Bee Paper - 5.5" x 8" Creative Marker Drawing Journal

This is my first time trying Bee paper, and it won’t be my last.I am a watercolorist, and I do most of my daily painting exercises and practice in journals. I prepare all of my journal pages as I would any high-end watercolor paper. I prefer journals that have really great quality cotton rag paper, because occasionally my daily practice yields some very high quality work, and if it’s done on great paper, I can remove it from the journal and frame it, sell it, use it in other art pieces, or gift it. If not, it’s still a joy for me to open and look at the work I’ve done in the past.I typically love the Etchr Perfect sketchbook journals for their high quality cotton rag paper and book-like covers, and still buy them, but they are quite expensive.So far this Bee watercolor journal seems to be very good quality paper at a very affordable price, and may well become an alternative to the Etchr journals for my daily work.The covers are pretty cheap as compared with the Etchr or Stillman & Birn sketchbooks, but for a lower price and still great paper it’s a compromise I’ll make. The covers could be a great substrate for a mixed-media application.

I tried this as an alternative to the Hahnemuhle 100% cotton sketchbook, because that one is so ridiculously expensive. If you want the quality of paper at a far better price, try this one. It's 140 pound (so, thicker than Hahnemuhle) and has a gentle cold press surface, so it's smooth enough for ink or graphite if you do line and wash, but has enough texture to show off your watercolors to maximum advantage. The only drawback, if you typically draw or paint across the seam, is that this is wire-spiral bound. It's possible to still have the drawing or painting continue across both pages, but you 'll have a larger gutter and the wires as an interruption.

My wife loves it

Update:I like this paper more as I use it more. It is quite heavy. It does drink in the washes fairly quickly. But one can get it quite wet.I did some 3 color back washes into the sky and like how it turned out. I updated the areas of the hills where it bled and added some shading to conceal that. I also wentuch darker in some areas and added highlights with a white hell pen down between the frozen ice and the melted breakup.You can see the photos progress.I will probably buy this over a Canson XL wire bound book next time. Also, I have some heavy paper that I have cut a bit larger that I stick in the book to act as a blotter, as well as to protect the edges of the pages below as I work for color that bleeds over the edges.Old review:The product was meant to be shrink-wrapped for shipment, however, Amazon felt that it was important to ship it in a HUGE box full of other stuff and then cushion with their famous half an inch worth of Kraft paper that does nothing to add anything from anyting, and the shrink wrap was torn. The corners were dinged up and one of the wires is bent.The ring binding is a little bit large and so the pages shift around a bit. but it did come with a transparent page for the end piece to keep the first sheet from getting a braided against the inside cover.I had a lot of trouble in the painting with the red sofa in the cat in getting my wash very controllable. And I ended up using a lot of layers to get the shading I wanted. I did use a little bit of shimmery paint for part of the sky and you can see this against the cats black tail. That is a Mijello bluish pearls paint. I like the way that adds a little bit of dimension to skies in paintings. This paper did show that off fairly well. There are also some Daniel Smith pigments in this painting that very clearly show glistening mica type particles off very nicely. But ultimately in the painting of the cat I felt that everything was very flat and I ended up adding some more texture with watercolor pencils and then not wetting some of them just to turn up the detailing a little bit. I'm a pretty new painter with watercolors so I'm sure part of that is my learning curve too- your mileage may vary.I did the landscape sketch outdoors on a very windy day down by the channel. I had trouble getting washes because they kept drying before I could get the pigment into the wet paper but I don't think that's the fault of this paper. for this picture my washes were very fast especially the shading in the mountains and I'm pretty happy with how that went and I'm also pretty happy with the effect of watercolor pencils here. I used some caran d'ache neocolor II crayons, cretacolor woodless watercolor pencils for my background sketch and a Daniel Smith and indancrone blue paint stick form a base sketch. The landscape is incomplete. I did have some issues where I tried to do extremely wet wash and they bled over in the area where the green trees and the background mountain sort of blood and washed out and didn't end up maintaining separations or the defining lines I had hoped for. I haven't tried to go back in and lift it out to correct it yet. I also had to use some artist tape to tape the corners down because it was so windy. I didn't have any problem removing the tape or having it lift any of the paper fiber.When I was painting the cat the paper buckled quite a bit and I had to wait for a while so it got completely dry before I could do second layers because areas bled fairly easily on that one as well. however when I close the book and put a weight on it overnight after everything was dry the pages flattened out very nicely again.I haven't tried to remove any pages from the book yet but I'm sure that it would be just fine because there are decent micro perforations near the spiral. they look small enough that it may be better to just cut along the line with a good pair of scissors than to risk ripping a finished piece. I kind of like that they're not too easily torn. The paper is a goodly weight and if it had bigger perforations I'd be a little concerned about then working their way loose at the top and bottom edges and then damaging some of the work that I wanted to remain inside the protective cover.I think the stability of this book could be improved by adding a rubber band or something to it and I'll probably do that or tie it shut with a ribbon or something during transport.overall you get a lot of paper on this pad and it seems to be nice paper although I'm not really convinced it's rag. It definitely has a different quality to some of the other papers I've used.I really wanted a hardcover notebook with spirals so I can open it all the way and flip it around so that I could just work with the one service instead of having an open book and I really like how thick and durable the covers are. They're very very sturdy and difficult to bend. I also really liked that they included a piece of vellum on both ends so that the first and last pages won't get ruined against the cover by rubbing into the black cardboard surface.I would buy this again, but I'm not sure yet that it's my go-to watercolor paper in a book form.

