 Hi there, I'm Sandy Allnach, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and I'm going to talk about watercolor sketchbooks and I'm going to give you some specifics on 11 of the many that I have tried. I've tried tons of them as you can see and I've tried to paint several things in all of them so I can get an idea what I like and what I don't and I actually came to some really interesting conclusions at the end so I will share those with you. This one is one of the first ones that I got because it has arches paper in it. I bought it at a local art store so I have not found it online but it does have arches in it a little more expensive but you can practice your actual techniques that you're going to use if you do a finished painting when you're working on really good paper and whatever it is that you're using in your sketchbook if you use the same kind that you're going to paint finished paintings on your techniques will improve. A lot of the other sketchbooks you're going to see here there's different things I learned from them than painting techniques. This one has of course arches so it's good heavy paper and you can come out with something. I was so pleased with this. You can come out with some really beautiful little sketches like the Washington Monument that I did and really get some nice effects from them because of the kind of paper that it is. So if you're used to a particular kind of paper get a sketch book with that kind of paper and there's lots of reasons not to though and I'll share a lot of that with you. This one is by a company called Pentallic and it's cold press. All of these are mostly cold press except the ones that are just really super lightweight paper. This one is good heavy paper. It takes a lot of pigment. It comes with a brush that I wasn't super thrilled with but it's great for travel so I put I'll probably put my silver travel brush in there because you guys know I like my silver brushes. I will link in the doobly-doo to the silver brushes as well for those who might not know about my silver brush fetish. This one is a book from Stillman and Burn is the name of it and it's got really really heavy paper and it does not seem to curl at all. I really like that about it and I started doing a few landscapes in here. I've been on a cloud fetish of late. I just can't stop painting clouds so you'll see lots of clouds throughout this and practicing some scenes doing foreground, mid-ground and background types of things. Just a lot of the stuff that I'm learning in my watercolor classes that I keep taking from all kinds of different instructors. This is a Windsor and Newton that I also only found in a store. Did not find this one online though I looked. You can check for yourself. Decent paper. Definitely decent. Not spectacular but I've got some really nice paintings out of it. This one I tried to do in just a few minutes. Frederick Douglass and succeeded at that. What I'm trying to learn how to do in my sketchbooks is paint quickly because even on my regular paintings I labor over things and I overdo them and so I'm trying to figure out how to get myself to paint quickly and I will be sharing a little more of that as we move on here through the sketchbooks. These will all be over on my blog by the way so you'll be able to see a lot more of them. This one by Fabriano which is a good paper and it's another hardback book that you can decide whether you want hardback or soft and whether you want a book with a spiral binding that can fold back on itself or if you want a hard cover like this one. You want to make sure if you're looking at them in a store that they will lay flat because that will be a problem if you're out in the field. Here I'm just trying to do some wood textures. I like just doing little vignettes of trying different things out and see how would I paint such and such a thing. See I had crazy clouds. I was trying to make the clouds rain wasn't that fun. Another scene with some crazy clouds on the beach and a little sunset and then of course Salvador Dali who is an amazing artist. He was quite the man. I loved his mustache when I was in college. He was one of my favorite artists because of that. Then there's books like this where this is the backside of the paper and the quality of the line that you'll get with this quality of edges is not what I like. This is what I like more and this particular paper these these particular Strathmore books you can't paint on two sides. So here I kept trying to get some fun edges and I didn't. So I ended up painting on every other side. I have two sketchbooks like this where I'm only doing on one side of the paper. So you may find that with some of the sketchbooks that you get. But just because you find one that's like that don't freak out and not use it. Use it anyway. Use every piece of paper to learn something from. Just try things on it. Even on the back sides of this if you just want to test out some colors and do some swatching. They're fabulous for color swatching. So you can try things out that way. So don't get upset because you bought one that wasn't quite what you thought it was going to be. So this is another one that is in the same kind of family where you can't paint on one side. There's well I mean I guess you could paint on one side but you just don't get that line quality. But it's a decent sketchbook nonetheless. So you can see I can do a decent painting. This is from a park in Italy that I was at. And then I did some tree studies but I just have to do every other page in this except for if I wanted to do some swatching of colors. These would be great books to do that in. Now here's a Strathmore book that was fascinating because what it had was alternating drawing paper with watercolor paper. And it's for people