Wil Freeborn
Stillman & Birn - Beta Series
The Beta series is another Extra Heavy Weight sketchbook at 180lb/270gsm. Like the Zeta series its pretty much bulletproof when it comes to watercolour washes. Its classed as cold press though the texture is still pretty smooth and not really like the texture you get with regular cold pressed watercolour paper.
One of the effects of using these books is they did alter how I use sketchbooks. Moleskines are cool, but they take a bit of getting used to the way watercolour doesn't really sit on the pages well at all. It takes ages to add watercolour to the moleskine paper so didn't really suit drawing outside. With the Stillman & Birn books its easy to do washes so its much easier to fill a page.
Another thing the Moleskin books are great with Faber Castell Artist pens and other fibre tip pens. The Stillman & Birn ones aren't so good, the ink I think gets absorbed too quickly and doesn't really glide over the paper. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I tried using fountain pens and dip pens instead with these you get a much more varied an interesting line.
Stillman & Birn - Beta Series
The Beta series is another Extra Heavy Weight sketchbook at 180lb/270gsm. Like the Zeta series its pretty much bulletproof when it comes to watercolour washes. Its classed as cold press though the texture is still pretty smooth and not really like the texture you get with regular cold pressed watercolour paper.
One of the effects of using these books is they did alter how I use sketchbooks. Moleskines are cool, but they take a bit of getting used to the way watercolour doesn't really sit on the pages well at all. It takes ages to add watercolour to the moleskine paper so didn't really suit drawing outside. With the Stillman & Birn books its easy to do washes so its much easier to fill a page.
Another thing the Moleskin books are great with Faber Castell Artist pens and other fibre tip pens. The Stillman & Birn ones aren't so good, the ink I think gets absorbed too quickly and doesn't really glide over the paper. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I tried using fountain pens and dip pens instead with these you get a much more varied an interesting line.