Bee Paper Company Creative Marker Book, 8-1/2" x 11"I use another brand too, Stillman and Birn Epsilon/ Zeta for alcohol markers, pen and inks and pigment markers and light washes. I saw this one at a local store and the paper felt amazing in my hands. It is very smooth and thick, 110lbs. , the color is awesome, it is a nice white with a warm undertone to it but very white, like a creamy white that shows the markers beautifully. Kind of like the tone of white pearl . Gorgeous. I like using colored pencils too to block some color and kind of melt with the alcohol markers. Just be careful, once you draw it is a bit challenging to erase, it is very smooth so the eraser tends to glide on the paper. IF you apply alcohol markers very heavily it will definitely bleed through but I see this happen across all papers, even Bristol paper, some of my markers are very juicy and they just dump a lot of color and others are not, so that really varies. The covers are very thick and they protect your artwork well. Compared in price with the other this is awesome if you stick with alcohol markers and pens, I find myself reaching for this one all the time to use my copics. Happy that I found this new sketchbook, I'm really enjoying it.

I’ve tried many watercolor sketchbooks but these are my favorite. They stopped making them for over a year but I was happy to see them back. The quality of the paper is not as good as the original manufacturer but still my go to. The paper is good for wet-on-wet or wet-on- dry techniques. I will hoard them if I have to. I like the variety of sizes but 8x8 are my favorite.

Bee paper is excellent value for 100% cotton, cold pressed, watercolour paper. It's absolutely beautiful to work with and it's my go to for a lot of projects. This journal is the perfect size for travel and I will be purchasing this journal again.

This is a good quality 100% cotton paper. My paintings stay wet for a long time which allows easy blending. It can also take a lot of water and I am able to do multiple layering on this paper without the paper peeling off. There are some YouTube reviews on Bee Paper sketchbook on how the watercolour paints don't move once it hits the paper but I think the paper of those Bee Paper sketchbooks reviewed may not be 100% cotton. I love the ones sold through Amazon!

Beautiful paper! Holds water well.

Honestly the best quality sketchbook for alcohol markers. Yeah it still bleeds a little bit what I like the most about it is that it has the least amount of feathering that I’ve experienced when it comes to inking a drawing.

Fantastic watercolour sketchbook. Paper is quite thick! Takes a significant (dare I say, unreasonable) amount of water (or, y'know.. tears...or I guess, enemy blood maybe? If that's your thing... I'm not here to judge) to warp or buckle even an untaped page. For example, I was able to layer paint a solid 8 times. Of course, that resulted in the dreaded 'over worked' look, which meant more tears... so really, winning all around!