Sketchbook, 160 gsm

Details

A sewn sketchbook, 96 pages in a 160 GSM acid-free sheet with a lightly grained surface, cased in a 350 GSM unlaminated board cover. The most common thing a sketchbook listing does is refuse to say what it is for. Sixteen zero GSM is a good weight for pencil, charcoal, ink and a light wash, and it is not a watercolour weight, but sketchbooks at this grammage are routinely photographed with a wet painting on the page and sold on the implication. So the limits are printed here beside the specification, and where a different book in this range is the right one, this listing says so instead of taking the sale.

• Measures 160 GSM to ISO 536 on a disc cut from the bound book, tolerance plus or minus 3 percent
• Surface is a fine grain rather than smooth, roughness measured to ISO 8791-2. Grain is what holds charcoal and a soft pencil. If you draw with a technical pen you will feel it, and a smooth sheet would suit you better
• Acid free, pH 7.5 to 9, buffered with a calcium carbonate reserve, to ISO 9706. A drawing you keep is only as permanent as the paper under it
• No optical brightening agents. The sheet is a warm natural white and it stays that colour. An OBA-brightened sheet looks whiter in a shop and then yellows unevenly as the fluorescent dye breaks down, which on a drawing you meant to keep is the worst possible outcome
• Dry media: pencil, graphite stick, charcoal, conte, coloured pencil, ballpoint, fountain pen and ink all work without bleed
• A light wash works. A proper watercolour wash will cockle a 160 GSM sheet and no sizing changes that. For painting, the 300 GSM watercolour block in this range is the book to buy, and we would rather say so
• Alcohol markers bleed through at 160 GSM. That is not a fault in the paper, it is what alcohol markers do to an uncoated sheet, and any sketchbook claiming otherwise at this weight is guessing
• 96 pages, which is 48 leaves and 96 drawable sides, in 6 sewn signatures of 16 pages. Counted per lot
• Sewn and cased, so it opens flat and a drawing can cross the gutter of a spread. A spiral book opens flat too and puts a row of holes down the middle of the double-page drawing
• Elemental chlorine free, AOX under 0.2 kg per tonne of pulp. ECF is not chlorine free and this store does not round it up
• Virgin fibre, no recycled content. Recovered fibre carries shorter fibres and a lower internal bond, which shows the first time an eraser is worked hard