I don't know how the paper is sized, or have any other information on them. I just know they are amazing, and I'm happy they exist.Strathmore, if you are listening: I'd really love an 11" x 14" size of one of these.I highly recommend this sketchbook. Treat yourself to one. Under $20. 100% cotton paper. The paper makes a big difference, and won't quit on you, or pill, or tear. I have tormented the pages of these sketchbooks, and they keep their integrity. I'm really glad I found them.