Need to learn more about good notebooks

January 13, 2022

Searching art supply stores as well as "stationery" suppliers does give a wider range of types of notebook. Artist's Sketchbooks range from really tiny pocket books through to enormous sizes that need a special portfolio carrying case to lug around. "Lay flat when open" is a selling point for some sketchbooks.

Paper types used in art sketchbooks are as varied in their behaviours with inks as papers in the general stationery market. ( I have particular trouble with "Bristol Board" pads. One brand may be excellent with fountain pen inks, another brand may seem identical but it behaves more like blotting-paper with FPen ink. )

The black sketchbook in photos above is a good one. (Beware... paper types change over the years. This one was good, ten years ago.)

My example lays flat nicely, aided by the fact that it is landscape format, and has been opened and used at all pages.

Here is the same (?) item, but portrait format:

https://www.jacksonsart.com/daler-rowney-ebony-hardback-sketchbook-portrait-150gsm-62-sheets-a5

But something changed long ago in my sketchbook and notebook library. These books are in chronological order, top right through to bottom left:

The last purchased notebook above is dated 2015. Since then all books are home made.

The books are made from any loose paper bought in 500 sheet packs, or sometimes from a glue-bound peel-off pad. Some books are cheap copy paper, some are Clairefontaine Triomphe, with anything in between.

Sheets are folded, holes cut (v-cuts with a Stanley knife down the folded edges, all sheets together in one cut.) Needle and thread ... and sew them all together. Stiff covers glued on for my wife's gardening notebooks, but all my own books are without covers.

Stitching technique has improved with practise.

The top book above is sewn with simple loops and knots.

The bottom book uses "Coptic Binding"/"Kettle Stitch", recently learnt from the Sea Lemon channel on YouTube.

These books lay perfectly flat, or can be unfolded all the way round like a reporter's spiral bound notebook.

In the pages shown above I started a doodle with a brush pen on the left sheet, and then extended the doodle with a fude-nib fountain pen onto the right sheet. (Comparing the two, to decide which one to choose for ongoing work.) So the two sides needed to be flat and level....

... the back pages of the book are opened underneath to balance the thicknesses. (Caution though. Needs a soft clean support beneath to avoid dirtying or polishing the sheets exposed below.)

January 13, 2022

On 10/23/2021 at 12:49 PM, inkypete said:

Are you writing in the shower?

These kinds of comments soon get tiresome.

Waterproofness is obviously not to write with a water-based ink in underwater environments. It is to be able to access written records after a watery incident. Which after all is the whole point of writing, isn't it? To be able to access later what you wrote?

I've had to access notes in misty, moisty, rainy, tropical or sea environments and it is not fancy when the notes get fuzzy and disappear. You can have a spill at the lab, at work, at home.. or slip walking, or forget an umbrella on a heavy rainy day and get soaked for a large number of reasons. Or you may be forgetful... I forgot last summer an A7 notebook on the rear pocket of my jeans when I put them in the laundry. Great thing that I use mostly waterproof inks, for most of the notes were still legible after a wash/sun-drying cycle.

Which takes me back in point: that was (still is) a "Liderpapel" little notebook with elastic strap, place-holder strip, FP-friendly paper, plastic cover, that took a few weeks to fully dry and then was inflated, but after a couple days in the back pocket flattened again.

Pretty nicely stitched. Still holds together (I'm still using it to take notes), and can "lay flat".

The problem with laying flat open is that you need to either force it, which will loosen most (glued) notebooks, or since most of the time the notebook is closed, the two sides will tend towards closing. So in the end, you need to keep the thinner side in place with your free hand or some aid in most cases.

What I think advertisers mean with "flat" is that it can be open 180 degrees (or more) without breaking, but most of the time you'll need some help in keeping it open just because of plain elasticity.

Even so, as mentioned, for thick notebooks (and I have a number of them), even if they can be open and even might remain in place, other than in the very middle, in most cases, the thinner side will hang off the higher thicker side and be inconvenient. Only a few can lay totally flat and stay so. And in those cases, the spine will lay flat, meaning the pages will start vertical off the spine and then bend sideways, which will make writing close to the center of the page inconvenient.

Your only safe bet is ring or spiral notebooks. With stitched ones, you need to be very lucky.

