I test journals primarily for two reasons:
1) To see what a new ink or watercolor does,
or how a mix will look in a journal with which I am familiar;
2) To test a new brand of journal’s paper quality.

I test them on the back pages of the journals.
I LOVE it when journals use the actual paper as paper liners in the front and back pages —
Hahnemühle does this — and the image above is on that back page.
It gives me an additional test page at the back, and I use the front inner cover
to write about where I am in the month starting the journal….

Above, a fooling around page in a Hahnemühle Watercolour Journal …
Tests generally are a bit smaller and may overlap,
compared to the tests below of a new unfamiliar journal brand.

I was given a Goldline Journal to try out…
This journal has brown cover paper both on inside covers and a second sheet;
This is pretty much wasted because I can’t do much on it
though I wrote some notes on the brown paper.

Above, my first foray into the back of the journal.
I wrote in the two waterproof inks I use most often.
I commented how the nibs felt on the paper; the stub nib dragged quite a lot.
After drying, I tested many watercolors from my everyday travel palette over the top of the two waterproof inks, and while I expected this outcome, neither moved on the new paper.

Then I tested my new fude pens on the paper…
And some graphite, and the paper has nice tooth for “pencil”.

Finally I tested some mixes
I am using for a cat book
I am illustrating.
Possible cat colors were
also mixed with a few
Daniel Smith Primatek watercolors, to see how they fared on the paper but also in general…  And I had bought a few new paints in shades of grey, tested those.

I tested both watercolor
and hard prismacolor-type
non-soluble colored pencils
I might use for bits of
linework on the cat images.

In the end I was able to put together my “cat palette”,
which also can be used as a horse or dog or bunny palette…
The greens are eyes and the Quinacridone Pink is for noses and tongues….

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