like me who like to do a pencil sketch first then do a watercolor sketch then do a finished painting. And this one is going to be fun to play with. Sometimes I might just dive into a watercolor painting without a sketch first. But look what happens when I can work out my layout I can work out where my shadows are going to be. Where do I want my light to come from. And then work it out in a watercolor sketch. If I were to take that to a finished painting I'd have a whole lot of detail already worked out by going that route. This is a book that is really fun. I like the format of it like the little bow tying around it. But I use this for my Bible journaling. So you can take black and white line work. So I'm just noting different things from sermons, words from songs, verses, etc. and sketching them out so that they are seeds for different Bible journaling ideas. The paper takes watercolor but it's very light and it's for really light sketching and light watercolor. Not for in-depth heavy work. But these are really nice books otherwise. Now we've got some Montvall and Montvall is I think the student line from Kansan. And so it's decent paper but it's not fan tabulous but it makes it a little more affordable. But you can see you can get a pretty decent painting out of this paper. It comes in various sizes. So you can get a little long tall one like this. I've started liking doing these long tall vignette type of paintings since I have been taking some classes where teachers are doing more of that. The plein air types doing just a slice of a scene. But also just practicing to see what kind of paintings I can do on paper like these. Just to see how much paint can it handle. Can it handle a lot of moisture without warping. And the books I'm showing you pretty much do a fairly decent job of that. So that's the Kansan Montvall. Now next we get into mixed media books. This one is just a really inexpensive Kansan book. And I used this for a Bible journaling challenge that I did. So I did 30 pages in a row 30 days. And I used brush show on a whole bunch of these. So this took a lot of I guess you can call it abuse. And a lot of watercolor and stuff. And it didn't take it in a way that's going to be permanent or anything. But these are all seeds of ideas for Bible journaling someday. And it's a great idea to get yourself a book and do a monthly challenge. Just challenge yourself to something or find an online challenge to just get your mind going. Now this book is probably one that I'm going to use a lot. I'll be getting a lot more of because several artists that I've taken classes from use this book. It's got a hard cover and spiral bound. And it's just lightweight paper. But I'm starting to do like I said these sketches before I do a watercolor sketch. And then I do a painting. So I'm trying to make myself work out my layout my lights in my darks figuring out what colors I might use what what colors are going to work on something like this. My background wasn't light enough I didn't get enough depth in it. So I know if I take that to a final painting I need to change some things. There's ones like this I really want to paint. But I need to learn how to paint that loose or this one just just learn how to be free with it. But on this paper I seem to be a lot looser and a lot freer. And that's got me really excited. I want to learn how to do this on the good paper when I finally get to it. But I'm just going to practice a lot like just tons every day. I'm going to try to sit down and do a couple of paintings. And these are these sketches here these drawings are like 10 15 minutes half an hour at the most. Just throw some paint on try to get some some sort of a picture done. This one I took to the dog park and I sat on the bench while the dog was swimming and there were people standing around by the bank of the river. And I'm trying to just do things quickly and not think about it too much. Well here's one in a class. I did think about that a lot because I had a long time to do that. But these sketches these these two little paintings at the bottom this this top sketch and the two at the bottom were like 10 minutes each. And I was working out whether or not that statue should break the horizon line of that building or not. And I could work that out in a sketch before getting to my finished painting. And see it in a small format. This one was one where I was trying to work out from the photograph it had these big people in it. Or did I want the people to be much smaller and then allow some light to come in from that window. Because I didn't like how dark that came out in my my practice one. And then this was a rehearsal I did for some trains. And I ended up painting the trains large and using the knowledge that I gained from that sketchbook. So my overall recommendation is to get a small sketchbook that has decent paper in it. And get a large one that has some sort of mixed mini paper in it. And try both of those. Don't buy a million of them. I did that. You can see I have a ton of them. And I I serve as a warning to you. Don't buy all of them. Figure out what it is that you are going to use your watercolor sketchbooks for. Because for me it's going to be a great place to practice and loosen up. And that is going to be my goal for my sketchbook. If you're trying to paint specific techniques get the paper that you're going to use with your finished work. That's going to replicate more exactly what you're going to do in your finished piece. But if you're trying to just get it get the hang of drawing and painting get yourself a mixed media book. They're not expensive and they're going to help you become a better artist. All right thank you so much for joining me. I will talk to you guys later. I will see you in the next video.