The golden rule of drawing is “Carry a sketchbook with you wherever you go”. Following that rule just got a little easier.
Today I was at my local Barnes and Noble, and they had a neat little Moleskine display. For those who don’t know, Moleskine (pronounced mo-lay-skee-nay) are luxurious high-quality journals and sketchbooks produced in Europe, and they are a big fad right now in certain art circles. But for good reason. Most moleskine’s are nice, smooth drawing paper mounted with a classy cover, a cloth bookmark sown in, and an elastic band attached which protects the sketchbook by holding it closed (or open). Also, the pages lie flat when opened for easy scanning.
Like most small sketchbooks, they fit nicely in the large pockets of my winter jacket but are a bit clunky to carry around during the warmer months.
So I was delighted to see that my local Barnes and Noble now sells what I’ll call “moleskine minis”. You can get a package of three small, 64-page sketchbooks for about $7.00. 192 pages for $7 is not bad as art supplies go, and the books are small enough (3.5″ x 5.5″) to fit in the pocket of my jeans but not too small to do a decent sketch on each page.
Now I have no excuse not to draw whenever I’ve got a little down time. And I couldn’t be happier.
PS–If you browse the moleskine website, the sketchbooks are listed under “notebooks”. Instead of sketchbooks they’re called “plain notebooks”. Go figure.