Bee Paper Company BEE-808S60-1824 Deluxe Drawing Paper Afdeluxe 18-Inch-by-24-Inch, 18-inch x 24-inch, 50 Sheet Wire Bound Pad

Best multi media sketchbook there is. I have been using this since 1984 and it always works great. Canson mix media xl is pathetic, a real blotter, by comparison. The strathmore mixed media visual journal, while good, has only half the pages for the same price.I have used charcoal pencil, pen and ink, and watercolor and all work well. Like any sketchbook, the watercolor use is somewhat limited...you can't do excessively wet in wet techniques or muti layer glazing effectively. Use arches watercolor paper for full blown watercolor paintings.However, with this Super Aquabee sketchbook, Straightforward watercolor sketches work great. It is, after all, a sketchbook.The Super Aquabee is the best thing I've found for watercolor crayons or watercolor pencil. Great paper.

Bee Paper Company has created a great sketch pad. I have tried them all and this my go-to pad. I got the 9X12" version of "Super Deluxe Mixed Media". It has all the attributes you will ever need: very thick, two surfaces- left side is smooth, right side is slightly rougher ( when full open to two pages), the sheets are perforated along the 12" side which is the wire ring binder side, lays flat, excepts all mediums - wet or dry. I have been using the 6"x9" version of this product for several years and decided to try the larger 9x12" version. Highly recommended, I have tried dozen of other sketch pads over the last 40 years and this is by far the best. Please see attached sketches (5) from my Bee Paper Super Deluxe Mixed Media sketch book. Happy sketching.

First, let me say that while I have a ridiculous number of sketchbooks of all brands, I'm a hardcore Strathmore Stan. This is actually the first time I've purchased a Bee Paper sketchbook. I had heard good things and decided to give them a try for Inktober, and it absolutely lives up to the hype.Starting with the impressively thick and hard covers this thing screams quality from the start. There's plenty of paper here, two different textures and it's acid-free-- for the price, it's an amazing bargain. The texture is a sensuous experience, both against the skin and under the glide of a pencil. The paper has a soft white tint and is thick enough for light washes, with minor buckling, that mostly straightens out when pressed between the heavy covers. It erases beautifully over and over again without ripping or pilling and takes pencil, color pencil, and pen and ink with the same ease.I'm seriously in love with this paper and have thrown a couple more in my cart for future purchase. If the rest of their products are as impressive, it looks like Strathmore might have a rival for my affection.

This is a sketchbook that is hard to beat for its features. The paper will take light washes, ink, pencil, colored pencil. I use these books to take my key notes and "learnings" for documentation. I often use the pages for simple color studies. If you like spiral bindings then this will work for you. Stillman and Birn is a competitor, but this book is every bit as good. Artist Ron Stocke swears by these sketchbooks. I've used them for years and will keep doing so.

The reason I'm only giving this Super Deluxe sketchbook four stars is not because I don't love it because the paper is a lightweight, sized, drawing paper. I was under the impression from several reviews that the paper in this book was suitable for watercolor, but it's not.The pages are white and bright and SUPER sturdy. They hold up to a ton of water. I literally put puddles of water all over the first page and while there was some *slight* buckling there was NO seeping through to the back of the paper at all.And the book is packed with paper- 60 sheets! That's amazing.The issue for me is that the pigment in the watercolors fade considerably on this paper- I tested it with a variety of paints, everything from Holbein to Twinkling H2Os and all the colors faded quite a bit when painted on this particular paper when compared to regular, run-of-the-mill watercolor paper. I'm super obsessed with color, and with the crisp and bright gradients of color that happen with controlled washes, so to see the colors fade so much was a huge disappointment. I haven't tried treating the paper with a wash of gum arabic before painting- that might help. But I was hopeful this paper might be sort of a lightweight watercolor paper, and it's not. It can handle the water and the moisture, but it sucks in the color.While I won't dedicate this pad to watercolor work, it is absolutely perfect for art journaling (probably *the* best art journal I have found- large, sturdy, perfect for mixed media, tons of pages, perfect size...) and a variety of other mediums- ink drawing, markers, pastels, etc. Anything *mostly* dry, or anything that you use a layer of gesso for would be an ideal use for this journal.

I use these to stamp a gallery form that is then attached to the back of artwork. The paper is thick enough to take the heavy stamp without bleeding through to the other side. The book fits easily in a back pocket and the back cover is quite sturdy. I also like that it contains 60 pages vs. the 24 that another brand offers.That said, my stamp is 4x2, and I expected to get two stamps/forms per page. However, they count the hole-punched portion in the 4x6 size, so the usable area is considerably less than 4x6. And the "4" is generous. When lined up with my stamp, it looks to be a fraction smaller than 4 inches. I'll need to trim all the pages to my needs, which means more time and effort above and beyond cutting out the unperforated sheets. Next time I'll buy a 5x7 or some such size to better economize my purchase.