Short explanation for rating: 5 stars for being a decent brand and a good price. Minus 2 stars for being delivered damaged and not thoroughly protected. This is a pretty average 60lb (89g/m2) paper. Good for sketching with pens, pencils, and color pencils. Do NOT get this if you are attempting to use wet media or marker. There are plenty of good options for marker and wet/mix media, sketching paper is for SKETCHING. I swatched oil pen, sharpie, HB lead, copic, Sakura, and tombow liners, copic alcohol markers, and zebra mildliners on a sample sheet. I also taped a piece of washi to cover my signature. Adhesives stick well, I’ve used washi and scotch permanent adhesive roller and everything sticks nicely. As expected, heavier inks bleed through, so as stated before, this paper is FOR SKETCHING, but I still wanted to see how my pens and markers bled through the paper. The ghost for the water based pens is not particularly apparent, but the bleed from the copic markers are. The mildliners did ghost, but did not bleed. Oil pen leaves no bleeding or ghosting. If you are expecting this paper to be of better quality, and to be useful for anything other than pens and pencils you are mistaken. Please look for marker and/or mix media and/or watercolor and/or acrylic paper for that. I see a lot of ratings saying this paper is not good quality. It is great quality for the price, and for what it is MADE FOR. Using media that this paper was not made for does not warrant complaint if you chose to get the wrong paper. I also like that the paper is not pure/stark white, and is more of an ivory/off white. I have sensitivity to bright lights and bright white paper is difficult for me to look at for extended periods of time, so having paper that is slightly off white helps ease my eyes. This is good for everyday sketching, doodling, or even free hand note taking, if you don’t want a ruled paper. Oil (ballpoint) pens write nicely with no ghost or bleed, but test your pens out on a sample page before committing to prevent bleeding, ghosting, and smudging. Now, this would have received a better rating, but my sketchbook came damaged. It was also not packaged very well. I expected it to be in some sort of plastic, or at least something more protective, and Amazon could have done a better job at packing to prevent damage. Strathmore is a good brand for cheap decent quality paper, but I don’t think I’m going to order from Amazon anymore considering every time I order a sketch book it comes damaged. This is not the fault of the sketch book or the brand, as they have no control over how Amazon packages and ships their products. The fact that it came through USPS is also bothersome as my local USPS is known for not delivering and mysteriously losing packages. All-in-all, I don’t love or hate it, but it works fine for what I wanted (doodling during work and class, quick freehand notes, and quick sketch/project ideas).