(corrected for typos)

January 13, 2022

5 hours ago, dipper said:

Searching art supply stores as well as "stationery" suppliers does give a wider range of types of notebook. Artist's Sketchbooks range from really tiny pocket books through to enormous sizes that need a special portfolio carrying case to lug around. "Lay flat when open" is a selling point for some sketchbooks.

Paper types used in art sketchbooks are as varied in their behaviours with inks as papers in the general stationery market. ( I have particular trouble with "Bristol Board" pads. One brand may be excellent with fountain pen inks, another brand may seem identical but it behaves more like blotting-paper with FPen ink. )

The black sketchbook in photos above is a good one. (Beware... paper types change over the years. This one was good, ten years ago.)

My example lays flat nicely, aided by the fact that it is landscape format, and has been opened and used at all pages.

Here is the same (?) item, but portrait format:

https://www.jacksonsart.com/daler-rowney-ebony-hardback-sketchbook-portrait-150gsm-62-sheets-a5

But something changed long ago in my sketchbook and notebook library. These books are in chronological order, top right through to bottom left:

The last purchased notebook above is dated 2015. Since then all books are home made.

The books are made from any loose paper bought in 500 sheet packs, or sometimes from a glue-bound peel-off pad. Some books are cheap copy paper, some are Clairefontaine Triomphe, with anything in between.

Sheets are folded, holes cut (v-cuts with a Stanley knife down the folded edges, all sheets together in one cut.) Needle and thread ... and sew them all together. Stiff covers glued on for my wife's gardening notebooks, but all my own books are without covers.

Stitching technique has improved with practise.

The top book above is sewn with simple loops and knots.

The bottom book uses "Coptic Binding"/"Kettle Stitch", recently learnt from the Sea Lemon channel on YouTube.

These books lay perfectly flat, or can be unfolded all the way round like a reporter's spiral bound notebook.

In the pages shown above I started a doodle with a brush pen on the left sheet, and then extended the doodle with a fude-nib fountain pen onto the right sheet. (Comparing the two, to decide which one to choose for ongoing work.) So the two sides needed to be flat and level....

... the back pages of the book are opened underneath to balance the thicknesses. (Caution though. Needs a soft clean support beneath to avoid dirtying or polishing the sheets exposed below.)

Those are your drawings? Awesome.

January 13, 2022

10 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

Those are your drawings?

Yes. My "mad inventor" notebooks are filled with text notes and diagrams drawn, as much as possible, with whatever pen/nib/ink is being modified at the time.

January 14, 2022

BTW, the thicker lay-flat notebooks I have also do use coptic-binding. They have leather covers and thick cotton paper, bought from Amazon third-party sellers in India. Some papers are better than others, but in my experience, generally they all work rather well, and I do also mix notes (usually with F/EF nibs) and sketches (with a Kuretake brush pen and with FPs).

The thinner lay-flat notebooks I have used were usually stapled, few sheets and with thin paperback covers, which can not only lay flat, but even be folded 360º and back. Pretty handy for quick note-taking in inconvenient places. These are the typically kind of small refills used in now so fashionable Midori-type travel "notebooks" (the kind with three elastic straps to hold three kraft-paper stapled notebooks in).

In between there are many "little-black-notebook" type notebooks. Some are glued and tend to lose the pages when opened too much (though some are good enough), but others are stitched and hold considerably well (though some are not good enough).

Next is a summary picture of some of the options: loose paper will always lay flat, you can also print on it, and stitch it later, a leather bound hand-made cotton paper Indian notebook with a brush pen doodle, a Rhodia stiched A5 black notebook, and perforated paper for ring notebooks (which can lay flat, or be extracted and replaced as needed).

I do prefer the leather, coptic bound notebooks for "record-keeping" (things I want to keep around for long-term I like to look nice), black-notebook type notebooks for work note taking (mid-term) ,and favor Midori-type thin notebooks in a leather holder for short-term (once a refill is full I can throw it away and replace it by a new one).

Paper qualities can vary considerably, but I have to say that most papers I have found made in Europe tend to (still) be rather FP friendly, India hand-made cotton papers do also tend to be fairly well behaved (but I usually write in F/EF or, at most M, even BSB does not feather on it). The worse offender -in my experience- tends to be Chinese paper (specially printer and loose reams reams which lean on the terrible side). US paper can be, depending on brand, either very good or maybe not so much, and from what I see here on FPN may be difficult to get.