I grabbed a luxurious Fabriano Classic Artist’s Journal at the Dallas Pen Show. It’s a delicious stack of 192 sheets of Fabriano drawing paper. Fabriano is a very famous Italian papermaker known in the art world for their drawing, watercolor and printmaking paper. To have a big, solid block of this fancy Italian paper that I can write, draw, doodle and collage on is so inspiring.
This book is the 5×7″ size (12x16cm) which feels like a chonky, almost-square sized notebook/sketchbook that is pretty transportable.
The paper is a mix of acid-free cream and white paper to provide a lovely variety in one notebook. This paper is a lovely laid surface and 90gsm. Laid paper is a little toothy so if you like your paper to talk back to you a little when you use, you’ll like this paper. It also likes pencil, crayon, chalk and other tools along with pens and ink.
Being able to go back and forth between the two colors of paper might be a fun way to decide between drawing and writing or a specific theme as the colors of paper create a visual divider.
The covers are heavyweight, navy blue, paper stock so there may be some wear and tear on the book in the time it would take to use 192 pages but it helps keep a chunky book from getting too heavy. The cover overhangs the pages by about 5mm on all three sides. This helps to protect the interior pages but the corners of the cover will get dinged over time.
The flexible cardstock cover will allow the book to fold back on itself if you choose to abuse your notebooks like that (I do).
This paper is designed to hold up well for pen, pencil, ink, charcoal, pastels and similar materials. Ink color fidelity will be better on the lighter colored paper but I think playing with inks on the darker paper could be fun.
Heavy ink/watercolor coverage may cause show-through, bleed-through and waffling of your paper. I didn’t have a too much of an issue with the big ink dump. It didn’t actually bleed through but it did get waffly. YMMV but mostly, this paper is good for lots of different kinds of pens including fountain pens.
The book features a stitched binding but it is a tight binding so in order to get it to lay flat, you will have to CRACK THAT SPINE. Don’t be afraid. Make it your notebook and bend it. It can take it.
The Fabriano Classic Artist’s Journal also has a ribbon bookmark but the edges are not finished so mine has already started to fray. It looks like its polyester or nylon so I should be able to melt the end to keep it from fraying completely.
So my quibbles are the tight spine, unfinished bookmarks and a cover that is not super sturdy. However, at the price point, this is a great deal (at least for now!). The paper is delicious and the option for two colors of drawing paper in the book is also a big plus.
This notebook might not be for everyone but I really like it. Let me know if you decide to give it a try.
(I was able to found these listed on the Blick website. If you have a Blick store in your area, you may be able to pick one up in person.)
DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were provided free of charge by Chartpak for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details. Fox Clip is in the shop!
