Not Quite Heaven

I thought I was being quite clever when I came up with the idea for replacing my favorite but sadly exhausted Sketchbook from Heaven. My idea was to get a larger sketchbook and chop it in half so it more closely approximated the cheap sketchbook’s size and shape. It fits easily in my backpack and I can retrieve it in a flash, but it’s just not the same. It’s resisting my attempts at doodling interesting doodles. I guess size and shape aren’t everything.

I’m not sure what the problem is. The paper in the new sketchbook is good paper. It’s Canson XL Mixed Media. It takes wet and dry media better than the cheap paper in the Sketchbook from Heaven which was probably something that was lying around a warehouse when somebody at the company figured “waste not, want not.” The cheap paper was bound into doodle pads meant for children and dumped into Target stores for Christmas whereas the Canson tablets are offered to artists through art supply stores.

That cheap little sketchbook was like an addictive drug that I greedily used up until there was no more. The halved replacement feels more like a homework assignment in a subject I don’t particularly like. It’s a bit of a slog and nothing decent is coming out of my pencils. That’s why I haven’t been splashing sketches across this website recently. I really don’t have much that’s worth showing. The adventures of The Atomic Warrior has hit a speed-bump.

Sigh.

One of the few decent doodles in my halved sketchbook.

I have to make a go of it. I have this and a whole other half of this sketchbook before I go exploring alternatives. It’s not that I think it’s bad luck to jump to a new sketchbook before the old one is done, but it’s probably bad luck to break out a new one before using up the old.

I don’t want to start haunting stores looking for cheap scratch pads. I’ll end up with garbage. I found a newsprint pad recently that proved to be utterly useless. It probably would have been just fine for shipping glassware but impossible to draw in.

In my years selling and using art supplies, I’ve always heard people bemoan the loss of a favorite pencil, paper, correcting white or something that they just don’t make anymore. Maybe a company went out of business or went into a different direction. Now I know what they mean.

I’m also wondering if something less toothy might do the trick. The Sketchbook from Heaven felt somewhat smoother.

The search continues.