Stillman & Birn Zeta Series Sketchbook: Just Short of Greatness

            Before you read this review, it’s important that you understand a little bit about me as an artist. I love working primarily in pen and ink, and I’ve collected dozens of fine-liners and brush pens alike. I prefer illustrations with clean and precise line quality, so when my tools feather on the paper I work with, it frustrates me to no end. I could talk about that for a long, long time, and I did! You can read about that here, because today I’m not talking about that. Today, I’m talking about the Stillman & Birn Zeta Series Softcover sketchbook.

My Stillman & Birn Softcover Zeta Series. On the right - Lamy Safari Petrol Blue and Noodler's Ahab Flex Pen

            Stillman & Birn is a company that specializes in artist’s paper. They currently produce sketchbooks in seven different varieties, from Alpha to Zeta, and over a dozen formats. Their paper can also be bought by the sheet. Each one of their paper varieties offers a different type of paper to suit the needs of different materials, from dry media to heavy watercolor. I decided to choose a 5.5” x 8.5” softcover from their Zeta series, a smooth stock of paper weighing in at a generous 270gsm and advertised by their website as most suitable for ink and watercolor.

“Sounds great,” I think to myself. “I love ink and I love watercolor, so I will love this book.” I talk like a robot. This isn’t important. It turns out I did not love this book.

Allow me to explain. I do like certain things about this book. I think it’s a great book for watercolor sketching, the paper is smooth, and the format is nice. However, the binding is pretty lousy and the paper does not treat my inks as nicely as everyone on the internet led me to believe.

While it isn’t a deal breaker, I appreciate greatly when a sketchbook is bound to lie flat. This typically involves exclusive stitch binding, which the Zeta does not offer. 

Glue binding - Yuck!

The paper is organized in signatures that are stitch bound, but the overall spine is bound in glue. The book eventually lays flat, but it requires some breaking in, and some of the pages are glued together close to the spine, causing tearing when opened widely. The breaking in isn’t much of an issue, but the tearing is honestly pretty ugly. The hardcover format of the book appears to not have this issue. You can check out a review of that format from Teoh Yi Chie, a blogger who I tend to trust when it comes to art supplies. If you want to get another angle on this book, I definitely recommend taking a look at his writing.

Something I consider much more severe is the quality of the paper. Like I mentioned before, the Zeta is great for watercolors. However, its performance with my ink pens is bafflingly mediocre. There is at least no bleed, but the paper is incredibly absorbent, which leads to some pretty heinous feathering for paper of this standard. Some of the worst offenders are my Pilot Pocket Brush, my red Pentel Touch Pen, my Stabilo fine liners, my Pilot Razorpoint, and my Noodler’s Ahab Flex Pen with Waterman Blue Ink. 

Pilot Pocket Brush

Red Pentel Fude Sign Pen

 The feathering is not ridiculous, but it is noticeable, which is honestly unacceptable for such a thick, smooth paper. Even my pens with the least feathering soak right into the paper, cheapening the quality of each line as it hits the page.

Blue Stabilo Fine Liner

Pilot Razorpoint (Purple)

Noodler's Ahab Flex with Waterman Blue Ink

Overall, the Zeta has the potential to be perfect, a book that lets me work limited only by my imagination. I’ve been working with a lot of idea books that I could only use pencils and a few select pens in, so I was looking forward to shed those material limitations for a month or two. Unfortunately, the Zeta fails to deliver on this experience. It’s a competent book for watercolors, so if that is something that you’re into then I recommend it. However, I don’t carry around a watercolor kit everywhere I go. Its shortcomings are few, but each is severe enough to damage an experience that I had been given such high expectations for. The Zeta is good enough for me to keep for watercolor sketching and technique testing, but in terms of sketchbooks I will be returning to more reliable brands like Midori in the future.