Review on Strathmore 566-5 500 Series Hardbound Mixed Media Art Journal, 5.5 x 8.5 Inches, White, 32 Pages by Lori Aguirre

I work mostly with watercolors and sketch a lot in the field - this is my favorite sketchbook. It's smooth and won't tear my Micron pens, allowing me to comfortably write to my heart's content. It has withstood multiple watercolor washes and still doesn't bleed or bleed on me. Although it's so thin that it's light enough to carry around in a field bag and has many sides for me to be free. to play around with without feeling as "valuable" as the typical 10-20 page watercolor journals. It's also nicely bound so it lays flat for creating multi-page templates. While it stands up to watercolor paints, it doesn't behave like watercolor paper. It's not rough like cold pressure, and not even like many drawing sheets - the surface reminds me of Fabriano's soft pressure, which I use most of the time. There's not much sizing either, so you won't lift any significant color, and very watery strokes can bleed a little more than on watercolor paper, but I found that to be a fairly negligible amount. I did watercolor calligraphy on it with no problem. I like it. I wrote off pretty much all Strathmore products as student products and mostly kept my own journals, trying to combine different papers to get all the qualities I wanted. I'm so glad a friend referred me to these magazines instead. Sometimes I enjoy working with this paper more than I do with my artist quality watercolor paper.