Royal & Langnickel is probably best known for their paintbrushes, but they also make a variety of sketchbooks, including this letter-size, hardcover one.
Sketchbook details:
- Hardcover
- 8.5″ x 11″ (21.5 cm x 27.9 cm)
- 65 lb / 110 gsm textured paper
- 110 sheets (220 pages)
- Acid free
- $15 MSRP
I first picked up this sketchbook in 2024, as I was nearing the bottom of my sketchbook stockpile, and despite the high page count, I filled it quickly.
(As a side note, this other R&L sketchbook has very similar specs at the same price point, but the cover texture is different, so I’m not sure how similar it actually is??)
The pages are more textured and toothier than I prefer, but that didn’t actually end up mattering much.
My 0.5mm mechanical pencils and most fountain pens don’t have trouble with it. The texture kinda helps make the pages feel thicker too, though 110 gsm is pretty respectable as-is.
Both sides of pages were totally usable with dry media (including pencils and pigment pens), water-based markers, and both brush pens and fountain pens with fountain pen ink.
I think I’m less heavy-handed than I used to be, but sometimes you can still see the whole ghost image of the drawing from the blank backside of a page, especially if it’s inked — the blank side is still in good enough shape to draw on though. The ghosting gets covered up if I do, and if I scan both sides of the page, the ghosting doesn’t show up in the scan.
All of these also show both sides of the same page:
While not intended for wet media, the pages hold up decently to light washes of watercolor.
I wouldn’t want to do an actual painting in the sketchbook, as the paper will start to warp quite a bit, but it’s not bad for swatching and quick experiments.
This Royal & Langnickel sketchbook has no ribbon bookmark or page perforations. There’s nothing that’s really notable about it. Even the $15 MSRP is pretty average. But it’s the same size and format as my dearly departed Punctuate sketchbook, has a high page count and decent paper, and I had no major complaints.
I felt good enough about the sketchbook that after I filled it, I ordered a box of six (6) more.
Unfortunately, the cover started to come loose from the pages as I neared the end of my third Royal & Langnickel sketchbook, and that was when my opinion started to sour a bit.
I was probably in the last quarter of the sketchbook when it started to happen, but it progressed very quickly, and was more or less in the below state before I finished it. I blitzed through the last few pages with big ink doodles just so I could get started on a new sketchbook ASAP, and that’s always kind of annoying. I don’t wanna be rushed! But I also gotta finish the sketchbook.
This is the first time I’ve had the cover of a hardcover sketchbook start to detach.
I don’t think I’m particularly rough on my sketchbooks, especially since I don’t really travel with them anymore. I’m not very careful with them either though, so they definitely fall off tables and have things stacked on them when open occasionally.
The first and last pages of the sketchbook are glued to the front and back interiors of the hardcover while the spine of the pages is free to flex and bend as the book is held open. This is a pretty common binding setup. Some sketchbooks have the spine exposed along the hardcover’s interior, but some have the spine glued to a flexible piece of cardboard, so the spine can still bend while having an extra bit of structure to hold the pages together.
And as I was taking photos for this review, I noticed that some of the R&L sketchbooks have the pages glued to a flexible cardboard spine, but some of them are exposed.
With or without the cardboard piece, the hardcover is still just held on by the first and last pages being glued to the interior covers, but the cardboard piece does prevent the page spine from being flattened at extremes.
Lack of the cardboard piece allows the sketchbook to “lay flat” to a greater extent, but maybe this stresses out the fixed, glued sheets and makes them more likely to tear? Sketchbooks specifically marketed as lay-flat get around this by making the glued sheets heavier/thicker, giving them some extra length, and having the spine of the hardcover be flexible (or non-existent).
The Royal & Langnickel sketchbooks aren’t marketed as lay-flat. Just kidding, the 8-pack of them indicates “the binding allows the books to lay flat while opened for easy sketching.” So are they supposed to have the cardboard piece or not? The inconsistency is extremely weird. The sheets glued to the interior covers could stand to be heavier if the sketchbook is intended to lay flat though.
Lay-flat is cool, but I don’t feel like I ever use the feature to my advantage, so I’d much prefer my sketchbooks stay bound. It’s one of the reasons I only use hardcover sketchbooks… At least it only happened to one of the R&L sketchbooks I’ve had, but that’s one more than every other type of sketchbook I’ve used.
Lately, I feel like the pages are warping too easily under my hand, but maybe my hands are just extra sweaty in summer. It also feels like back-of-page indentation and ghosting is happening more? Flipping through my sketchbooks though, it seems like things are about the same, actually, but things that didn’t annoy me before are annoying me now. The page texture feels more annoying lately, too.
I guess I’m kinda tired of this sketchbook? I really don’t tend to get tired of things from using them too long or too often, so that’s pretty weird.
The cover coming loose on one of them was unexpected, but the R&L sketchbook has otherwise been fine. It just feels like time to try another sketchbook though.
The first Royal & Langnickel sketchbook I got was from Push/Pull. It was at the MSRP price of $15, but I get 50% off supplies, so it cost me $7.50+tax, for probably $8.27 total.
Unfortunately, the store stopped carrying it, so the two 3-packs I subsequently ordered were from Walmart, which totaled $56.08 including tax and shipping (the receipt didn’t separate them), so about $9.34/sketchbook.
It looks like other retailers have single sketchbooks anywhere between $8-16. The low end of that is fantastic, but even the high end is still pretty good for a high page count, hardcover sketchbook. This isn’t a bad sketchbook!!
Still, the Royal & Langnickel sketchbook is basically a less good and more expensive version of the Artists’ Loft sketchbook. The specs are nearly identical, although R&L’s “110 gsm” is 65 lb and Artists’ Loft’s “110 gsm” is 75 lbs somehow. Paper weights are mysterious, but the difference is noticeable between the two sketchbooks. The latter’s pages are thicker, less toothy, and generally hold up better.
It was just unfortunate that I’d had quite a few sketchbooks (from the stockpile) between the Artists’ Loft (#91) and my first R&L (#99), so I didn’t remember how much better the Artists’ Loft was. If I had, I’d probably would’ve ordered a box of those instead.
Estudio EA