Royal Talens vs Pith

Thoroughly researched, honest review. All opinions are my own!

I have been using Royal Talens sketchbooks exclusively for a couple of years. After trying out lots of sketchbooks over the last two decades, I’d settled on these and we were very happy together. But then,

Emma Carlisle

and

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started banging on about Pith being the best ever, in their new Podcast, so FOMO led me to make my first Pith order.

First drawing in new Pith sketchbook.

I’ve been mainly using the 13cm x 21cm Royal Talens sketchbook. It isn’t a standard size - a bit narrower than A5 - which I like. It’s perfect for me when I am out and about because it fits easily in my bag with all the materials I want and it doesn’t feel daunting to fill a double page spread, which is how I use it mainly. I wish I’d ordered the Pith Cara Cara as it’s the most similar at 14cm x 20cm, but true to form I got muddled up and ordered the Lumia (17.5cm x 25cm). So I’ll be comparing the Lumia and the A4 Royal Talens in this post. It’s worth mentioning that I paid for both of these sketchbooks!

Size comparison of the two sketchbooks in question! RT is the red one, Pith is blue.

First up to be reviewed is…

PAPER

Which I’ve broken down into a few sections..

• Finish

  I like the smoothness of the Royal Talens paper. Pencils and soft pastels glide on really nicely. The Pith sketchbook has a very slight texture, still fine for pencils and pastels, but less glidey!

• Weight

  Pith 200 gsm.

  Royal Talens 140 gsm.

  Does Pith take wet materials better?

  YES IT DOES!

  Those 60 gsm make a big difference when it comes to wet materials! Pith pages feel much more substantial, more like card than paper. It’s encouraged me to take the paints (gouache) and acrylic inks out on location with me on every outing. I’ve had a merry old time with them and my Art Graf tin as the pages take loads of water without going wrinkly and bumpy. This pleases me greatly! I find any kind of wet material crinkles the Royal Talens pages and I can be put off from drawing on the other side if there are too many crinkles. Occasionally wet materials will bleed through the spine too. 

  

  Nasty ink/bleach spine bleed and wrinkling in the Royal Talens.

I don’t use alcohol markers much but I did a little test for those of you that are interested. The markers bleed through in both sketchbooks. Less so in the Pith. 

Alcohol marker bleed through. RT on the left, Pith on the right.

• Colour

  When I first tried the Royal Talens sketchbooks the creamy colour of the pages was my no.1 complaint! It felt toooo yellow. But now I’m used to it and I like the warmth it brings to my drawings. However, when it comes to scanning sketchbook drawings to make into prints it can be problematic, and I sometimes have to mess about dropping cream backgrounds in and I get a bit cross. 

  The Pith pages are described as “ivory”, they still have a lovely warmth to them but they are less yellow. I haven’t scanned any pages yet but I guess I’ll have a similar thing in Photoshop if I want the drawings to be on the warm ivory, instead of white. 

COVER AND BINDING

I like the wide range of coloured covers from RT. I try to use a certain colour during the summer, or for a module of my MA, so I can recognise them easily as a group. Pith have some lovely colours too, but there is less choice at the moment. 

Quite a lot of sketchbooks.

The Pith cover is thicker and stronger but I find the soft corners of the RT appealing and welcoming and I like the elastic strap that holds all my scrappy bits of paper in that I put between pages when I’m out and about. 

My favourite thing about the Pith is the binding. There’s no hard spine so it opens completely flat. This is brilliant! It makes working on a double page spread really easy and will be great for scanning for prints because nothing disappears down the gutter. 

AVAILABILITY

For me it’s really easy to get hod of an RT sketchbook. I can pop in to my lovely local stationers whenever I want, have a chat, and buy an A4 RT for the grand total of £12.99. I waited about 4 days for my Pith to arrive and I did feel the postage was a bit steep at £4.

SOURCE

Pith’s USP is about working in a sustainable way, which undoubtedly adds to production costs. Royal Talens say they are taking steps to work in a more sustainable way. 

PRICE

To make things fair let’s pretend that I can’t nip to the local shop to buy an RT and pretend I have to order both of them online and pay postage.

If I ordered the A4 Royal Talens from Jackson’s the price plus VAT and UK postage would be £19.44.

The Lumia sketchbook direct from Pith, plus VAT and UK postage would be £23.95.

A price difference of £4.51.

There are 76 sheets in Pith and 80 in Royal Talens, but I don’t always draw on every page of an RT sketchbook because the pages are too wrinkly, wet materials have bled through the spine, or I’ve done a drawing I really like and I don’t want to risk ripping/bleeding through. Let’s say 10% go unused. I will use every page in a Pith.

This makes my cost per double page spread…

Pith 31p

Royal Talens 27p

Not much in it is there!

A nice spread from an RT, despite the wrinkling.

So my highly scientific and mathematical review comes to an end. It turns out that value for money isn’t that different after all. I think Pith is a superior sketchbook and if you are a fan of wet materials and piling loads of stuff on the page I reckon Pith is for you. If you find expensive sketchbooks intimidating I’d stick to the RT. Pith feels much better quality and I was a bit scared to draw in it at first until I’d wrecked a few pages.

If I had to order both online then I’d probably be making the switch to Pith. But because RT is so easy to get hold of for me and no postage cost means it’s really affordable, I’ll be using both from now on. I’ll save Pith for holidays and the summer when I know I’ll be doing lots of drawing from life, and RT as more of an every day sketchbook.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you tried Royal Talens and Pith? Which do you prefer? Do you know of a far superior sketchbook? TELL ME! Or maybe not….