Canson XL Mix Media

Great price, great quality, great paper! It's one of the classics for a reason: multiple sizes, spiral binding for laying flat and perforations for easy removal, if you're the kind of MANIAC that actually removes pages from their sketchbook!! CAN'T RELATE! You have to put in some extra effort to decorate the cover, but this is easily compensated for with acrylic paint or just plastering the thing with all the extra stickers you have laying around.

Bee Paper Super Deluxe Mixed Media

Great higher end mixed media book! They're difficult to find in Australia, but I'm a big fan of this paper and if I ever find it on sale, I grab it! I have a single spare I am keeping reserve as like most Bee Paper products, they have become more and more impossible to find in my country. Another sticker-friendly cover that you can slather with paint if you require more elaborate decoration. I grab spiral bound, but you can buy individual sheets of the paper as well. Just a really gorgeous, high quality Mixed Media paper.

Bee Creative Watercolor Art Journal

Absolutely beautiful, perfect watercolor sketchbook. It's not too pricey while being high quality, and I was only able to grab one before they became borderline impossible to acquire in Australia. It's rougher than a mixed media pad and so allows the depth of your paint to REALLY shine, and every day I mourn that I can't buy them anymore.

Crescent RENDR No Show Thru Paper

Want to do heavy marker stuff? This paper is literally designed for it! I'm not a big marker guy, but this paper briefly made me consider buying some Copics. Thankfully I settled for some TomBows and was spared spending a fortune, but if you already have Copics, this is the paper for you! They have spiralbound/layflat versions that I think would be better than the hardbound I used, but the hardbound was nice. Also, perhaps not surprisingly, it's great for ink as well!

The World's Largest Sketchbook

THE BIG BOY. I have used three of these for the Sketchbook Slam Challenge. What's the Sketchbook Slam Challenge? It's filling a 600 page sketchbook in 30 days, and I have completed it 3 times, because there's something very wrong with me and also I might be god?? There are bigger & better quality books than this one, but it would have cost me nearly 200$ to import them and so I got this local version which was 'only' 40$. The pages are VERY thin, but the binding puts up with absolutely brutal treatment and for what it is? It's fine! It takes dry media best (though I would warn you, emphatically, NOT to use charcoal: it does NOT have enough tooth to hold charcoal and it will just flake off no matter how much fixative you spray on it!!), some markers (NOT alcohol based lol) and even some ink! There are more than 600 pages which means you can use an extra as a text page to see what bleeds through and what doesnt. If you want a budget option for buying a ream of paper thats been bound together into a book, this gets the job done extremely well! Also, if you're NOT insane, a book like this for roughs, gestures & storyboards would probably be fantastic and last you a long time.

The Paper Mill A4 Creative Journal (Ivory)

I'm obsessed with these. I have no idea if you can buy them outside of Australia/Riot Art & Craft, but this is probably the sketchbook I've re-purchased the most often and am always sad to reach the end of. The paper is a sort of cardstock that... kinda takes watercolor?? It takes it enough!! Gouache is fantastic. It also takes dry media and inks very well since it's so smooth. Aside from enjoying the weird paper, the cover BEGS for customization, which I have obliged several times and will continue to do so! The cover is fine with watercolor, ink and gouache, as is the interior, and there is even a little pocket for uh... I dunno. Whatever. Business cards maybe?? All I know is that I love these things and I live in fear of them going out of production since they're on the pricier side. Whenever they're on sale, I grab an extra... JUST IN CASE.

The Paper Mill A4 Creative Journal(Kraft)

Even more niche than the ivory card stock version, the Kraft version is a rougher cardstock. It's less friendly for ink, but much more friendly with watercolor and gouache and softer graphite. Like the Ivory version, the cover is customizable. I'm not AS obsessed with this one because of it being a little grouchy about ink, but so long as you use a brush or a marker and not a dip and/or technical pen, it's fine.

Etchr you already know about. Long story short, they aren't the worst, but there are better sketchbooks for the same/better pricepoints than this, at least in my opinion. As a refresher, you HAVE to buy three Etchr books at a time, which immediately prices them out of consideration for me, regardless of how nice 100% cotton paper is.

STILLMAN & BIRN Alpha Sketchbook

Stillman & Birn isn't a bad brand, and it's in this section only because I purchased the wrong one but refuse to throw out expensive sketchbooks, and so I have trudged through using it. BETA is the version of this I should've got, not Alpha, but Alpha is MEANT to sustain multiple washes. On paper (wink!). I hate how tightly bound the hardcover is (should have gotten a spiral, but I didn't know it would be THIS bad as I have several hardbound sketchbooks that flatten out just fine) and the paper just felt wrong. Watercolors absolutely hated to perform like they usually do on it, it felt slightly too rough for ink, and just generally felt like I was using fucked up paper. I don't recommend this, but in the future I hope to try the Beta paper in the hopes that it's an improvement cause damn this was a rancid sketchbook.

Strathmore Hardbound Toned Grey Mixed Media

Sketchbook brands are limited in Australia and one of the only big art chains here, Eckersley's, sells an extremely limited, overpriced range of books (or extremely cheap ones lol). Grimly, I tried out one of their Strathmore monstrosities. It was... fine, I guess? I hated the hard, too-tight binding, but there wasn't a spiral available at the time I purchased this, and while I thought grey and brown paper (the latter of which I love to use) would be the same, I kind of fucking hated the grey, a lot. The brown warmed transluscent colors up and this, PREDICTABLY IN HINDSIGHT, toned everything down. I really hate this book except for the cool Necronomicon I turned the exterior into, which owns. The rest sucks though, I was very unhappy with this book.

Utrech Art Kraft Paper Sketchbooks

GONE TOO SOON... REST IN PEACE... WORTH EVERY PENNY OF INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING... IRREPLACEABLE...

My favorite sketchbooks are no longer in production, and I am using the last one I have as we speak. They were highly decoratable, the paper would let you do pretty much anything to it, they lay flat and were just overall great books with quality paper for a fanastic price. I have a special fondness for them because they're what I used to get back into drawing and to teach myself watercolors, and I will forever mourn them because I have yet to find a single sketchbook brand that replicates what this one brought to the table. If you have any brand recs that are similar, please let me know!! UTRECHT PLEASE MAKE THESE AGAIN, I BEG YOU. ESPECIALLY THE MASSIVE HARDBOUND ONE BUT I MIGHT KILL A MAN FOR EVEN AN A4 SPIRAL.... PLEASE!!!!

It depends.

PRICE & AVAILABILITY: CANSON XL MIX MEDIA. If I need a new sketchbook, this is the first one that comes to mind. A classic all-rounder that gets the job done.

ALL AROUND TOP NOTCH: BEE PAPER SUPER DELUXE. If I need a sketchbook and have the cash to be fancy, I grab this.

HONORABLE MENTION: PAPER MILL (IVORY). Sometimes, I become deranged and want to work with kind of difficult, weird paper, and also to spend a few days decorating the cover. If this time coincides with needing a new sketchbook, I grab one of these bad boys.

If you have a sketchbook you think I would like or would just like me to check out, let me know!