art books reviewed

There are lots of reviews of the Mole­sk­ine water­colour note­book on the web, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents here, plus tell you where you can get them for cheap!

The Mole­sk­ine water­colour note­book comes in four dif­fer­ent sizes:

• Pocket (5.5 x 3.5 in, 60 pages)
• Large (8.25 x 5.25 in, 72 pages)
• Folio A4 (12.5 x 8.5 in, 60 pages)
• Folio A3 (16.5 x 12.5 in, 60 pages)

Like all Mole­sk­ines, the pages in the water­colour note­book series are stitch bound and lie flat when opened. How­ever, the bind­ing is on the short-side of the book, so it opens up into a hor­i­zon­tal landscape/panoramic for­mat. If you sketch and paint on the go, it can be a lit­tle clumsy to hold your book open. But many artists love it for draw­ing land­scapes and loca­tions! These days, I walk around Zurich on the look­out for panoramic views to put into my book : )

For some tips on how to sup­port your water­colour Mole­sk­ine dur­ing travel sketch­ing, see Rus­sell Stutler’s page on sketch­ing with Mole­sk­ines.

The paper in the books are cold pressed and 200g/m² thick. The tex­ture is slightly rough, as you can see in the photo below.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, the water­colour paper used in Mole­sk­ines are sourced from a spe­cial­ist French man­u­fac­turer. I can’t com­ment on the paper qual­ity in com­par­i­son with water­colour blocks as the Mole­sk­ine is the only water­colour paper I’ve really used. From what I’ve heard and seen, I think it prob­a­bly com­pares well to other brands.

So is this Mole­sk­ine worth the money? I give it a resound­ing YES. A water­colour block of 15–20 sheets might already set you back US$15 or so. A Mole­sk­ine con­tains many more pages, plus you can draw and paint on both sides of the sheets! Most irre­sistibly, all your paper is safely bound between gor­geous black oil­cloth covers…

There are lots of places where you can find Mole­sk­ines but they’re always slightly cheaper online. As some­one who does not live in US or UK, I love the Book Depos­i­tory as they ship world­wide for free!

Book Depos­i­tory Pocket: $11.42 Large: $16.50 A4: $24.29 A3: $31.77

Ama­zon US Pocket: US$10.20 Large: US$12.21 A4: US$19.77 A3: US$29.20

Ama­zon UK Pocket: £5.32 Large: £7.95 A4: £12.47 A3: £19.00

If you pur­chase your books via these links, I get a 5% com­mis­sion which helps me run this website! : )