Your Trusted Guide to Essential Study Equipment
There’s a specific kind of heartbreak that comes from watching a watercolour wash blow straight through the back of a cheap sketchbook page onto the one underneath. If that’s happened to you, you already understand why the best mixed media pad isn’t really about brand loyalty — it’s about paper that can survive whatever you … Read more
Buy the wrong watercolour pad and you will know within about thirty seconds of your first wash: the paper cockles, the colour pools where you didn’t want it, and the sheet you were hoping to frame ends up looking more like a crisp packet. The best watercolour pad for you depends less on brand prestige … Read more
The best spiral sketchbook is the one you actually reach for without thinking twice, and that usually comes down to one unglamorous detail: whether the thing lies flat when you’re halfway through a drawing with a charcoal stick in one hand and no free palm to hold the pages down. Spiral binding sounds like a … Read more
Somewhere between the biro-chewed spiral pad you had at school and the leather-bound diary your gran gave you sits the hardback sketchbook — and honestly, it’s one of those bits of stationery that punches way above its price tag. Pick the wrong one and you’ll spend more time fighting ghosting ink and buckling pages than … Read more
An A5 sketchbook is a bound pad of blank pages measuring roughly 14.8 x 21cm — small enough to slip into a bag or coat pocket, yet large enough to actually stretch out a drawing rather than cramping it into a corner. It’s the format most artists eventually settle on as their everyday carry, the … Read more
There’s a particular moment familiar to anyone who draws regularly — flicking through a new sketchbook, testing the first page with a pencil, and feeling either relieved or faintly disappointed by how the graphite sits on the surface. An A4 sketchbook is a bound pad of drawing paper measuring 297 x 210mm, typically made from … Read more
There’s a particular kind of guilt that comes from owning a beautiful sketchbook you’re too scared to draw in. You know the one — sitting on the shelf, spine uncreased, waiting for a drawing worthy enough to go first. Here’s the truth nobody tells beginners: the “right” sketchbook isn’t the prettiest one, it’s the one … Read more