A company named Pink Pig? I like them already! If that cute-named British company turns out to make sketchbooks, it’s hard not to get excited about it.
When Pink Pig sent me a couple of sketchbook samples to check out and try, I couldn’t wait to break into them. Art supply addicts like me (and you) love getting our hands on a new type of sketchbook.
Pink Pig’s spiral bound sketchbooks come in various dimensions, and the colorful covers are made of recycled board with patterned tissue paper. The first thing you see on the endsheets is a pattern of pink pigs! It sets the tone and helps you overcome the fear of that first blank page in a new sketchbook.
The two sketchbooks they sent me contain 150 gsm white paper (acid free, archival grade), but they also sell sketchbooks (in all sizes imaginable) with different white tones, brown and black paper.
When you order a Pink Pig sketchbook, you can design it to your taste – not just by choosing the color of the cover and the size and format (landscape, square or portrait), but also how many pages you want your sketchbook to contain. Perhaps you like lots of pages so each one doesn’t feel too precious and you can freely “mess up”. if so, you can go for more leaves.
I tried some of my favorite art tools in my brand new A5 sketchbook, and I liked working in it. The paper is quite smooth with just a little bit of texture. It reminds me a bit of another British brand I like, Seawhite of Brighton. My Uniball rollerball pen flows over it smoothly, and so do fountain pens with various nibs, as well as fine liners and brush markers. Colored pencils show the grain of the paper just a little bit, and the paper holds watercolors too even though it’s not watercolor paper. It may wrinkle if you add big, wet washes, but I never really mind buckling pages – it means the sketchbook is well used and feels alive.
A spiral- or wire-binding allows a sketchbook to lie flat, and also you can fold the book to hold it compact. A downside of a this type of binding is the spirals are in the middle of the page when you’re working on a double-page spread. I personally wouldn’t use this as a daily sketchbook because I prefer glue bound sketchbooks and drag them in and out my bag all day, so they need to be sturdy.
That doesn’t mean I won’t be filling my brand-new sketchbooks! I may just think of a project or two to fill these little piggies (Illustrated recipes? Selfies? Who knows!). The colorful covers are very inviting and make you want to pick them up and play!
— Koosje Koene
