#303 Watercolor Journal

🍂 Fall Special: Buy one of our watercolor or mixed media notebooks (#302 Watercolor Journal, #303 Watercolor Journal Square, #502 Pro Mixed Media, or #503 Utility Mixed Media), and we'll include a FREE Holbein Artists' Watercolor sample card! It comes with dots of six beautiful Holbein colors. Wet them with a brush and you'll have enough paint for a couple of smaller sketches. No promo code needed.

Designed and manufactured at our shop in St. Louis, the #303 Watercolor Journal is a versatile watercolor notebook that's just as good on the road as it is in the studio. The square shape is meant to inspire bold compositions (and it doesn't hurt that your work will look great on Instagram!) Inside the soft Prussian blue cover are 25 sheets of Italian watercolor paper with a cold press texture. The 25% cotton sheet allows water to absorb and pigment to settle naturally, creating organic washes and lovely dappled light effects. Water won't bleed through the heavyweight, 300 gsm (140#) paper, and you'll notice very little warping even when using lots of water.

The binding of our notebooks is inspired by a type of sketchpad that's popular with art students in Japan. These pads, sometimes called croquis books, have wraparound covers bound into the spiral that can be folded back for a mobile drawing surface. Several companies in Japan make their own versions. We love the style and we think we've given them a distinctly American twist. We chose an extra-large spiral with thicker wire, so our notebooks aren't delicate and the pages have plenty of room to move. The oversized, wedge-shaped profile of our notebooks make them more comfortable to hold and carry. And we use much thicker, more opaque paper than is typically found in croquis books.

Our cover stock, made in Michigan, is soft to the touch but heavy enough to wear well. It has a matte finish and can be written on, labeled, and customized. The label is bound into the outside of the spiral; tear it out and the notebook has almost nothing printed on it. The model number is hand-stamped on the back cover so you can reorder when you run out.

The pages are made in Italy and measure 180 x 180 mm (7.1" x 7.1"), with a 300 gsm weight, cold press texture, bright white color, and a pH neutral, 25% cotton composition.

Please note that these notebooks are made by hand, so minor variations are to be expected. They're a reminder that a real person bound your book with care.