Tina snagged this 5.5 inch by 8.5 inch Canson XL Mixed Media sketchbook from a big box store to hopefully replace my beloved Sketchbook from Heaven. It wasn’t quite the replacement for that cheap but inexplicably magical doodle pad, but it wasn’t half bad.
The Canson XL has a nice, heavy stock that will take both wet and dry media. I’m finding that I prefer it to the paper in the Strathmore 400 Series Sketchbooks which I sadly have a number of strewn around my house. They’re not as bad as the hardbound sketchbooks which I have one or two I still need to polish off, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the enormous 14 inch by 17 inch Strathmore sketchbook that I bought years ago for a particular project. I’ll probably never finish it off. It’s too big to stuff into a backpack.
I just ordered another 7 inch by 10 inch Canson XL sketchbook along with a number of other art supplies from a retailer I have never dealt with before. I’ll let you know how I make out once the package arrives. Maybe I’ll do an unboxing post when my stuff comes.
As I’ve written before, I like to have noise in the background when I am scribbling in my sketchbooks. That noise is usually in the form of my TV tuned to something that doesn’t require my strict attention. I think I struck pay dirt with the fabulous DistroTV channel available on the Roku and probably a bunch of other streaming boxes. Distro is sort of like the cable methadone for cord cutters in that they offer a number of TV channels within their channel featuring movies, news and what have you, but what I discovered was a music channel called ’80s Loop that is like MTV back when that station first started. They just play music videos along with the occasional commercial. No VeeJays, but I don’t miss them. They play way too much Madonna, but it’s like I got my MTV back! I killed off the little sketchbook while listening to songs I haven’t heard in years.
