Birch Bark: An Ideal Blank Canvas

 

Looking forward to filling more blank canvases!

When Field Notes Brand released its fall quarterly edition, Birch Bark, its white, subtly speckled cover was supposed to evoke the “simple, elegant and austere” bark of birch trees, but I saw only one thing: a blank canvas waiting to be sketched on! But what would the cover stock be like to draw on?

Field Notes likes to try lots of different cover stocks for its quarterly limited editions, but many tend to be smooth and even glossy – not ideal for some drawing materials. The first thing I did was to scribble a bunch of media on a back cover. For something like a notebook that’s going to get daily wear, tear and possibly splashes, I don’t want to use anything water-soluble, but just for fun, I tested a few anyway. As suspected, the paper is not great for wet media, but markers and other inks did well. More surprisingly, the cover stock has a delicious tooth that’s great for graphite, colored pencil and – the pencil of pens – Bic ballpoint!

Graphite would probably be beautiful, but constant handling would likely end up a smudgy mess. As a compromise, I chose a Bic for my first try. It has the closest look and behavior of graphite, but it’s both water- and smudge-proof.

Initially I thought a technical or fountain pen would also work well, but now that I’ve drawn on the stock’s texture, I’m wondering if it might be too toothy, especially for a fine nib. A brush pen seems OK, though, and my Platinum music nib did well, too.

Drawing this raccoon (the one who begged from our backyard a couple months ago) was so much fun that I think more animal portraits would be the ideal subject for Field Notes covers. Birch Bark might be the most fun edition since Sweet Tooth!