A Bright Idea From Bright Ideas

Posted on June 4, 2016 by Larry Marshall

Sometimes you just want to draw on colored paper. Maybe it comes from the days when we were kids and had piles of “construction paper” in all colors of the rainbow. Whatever its roots, sketchers like to shun the white and walk a bit on the wild side, if only once in a while.

A company called Bright Ideas has a solution and it’s called the Bright Ideas Journal. This is a 5×7 book with 408 pages. I suppose you could get away with very light applications of watercolor but the paper isn’t heavy enough for the serious watercolorist. As a substrate for pencil and/or ink drawings, however, this journal is pretty sweet.

It’s thick (about 1-inch) compared to most sketchbooks because of its 408 pages of paper in ten different colors but a big plus is that this book lays flat, very flat because of the open spine binding. Some may grumble because each page has the name of its section printed in the lower right corner. What purpose this could possibly serve is lost on me but I don’t find it objectionable for my ‘small sketches’ needs.

I haven’t had much chance to experiment with it but the paper takes ink very well, with no feathering, no bleedthrough and ghosting only if you hold up the sheet to the light. I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with this book and I thank the Bright Ideas folks for their bright idea. I ran down to the local park and did this quick test sketch so I’d have at least one ‘test’ that isn’t a bunch of scribbles.

Field Notes Sweet Tooth: A Sketchbook?

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Larry Marshall

I confess that I’ve been a subscriber to Field Notes, a series of small (3×5) collectible notebooks, for the past year. These are handy notepads but mostly they come with paper that’s too light for sketching, at least with fountain pens, and they generally come with pesky lines or grids on their pages.

A while back, though, they did one of their quarterly releases that included 70# white paper. It did have a light grid but it could be easily ignored and proved to be a useful sketchbook at least for those of us who like the convenience of having a small, light sketchbook with us at all times. And Field Notes have done it again… sort of.

This time they’re released a set of three colorful notebooks (Easter colors??) with a couple significant twists on their typical approach. This time, the 70# paper is BLANK… just like we like it. And it’s RED, BLUE and YELLOW… which we like…err…uhm… I’ll let you be the judge.

When I received mine I was very unhappy. Who the heck needs paper with these ridiculous colors. I threw them on the debris field and this my desk and didn’t even open them.

Then Tina Koyama “experimented.” She’s much smarter than I am and saw the potential. You can see her results here, and here. The results were undeniable; I had to try them.

Like Tina, I started with the red one. I took it with me when I went to meet some people to attend a small art exhibition. I stood outside and in spite of the cold decided that I should try to draw a lamp on red paper. This was not a great idea because my hands quickly became frozen and I was struggling to get the white Uniball pen to write in the cold. Nevertheless, I had started my adventure down the small red road.

That night I sat at my desk with a photo of a street lamp on my laptop. I only spent a few minutes on it but the red paper made it a lot of fun.

The next night I was watching TV with my wife and as I’m prone to do, I got a bit bored not doing at least one other thing while watching the glass teat. So, after checking my Instagram feed, becoming frustrated with vitriole on Twitter, and checking in to see what the Blue Jays are doing in spring training, I got my red Field Notes, my Platinum 3776 and I grabbed the glass container that holds my watercolor water on my desk. Watching TV became more fun as I drew that container.

I’m a guy who loves drawing lines more than anything else. I’m drawn to watercolors mostly cuz everyone else is, proving that I’m as much of a lemming as anyone else. But the red paper releases me from the thought of adding color so I can just enjoy drawing with my fountain pens. It won’t be the only sketching I do as I’m not sure how well it fits into my urban sketching passion, but for sitting around the house drawing, it’s pretty sweet… or is that sweet tooth?

I did give the approach a try while I was at the museum and drew this interesting flask. It’s a flask which was traditionally filled with perfume. Egyptians gave these to each other as part of a New Years celebration. This was fun and may show me the way to incorporate the toned paper into a location session as this only too me a few minutes between my normal sketching.

I was more doubtful about the other two colors but, again, Tina led the way. This morning I decided I should try the blue book so I could post a result in this blog post. I decided a fire hydrant might be nice and as I’d just filled a Pilot Metropolitan with Nooder’s Red-Black I started drawing. Not good…really bad, in fact. Noodlers Red-Black is supposed to be “water-resistant.” It is not… not even a little bit. I touched the drawing with a small brush with the idea of pulling a bit of shading from the lines and those lines just exploded. Thank goodness I was drawing a red thing because I was in chase my tail mode trying to clean up the mess. I wasn’t very successful and smarter people would probably not post this sketch. Here it is. Not the fault of the Field Notes but it’s a great example why I don’t use Noodler’s “water-resistant” inks.

