Giving Moleskine Another Try…
Greetings! I’m writing to you on a blustery and rainy morning, right in the middle of a storm. Weather that incapsulates my past experiences using a moleskine sketchbook.
My first moleskine sketchbook experience
The year was 2022, and I decided to finally treat myself to the sketchbook everyone and their mother raved about. An A5 “large” black hard-cover was bestowed a sticker, and I began to test it with sketches and art supplies. I loved the paper, for the most part. I liked the soft warmth, the texture and feel. I loved how pencil built up on the paper, and how most ink pens acted with it.
However, I quickly ran into a problem. The binding fell apart on me.
I don’t treat my sketchbooks terribly. I’m quite mindful of them, though they do have to put up with daily use and sometimes being thrown into a bag for a day out. Yet only a few spreads into the sketchbook the stitching and paper started to pull away, and I had to change my approach to using the sketchbook. I continued using it - with a disappointed heart - but treated it like a delicate flower. It meant no more using it for whatever and taking it where-ever.
Needless to say, the experience put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I had been using other sketchbooks at half the price with twice as many pages, and they held up just fine. So I continued to use those instead, while occasionally trying other brands. That being said, I did sometimes miss the moleskine paper. It has a unique feel and look to it I haven’t found elsewhere.
The drawing on the first page of my new moleskine sketchbook of a judgemental leopard.
New sketchbook, second chances
Which brings us to 2025. I saw a “medium” (11.5 by 17.5 cm) sized moleskine sketchbook on a pretty steep discount, and decided to give them another shot. Lately I’ve been keeping an eye out for a smaller sketchbook to easily take with me in any situation, so why not give this a go?
It’s now adorned with a sticker of a panda ink painting, made by Su Yao of Wukong China Art Crafts, and I’m a few pages in.
Above is the sketch on the first page of this new sketchbook. A rather judgemental leopard. I mainly used one of my everyday sketching pencils, a 0.7 mm mechanical pencil with 2B Ain Stein lead. For the whiskers though, I reached for the 0.3 mm with 2B lead. I intentionally wanted to use some of my “everyday carry” art supplies, to get a feel for the paper again. It’s been a long time, and I’ve come a long way since 2022!
The background is where I came across my first hurdle with the paper. I remembered liking how copic markers blend out on moleksine paper, but I forgot the other quirks.
This paper bleeds. The marker readily soaks through the page and onto the next sheet. Thankfully I realised that through test swatches in the back of the sketchbook, and put a piece of scrap paper behind the page while doing this background. That didn’t save me from another quirk I forgot about though. The marker spreads and fans out way more than I’m used to in other sketchbooks, quickly passing by boundary lines. The thick pencil border around the grey rectangle was my attempt to fix a very ragged edge… Don’t tell anyone that though. It’s a secret between you and me!
All in all I’m enjoying my time playing with this paper again. Every paper and every sketchbook has its strengths and weaknesses, positives and negatives, and it’s been fun rediscovering them with three more years of art under my belt.
So far so good on the binding too, but we’ll see how that goes.
