Seawhite of Brighton is a British brand of art supplies targeted at the educational market. I’ve only seen their products in stores once, when I was in London. But I did find this sketchbook available on Amazon, and decided to give it a try..

As noted in my post Size Matters: When A6 Isn’t A6, this is claimed to be an A6 notebook, but is actually slightly larger, at 109 x 153mm. Otherwise, the initial impression is very Moleskine-like. The color and design of the paper band almost gets into trademark-violation territory in terms of its similarity to Moleskine’s design, or older versions of it, anyway. The cover is the usual black faux-leather texture, although the cover boards are narrower so there is a groove next to the spine. The cover overhang is bigger than I would like, and it is not even all the way around. One of the corners is wrapped a bit sloppily. The other thing that made me wonder about quality control is that there were some reddish smudges on the page edges, as if it had been handled by someone with dirty hands. I’m pretty sure this was there before I took off the shrinkwrap and wasn’t from my own hands. The back cover also had some minor scuffs.

The Seawhite sketchbook is shown next to a pocket size Moleskine in the comparison shots below:

The brand is stamped on the back cover, there is an elastic closure and a ribbon marker (in a fun lime green), and there is a pocket inside the back cover. But oddly, the pocket is not the full size of the notebook! It’s like they bought pockets that were made for standard 3.5 x 5.5″ notebooks rather than having them made for this less typical size.

The notebook opens very flat. There is no branding on the inside of the notebook– just 128 pages of somewhat toothy 130 gsm paper. The paper seems quite sturdy. The fibers in it caused a few little bits of feathering with wet pens, but it otherwise performed quite well, with better than average show-through, and almost no bleed. The paper also seemed to hold up to watercolors and markers without buckling or fibers pulling away. I wouldn’t use it for a lot of wet painting, but it should be fine if you just want to add some touches of color to sketches. This paper seems similar in texture and weight to the Handbook Artist Journals I’ve used, but it is a brighter, cooler off-white.

If you find a standard 3.5 x 5.5″ pocket sketchbook a bit cramped, this size may be a nice way to get a bit more elbow room while still fitting in most pockets. The exterior construction may not be as refined as some other hardcover sketchbooks, but it seems solid enough. You can get this size on Amazon for $11.28, which is reasonable, though that is from a 3rd party seller who charges $4.90 in shipping. I bought mine directly from Amazon and paid $9.95 but they don’t seem to have this size/format right now. They do have other formats available, including a landscape A6 version, and other A5 and A4 sketchbooks and lined journals, as well as watercolor sketchbooks. The prices seem reasonable: about $23 for an A4 size watercolor sketchbook, compared to $28 for a comparable Moleskine. This may not be a high-end sketchbook for professional artists, but given that Seawhite is aimed at the student market, it should be a good option for many users.