And so I had to try again so I could provide something…anything in the blue book that looked ok. I did this quick architecture/landscape sketch from my limited imagination. Hope you like it.

Stillman & Birn Softcovers: An Exciting Announcement

Posted on February 20, 2016 by Larry Marshall

Via Giphy.com

I am so excited to be writing this post. As many know, Stillman & Birn, my favorite sketchbook company, released a line of softcover sketchbooks not very long ago. Sadly, what most also know is that there were manufacturing problems with those books and they had to recall all of them, at great expense, from around the world. I applauded them for this as it hit their bottom line hard, but they didn’t want we artists to bear the pain of the problem.

Excepting the manufacturing problem, these softcover books looked like a dream come true. Available in all of Stillman & Birn’s great papers, in a variety of sizes, and with cover colors that reflected the paper type. The covers had an almost suede-feel to them. They weighed only 55-65% of the weight of the equivalent hardcover and they were much thinner. A dream come true for someone like me who carries several sketchbooks and walks a couple hours a day to sketching locations.

Stillman & Birn sofcover prototypes

Well, they’re BACK!!! Or at least almost back. Stillman & Birn says they should be available ‘real soon’ and they sent me a couple of their prototype books to get my opinion about whether the problems are fixed.

To that I can say, they are fixed and then some. I’ve gone through both of my prototype books, one page at a time, and the problems we saw with the initial release are gone. But it’s better than that. These books lay flatter than their early softcovers and certainly better than the hardcovers. I didn’t have to bend them backwards as you do with the hardcovers to get them to lay flat. They just do, though I still recommend going through each page, folding it out flat before using the book. I do that with any sketchbook, regardless of brand.

As I said, the books they sent me are prototypes. They came with Delta and Gamma paper so I could check both the 150gsm and 270gsm binding. The covers are the same material as the production versions but these aren’t color-coded; they’re prototypes. Still, they are amazing books and I’m downright giddy that I have them to use. I was planning to get somewhere to do a sketch for this blog post but a snowstorm prevented that. Truth is, everyone knows how great Stillman & Birn paper is so I decided it was more important to get this announcement into the ether. So here it is, without a sketch. Here’s the money shot of the books laying flat. Ain’t they gorgeous? Coming soon to an art store near you.

Stillman & Birn softcovers, laying flat.

Cheap, Small Sketchbooks – Another Solution

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Larry Marshall

I go through a lot of small sketchbooks because I’m constantly scribbling in them. I have one where I watch TV, one in my office, one in my coat pocket and at least one in each of my sketching bags.

I’ve tried using Field Notes notebooks. I use the ‘mustache’ notebooks I wrote about at one point. These are wonderful because of their toned 4×6 paper that take fountain pen ink well. But for my sketching bags I like to have something that’s just a wee bit bigger, with a spiral binding so I can fold everything back and have just the sheet I’m working on in front of me. It still has to be cheap, fountain pen friendly, and of a practical size. For that I’ve been cutting 9×12 spiral-bound, 60# sketchbooks that I cut in half, creating 80-page 6×9 books that cost me less than $4. All of these solutions suffer when I try to add even light washes of watercolor.

What is a problem is that while I like the cheap Fabriano paper in those 6×9 books, they’re just large for the purpose, being too large and too heavy because I’m also carrying my regular S&B sketchbooks.

So, when I saw Canson’s XL Multi-Media book in a 7×10 size, I knew I’ve found my answer. Cut in half (I just run it through my bandsaw), it provides two 60-sheet 5×7 sketchbooks and the best part was that the paper is 98lb paper that takes watercolor washes quite well. No, I’m wrong. The best part is that these books only cost $3.50. I put one of my sketches on the front just to spiff it up a bit.

Review: Stillman & Birn Softcover Sketchbooks

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Larry Marshall

When I got into sketching, about four years ago, I found it pretty easy to find quality pens, pencils, brushes and watercolors. What was harder was to find a sketchbook that could accommodate pen, ink and watercolor. It seemed that I was buying a new sketchbook every week in an attempt to ‘try another’ in my quest for the perfect sketchbook.

My first post about Stillman & Birn sketchbooks was in December of 2011. A few other artists had discovered them and were really excited by them. I’d just gotten one and was very new to sketching so it was hard for me to evaluate it except to say that I liked it.

My first real discussion of S&B came in March of 2013, after I’d had some time to fall in love with their products. At that point I’d done a lot of sketching on their Alpha series paper and had just bought one of the Epsilon series sketchbooks. If you read that post you’ll get the impression that I worked as a sales rep for S&B but I do not.

In the future my daughter is going to be faced with the task of taking my sketchbooks to the landfill. When she does this, I suspect my pile of Stillman & Birn sketchbooks will be even larger. These are the ones I've filled in the past 3 years.

