ARTWAY Studio WIRObound Sketchbooks

Black wibalin cloth covered* WIRObound sketchbook in portrait format. Contains 112 sides. We use the same heavyweight 165gsm acid free cartridge paper in all of our STUDIO sketchbooks. This premium paper has sufficient tooth (surface texture) to hold soft media but not so much as to hinder finer, graphic work thus making it suitable for all dry applications.

This book is bound with a metal silver WIRO on the long edge for rigidity. WIRO binding provides extra expandability in the spine to attach added material (cuttings/swatches etc) to internal pages. It allows for the book to be completely folded round on itself taking up minimum desktop footprint. Pages can be easily pulled out should you need to. Small wiro loops hold the book better together but offer limited expandability whilst larger wiro loops provide better expandability but can make the book feel very floppy. We use a 1" WIRO which we believe is the best size for this number of pages to provide a happy compromise between structure and practical usage. Please remember however that a WIRO bind is less secure than a casebound book as the WIRO is pliable and will distort / break down without care. We recommend that users get in to the habit of manually closing the wire loops on a regular basis particularly if their books have a good number of pages with added material. Too much insertion will however render the binding useless as its tolerance will be exceeded.

We often get asked if you can use wet media (watercolour/ink etc) in our books. Cartridge papers are not the ideal surface for such applications lacking the strength and rigidity required however if you don't mind a bit of buckling as the paper dries out then it's not a problem. Our heavier cartridge certainly helps to resist these effects although the wetter the surface the more it will be affected. If you require your work to be absolutely flat then we suggest you use heavier, purpose made papers designed to take wet media or to 'stretch' your cartridge wet over a rigid flat board using brown gum tape on all edges.

* Covering the board reduces moisture getting to the greyboard beneath and therefore restricts warping.