December 9, 2025

A Collaborative Sketchbook: Conversations on Paper

Our very talented retail staff have been painting in a shared Moleskine Japanese Album over the past few months—take a peek and find some inspiration for your sketchbooks.

By The Art Toolkit Team

A series of illustrated pages in a concertina binding, showcasing various artistic styles and characters, including whimsical creatures and abstract designs. Each page features detailed, colorful artwork, blending fantasy and surreal elements.

Since late August of this year, our talented retail staff have been collaborating on a shared Moleskine Japanese Album using the demo supplies in our shop.

The sketchbook, which Morgan Terry, Jemma Pereña, and Ron Ransom worked on concurrently, is a fascinating blend of styles, media, and personalities; each artist has his or her preferred subject matter and materials, and each takes up space on the page in a distinctive way.

A collage of artistic sketches featuring a sleeping dog, a raccoon hanging upside down, a young child reaching out with a pencil, and a butterfly. The background blends earthy tones with scattered colors, creating a dynamic, whimsical scene. — Morgan’s pages using water-soluble graphite, gouache, and ballpoint pen.

Yet as the pages progress, we witness playful juxtapositions and the visual artists’ equivalent of riffing on a theme. Ron’s magnificent octopus with a waving tentacle is echoed by trailing jellyfish tendrils and embellished with delicate mussel shells painted by Jemma.

Morgan, our Customer Service and Retail Specialist, says the joint sketchbook has been a practice of sketching more freely and trusting “that it’s okay to show my messy process to my sketchbook buddies.”

A vibrant, colorful octopus with pink and purple hues stretches out its tentacles. Nearby, two dark blue shells are scattered on a sandy beach, while a child reaches toward them, engaged with the scene. — Octopus by Ron, shells by Jemma, and part of a portrait by Morgan.

The artists drew inspiration from Peter Han’s tour of his Japanese accordion sketchbook, taking cues from how his images seemed to converse with each other.

And indeed the format of the accordion sketchbook truly lends itself to a visual conversation that sprawls across the pages, one image spilling over into the next, in a way that would be impossible to achieve in a standard bound notebook.

Jemma’s (left) and Ron’s (right) pages. Jemma uses De Atramentis Document Ink in blue gray with colored pencil and gouache. Ron uses Da Vinci Paint Co.’s Payne’s Gray, Ultramarine Blue and Hansa Yellow Medium paints and a white gel pen.

The Moleskine Art Plus Japanese Album, available both in our retail shop and on our website, measures 5" x 8¼" and fits into an A5 Art Toolkit. Its hard cover and slim width allows it to be slipped easily into any bag and carried unobtrusively for impromptu sketching. Its creamy pages are 90lb (165 gsm), making it perfect for light washes and mixed media, and it opens flat at 180 degrees.

A colorful illustration features a serene forest scene with tall trees and a winding path. Above the forest, whimsical faces of children and a frog peek down. A yellow slug is positioned at the bottom of the image. — Collaborative pages between Jemma (woods and slug, watercolor pencil), Morgan (portrait, ballpoint ink), Ron (faces and frog, red pencil and watercolor).

We recommend the Moleskine Japanese Album for fans of the Hahnemühle Zig Zag Books, for sketching a sprawling panoramic landscape or cityscape, for a series of sketches on a theme (such as portraits or a garden journal), or for making your own collaborative sketchbook with friends!

A pair of binoculars rests on a wooden surface, set against a dramatic backdrop of dark clouds and distant mountains with a green landscape in the foreground. — A collaborative sketch between Morgan (portrait and binoculars underpainting) and Jemma (landscape overpainting).

If you visit the shop, be sure to ask the retail staff for a peek at the shared sketchbook and chat with them about their art—and pick up your own Japanese Album!

A watercolor illustration depicting a woman and a chimpanzee facing each other, with a child lying in the background. The woman and chimp appear to be engaged in a gentle, contemplative interaction. The overall tone is soft and introspective. — Morgan’s pages painted with the Aquash Water Brush: the portrait of Jane Goodall and the chimpanzee are not painted on consecutive pages, but the magic of the fold-out accordion notebook allows for whimsical juxtapositions like this.

A whimsical illustration featuring two distinct characters: on the left, a mythical woman with intricate designs in her hair, butterfly wings, and celestial elements, and on the right, a colorful octopus with prominent texture and flowing tentacles, set against a soft, dreamy background. — Ron’s pages using colored pencil, water-soluble graphite, watercolors from the Explore Palette, a gold gel pen, and a fineliner pen.

Tomatoes by Ron in watercolor using the Explore Palette—the final page of this sketchbook-in-progress.

You can view more of Morgan’s and Ron’s art, as well as those of our other staff members, in our previous blog posts.

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