In the future my daughter is going to be faced with the task of taking my sketchbooks to the landfill. When she does, I suspect my pile of Stillman & Birn sketchbooks will be even larger. These are the ones I’ve filled in the past 3 years. Several others are ‘in progress’.

Since then I’ve been filling S&B sketchbooks at an alarming rate. I’ve tried not only Alpha and Epsilon papers but also their Beta, Zeta and Gamma sketchbooks. You can find reviews of these sketchbooks if you search for those words here. I have a lot of experience with Stillman & Birn products, and I can’t imagine using anything else.

But there’s been one sketchbook format that S&B hadn’t provided me, until now. I’ve whined to them about it enough that you’d think they would have made some just to shut me up. It’s a small (3×5) portrait format book that has paper good enough (interpretation = Alpha paper) to accept my scribbles and watercolor smears. Because this has not been forthcoming from S&B, I’ve been making do with crappy books from the dollar store, Field Notes, small (?) Visual Journals, Moleskines, etc. At this point I’ve filled 27 of the darned things. You’d think I’d know how to draw by now with all that scribbling. Maybe in another 20 years.

Anyways, Stillman & Birn has just released the solution to my small sketchbook needs, and then some. The photo above shows just a few of the many format/paper combinations available in this new series. All of the S&B’s paper types are available and each has its cover color-coded for that paper type (Alpha = burnt sienna (red?), Beta = blue, Epsilon = gray, Delta = green, Gamma = brown, Zeta = black). They’re available as 3.5×5.5 and 5.5×8.5 portrait or landscape format and in 8×10 portrait format.

I like the cover material. It feels almost like leather, though it is obviously not. It’s stiffer than the Strathmore softcover books, a plus for a street sketcher like me. The papers are the same great papers you can find in their hardcover books so I’m not going to talk about them. You can find my opinions by searching for the reviews on this blog but so far I haven’t found any that I don’t like. I use Alpha and Beta almost exclusively though.

Stillman and Birn have obviously tried to provide lighter and thinner sketchbooks compared to their hardcover books and in that they have succeeded in a big way. Here are a few comparison numbers:

Hardcover Softcover

Alpha 5×8 419gm 232gm
Beta 5×8 354gm 267gm

The thickness of a 5×8 Alpha hardcover is 18mm while the Alpha softcover is a svelte 10mm. In short, these new books are much lighter and thinner than their hardcover counterparts.

Here is my favorite. I’m showing it before I took the shrinkwrap off because now that I’ve opened it there is some drool on the front cover. It’s a small, Alpha-series portrait-format book. Many who use the Moleskine watercolor books have complained that Moleskine doesn’t produce it in a portrait format. I used to be one of them, but no more. I now have my small sketchbook need satiated, or at least it will be when I place an order for a bunch more of these little guys.

Do you need/want the softcover versions of Stillman & Birn sketchbooks? It depends. It depends upon whether weight matters to you. If you carry a single sketchbook and not very far, then giving up those nice hardcover bindings might not make sense. I carry several sketchbooks and regularly carry them during two-hour walks so cutting the weight nearly in half is a big deal for me.

Are you ever bothered by the thickness of your sketchbook, say when you’re trying to draw along the edge where you have no support for your hand? Do you wish the book were thinner when trying to draw across the gutter during early or late sections of the book, where one page is bent downward to reach the table due to the thickness of the book? If these things bother you, maybe having a book that’s half as thick would make you happy. Beware, though, this comes at a cost. While the covers reduce the thickness, the softcovers are also made thinner by a reduction of page count (in Alpha the hardcovers have 62 sheets while the softcovers have 48). I find this a small price to pay to get what I want in the small-size book.

There is one downside to these softcover books. They use the same double-stitched, glued bindings of their hardcover counterparts and the glue sometimes wicks between the signatures (the small groups of sheets that are folded and sewn together) and they tend to stick the base of the two pages between two signatures together. I don’t find this to be a problem with Alpha, and probably not with the other 150gsm paper books. Their pages fold open just fine. But with the Beta (270gsm) and probably Delta and Zeta books, the paper tends to separate slightly at the gutter when you fold open a section where two signatures come together (6 places in a Beta series book). This separation is very tight in the gutter of the two-page spread and if you’re working on either side of the gutter, it’s not a problem at all. But if you want to do a two-page spread, it can create an ugly gutter seam.

I’m thrilled with these new softcovers. I’ve only drawn a couple things in them thus far but I know the papers well and have documented their use in pretty much all the drawings presented on this blog. The softcovers, like Stillman & Birn’s hardcover and spiral-bound books, are great options for the urban sketcher or nature journalist. I feel lucky to live in a time when we sketchers have so many great choices, and all from one company – Stillman & Birn.